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Neutrality breached: The British Invasion of Iraq.

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Watch: the moment British missiles hit in Iraq | Channel 4 News

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What Is The British Military Doing In Iraq? | Forces TV

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Merging the three provinces of Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra into one political entity and creating a nation out of the diverse religious and ethnic elements inhabiting these lands were accomplished after World War I. Action undertaken by the British military authorities during the war and the upsurge of nationalism afterward helped determine the shape of the new Iraqi state and the course of events during the postwar years until Iraq finally emerged as an independent political entity in 1932.

British control of Iraq, however, was short-lived. After the war Britain debated both its general policy in Iraq and the specific type of administration to establish. Two schools of thought influenced policy makers in London. The first, advocated by the Colonial Office, stressed a policy of direct control to protect British interests in the Persian Gulf and India. Assessing British policy from India, this school may be called the Indian school of thought. The other school, hoping to conciliate Arab nationalists, advised indirect control. In Iraq itself British authorities were divided on the issue. Some, under the influence of Sir Arnold Wilson, the acting civil commissioner, advocated direct control; others, alarmed by growing dissatisfaction with the British administration, advised indirect control and suggested the establishment of an indigenous regime under British supervision. Britain was still undecided on which policy it should follow in 1920 when events in other Arab countries radically changed conditions in Iraq.

Early in 1920 the emir Faisal I, son of the sharif Hussein ibn Ali (then king of the Hejaz), who had led the Arab Revolt of 1916 against the Ottomans, established an Arab government in Damascus and was proclaimed king of Syria. Meanwhile, a group of Iraqi nationalists met in Damascus to proclaim the emir Abdullah, elder brother of Faisal, king of Iraq. Under the influence of nationalist activities in Syria, nationalist agitation followed first in northern Iraq and then in the tribal areas of the middle Euphrates. By the summer of 1920, the revolt had spread to all parts of the country except the big cities of Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra, where British forces were stationed.

In July 1920 Fayṣal came into conflict with the French authorities over control of Syria. France had been given the mandate over Syria and Lebanon in April and was determined to obtain Fayṣal's acceptance of the mandate. Nationalists urged Fayṣal to reject the French demands, and the conflict that ensued between him and the French resulted in his expulsion from Syria. Fayṣal went to London to complain about the French action.

Although the revolt in Iraq was suppressed by force, it prompted Iraq and Great Britain to reconcile their differences. In Britain a segment of public opinion wanted to "get out of Mesopotamia" and urged relief from further commitments. In Iraq the nationalists were demanding independence. In 1921 Britain offered the Iraqi throne to Fayṣal along with the establishment of an Arab government under British mandate. Fayṣal wanted the throne if it was offered to him by the Iraqi people. He also suggested the replacement of the mandate by a treaty of alliance. These proposals were accepted by the British government, and Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill promised to carry them out. He was advised by T.E. Lawrence, known for his sympathy for the Arabs.

In March 1921 a conference presided over by Churchill was held in Cairo to settle Middle Eastern affairs. Fayṣal was nominated to the Iraqi throne with the provision that a plebiscite be held to confirm the nomination. Sir Percy Cox, recently appointed a high commissioner for Iraq, was responsible for carrying out the plebiscite. A provisional government set up by Cox shortly before the Cairo Conference passed a resolution in July 1921 declaring Fayṣal king of Iraq, provided that his "Government shall be constitutional, representative and democratic." The plebiscite confirmed this proclamation, and Fayṣal was formally crowned king on August 23.

The establishment of the monarchy was the first step in setting up a national regime. Two other steps followed immediately: the signing of a treaty of alliance with Great Britain and the drafting of a constitution. It was deemed necessary that a treaty precede the constitution and define relations between Iraq and Britain. The treaty was signed on October 10, 1922. Without direct reference it reproduced most of the provisions of the mandate. Iraq undertook to respect religious freedom and missionary enterprises and the rights of foreigners, to treat all states equally, and to cooperate with the League of Nations. Britain was obligated to offer advice on foreign and domestic affairs, such as military, judicial, and financial matters (defined in separate and subsidiary agreements). Although the terms of the treaty were open to periodic revision, they were to last 20 years. In the meantime, Britain agreed to prepare Iraq for membership in the League of Nations "as soon as possible."

It soon became apparent that the substance, though not the form, of the mandate was still in existence and that complete independence had not been achieved. Strong opposition to the treaty in the press made it almost certain that it would not be ratified by Iraq's Constituent Assembly. Nor was British public opinion satisfied with the commitments to Iraq. During the general elections of 1922, there was a newspaper campaign against British expenditures in Iraq. In deference to public opinion in both Britain and Iraq, a protocol to the treaty was signed in April 1923, reducing the period of the treaty from 20 to 4 years. Despite the shortening of British tutelage, the Constituent Assembly demanded complete independence when the treaty was put before it for approval. Ratification of the treaty was accomplished in June 1924, after Britain's warning that nonapproval would lead to the referral of the matter to the League of Nations.

The Constituent Assembly then considered a draft constitution drawn up by a constitutional committee. The committee tried to give extensive powers to the king. Discussion on the draft constitution by the Constituent Assembly lasted a month, and after minor modifications it was adopted in July 1924. The Organic Law, as the constitution was called, went into effect right after it was signed by the king in March 1925. It provided for a constitutional monarchy, a parliamentary government, and a bicameral legislature. The latter was composed of an elected House of Representatives and an appointed Senate. The lower house was to be elected every four years in a free manhood suffrage. The first Parliament met in 1925. Ten general elections were held before the downfall of the monarchy in 1958. The more than 50 cabinets formed during the same period reflected the instability of the system.

From the establishment of a national government, there was keen interest in organizing political parties. Three parties formed in 1921, one by the group in power and two by opposition parties, had similar social and economic views and essentially the same political objective: terminating the mandate and winning independence. They differed, however, on the means of realizing the objective. After the achievement of independence in 1932, these parties dissolved, because their raison d'être had disappeared. It was only when social issues were discussed that new political groupings, even if not formally organized as political parties, began to emerge. The power struggle between these groups became exceedingly intense after World War II (1939-45).

The Iraqi nationalists, though appreciating the free expression of opinion permitted under a parliamentary system, were far from satisfied with the mandate. They demanded independence as a matter of right, as promised in war declarations and treaties, rather than as a matter of capacity for self-government as laid down in the mandate. Various attempts were made to redefine Anglo-Iraqi relations, as embodied in the 1926 and 1927 treaties, without fundamentally altering Britain's responsibility. The British treaties were viewed by the nationalists not only as an impediment to the realization of Iraq's nationalist aspirations but also as inimical to the economic development of the country. The nationalists viewed the situation as a "perplexing predicament" ( al-waḍʿ al-shādh)-a term that became popular in Parliament and in the press. It referred to the impossibility of government by the dual authority of the mandate. The nationalists argued that there were two governments in Iraq, one foreign and the other national, and that such a regime was an abnormality that, though feasible in theory, was unworkable in practice.

In 1929 Britain decided to end this stalemate and reconcile its interests with Iraq's national aspirations. It notified Iraq that the mandate would be terminated in 1932, and a new treaty of independence was negotiated. A new government was formed, headed by Gen. Nuri al-Said, who helped in achieving Iraq's independence.

The new treaty was signed in June 1930. It provided for the establishment of a "close alliance" between Britain and Iraq with "full and frank consultation between them in all matters of foreign policy which may affect their common interests." Iraq would maintain internal order and defend itself against foreign aggression, supported by Britain. Any dispute between Iraq and a third state involving the risk of war was to be discussed with Britain in the hope of a settlement in accordance with the Covenant of the League of Nations. In the event of an imminent threat of war, the two parties would take a common defense position. Iraq recognized that the maintenance and protection of essential British communications was in the interest of both parties. Air-base sites for British troops were therefore granted near Basra and west of the Euphrates, but these forces "shall not constitute in any manner an occupation, and will in no way prejudice the sovereign rights of Iraq." This treaty, valid for 25 years, was to go into effect after Iraq joined the League of Nations.

In 1932, when Iraq was still under British control, the boundaries between Iraq and Kuwait were clearly defined in an exchange of letters between the two governments, but they were never ratified by Iraq in accordance with the Iraqi constitution. This set the stage for future Iraqi claims on Kuwaiti territory, particularly on the islands of Būbiyān and Warbah, which had originally been part of the Ottoman province of Al-Baṣrah but had been ceded to Kuwait in the unratified convention of 1913.

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Iraq - British occupation and the mandatory regime

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Iraq - Iraq - British occupation and the mandatory regime: Merging the three provinces of Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra into one political entity and creating a nation out of the diverse religious and ethnic elements inhabiting these lands were accomplished after World War I.

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Nuri al-Said, author of the 1930 treaty, was prime minister when war broke out. Believing that the Anglo-Iraqi alliance was the best guarantee for Iraqi security, he wanted to declare war on Germany, but his ministers counseled caution, as British victory was then in doubt. The premier accordingly declared Iraq nonbelligerent and severed diplomatic relations with Germany. When Italy entered the war in 1940, however, Nuri al-Said, then minister of foreign affairs in the cabinet of newly appointed prime minister Rashīd ʿAlī al-Gaylānī, was unable to persuade the cabinet to break off diplomatic relations with Italy. Under the influence of pan-Arab leaders, public opinion in Iraq changed radically after France's fall, becoming especially hostile to Britain because other Arab countries remained under foreign control. Pan-Arabs urged Iraqi leaders to free Syria and Palestine and achieve unity among Arab countries. Extremists advocated alliance with Germany as the country that would foster independence and unity among Arabs.

Rashīd ʿAlī was at first unwilling to side with the extremists and gave lip service to the Anglo-Iraqi alliance. Dissension among the Iraqi leaders, however, forced him to side with the pan-Arabs. Leading army officers also fell under pan-Arab influences and encouraged Rashīd ʿAlī to detach Iraq from the British alliance. During 1940 and 1941, Iraqi officers were unwilling to cooperate with Britain, and the pan-Arab leaders began secret negotiations with the Axis Powers. Britain decided to send reinforcements to Iraq. Rashīd ʿAlī, while allowing a small British force to land in 1940, was forced to resign early in 1941, but he was reinstated by the army in April and refused further British requests for reinforcements.

