Iraq: From Sumer to Saddam

456 Pages·1996·45.809 MB·English

by  Geoff Simons (auth.)

IRAQ: FROM SUMER TO SADDAM
Also by Geoff Simons and published by Palgrave Macmillan
CUBA: From Conquistador to Castro
KOREA: The Search for Sovereignty
LIBYA: The Struggle for Survival
THE UNITED NATIONS: A Chronology of Conflict
UN MALAISE: Power, Problems and Realpolitik
THE SCOURGING OF IRAQ: Sanctions, Law and Natural Justice
Iraq: From Somer
to Saddam
Geoff Simons
Foreword by
Tony Benn, MP
Second Edition
MACMill.AN
© Geoff Simons 1994, 1996
Foreword © Tony Benn, MP, 1994
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 2nd edition 1996 978-0-333-66056-0
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Published by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
First edition 1994
Second edition 1996
ISBN 978-0-333-65169-8 ISBN 978-1-349-24763-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-24763-9
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I
05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 96
Contents
Preface to the Second Edition ix
Foreword xi
Preface xiii
Acknowledgements xiv
Introduction XV
PART I IRAQ IN THE NEW WORLD ORDER 1
1 After the 1991 Gulf War 3
The Face of Iraq 4
The Face of Kuwait 25
Post-War Chronology 31
The Saddamgates 55
Other Exposes and Unanswered Questions 70
The Turkish Factor 75
The Survival of Saddam 83
The Bush Finale 89
Enter Bill Clinton 93
The Continuing Confrontation 97
PART II THE HISTORY OF IRAQ 111
2 The Ancient Crucible 113
Beginnings 113
Sumer 115
Akkad 120
Babylonia 121
Assyria 125
The Jews 130
The Persians 133
The Greeks 135
v
vi Contents
Romans and Parthians 136
The Sassanians 137
3 The Arabs, Islam and the Caliphate 139
Arab Origins 139
Mohammad 142
The Framework of Islam 143
The Arab Conquest 145
Schism 147
The Umayyad Dynasty 150
The Abbasid Dynasty 154
Decline 156
4 Seljuks, Mongols and Ottomans 160
End of the Abbasids 160
The Seljuks 161
Impact of the Crusades 164
Mongol Onslaught 168
Ottoman Conquest 173
Ottoman Decline 177
5 The Western Impact 181
Early Interests in Mesopotamia 181
The Lure of Oil 184
The Demise of the Ottomans 188
The Sykes-Picot Agreement 195
Colonial Interregnum 198
Towards Independence 217
6 From Monarchy to Republic 224
The Growth of Nationalism 224
Towards the Coups 227
The Emergence of Ba'athism 234
The Israel Factor 237
Prelude to Suez 244
Revolution and Aftermath 251
The Ba'athists in Power 260
The Impact of Oil 268
Contents vii
7 Into the Era of Saddam 271
Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti 271
The Ba'athist Coup 277
The Kurdish Question 297
Iran-Iraq War 305
Western Support for Saddam 317
US Business and Saddam 325
PART III TOWARDS THE NEW WORLD ORDER 331
8 War with the West 333
Countdown 333
Iraq's Grievances 338
The American 'Green Light' 345
The Invasion of Kuwait 351
The Fabrication of Consensus 353
George Bush 359
The Chronology of Conflict 361
Notes 382
Bibliography 412
Index 418
Preface to the Second Edition
At the time (April 1995) of providing material for this edition, the full trade
embargo on Iraq is still in place. This embargo, maintained nominally as a
UN provision following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990, is
now being retained largely at the sole insistence of the United States.
The entire Iraqi people, supposedly allowed access to foodstuffs and
medical supplies under the terms of UN resolutions, are suffering appalling
privations: diseases, many previously eradicated, are spreading through
the population, and hundreds of thousands of men, women, children and
babies are dying of preventable illnesses or starving to death. Iraqi
assets are frozen or sequestered, and there is still a total ban on the sale of
Iraqi oil. Despite US propaganda about the humanitarian provisions of
Security Council resolution 706 (see Chapter 1), Iraq is being denied
the means to relieve the suffering of an increasingly diseased and starving
population. Iraqi claims that a million people have so far been killed by
the US-protected embargo are largely supported by the independent aid
agencies.
This policy of using starvation and disease against a civilian population
to achieve political ends - in violation of Geneva Protocol 1, Article
54(3)(b ), countless UN Covenants and Declarations, and all natural justice
- is sustaining a manifest genocide. All those prepared to defend policies
that are impacting with such cruelty on an entire population should reflect
on their complicity, major or minor, in the perpetration of a new holocaust.
GEOFF SIMONS
ix
Foreword
The 1991 Gulf War was hailed by many people, including those who prided
themselves on their liberal outlook, as the first example of the New World
Order made possible by the end of the Cold War.
We were told that the international community, using the United Nations
as its founders intended, would defeat and probably overthrow a brutal
dictator by means of weapons of clinical accuracy, deploying the minimum
force possible, and hence pave the way for democracy and a lasting settle
ment of the problems of the Middle East.
It is now clear that what happened was very different from this official
explanation of events.
The United Nations was actually taken over and used by the United
States to secure its strategic oil supplies at a time when the USSR was
disintegrating. The bombing was on a horrific and quite unnecessary scale
which inflicted untold suffering on the Iraqi civilian population both at
the time and subsequently.
A feudal king in Saudi Arabia was protected and the undemocratic
Al-Sabah family was re-installed in Kuwait; Saddam's harsh regime, ori
ginally built up with enthusiastic Western help, was actually consolidated
in Iraq; and the double standards of the West, with respect to the Palestin
ians, stand out more glaringly than ever.
When a superpower war machine gets going and the media puts itself at
the disposal of the political leaders and generals who are cranking it up, all
understanding is driven from the airwaves and the newspapers to ensure
public support for that war. So it was during that short and bloody conflict.
No-one was allowed to hear about the long history of Iraq or its civil
isation, its relations with its neighbours or what happened when Britain
governed it. All parallels with other Western military interventions and
non-interventions were discouraged, as were comparisons with the conduct
of Israel or Turkey.
There was tight censorship of the war reports and then a deadly media
silence about the carnage caused by the bombing and the suffering that
followed, so that we were never permitted to hear of the many thousands
of civilian deaths for which we were collectively responsible.
That whole horrific story and the background which explains it has been
waiting to be told. Here Geoff Simons tells the Iraq story with scholarship,
clarity and great moral force, making this a book for the general reader as
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