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It's déjà vu, all over again
Kenneth
Lamb
11/22/2003
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Welcome to Iraq.
Adam C. Dennis, the assistant archivist for the United Pentecostal Church International, reminded me of that quote from George Santayana. The quote reminded me of Iraq.
In the December issue of the internationally circulated Pentecostal Herald, the Rev. Mr. Dennis writes in an article entitled "Why Study History?", "History helps us to understand change and how the present conditions came to be. The past causes the present, which in turn causes the future. There is no denying that."
The Rev. Dennis then succinctly summarizes the consequences of history: "Choices made by individuals have a lasting effect upon others."
Too bad the Bush administration didn't keep that in mind.
Many pundits toss around Vietnam, questioning if it is the accurate historical analogy for our mess in the Middle East. It's an example of laziness overcoming quality journalism; the more accurate analogy is the British experience in Iraq from 1914 - 1920.
(The Vietnam analogy applies to the Iraq-Afghanistan experience as a whole. More on that in another column.)
The Brits and France defeated the Central Powers in WWI, an alliance whose primary players were the Ottoman Turks, the Germans, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Bulgarians.
One of the best historical narratives on the web about the British, French, and Turks resides at Regiments.org (http://www.regiments.org/milhist/wars/ww1/mesopotam.htm). Historian and author T. F. Mills writes, "Britain's interest in Mesopotamia ran much deeper than just opening another front to harass the Central Powers. They already had a significant economic toe-hold in Basra and Baghdad to the point that in 1911 the Viceroy of India recommended outright annexation by the India Office."
By 1916, the British and French thought they would prevail in The Great War. So Prof. Mills reminds us that the "secret Sykes-Picot Agreement anticipated the partition of the Ottoman empire into British and French spheres of influence with the villayets of Basra and Baghdad going to Britain, and Mosul and Syria to France, but Britain did the fighting and came away with the spoils, taking over Mosul as well as Basra and Baghdad."
Any wonder the Brits and the French never trust each other?
It's significant to note that under the Turks, there was no Iraq proper. Instead, what we now call Iraq existed under the Turks as three provinces distinct in geographic characteristic, history, and ethnic composition.
It fell to young Winston Churchill to draw a map combining the provinces into one "nation." I put that in quotes because Iraq is a nation in geography only. The Great Iraq Revolt of 1920, a portent of why and how the Bush administration is now planning to "cut and run" by June 2004, illustrates my point.
From the site OnWar.com (http://onwar.com/aced/nation/ink/iraq/firaq1920.htm) we read that following the British mandate over Iraq by the League of Nations, "(Imam) Shirazi then issued a fatwa (religious ruling), pointing out that it was against Islamic law for Muslims to countenance being ruled by non-Muslims, and he called for a jihad against the British. By July 1920, Mosul was in rebellion against British rule, and the insurrection moved south down the Euphrates River valley. The southern tribes, who cherished their long-held political autonomy, needed little inducement to join in the fray . . . The country was in a state of anarchy for three months; the British restored order only with great difficulty and with the assistance of Royal Air Force bombers. British forces were obliged to send for reinforcements from India and from Iran."
Sound familiar? Keep reading:
"The Great Iraqi Revolution (as the 1920 rebellion is called), was a watershed event in contemporary Iraqi history. For the first time, Sunnis and Shias, tribes and cities, were brought together in a common effort. In the opinion of Hanna Batatu, author of a seminal work on Iraq, the building of a nation-state in Iraq depended upon two major factors: the integration of Shias and Sunnis into the new body politic and the successful resolution of the age-old conflicts between the tribes and the riverine cities and among the tribes themselves over the food-producing flatlands of the Tigris and the Euphrates. The 1920 rebellion brought these groups together, if only briefly . . ."
It's really too bad someone at the White House can't stick this next paragraph into the faces of the Gang of Six - Rove, Rummy, Wolfie, Condie, Collin and Dickie. The president needs to read this inside his information cocoon:
"The 1920 revolt had been very costly to the British in both manpower and money. Whitehall was under domestic pressure to devise a formula that would provide the maximum control over Iraq at the least cost to the British taxpayer. The British replaced the military regime with a provisional Arab government, assisted by British advisers and answerable to the supreme authority of the high commissioner for Iraq, Cox. The new administration provided a channel of communication between the British and the restive population, and it gave Iraqi leaders an opportunity to prepare for eventual self-government. The provisional government was aided by the large number of trained Iraqi administrators who returned home when the French ejected Faisal from Syria. Like earlier Iraqi governments, however, the provisional government was composed chiefly of Sunni Arabs; once again the Shias were underrepresented."
It's déjà vu, all over again. (Thanks Yogi!)
The British government fell in the next election. It was a combination of the Iraqi War and the economy. As I said, this needs to be in the president's face.
In a summary, Dr. Mills gives the lesson Americans need to learn:
"British trouble in Iraq in the 1920s cannot be divorced from their pre-war interests in the area . . ."
"The war-time policy continued in 1919 as Britain attempted to consolidate its territorial gains. Nationalism was to be controlled, not encouraged, although the "Sharifian" faction in London (e.g. T.E. Lawrence and Gertrude Bell "the uncrowned queen of Iraq") was trying to follow through on rewarding all Arabs for their war effort with full independence. British civil administration was set up in Iraq almost identical to India, with British officials controlling every position."
Highly pertinent to our situation today is the next sentence: "The Commissioner, Sir Arnold Wilson, saw his duty as bestowing the gifts of British civilization without ever having to justify their presence."
So how did the Brits set the historical example for Washington's constantly shifting justifications?
"To make it more palatable to the outside world, London planned to install a puppet monarch, but they dithered so long that they finally asked for a plebiscite on the best form of government. Wilson earnestly thought he knew what was best for Iraq and that the people were too ignorant to govern themselves, so he manipulated a series of phoney plebiscites to give the result he wanted. After a puppet government was installed, several hundred British civil servants moved in expecting a very long imperial tenure."
Replace Wilson with Bremmer; replace puppet government with Iraqi Governing Council.
And what do we see today that the Brits saw in 1920? This time replace League of Nations with U.N.
"Wilson's arrogant administration was precisely the miracle that for the first time gave all Iraqis a sense of national identity and purpose. Even the centuries-old Sunni-Shia conflict was put aside. So by the time the League of Nations confirmed the British Mandate in April 1920, that was the signal for revolt."
George Santayana is chortling in his grave. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
Welcome to Iraq.
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