British contingents entered Iraq from the Persian Gulf and from the Ḥabbāniyyah air base in April and May 1941; armed conflict with Iraqi forces followed. The hostilities lasted only 30 days, during which period a few Iraqi leaders, including the regent and Nuri al-Said, fled the country. By the end of May, the Iraqi army had capitulated. Rashīd ʿAlī and his pan-Arab supporters left the country.

The return of the regent and moderate leaders through British intervention had far-reaching consequences. Britain was given what it demanded: the use of transportation and communication facilities and a declaration of war on the Axis Powers in January 1942. Rashīd ʿAlī's supporters were dismissed from the service, and some were interned for the duration of the war. Four officers who were responsible for the British-Iraqi conflict were hanged.

Postwar reconstruction and social upheavals, 1945-58

During World War II, liberal and moderate Iraqi elements began to play an active political role. The entry of the United States and the Soviet Union into the war and their declarations in favour of democratic freedoms greatly enhanced the position of the Iraqi democratic elements. The people endured shortages and regulations restricting personal liberty and the freedom of the press, trusting that the end of the war would bring the promised better way of life. The government, however, paid no attention to the new spirit, and the wartime regulations and restrictions continued after the war. The regent, ʿAbd al-Ilāh, called a meeting of the country's leaders in 1945 and made a speech in which he attributed public disaffection to the absence of a truly parliamentary system. He called for the formation of political parties and promised full freedom for their activities and the launching of social and economic reforms.

The immediate reactions to the regent's speech were favourable, but, when political parties were formed in 1946 and certain regulations were abolished, the older politicians and vested interests resisted. The new government formed in January 1946 was overthrown within a few months of its inception. Nuri al-Said then became prime minister and tried to enlist the cooperation of political parties, but the general elections held under his government's supervision were no different from previous controlled elections. The parties boycotted the elections. Nuri al-Said resigned in March 1947, and Ṣāliḥ Jabr formed a new government.

Jabr, the first Shiʿi politician to become a prime minister, included in his cabinet a number of young men, but he himself was unacceptable to some liberal and nationalist elements who had been roughly handled when he was wartime minister of interior. Jabr tried to help the Arabs in Palestine in order to improve his image in nationalist circles, but he mishandled opposition leaders. Most damaging was his attempt to replace the Anglo-Iraqi treaty of 1930 without consulting with Iraqi leaders. When he was asked to consult with others, he called in only older politicians and excluded the younger leaders.

Jabr entered into negotiations with Britain with the intention of enhancing his own position. When he found that Britain wanted to retain control of its air bases in Iraq, he insisted that Britain accept the principle of Iraqi control of the bases; Iraq would allow Britain to use them in the event of war. He threatened to resign if Britain refused his proposals.

It was with this understanding that Jabr proceeded to London early in 1948 to negotiate a new treaty. He and Ernest Bevin, the British foreign secretary, quickly came to an agreement and signed a 20-year treaty at Portsmouth on January 15, 1948. It provided for a new alliance between Iraq and Britain on the basis of equality and complete independence and required that "each of the high contracting parties undertake not to adopt in foreign countries an attitude which is inconsistent with the alliance or which might create difficulties for the other party." An improvement of the 1930 treaty, this document sought an alliance on the basis of mutual interests. The two air bases, which were often the subject of criticism, were returned to Iraq. British forces were to be evacuated, and Iraq would be supplied with arms and military training. The annex to the treaty stressed the importance of the air bases as "an essential element in the defense of Iraq." Britain's use of the bases in the event of war, or threat of war, would depend on Iraq's invitation. The treaty also provided for the establishment of a joint defense board for common defense and consultation. Both parties agreed to grant each other necessary facilities for defense purposes.

Despite these advances, the treaty was repudiated immediately in a popular uprising. Street demonstrations had occurred before the treaty was signed, in defense of Arab rights in Palestine, but, when the news of the signing of the new treaty was broadcast in London, rioting and demonstrations in Baghdad followed. Within a week of the signing, the regent called a meeting at the royal household that was attended by both older and younger leaders. After deliberations, they decided to repudiate the treaty. Jabr returned to Baghdad to defend his position but to no avail. Rioting and demonstrations increased, and Jabr was forced to resign.

The new treaty was not the root cause of the uprising. It was the culmination of a struggle between the young, liberal leaders who wanted to participate in political activities and the older leaders who insisted on excluding them. This conflict continued after the treaty was rejected. The older politicians returned to power under Nuri al-Said's leadership.

In 1952 another popular uprising flared, stirred by opposition leaders and carried out by students and extremists. The police were unable to control the mob, and the regent called on the army to maintain public order. The chief of the general staff governed the country under martial law for more than two months. Civilian rule was restored at the beginning of 1953, but there was no sign that the country's older leaders were prepared to share authority with their opponents.

Meanwhile, King Fayṣal II, who had come of age, began to exercise his formal powers, and the period of regency came to an end. It was hoped that ʿAbd al-Ilāh would withdraw from active politics and allow the political forces of the country to create a new order. The former regent, who became the crown prince, continued to control political events from behind the scenes, however, and the struggle for power among the leaders continued with increasing intensity until the downfall of the monarchy in 1958.

Despite political instability, Iraq achieved material progress during the 1950s, thanks to a new oil agreement that increased royalties and to the establishment of the Development Board. The original oil agreement between the Iraqi government and the IPC had heretofore yielded relatively modest royalties, owing to certain technical limitations (such as the need for pipelines) and to war conditions. It was not until 1952 that construction of pipelines to Bāniyās was completed.

Some points of dispute between the government and the IPC were not entirely resolved. The nationalization of the oil industry in Iran and the announcement of the 1950 agreement between Saudi Arabia and Aramco ( Arabian American Oil Company, later Saudi Aramco), on a half-and-half basis of payment, induced the Iraqi government and the IPC to negotiate a new agreement on the division of profits. Some opposition leaders demanded that the oil industry be nationalized, but the Iraqi government and the IPC, forestalling any serious move for nationalization, agreed to negotiate on the basis of the fifty-fifty formula, to the mutual advantage of Iraq and the company. The new agreement was signed in 1952; it allowed Iraq to take part of its share of the profits in kind and to receive an increasing amount of royalties specifically agreed upon between the two parties. It was stated that Iraq would receive a set minimum amount of the proceeds in 1953 and all subsequent years.

In 1950 the government had created an independent Development Board, an agency immune from political pressures and responsible directly to the prime minister. The board had six executive members, three of whom had to be experts in some branch of the development program. The prime minister, as chairman, and the minister of finance were ex officio members. An amendment to the law increased membership by two and provided for a minister of development responsible directly to the head of the cabinet. These members were appointed by the cabinet, had equal voting rights, and were not permitted to hold any other official position. Two foreign members held positions as experts, and the Iraqi members were selected on merit and past experience. The board was composed of a council and ministry. Its staff was divided into technical sections and the ministry into a number of departments. The technical sections were for irrigation, flood control, water storage, drainage, transportation, and industrial and agricultural development. The board was financed from 70 percent of oil royalties and from loans and revenues from the board's own projects.

In 1950 the World Bank provided a loan for the Wadi Tharthār flood-control project, and other flood-control plans were constructed. Extensive work on bridges and public buildings-including schools, hospitals, a new Parliament building, and a royal house-was started. This work, especially the work on dams and irrigation projects, was a long-term investment, and many short-term projects of more direct benefit to the population were neglected. Opposition leaders attacked the Development Board for the stress on long-term projects that they claimed benefited only the vested interests-landowners and tribal chiefs. Despite criticism, the board maintained an independent status rarely enjoyed by any other government department. Nevertheless, the public remained unaware of the far-reaching effects of the projects undertaken, while the opposition attacked the board for squandering funds on contracts given to wealthy landlords and influential politicians.

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Iraq - World War II and British intervention, 1939-45

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Iraq - Iraq - World War II and British intervention, 1939-45: Nuri al-Said, author of the 1930 treaty, was prime minister when war broke out. Believing that the Anglo-Iraqi alliance was the best guarantee for Iraqi security, he wanted to declare war on Germany, but his ministers counseled caution, as British victory was then in doubt.

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The UK's Arab community isn't as large as those communities from South Asia, and casual stereotypes about race have long been used about of all of these groups to caricature, demonise, and essentially justify a racist discourse. Whilst on many occasions there now appears to be a certain reluctance to single out British Bangladeshi, Indian, Pakistani and Sri Lankan communities, the same cannot always be said of the British Arab community. With standard stereotypical images of bombers, belly dancers, billionaires and burkas, the Arab male or female is continually fair game to either poke fun at, or more seriously, be confined to and judged by a representation that is either inherently bad, angry, irrational or stupid, misogynistic or repressed, exotic or lascivious.

In 2011, speaking about Islamophobia, Baroness Warsi said that it had become socially acceptable and "passed the dinner table test". It is no wonder that as racist bullying is on the increase, Islamophobia is particularly heightened, with many children being called "bomber" or "terrorist". Negative stereotypes of Arabs in the UK have long been socially acceptable at the dinner table, on the television (pre and post watershed), and throughout images in the media.

Last month, Caabu (Council for Arab-British Understanding) wrote to the Spectator to suggest that a cartoon portrayal of a Sunni-Shia war of "two bearded, large hooked-nosed, weapon-wielding men" on its front cover was ill advised. We argued that in publishing such a cartoon, it alienated British Arab and Iranian communities further. Of course, much of the response to that complaint was that we were pursuing a politically correct agenda, that we were humourless do-gooders, and that Arabs really were like that - large hooked-nosed, angry, weapon wielding and irrational, that despite this being a cartoon, that was the nature of the Arab "beast" so to speak. We should be alarmed about casual generalisations, in image form, or with flippant or deliberately derisory remarks. Such generalisations based on casual stereotyping can cement a view of a particular group of people, in this case Arabs, and whilst not always intentional, has detrimental consequences.

It is not the first time that casual ethnic slander of groups of people as "savages" has graced the Spectator. Melanie Phillips was investigated by the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) for discussing the "moral depravity" of Arab "savages", and Rod Liddle wrote:

"Two black savages hacked a man to death while shouting Allahu Akbar; that's really all you need to know, isn't it?"

