Be How imperialism Second and final part of GEOFF RYAN's artcle explaining the origins of the modern Iraqi state and the role played by British and US imperialism in the establishment of regimes they are now preparing to wage war against.
Repression of Kurds and Shia Reins lins and tony
George Bush and Tony Blair would have us believe, invented by Saddam Hussein. From its very inception the Iraqi state created by British imperialism denied national rights to the Kurds and was designed to preserve a Sunni Muslim élite in power against a majority Shia population.
As we pointed out in the last issue, the oil rich province of Mosul was finally ceded to Iraq by Turkey in 1926. Both Britain and the Iraqi monarchy found common cause over
Britain wanted control over the region to ensure exploitation of oil resources: that required bombing rebellious Kurds with poison gas and a compliant Iraqi monarchy.
For its part the Iraqi monarchy needed to incorporate the province's large Sunni Muslim population into its new state. Without the Sunni, both Arab and Kurdish, of Mosul, King Faisal's regime (imposed by Britain and originating from what is now Saudi Arabia) would have had little chance of survival in an Iraq with a majority Shia Muslim population.
The biggest losers from the incorporation of Mosul into Iraq were the Kurds, who had been promised their own state in the (non-ratified) 1920 Treaty of Sèvres. The Kurds found themselves divided up between Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria (with a small number in the Soviet Union) and remain the largest nation in the world without their own state.
For the last seventy five years the Kurds have been subjected to repression, with varying degrees of intensity at different times and in different places, in all the states they occupy.
The Shia were also losers, condemned to perpetual domination by a minority Sunni regime - a situation that has continued long after the overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy.
Approximately 75 per cent of Iraqi Arabs are Shia, and Iraq contains four of the most important shrines of the Shia branch of Islam. Even with the largely Sunni Kurds about 55 per cent of the population of Iraq formation. of the Mahabad Republic. Although Mahabad is in the Iranian occupied part of Kurdistan the Republic received enthusiastic support from Iraqi Kurds.
The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), formed in 1945, involved Kurds from both Iraq and Iran. T ever heavily dependent on the he Mahabad Republic was, howSoviet Union. With the beginning of the Cold War the Soviets withdrew their forces from Iran and, in return for oil concessions, abandoned the Kurds to their fate.
The Republic of Mahabad was crushed and the KDP divided into Iraqi and Iranian parties, frequently mutually hostile to each other.
In 1948 Britain and Iraq signed a new