Whilst a child may not come into contact with cartoons in the Spectator, many would be familiar with Disney's Aladdin. A clean-shaven, fairer skinned, American accented Arab, battling against the sinister large hooked-nosed antagonist Jafar. A blatant reminder of the predatory Arab and his lack of a moral compass. For years, Hollywood has cemented the negative stereotypes of Arabs, and Aladdin, for which it's lyricist and composer won a Oscar, was quite happy to allow the following lyrics for its opening song:

"Oh, I come from a land/From a faraway place/Where the caravan camels roam. Where they cut off your ear/If they don't like your face/It's barbaric, but hey, it's home."

In his 2001 book, Reel Bad Arabs, (and in a documentary of the same name in 2006) Jack Shaheen discussed how stereotyping of Arabs in Hollywood had evolved from the rich, invariably fat, billionaire Gulf Arab in the 1970s, to portrayals of Arabs as terrorists in the 1980s. After research of some 900 films (many of which have been honoured by Hollywood), Shaheen concluded that the Arab stereotyping was a "systematic, pervasive and unapologetic degradation and dehumanisation of a people". Shaheen noted that the number of positive portrayal of Arabs in these films could be counted on one hand. Perhaps more recent examples are Homeland's depiction of Arabs and Muslims as violent fanatics and Sacha Baron Cohen's The Dictator largely based on Libya's ousted leader Muammar Qaddafi, which Arab American comedian Dean Obeidallah described as a "modern day minstrel show."

In the UK today, the image of the Arab takes the two forms that Shaheen highlights in Hollywood's portrayal of Arabs. The wealthy, invariably fat Gulf Arab buying up huge chunks of London, and the existential threat terrorist Arab, particularly with the conflict in Syria, that is a direct threat to the UK. There is also the generic stereotype of a benefit cheating asylum seeker, who could be Afghan, Albanian, Kosovar, Iraqi, and may not be Arab at all, but a category that some Arabs would be lumped into. In all of these contexts, Arabs are portrayed as irrational.

The Arab community in the UK is often seen as more transitional, a temporary bloc of people, usually with significant financial capital to invest in London. The popular image of a twenty-something year old Gulf Arab driving a Lamborghini through Knightsbridge (and the schadenfreude at it being clamped and towed away), ignores the fact that there has been a British Yemeni community since the 19 th century - Britain's first mosque being built in 1860 in Cardiff for Yemeni sailors. Other well established Arab communities are ignored and under represented, both in the political and cultural life of the UK.

The crisis in Syria has reaffirmed a view that plenty of Arabs are terrorists. Like with many conflicts in the Middle East, Syria fatigue has set in, and with the largest humanitarian crisis being massively underfunded, negative perceptions of Arabs have played a part in this. Syria's refugees, for example, would not be seen as innocent as those displaced by natural disaster. That although the majority of Syria's refugees are women and children ( 69.6% of refugees are made up of women and those under 18 according to UNHCR), there is a perception that if the UK were to allow the most vulnerable into the country, it would be inclusive of hordes of angry bearded rebels, like the one who gained infamy for eating the heart of a Syrian government soldier. The image of the Syrian that existed in March 2011, somebody fighting for rights against a 40 year old dictatorship, has almost been erased in many elements of the media to be replaced by the armed rebel; bearded and conservative, potentially as nasty as the regime he's trying to overthrow. This is despite the fact that so many innocents have been made destitute, detained, tortured, and sexually abused, these images often overlooked to promote the image of the angry, irrational Syrian rebel fighting against Assad, an image that the regime itself has also propagated. In many cases, it could be argued that the vulnerability of a refugee from the Arab world is taken away because of the stereotype "that's what they do there, that's what they're like" in these "barbaric" Arab lands.

Arabs in many cases have not only been victims of brutal dictatorships, but also of the caricatures that such repressive regimes create. The barbarism of some of their leaders and those claiming to be representative of them has in turn assisted in cementing such stereotypes about Arabs, that in the UK, many elements of the media seems happy to keep them trapped there to justify the narrative, and abdicate the responsibility it has in engaging this community further rather than alienating it.

Joseph Willits works for Caabu (Council for Arab-British Understanding). He Tweets@JosephWillits.

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The UK's Arab community isn't as large as those communities from South Asia, and casual stereotypes about race have long been used about of all of these groups to caricature, demonise, and essentially justify a racist discourse.

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Iraq, country of southwestern Asia.

Iraq Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

During ancient times, lands that now constitute Iraq were known as Mesopotamia ("Land Between the Rivers"), a region whose extensive alluvial plains gave rise to some of the world's earliest civilizations, including those of Sumer, Akkad, Babylon, and Assyria. This wealthy region, comprising much of what is called the Fertile Crescent, later became a valuable part of larger imperial polities, including sundry Persian, Greek, and Roman dynasties, and after the 7th century it became a central and integral part of the Islamic world. Iraq's capital, Baghdad, became the capital of the ʿAbbāsid caliphate in the 8th century. The modern nation-state of Iraq was created following World War I (1914-18) from the Ottoman provinces of Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul and derives its name from the Arabic term used in the premodern period to describe a region that roughly corresponded to Mesopotamia ( ʿIrāq ʿArabī, "Arabian Iraq") and modern northwestern Iran ( ʿIrāq ʿAjamī, "foreign [i.e., Persian] Iraq").

Iraq Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Iraq gained formal independence in 1932 but remained subject to British imperial influence during the next quarter century of turbulent monarchical rule. Political instability on an even greater scale followed the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958, but the installation of an Arab nationalist and socialist regime-the Baʿth Party-in a bloodless coup 10 years later brought new stability. With proven oil reserves second in the world only to those of Saudi Arabia, the regime was able to finance ambitious projects and development plans throughout the 1970s and to build one of the largest and best-equipped armed forces in the Arab world. The party's leadership, however, was quickly assumed by Saddam Hussein, a flamboyant and ruthless autocrat who led the country into disastrous military adventures-the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) and the Persian Gulf War (1990-91). These conflicts left the country isolated from the international community and financially and socially drained, but-through unprecedented coercion directed at major sections of the population, particularly the country's disfranchised Kurdish minority and the Shiʿi majority-Saddam himself was able to maintain a firm hold on power into the 21st century. He and his regime were toppled in 2003 during the Iraq War.

Land

Iraq is one of the easternmost countries of the Arab world, located at about the same latitude as the southern United States. It is bordered to the north by Turkey, to the east by Iran, to the west by Syria and Jordan, and to the south by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Iraq has 36 miles (58 km) of coastline along the northern end of the Persian Gulf, giving it a tiny sliver of territorial sea. Followed by Jordan, it is thus the Middle Eastern state with the least access to the sea and offshore sovereignty.

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Relief

Iraq's topography can be divided into four physiographic regions: the alluvial plains of the central and southeastern parts of the country; Al-Jazīrah (Arabic: "the Island"), an upland region in the north between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers; deserts in the west and south; and the highlands in the northeast. Each of these regions extends into neighbouring countries, although the alluvial plains lie largely within Iraq.

physical features of Iraq Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

The plains of lower Mesopotamia extend southward some 375 miles (600 km) from Balad on the Tigris and Al-Ramādī on the Euphrates to the Persian Gulf. They cover more than 51,000 square miles (132,000 square km), almost one-third of the country's area, and are characterized by low elevation, below 300 feet (100 metres), and poor natural drainage. Large areas are subject to widespread seasonal flooding, and there are extensive marshlands, some of which dry up in the summer to become salty wastelands. Near Al-Qurnah, where the Tigris and Euphrates converge to form the Shaṭṭ al-ʿArab, there are still some inhabited marshes. The alluvial plains contain extensive lakes. The swampy Lake Al-Ḥammār ( Hawr al-Ḥammār) extends 70 miles (110 km) from Basra (Al-Baṣrah) to Sūq al-Shuyūkh; its width varies from 8 to 15 miles (13 to 25 km).

dhows in the Shatt al-Arab, Iraq Diane Rawson/Photo Researchers

North of the alluvial plains, between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, is the arid Al-Jazīrah plateau. Its most prominent hill range is the Sinjār Mountains, whose highest peak reaches an elevation of 4,448 feet (1,356 metres). The main watercourse is the Wadi Al-Tharthār, which runs southward for 130 miles (210 km) from the Sinjār Mountains to the Tharthār (Salt) Depression. Milḥat Ashqar is the largest of several salt flats (or sabkhah s) in the region.

Euphrates River at Khān al-Baghdādī, Iraq © Nik Wheeler

Deserts

Western and southern Iraq is a vast desert region covering some 64,900 square miles (168,000 square km), almost two-fifths of the country. The western desert, an extension of the Syrian Desert, rises to elevations above 1,600 feet (490 metres). The southern desert is known as Al-Ḥajarah in the western part and as Al-Dibdibah in the east. Al-Ḥajarah has a complex topography of rocky desert, wadis, ridges, and depressions. Al-Dibdibah is a more sandy region with a covering of scrub vegetation. Elevation in the southern desert averages between 300 and 1,200 feet (100 to 400 metres). A height of 3,119 feet (951 metres) is reached at Mount ʿUnayzah (ʿUnāzah) at the intersection of the borders of Jordan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. The deep Wadi Al-Bāṭin runs 45 miles (75 km) in a northeast-southwest direction through Al-Dibdibah. It has been recognized since 1913 as the boundary between western Kuwait and Iraq.

Official name

Al-Jumhūriyyah al-ʿIrāqiyyah (Republic of Iraq)

Form of government

multiparty republic with one legislative house (Council of Representatives of Iraq [329¹])

Head of state

President: Barham Salih

Head of government

Prime Minister: Mustafa al-Kadhimi

Capital

Baghdad

Official languages

Arabic; Kurdish

Official religion

Islam

Monetary unit

Iraqi dinar (ID)

Population

(2019 est.) 38,245,000²

Population rank

(2018) 37

Population projection 2030

53,036,000

Total area (sq mi)

167,618

Total area (sq km)

434,128

Density: persons per sq mi

(2018) 238.2

Density: persons per sq km

(2018) 92

Urban-rural population

Urban: (2018) 70.5%

Rural: (2018) 29.5%

Life expectancy at birth

Male: (2017) 72.6 years

Female: (2017) 77.2 years

Literacy: percentage of population age 15 and over literate

Male: (2015) 85.6%

Female: (2015) 73.4%

GNI (U.S.$ '000,000)

(2017) 182,580

GNI per capita (U.S.$)

(2017) 4,770

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Iraq | History, Map, Population, & Facts

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Iraq, country of southwestern Asia. During ancient times, lands that now constitute Iraq were known as Mesopotamia. The modern nation-state of Iraq was created following World War I from the Ottoman provinces of Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul. The capital city is Baghdad.

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The foundation of Iraq

By the end of World War One, British forces were more or less in control of the three provinces and a shaky British administration in Baghdad had to decide on their future. The Ottoman Empire had collapsed, leaving the former Arab provinces in limbo, and the colonial powers of Britain and France aimed to absorb them into their empires; however, the Arab and other inhabitants felt strongly that they had been promised independence.

'The Arabs claimed this was a veiled colonialism...'

Under strong pressure from the United States, a sort of compromise was evolved whereby Britain and France were given mandates for the administration of these provinces, under international supervision, by the League of Nations. The Arabs claimed this was a veiled colonialism, because there was only an indefinite promise of independence.

Iraq (the old Arabic name for part of the region) was to become a British mandate, carved out of the three former Ottoman provinces. France took control of Syria and Lebanon. There was immediate resentment amongst Iraq's inhabitants at what they saw as a charade, and in 1920 a strong revolt spread through the country - a revolt that was put down only with great difficulty and by methods that do not bear close scrutiny. The situation was so bad that the British commander, General Sir Aylmer Haldane, at one time called for supplies of poisonous gas.

Indiscriminate air power was used to quell the revolt of the region's tribesmen, methods the British admitted did not win them friends and, as one of them said, implanted undying hatred of the British among the people of the area, and a desire for revenge.

The mandate united the three disparate provinces under the imported Hashimite King Faisal, from the Hijaz region of Arabia. Apart from its natural geographical differences, the new Iraq was a complex mix of ethnic and religious groups. In particular the rebellious Kurds in the north had little wish to be ruled from Baghdad, while in the south the tribesmen and Shi's had a similar abhorrence of central control. In implementing their mandate, the British had certainly sown the seeds of future unrest.

'The British imposed a monarchy and a form of democracy...'

There were other contentious issues. The Iraqis deeply resented the borders imposed on them that cut them off from Kuwait, a mini-state that they believed to be a part of their country. These borders also meant that Iraq had only limited access to the waters of the Gulf. The British imposed a monarchy and a form of democracy but, even after the grant of formal independence in 1930, most Iraqis believed that the British really ruled the country.

Published: 2003-02-10

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iraq changed from being a western ally to an arch enemy in two decades.

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The foundation of Iraq By the end of World War One, British forces were more or less in control of the three provinces and a shaky British administration in Baghdad had to decide on their future.

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Under the terms of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), President Barack Obama is currently bound to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of 2011. Three factors, however, make it probable that the president will attempt to renegotiate the terms of the agreement as it approaches its conclusion: Iraqi security forces will continue to be logistically dependent on the U.S. military. The United States will be increasingly dependent on oil from Iraq and the wider region. And the American left will be unable to exert significant electoral pressure on the legislative or executive branch, given the U.S. foreign policy establishment's calculation of the strategic consequences of a complete withdrawal.
Given their continued dependency on the U.S. government and despite their resentment of the occupation, Iraqi leaders might be inclined to agree to a SOFA extension. This would likely entail, at a minimum, continued close air support and logistical assistance to Iraqi Security Forces, as well as a continued advisory mission within the Iraqi defense and interior ministries. It would probably also include continued access to airfields in Iraq to serve as a deterrent against Iran. The Senate would not likely require ratification of a SOFA extension, given its prior decision to accept the Bush administration's claim that the SOFA isn't a treaty and therefore doesn't require Senate approval. A less conspicuous U.S. military mission of perhaps fewer than 50,000 troops would also generate less public opposition, thereby reducing pressure on the Senate to exercise such oversight.

The history of the British Empire's relationship with Iraq serves as a detailed guide to what the current U.S.-Iraq relationship might evolve into and why. The British drew down their military involvement in Iraq in the early 20th century only to increase their involvement in other ways. Even as the United States negotiates a SOFA extension, it will likely follow the British lead in this transformation of the relationship with its newest Middle Eastern client state.

The British Model

The British occupied what came to be known as Iraq in the early 20th century. They ruled the country directly from 1914-1920, after which numerous political and financial constraints compelled them to devise a way to preserve their empire through more subtle and cost-effective means. The British experience closely paralleled the situation of the United States in the 21st century. Both occupations grappled with the continual threat and actual occurrence of widespread revolt in Iraq and an exceedingly high level of debt at home.

Growing domestic and international opposition to imperialism - one of the primary causes of World War I - led British political and military officials to transition from overt governance to an increasingly advisory role. "What we want [in Iraq] is some administration with Arab institutions which we can safely leave while pulling the strings ourselves," said British India Office Official Sir Arthur Hirtzel at the time, "something that won't cost very much, which Labour can swallow consistent with its principles, but under which our economic and political interests will be secure." This method of control, although in practice more vulnerable to Iraqi political maneuvering, alleviated popular resentment in the country and allowed the British to reduce their force presence and consequent military expenditures. Reduced casualties and expenditures in turn alleviated media controversy and domestic opposition, allowing future administrations to pursue long-term strategic objectives such as control of oil fields in both Iraq and Iran. "The discoveries of immense quantities of oil," as British High Commissioner for Iraq Sir Henry Dobbs put it, "make it now impossible to abandon control of Iraq without damaging important British and foreign interests."

The British advisory apparatus operated effectively as a parallel government in Iraq. British intelligence advisers worked at the Iraqi interior ministry, British military advisers at the Iraqi defense ministry. These officials were strategically placed throughout the Iraqi government and military in order to gather intelligence and influence their Iraqi counterparts according to the dictates of British imperial interests. To ensure the continued primacy of these interests, the British High Commissioner in Iraq - the rough equivalent of a U.S. ambassador - retained the authority to veto decisions made by a decidedly unsovereign Iraqi government. Iraqi resentment of British oversight significantly contributed to long-term political instability and socioeconomic retardation in the country.

Why did the Iraqis acquiesce to what they generally viewed as a humiliating system of foreign rule? Even after the British had withdrawn their ground forces from the country in 1930, they still retained air bases until (and even after) 1941, when they overthrew a militantly nationalist government.

Less apparent factors also caused Iraqi officials to take a more pragmatic view of their subordinate position in the international order. According to the terms of the Anglo-Iraqi treaty of 1930, the Iraqis were effectively forced to rely on the British for their military equipment, which consequently made the former dependent on the latter for spare parts and military advisors as well. Iraqi officials were also dependent on the British for credit and the development of their oil sector, which over the coming decades contributed an increasingly significant percentage of the federal budget. This had major implications in terms of the central government's power and influence over a frequently restive population.

U.S. Parallels

Under the British Empire, the Iraqis deeply resented to the point of violent rebellion the control that foreign oil companies had over production, supply, and royalty payments and therefore the Iraqi national budget and economy. In the 21st century, a similar exertion of foreign influence through military-backed private interests and multilateral institutions such as the IMF will undoubtedly contribute to future political instability.

Its frequent denials of interest in oil notwithstanding, the Bush administration exerted diplomatic pressure on the Iraqi government in order to secure production sharing agreements, the 21st-century equivalent of imperial oil concessions, on behalf of U.S. oil companies. The Obama administration's current position on foreign investment in Iraq's oil industry remains unclear. But it will likely face similar temptations to ensure U.S. access and control. The U.S. government's apparent approval of American private investment in Iraq's oil industry in the absence of critical parliamentary oversight and an Iraqi law regulating such activity is almost certain to lead to greater sectarian and tribal tension. The ruling party in power will take advantage of the legal ambiguity to manipulate contracts for its own financial and political benefit.

Under the British Empire, the minority Sunni took advantage of their dominant political and financial position over a Shi'a majority, and the result was persistent violence. Today the power relationship is reversed, but the result, predictably, is the same. This imbalance of interests also reinforces the Kurds' preference for autonomy to the detriment of Iraq's future viability as a unified country.

The United States can potentially play a productive, stabilizing role in the country so long as it does not seek to perpetuate a state of dependency there. True Iraqi sovereignty, a prerequisite for long-term stability, involves much more than the full withdrawal of all occupying forces from Iraq. It also means economic sovereignty: the right to develop and utilize national resources primarily to benefit the nation rather than the occupying power. If U.S. political leaders acknowledge and act on this essential consideration - which shaped America's own rebellion against the British Empire - U.S. investors may be welcome in Iraq over the longer term, to the benefit of both nations. If not, Iraq is likely to be plagued by another era of coups until another dictatorial leader like Saddam Hussein consolidates power.

By no means does the United States control everything happening in Iraq. But proper executive and legislative oversight of American public and private conduct may go a long way toward solving some of the problems currently plaguing the country. The Senate Foreign Relations and House Foreign Affairs Committees should ensure that State Department officials are balancing advocacy on behalf of American investors with sensitivity to Iraqi sovereignty. U.S. diplomatic officials should be instructed not to pressure the Iraqi government into signing legislation or contracts such as production sharing agreements that would effectively limit the country's future ability to develop and allocate resources for the benefit of the Iraqi people. U.S. officials should also encourage the Iraqi government and international oil companies to wait for passage of legislation governing foreign investment before signing contracts. Lastly, diplomatic officials should emphasize that parliamentary oversight can help to increase public transparency and correspondingly reduce the potential for corruption within the Iraqi executive branch.

Global leadership requires global responsibility. The United States should model constructive behavior concerning negotiations over foreign investment in Iraq and urge its competitors to do the same out of recognition of their mutual self-interest. Replacement of fossil fuel demand with renewable energy sources will not happen overnight. Sacrificing short-term gain in exchange for increased long-term prospects for a stable, democratic Iraq is surely in the U.S. national interest.

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Learning from the British in Iraq - FPIF

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Under the terms of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), President Barack Obama is currently bound to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of 2011. Three factors, however, make it probable that the president will attempt to renegotiate the terms of the agreement as it approaches its conclusion: Iraqi security forces will continue to be logistically dependent on the U.S.

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Iraqi President in Britain to Bolster Bilateral Relations

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Iraqi President in Britain to Bolster Bilateral Relations

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British Prime Minister Theresa May shakes hands with Iraqi President Barham Salih at the 10 Downing Street in London on Tuesday, June 25, 2019. (EPA)

Iraqi President Barham Salih started Tuesday a three-day visit to Britain, heading a high-level government delegation, including Foreign Minister Mohammed Ali Hakim and Health Minister Alaa al-Din al-Alwan.

According to a report published by the Dubai-based Foreign and Commonwealth Office Arabic Media Hub, the visit will include high-level meetings with British officials.

Among these officials are Prime Minister Theresa May, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Jeremy Hunt, Defense Secretary Penny Mordaunt, Secretary of State for International Trade Liam Fox, Secretary of State for International Development Rory Stewart and Queen Elizabeth II.

The visit, which included a dinner banquet hosted by Fox and Stewart, according to the report, aims at bolstering bilateral political and trade relations.

It also seeks to reaffirm their determination to continue working together to boost efforts in developing the Iraqi economy and achieving stability and prosperity in Iraq and the region as a whole, by ensuring the permanent defeat of ISIS.

Alyson King, spokesperson to the UK government for the Middle East and North Africa, expressed satisfaction with the visit.

"It comes at a time when Iraq has made a lot of encouraging progress with respect to stabilization, especially in achieving security and fighting corruption," she said.

King stressed that the visit also affirms Britain's continued commitment to its partnership with Iraq and its support for the efforts to achieve stability and prosperity that Iraqis deserve.

The importance Britain attaches to its relations with Iraq is clearly evident through the level of intensive meetings that Salih will be holding during his visit this week, King noted, especially with Queen Elizabeth on Thursday, she added.

Salih will visit the parliament, where he will hold talks and meetings with its speaker and a number of MPs.

He will deliver a speech in Chatham House and meet with Iraq Britain Business Council (IBBC).

An oil and gas conference will be held on the sidelines of the visit and will be attended by Iraq's Oil Minister Thamer al-Ghadban and its foreign minister.

Salih's visit follows that of Fox's to Iraq in April, during which he announced that UK Export Finance will make an additional £1billion available to British firms operating in the country, bringing total support for Iraq to £2 billion.

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Iraqi President in Britain to Bolster Bilateral Relations

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British Prime Minister Theresa May shakes hands with Iraqi President Barham Salih at the 10 Downing Street in London on Tuesday, June 25, 2019. (EPA) Iraqi President Barham Salih started Tuesday a three-day visit to Britain, heading a high-level government delegation, including Foreign Minister Mohammed Ali Hakim and Health Minister Alaa al-Din al-Alwan.

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British-Iraqi relations are foreign relations between Iraq and the United Kingdom.

The current ambassador to Iraq is Stephen Hickey.

The history of British-Iraqi relations date back to the creation of Iraq in 1920, when it was controlled by Great Britain; by establishing separate provinces from Mosul to Basra. In the 19th century Europeans (mostly the British) began to take an interest in exploring, surveying, spying and trading in Mesopotamia, as well as in navigating its rivers. By 1914 there was growing anxiety about the security of the Persian oilfields on the other side of the Persian Gulf, these were the fields that supplied the Royal Navy.

The Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of Germany and immediately became an enemy of Britain and France. Four major Allied operations attacked the Ottoman holdings. The Gallipoli Campaign to control the Straits failed in 1915-1916. The first Mesopotamian campaign invading Iraq from India also failed. The second one captured Baghdad in 1917. The Sinai and Palestine campaign from Egypt was a British success. By 1918 the Ottoman Empire was a military failure. It signed an armistice in late October that amounted to surrender.

By the end of World War I, British forces were in control of the three provinces (Baghdad, Basra and Mosul), and the British administration in Baghdad had to decide on their future. The Ottoman Empire had collapsed, leaving the former Arab provinces in limbo, and the colonial powers of Britain and France aimed to absorb them into their empires; however, the Arab and other inhabitants felt strongly that they had been promised independence. Iraq then became a British mandate, carved out of the three former Ottoman provinces. There was immediate resentment amongst Iraq's inhabitants at what they saw as a charade, and in 1920 a strong revolt spread through the country, the situation was so bad that the British commander, General Sir Aylmer Haldane, at one time called for supplies of poisonous gas. The mandate united the three disparate provinces under the imported Hashimite King Faisal. Apart from its natural geographical differences, Iraq was a complex mix of ethnic and religious groups. In particular the rebellious Kurds in the north had little wish to be ruled from Baghdad, while in the south the tribesmen and Shia's had a similar abhorrence of central control. In implementing their mandate, the British had sown the seeds of future unrest. There were other contentious issues. The Iraqis deeply resented the borders imposed on them that cut them off from Kuwait, a mini-state that they believed to be a part of their country. These borders also meant that Iraq had only limited access to the waters of the Persian Gulf. The British imposed a monarchy and a form of democracy but, even after the grant of formal independence in 1930, most Iraqis believed that the British really ruled the country.

Iraq remained a satellite of Britain for the next three decades, under the terms of a treaty signed in 1930, which included the retention of British military bases and an agreement to train the Iraqi army. Ironically, this army became a breeding ground of resentment against the British presence, particularly amongst new nationalist officers. After the death of King Faisal in 1933 the country was virtually ruled by a group of colonels who saw themselves as the future liberators of an oppressed Iraq.

The Anglo-Iraqi War (2-31 May 1941) was a British-led Allied military campaign to regain control of Iraq and its major oil fields. Rashid Ali had seized power in 1941 with assistance from Germany. The campaign resulted in the downfall of Ali's government, the re-occupation of Iraq by the British, and the return to power of the Regent of Iraq, Prince 'Abd al-Ilah, a British ally. The British launched a large pro-democracy propaganda campaign in Iraq from 1941-5. It promoted the Brotherhood of Freedom to instil civic pride in disaffected Iraqi youth. The rhetoric demanded internal political reform and warned against growing communist influence. Heavy use was made of the Churchill-Roosevelt Atlantic Charter. However, leftist groups adapted the same rhetoric to demand British withdrawal. Pro-Nazi propaganda was suppressed. The heated combination of democracy propaganda, Iraqi reform movements, and growing demands for British withdrawal and political reform became as a catalyst for postwar political change.

In 1955, the United Kingdom was part of the Baghdad Pact. HM King Faisal II of Iraq paid a state visit to the United Kingdom in July 1956.

The British had a plan to use 'modernisation' and economic growth to solve Iraq's endemic problems of social and political unrest. The idea was that increased wealth through Oil production would ultimately trickle down to all elements and thereby thus stave off the danger of revolution. The oil was produced but the wealth never reached below the elite. Iraq's political-economic system put unscrupulous politicians and wealthy landowners at the apex of power. The remained in control using an all-permeating patronage system. As a consequence very little of the vast wealth was dispersed to the people, and unrest continue to grow. In 1958, monarch and politicians were swept away in a vicious nationalist army revolt.

In 1961, after Kuwait had gained independence from Britain, the Iraqi leader, General Kassem, claimed it as an integral part of Iraq and concentrated his troops on the frontier, with the intention of taking it by force. Britain was ready and dispatched troops stationed in the Persian Gulf region to dissuade the Iraqis from armed conflict. In 1979, Saddam Hussein, seized power in Iraq in the name of the Arab nationalist Ba'ath Party, a secular organization devoted to achieving the unity of all Arabs. In September 1980 when Iraqi troops crossed into Iran, by the orders of Saddam; Britain was one of the nations that armed Iraq. A decade later however, Anglo-Iraqi relations timbered over when the UK supported the coalition forcing Iraq out of Kuwait.

Britain once again found itself in Iraq after an invasion in 2003. British forces were mainly based in the southern city of Basra, but after handing over Basra to Iraqi forces in 2007, both Iraq and Britain stressed the need to develop economic relations between the two countries. This was confirmed by the British Foreign Minister, David Miliband, during his current visit to Iraq on the occasion of his country's troops handing over the reins of security in Basrah to the Iraqi forces, and said:

"By spring 2008 our military presence in Basrah will be 2500 troops. We would like now to focus on new prospects of cooperation in the economic, political and military areas; our forces have been able to build close ties with their Iraqi counterparts under the leadership of lieutenant general Mouhan."

A statement issued by the Presidency of the Cabinet quoted Al-Maliki stressing his government's keenness to establish better relations with Britain and open horizons of joint cooperation in all fields, saying that the coming phase will witness the establishment of multiple projects for the reconstruction of Basrah and all other provinces, calling on the British government to contribute actively in these projects and help to support the development of the Iraqi economy. On 22 May 2011 all of the remaining British troops had left Iraq and were all redeployed to Kuwait after the Iraqi government rejected their request to stay in Iraq and to extend their mission.

Unlocking Iraq's economic potential

Background

Following three decades of conflict and international sanctions, Iraq's economy is set to become one of the fastest growing in the world over the next 10 years. Its GDP growth rate for 2013 is forecast for around 14% - largely fuelled by a rapidly developing hydrocarbons sector which already generates around $8bn a month in oil revenues. On the back of this sizeable wealth stream, Iraq's import demand is projected to increase by 150% by 2020, with major opportunities in sectors including:

power generation

infrastructure

healthcare

education

financial and professional services

telecoms

security

ICT

British companies are especially well placed to capitalise on investment opportunities in Iraq, given the significant historical and cultural ties that exist between the UK and Iraq, as well as the UK's solid reputation for quality and clean business practices.

UK exports to Iraq totaled £782m in 2011, and exports of goods increased 40% last year. But there are still significant challenges to doing business here. Corruption, bureaucracy, lack of transparency and decades of under-investment in key infrastructure all contribute to Iraq continuing to score poorly on global ease of doing business rankings. And while the UK and Iraqi Governments are working together to address a number of the major barriers to trade, Iraq remains a challenging market in which to do business, especially for inexperienced exporters.

Security also remains a major consideration for companies looking to operate in Iraq, and visitors are strongly recommended to consult the FCO travel advice for Iraq prior to travelling. For most parts of the country, business visitors should also consider the use of private security when planning a trip. The UKTI commercial team in Baghdad can supply contact details of the private security companies operating in Iraq.

The British government actions :

Encouraging the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Regional Government to pass and implement new legislation on hydrocarbons and revenue sharing.

Contributing to Iraqi development of a strategic vision for the energy sector.

Encouraging the Iraqi government to play a responsible role in OPEC and other international energy institutions.

Working with the EU on a strategic partnership with Iraq, including encouraging gas exports to the EU.

Supporting British companies to win high value contracts in Iraq.

Improving UK visa operations in Iraq.

Encouraging and supporting the Iraqi government to resolve the problems that prohibit business, and encourage inward investment.

Supporting increased private sector growth in Iraq, leading to job creation.

Building partnerships between UK and Iraqi colleges and universities to support improved learning and develop vocational, academic and professional skills.

Improving provision of education and training in the state sector.

Encouraging Iraq-funded scholarships to the UK.

Seeking reduced restrictions on banks eligible to issue letters of credit.

Encouraging a market open to foreign banks and support British banks' efforts to enter and grow.

Supporting development of retail banking to provide small loans to private businesses and the public.

UK Trade & Investment services

UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) helps UK-based companies succeed in the global economy. They also help overseas companies bring their high-quality investment to the UK's dynamic economy.

UKTI offers expertise and contacts through its extensive network of specialists in the UK, and in British embassies and other diplomatic offices around the world. They provide companies with the tools they require to be competitive on the world stage.

In Iraq, UKTI has commercial staff at the British Embassy in Baghdad, covering trade in the centre and south of the country - including Basra, and in the British Consulate in Erbil, covering trade in the Kurdistan region.

UKTI Responsibilities

UKTI's commercial teams in Iraq are helping UK companies to identify opportunities in the country, and supporting them in accessing the market. They are also working with the Iraqi Government to identify and overcome obstacles to doing business in Iraq, including through the UK/Iraq Joint Ministerial Trade Council.

The Iraq UK Gateway

The Iraq UK Gateway is a UK based business and was established to facilitate business-to-business transactions by providing the Iraqi companies with credible access to the British market place and Industry, sourcing products as well as approaching established businesses to promote the largely untapped potential for Iraq-British cooperation.

It offers British businesses a gateway to explore new business opportunities and to expand their market internationally. Iraq has all the success components and national will and determination to become one of the richest and most successful growing economies in the world. They work with both sides to overcome the challenges that exist and are well placed to encourage greater participation and engagement by British business in Iraq's fast growing economy.

They are currently a dedicated small team of professionals actively working with other professional associates and together they can help Iraqi and British businesses to navigate the sometimes challenging route to successful trading in and with Iraq and the UK.

Bashkin, Orit. "Deconstructing Destruction: The Second Gulf War and the New Historiography of Twentieth-Century Iraq." Arab Studies Journal 23.1 (2015): 210-234. online

Broich, John. Blood, Oil and the Axis: The Allied Resistance Against a Fascist State in Iraq and the Levant, 1941 (Abrams, 2019).

Franzén, Johan. "Development vs. Reform: Attempts at Modernisation during the Twilight of British Influence in Iraq, 1946-1958," Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 37#1 (2009), pp. 77-98

Elliot, Matthew. Independent Iraq: British Influence from 1941 to 1958 (IB Tauris, 1996).

Lyman, Robert. Iraq 1941: The Battles for Basra, Habbaniya, Fallujah and Baghdad (Osprey Publishing, 2006).

Silverfarb, Daniel. Britain's informal empire in the Middle East: a case study of Iraq, 1929-1941 ( Oxford University Press, 1986).

Silverfarb, Daniel. The twilight of British ascendancy in the Middle East: a case study of Iraq, 1941-1950 (1994)

Silverfarb, Daniel. "The revision of Iraq's oil concession, 1949-52." Middle Eastern Studies 32.1 (1996): 69-95.

Tarbush, Mohammad A. The role of the military in politics: A case study of Iraq to 1941 (Routledge, 2015).

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Iraq-United Kingdom relations - Wikipedia

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British-Iraqi relations are foreign relations between Iraq and the United Kingdom. The current ambassador to Iraq is Stephen Hickey. The history of British-Iraqi relations date back to the creation of Iraq in 1920, when it was controlled by Great Britain; by establishing separate provinces from Mosul to Basra.

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There are lots of stereotypes and misconceptions related to the British. Here we reveal which ones are true and which ones are completely made up. You might think that all British people drink excessive amounts of tea to solve their problems, or maybe you have heard that their upper lips are peculiarly stiff, presumably since birth.

Heaven forbid you may have even heard that they have no sense of humour, if so leave this site right now! (Please don't literally do that...this is an example of our famous dry wit).

So if you are feeling out of place like Sting in New York (Google it), have no fear, as Foreign Students will now attempt to debunk some of the stereotypical traits of the British people.

Misconception One: All British People like to Queue

Queuing - some say it's nonsense, others view it as the 'right thing' to do. Whether or not it is justified, most cities have thousands of queues that you can't avoid.

A bank or a bus stop both require a level of courtesy, that is to say members of the public in Britain are brought up in a culture that has a tendency to queue in a range of everyday situations.

Since this is the norm, those who break it - or 'queue jumpers'- are often frowned upon. Having said this, don't let this put you off - just learn to love the queue and you'll fit in perfectly!

Here we have a society, which has evolved to queue, but it isn't all or nothing and even those native to the country sometimes break the unwritten social laws of the queue, and when they do, this is your opportunity to be a part of the crowd and also mock them!

Misconception Two: All British People Hate other Nationalities

British people like to think they were once rulers of the world, so some of this quest for global notoriety still lingers up until the present day. However, nowadays most of the comments made about other nations are meant in jest.

You may think that the British hate Americans, Germans and French, in fact this is not true - really the British hate everyone! OK, that was a joke, but you can rest easy knowing that hate is a very strong word for a British person, the average Brit is very fond of friendly rivalry with other nationalities.

This is taking into account that most British people would rather swim the English Channel than face any confrontation with someone; they are as timid as a church mouse (except when at a football match). Britain is a very open society to live in, and you're much more likely to receive genuine and friendly interest in where you're from than any form of hostility whatsoever.
Foreign Students Top Tip: Judge Britain for yourself. It's one of Europe's most multicultural countries, so the Brits aren't that full of hate after all!
Misconception Three: All British people speak the Queen's English

The English language is often misconstrued as being only understood as an elite expression of lords and ladies. Why golly gosh, this is absolute utter incongruous pish posh my dear boy!*

In the days of Kings and Queens, the language was certainly more Dickensian, but modern Britain is an eclectic blend of different sounds.

In fact, the true vernacular is refreshingly diverse in its slang ( see our slang section), and you'll probably surprise the person on the street with how good your English is. Like with most things Britain exports, they invent something but are then always outdone by foreigners (see cricket)!

* Translation: "Damn, this is made-up nonsense my friend"

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There are lots of stereotypes and misconceptions related to the British. Here we reveal which ones are true and which ones are completely made up. You might think that all British people drink excessive amounts of tea to solve their problems, or maybe you have heard that their upper lips are peculiarly stiff, presumably since birth.

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Britain's former Prime Minister Tony Blair has said it all. In numerous public appearances and interviews he has laid out and defended the reasons why he not only passively supported, but actively contributed to the American decision to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein.

Speaking before the so-called Chilcot Inquiry set up by the British government to study London's involvement, Blair will likely make the case again that he and most Western intelligence services were convinced that Iraq retained weapons of mass destructions, that he tried to reach a diplomatic solution through the United Nations, but that he was and remains convinced that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the region even without weapons of mass destruction and that the decision to topple him was therefore correct.

"Unless Blair decides to drop a bombshell, nothing new under the sun will be revealed," is how Klemens Fischer, a lecturer on international relations with the University of Cologne, described the expectations ahead of Blair's appearance before the Chilcot Inquiry.

"I think he is convinced that the decision then was right. Why should he change his opinion now," Daniel Gossel, an expert on British foreign policy at the University of Kassel, told Deutsche Welle.
Traditional bond
More interesting than Blair's oft-stated rationale for going to war against Iraq is a major factor that is less tangible and is mentioned a lot less than the more obvious security aspects: the so-called special relationship between the United States and Britain. While much has been written about the close relationship between Prime Minister Blair and US President George W. Bush and this personal bond is often viewed as a decisive factor in Blair's decision to go to war, experts argue that the relationship is actually only a function of the special ties between both countries.

"I think the special relationship goes far deeper than any personal relationships there were between Blair and Bush," Paul Ingram, executive director of the British American Security Information Council, told Deutsche Welle. "People have to realize that the relationship with the United States has been the number one foreign policy goal of the British ever since the second world war. There is a lot of mythology around that and it remains as strong today as ever."

British aircraft carrier Ark Royal left Portsmouth for the Gulf

By joining the US effort to topple Saddam Hussein, Britain could not only eliminate a threat to Middle East peace and a pernicious dictator, it would also assert itself as Washington's most reliable partner and thus strengthen the transatlantic bond between both countries.

"The importance of the special relationship between the US and the UK was one of the reasons that they went to war together with the Americans," said Fischer. "Blair obviously thought that it would be better for everyone if he went along with the Americans so he could shift their decisions and not taking part would have meant not to have any chance at all to be involved in the decision-making process."
Dependence on US
A common perception in London is "that Britain only ever has influence on the world stage through its relationship with the United States and that is it is loath to give that up," said Ingram.

"In terms of how strong that was in the decision to go to war, I think it was a very powerful influence, that belief that we needed to stick by the Americans so soon after the attack on September 11, 2001 and that we in Britain faced a similar threat to the threat that the Americans faced," he added. "Saddam Hussein was symbolic of that threat. And it's incredible how such critical decisions can be taken on that basis."

With the Iraq war now a topic for inquiries and seminars and both Bush and Blair out of office, what effect did the staunch British support for US-led invasion have on the special relationship?

"I assume that future British politicians will be more careful before they agree to any military action in support of American foreign policy," said Gossel, adding that the close bond between Washington and London has seen many ups and downs in the past.
Future of special relationship
"From a British perspective in security terms the United States are still the most important power and therefore the most important partner for them. So they certainly will try to keep valid the special relationship and try to preserve it also for reasons of prestige for example."

Relations between Gordon Brown and Barack Obama are not as close as between their predecessors

Paul Ingram disagreed: "I think in essence this special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom has no future. This is for two reasons: Firstly, Barack Obama as an individual and the broader Obama movement. And secondly and more importantly is the diffusion of power globally." The US, he argued, focuses increasingly on Asia. But even when the US turns toward Europe, its outlook extends far beyond London. Britain, according to Ingram, in future will only have influence in Washington in concert with other major European partners.

While Gossel agrees that US interests extend far beyond Britain and Europe and that globalization demands that nations become more flexible in their relations, he believes that the special relationship will endure: "I think it will stay pretty much the same. Especially in a very globalized world, nations and governments will look for fairly stable relationships."

Author: Michael Knigge
Editor: Rob Mudge

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Legacy of UK-US special relationship contributed to British decision to invade Iraq | DW | 28.01.2010

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Britain's former Prime Minister Tony Blair has said it all. In numerous public appearances and interviews he has laid out and defended the reasons why he not only passively supported, but actively contributed to the American decision to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein.

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Social Norms Structuring Masculinities, Gender Roles, and Stereotypes: Iraqi men and boys’ common misconceptions about women and girls’ participation and empowerment - Iraq

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English Analysis on Iraq about Gender and Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding; published on 31 Aug 2021 by Oxfam

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Ramy Aly, author of the new anthropolocial work Becoming Arab in London: Performativity and the Undoing of Identity discusses what it means to be a British Arab.
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'Young people are acutely aware of the meanings that inform belonging in their society as well as those that convey symbolic violence. The everyday interactions that take place at Britain's school are instances where young people draw upon the discursive economy within their culture and map a system of meaning upon those around them. In Hugh Muir's recent article 'Is your five-year-old a bigot and a racist?' he asks, 'these things they say, where do they come from?'[1] While I understand the sentiment, it also baffles me to think that the answers to that question seem so ostensibly elusive. As if we were somehow unaware of the divisive structural and cultural values and discourses on difference in contemporary Britain. When schoolchildren utter racist, sexist, classist or homophobic taunts (to name but a few) and act upon them, they are reiterating and reciting through the parlance of their time, the system of values and meanings that are to be found in the local and global culture in which they live. Discourses are pervasive, once the meanings have been made and circulated it is difficult to control or erase them. No one should any longer doubt that that those utterances made by school children are an uncensored version of the discourses and cultural values that surround them at a time in their lives when they are yet to develop the aptitudes of subtle prejudice, concealment and carefully timed delivery practiced so masterfully by adult culture. Looking in horrified incredulity at the cruelty that some of our children exact upon one another should quickly give way to the realisation that we are all to blame.

While discrimination works on levels too numerous to comprehensively list or prioritise, ethno-racial discrimination remains the forte of debates about national identity in Britain and elsewhere. The postcolonial melancholia that Paul Gilroy so lucidly described over a decade ago seems to still define the enduring sense of a nation diluted and deformed by the arrival of those with different shades of melanin, tongues and beliefs.[2] Britain has only ever really half-heartedly tried to accept that mass migration has been caused by the country's thirst for cheap labour and its colonial and neo-colonial exploits.

I say 'neo-colonial' because 'postcolonial' may be a slightly premature designation. The overwhelming majority of Iraqi Arabs and Kurds who make-up the largest group of migrants from Arab states to Britain have arrived in unprecedented numbers since the 1991 Gulf War, the subsequent sanctions regime and more consequentially as a direct result of the 2003 American and British invasion and destruction of the Iraqi state. Britain was a principle protagonist in those conflicts, and on the whole it is safe to say that other societies and countries less implicated in those episodes have had to bear the brunt of forced mass migration from Iraq.

Although as a society we are certainly trying to deal with the changing nature of Britain, there is a sense in which those attempts have been accompanied by a culture of denial. Every now and then the debate is taken out of the rhetorical sophism of 'tolerance', 'multiculturalism', 'communities', 'Britishness' and the like and is distilled into forms of expression that are more sincere and reflective of the cultural status quo. Roy Williams and Clint Dyer's recent sports microplay 'Death of England' captures the reality of England's cultural condition incisively. During an emotionally charged and impromptu eulogy to his father, the main character Paul tells his best friend Delroy that at football matches his father, who now lay behind him in a coffin draped in the St George's cross, would cover Paul's ears as racist abuse was being hurled at black players on the field. But he couldn't stop him seeing the bananas being thrown on the field. 'There's no sense in it' his father would say, but Paul retorts 'well if you hated it so much why didn't you tell your mates to stop, why didn't you do something let alone cover my bleedin' ears'. It's a simple analogy, although many people, institutions and governments have taken a stand against racism and discrimination officially and rhetorically, we have been less adept at tackling the culture of racism and the ideas and values that fuel discrimination and constitute it as a lived reality. Is Britain, like Paul's father trying to cover its children's ears to protect them against the culture of racism, while allowing it to thrive and structure their sense of self and other in a myriad other ways?

Paul confronts Delroy with the reality that most of us know but prefer to ignore, 'you may sound like us, you may act like us, but you will never be one of us.' While I was researching my book Becoming Arab in London: Performativity and the Undoing of Identity, I was often struck by the way in which many young people I interviewed narrated growing up in London as a process of gradual estrangement from Englishness, a process that they felt was someone else's doing. Take Suad for examples, born in London in the late 1970s to Jordanian parents, Suad tried to embody the white, leafy middle-class suburb in which she lived, and mimicked what she considered to be a loyal 'Englishness'. She was quite clear that she thought of herself not as British but as English, quite enthusiastically adopting what she thought were the necessary tastes, discriminations and cultural mores that might make her a 'local' as it were. Suad had internalised the notion that she was English and that her behaviour and presentation meant that she could convincingly pass for and even be accepted as English.
'Until one day a group of girls in my class, I'll never forget this, they said to me 'You are not English, you are not Anglo-Saxon, you are British', that really was like, it made me feel like nothing 'cause whatever I did wasn't good enough.'
This passing incident, which contains no direct slander or abusive language was enough to fundamentally alter Suad's relationship to the country and culture in which she lived, at least for as long as she remembered the incident which in this case took place over twenty years ago. Suad's attempt to be English, her performative rendition, was as Homi Bhabha suggests the effect of a 'flawed colonial mimesis in which to be Anglicised is emphatically not to be English'[3]

In spite of the family disciplining that more often than not emphasises the idea that 'we are not English', or the school system that unfailing makes sense of young people as 'ethnic minority schoolchildren;' many young people I interviewed saw themselves as English until the message, that is out there in society but suppressed so often and yet clear in so many roundabout ways, was delivered in all its unadulterated clarity by peers at school: Englishness is still about biology and race.

Even though the debate on Britishness roars on unabated, many people are tiring of the toing and froing about what it means and how migrants and their children might share in it. We all know that 'Britishness' is a metaphor for acceptance and inclusion, the debate is actually about inclusion and exclusion from 'Englishness' and not whether people identify with being British. Britishness articulated in this way confirms the boundedness of the categories it has come to relieve, in this case 'Englishness' and becomes a secondary category that stands for partial acceptance and curtailed inclusion. Englishness seems to be the last barricade between the nations perceived pre-immigration monoculture and sense of self, and its 'multicultural' present, lamented and celebrated in equal measure.

Ahmed, who was raised in Britain while his Iraqi parents were studying for their doctorates also 'felt quite English' until the 1991 Gulf War when some of his peers at school decided that it would be fun to walk past him simulating the sound of a falling bomb and call him 'Saddam'. Those experiences and 'slurs live and thrive in and as the flesh of the addressee' and over time harden, taking on profound meaning as ordering principles that 'count as 'reality''[4]. The physical and verbal abuse was so consistent and persuasive that he eventually started putting pictures of Saddam Hussein on his folders and schoolbooks. How ironic that it was at school in Britain, a country that he readily identified with, that he was obliged to appropriate the image of the despot who had caused so much suffering and dislocation for him and his family.

Again we are confronted with the fact that these experiences take place at schools and are recalled and continue to have meaning for people decades later. The things that were said and done to both Ahmed and Suad were created and sanctioned outside schools but reflected forcefully in the interactions within them.

Niether Ahmed nor Suad were born Arabs, they were made into 'Arabs in Britain' by their parents, peers, war, the media and the pervasive ethnic cultural politics of the United Kingdom which remains so uncomfortable in its own skin. In other words they have been forced to recite a particular kind of gendered, raced and classed subjectivity. Their subjectivity was forged in the process of interpolating the injunctions that they were confronted with among them the clear message that regardless of how they sounded, behaved or felt, they would never be English and the 'identities' that they subsequently appropriated are about a project of survival and intelligibility within the culture that they live.

However careful we think we might have become at avoiding certain words and however adept politicians and institutions are at crafting messages and policies about diversity and tolerance we must recognise that people, particularly children are far more sensitive to meaning than we think. Meanings are not just about enunciations; absences and silences - what is not said, meanings that are suppressed, histories that are denied - are just as important and consequential.

This is not just about a straightforward White/ Black or 'indigenous'/ immigrant animosity, racial thinking is far more tenacious than that. In early 2014 Lola Okolosie reported on the scale of 'intra-racism' at schools arguing that we rarely consider the diverse modalities in which racism can thrive within a 'multicultural' setting.[5] There is something about the way we have experienced multiculturalism that has fortified and valorised the idea of ethnic distinctiveness and hierarchy, Afro-Caribbean is pitted against African, Pakistani against Indian and Bangladeshi to name but a few.

My experience with young British-born or raised Arabs very much speaks to the kind of dynamic that Okolosie reports. Some young British-Arabs seemed reluctant to share social space and locales with people they had been socialised into seeing as somehow different or inferior in culture, race, class, taste and so on. This meant that for many the Edgware Road a place long stereotyped as being the heart of Arab London was actively avoided by some because it was 'full of Pakis,' 'Chavistanis' and 'P-Diddy clones (aka Somalis)'. The censure here is not just racial but intimately related to class.

One young man I interviewed outside a mosque in west London responded to questions about how he felt about being British and Arab by saying 'Look if there's one thing I could say to them it's that we are not all Pakis.' I took 'them' to refer to the British media or public and the 'we' to refer to not just 'Muslims' but implicitly to 'real Muslims'. The South Asian face of Islamic 'revivalism' in Britain is used as part of a discourse that some Arabs in Britain subscribe to that 'it is the Asians' or 'Pakis', who do not really understand Islam and who are responsible for the current negativity with which Muslims are seen in Britain. This narrative not only excludes the role of 9/11, where it is claimed that all the bombers were Arab, but is also a case of a flagrantly selective repertoire which borrows a British racist trope 'Paki' to frame British South Asian Muslims as the cause of a deep-seated and complex fear of Islam and Muslims in Britain.

Like Hugh Muir, perhaps there are some British-Arabs and or British-Muslims reading this saying to themselves 'How did this happen?' 'Where do they get these ideas from?' 'The majority of young Arabs and Muslims don't have such views'. Again, I understand the sentiment, but denying the deep-seated fractures and bigoted discriminations among what people like to see as 'British-Muslim' is a similar act of denial or naivety.

The penchant for difference that we live with has institutional and cultural roots. In my work I became convinced of the arguments that suggest that our thinking in Britain remains captivate to the logic of race, a condition I describe as 'ethnonormativity'. Ethnonormativity is a deeply embedded set of beliefs about essential sameness and difference that naturalise the notion of 'ethnicity' and provide it with the status of a proper (ontological) object with which the expansive potential of self and human relationships are predicated. Ethnonormativity is relentlessly enduring; in its history it has manifested itself as that which is incommensurable about 'race', 'ethnicity', 'religion', 'nation' and 'culture'. Today 'identity' has become both a synonym and suffix of these forms of incommensurability. The idea of having or possessing an ethnicity, of being part of an ethnic group has become so embedded in the way that we see people in Britain that we see ethnicity and ethnic groups everywhere instead of seeing people.

There is a clear genealogical line from the purported displacement of biological racism to the notion of cultural incommensurability and finally 'identity'. 'Ethnicity,' 'culture' and 'identity' are the successors of 'race' within the context of British ethnic governmentality. Before we comfort ourselves with the thought that we have come so far on the back of multiculturalism we should remember that in Britain ethnonormative thinking still structures people's sense of self and socio-political praxis. The solidarity that migrants had with each other was shattered by corporatist multicultural policies which made black politics into a spectrum of national and ethnic groups all in competition with each other over their distinctiveness, recognition by the state and acceptability vis a vis the majority.

In my research on Arabness in Britain I felt that often being 'Arab' was simply about not being 'White', 'Black' or 'Asian'. Checkbox or corporatist multiculturalism has a performative effect in the Butlerian sense.[6] It brings into being that which it names - a society perceived through the notion of essential difference that needs to be managed and tolerated. Difference and distinctiveness have become primary source of subjectivity. The set of evolving policies that began as race-relations and have come to be known as 'multiculturalism' are not as some like to think, part of a benign anti-racist project. They have bought about a divisive identity politics in the way we see each other. As Malek Alloula would have it, within this cultural condition we produce stereotypes 'in the manner of great seabirds producing guano'.[7] The rampant prejudice that echo in school playgrounds and classrooms all over the country is the clearest indication that large parts of mainstream British culture remain fertile breeding ground for bigotry.

I fear that some will take this to be ammunition for 'multiculturalism' bashing conservatism. Far from it, multiculturalism is another byword that we have coined to stand for the way in which Britain has tried to culturally cope with difference, a begrudging set of policies that were adopted to manage the 'colonial boomerang' and one that has fragmented and depoliticised Black politics and the struggle for equality, commodified the smells, sounds, colours and fashions of its 'ethnic subjects' and created a hierarchical system of signification that skirts around the most deeply embedded and complex aspect of subaltern belonging in Britain. It is a national state of mind, the coming and going of the term multiculturalism seems inconsequential because another set of policy terms will emerge to repackage and obscure Britain's unresolved postcolonial condition. The culture of caustic disdain and resentment which so many people harbor has been normalised but in a very British way repressed. It only takes a brief look at the popularity of the language and sentiment of the far right to recognise the thirst that so many have for expressing this cultural malaise publicly and proudly. But it was there before UKIP and it will continue to be there until we engage in a sincere cultural process that can help Britain emerge from its denial about what it was, what it is and where it is going.

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Ramy M. K. Aly is Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at the American University in Cairo.

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Becoming Arab in London: Performativity and the Undoing of Identity is available to buy from Pluto Press here.

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[1] Muir, Hugh (2015) Is Your Five-Year-Old a Bigot and a Racist? The Guardian, January 4. http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/04/is-your-five-year-old-bigot-racist, accessed January 6, 2015.

[2] Gilroy, Paul 2004 After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture?: Multiculture or Postcolonial Melancholia. 1 edition. London: Routledge.

[3] Bhabha, H. (1989) Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse, in P. Michelson (ed.) October: The First Decade (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) p.320

[4] Butler, J (1997) Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (London: Routledge) p.125

[5] Okolosie, Lola (2014) How White, Black and Brown Students Learn the Language of Racist Bullying. The Guardian, January 10. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/10/racist-bullying-children-media-white-black, accessed January 6, 2015.

[6] Butler, J (1994) Against Proper Objects, differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, Vol. 6 Nos 2-3, pp. 1-25.

[7] Alloula, M. (1986) The Colonial Harem (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press) p.4

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Thoughts on Being An Arab in Britain: Multiculti-Schisms

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Ramy Aly, author of the new anthropolocial work Becoming Arab in London: Performativity and the Undoing of Identity discusses what it means to be a British Arab. ------ 'Young people are acutely aware of the meanings that inform belonging in their society as well as those that convey symbolic violence.

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Our latest Chevening Conversations blog is by Iraqi scholar Seja Majeed. Seja studied law at Brunel University in 2009/10.

Iraq, my homeland, or is it? Yes my parents are Iraqi, thus by default I am also Iraqi. But isn't there more to one's identity then simply deriving your parents genes. Just like 'relationships,' is it not right to expect a person to have a form of attachment to a country, one which goes beyond genes? Or am I complicating matters?

To be honest, I don't know where to start with Iraq, I really feel lost, bewildered and rather furious at the complexity of our situation. I love Iraq. I have spent my entire life dreaming about it; hoping and wishing that someday I would be a part of its reconstruction and development. I want Iraq to be the greatest Arab Country within the Middle East; if Baghdad was once the capital of intellect, then surely it can rise from the ashes and become the great civilisation it formerly was. Yes, I was a visionary dreaming of something that is now so farfetched and distorted. I no longer dare to dream of Iraq because of my own well being and sanity.

I first travelled to Iraq during the time of Saddam Hussein, when uttering his name even in the confines of your own home was a terrifying thing to do, no doubt a deadly mistake for someone who didn't wish to get hanged. I also came in 2007 when terrorism was at its peak, with beheadings, kidnapping, gunfire and explosion being the main discussions around the dinner table. And now, I return again, to my homeland, or whatever is left of it.

Since I've been here, there have been between six to eight suicide bombings so far and I am not even midway through my journey. The precise number I cannot say as I have not had the energy to switch on the TV and watch the Iraqi news, after all I must keep my sanity if I am to survive such an ordeal and believe me I have little of it left. I initially came to Iraq for several reasons. The paramount one was because I wanted to set up a recycling initiative to clean up the streets of Basra. As soon as I entered the borders of Kuwait, I was shocked by the appalling state of the roads, with dirty ditches everywhere, scrap metal lying in the middle of the streets, plastic bottles along the Shatt al Arab river bank, including unwanted refrigerators, exploded cars, everything that anyone can imagine is there.

My first reaction was quite frankly an energetic 'where do I start?' It felt as if I had entered a rubbish tip one which I happily wanted to polish until it shone like silver. I was so eager to get on with my cleaning project, so much so that I wanted to jump into the river myself, use my own plastic gloves and one-by-one collect all the bottles for recycling. But I am a ''woman'' and an ''outsider'' according to 'native Iraqi eyes', and apparently, a woman cleaning up the streets would be frowned upon; a truly undignified thing to do, in every sense of the word.

If I chose to ignore such cultural philosophies, I would attract attention to myself thus putting me at risk of kidnapping. I, however, am an independent thinker who does not take much notice of cultural taboos, I would happily jump into the Shatt al Arab River but I need a team and I need funding. I have neither, which leads me onto my second point, one which I am extremely passionate about (but shall discuss in a little while). To be blunt and to the point, there is no community spirit here in Iraq, quite frankly, it is a dog eat dog world out here. The individual and his family is the ''nucleus in the atom,'' and that's about it. So you see there is a vicious circle, the Iraqi people (not all, but most) do not feel a sense of duty to help themselves by improving their own environment.

It is a deep contrast from the United Kingdom, when London was gripped by the riots, community spirit was key to overcoming the 'destructive yobbish' behaviour of those who tried to breakdown society. Everyone felt the necessity to pull their weight, report those who they believed had participated in such hideous acts, and clean up their streets. I remember watching strangers sweeping the road without urging payment. I imagine you are thinking, 'But there is a great deal of poverty in Iraq, it is only right that they are paid for their services.'

Well that's not entirely true. Yes, there is poverty, but if you come to Basra, you'll see most people driving brand new cars and range rovers. The Iraqi people are being paid well, the average man and woman earns about 1200 dollars a month. That's not a hefty sum but take into account the fact that they do not pay income tax, tv licenses, extortionate electric and gas bills and so on. It is a decent wage for those living here, coupled by that the Government offers free sugar and petrol to families. So you see the problem is not finances, it is mentality, and an enshrined laziness to just accept the things the way they are. Not to tell off a child who throws his chocolate wrapper in the floor, after all, he saw his parents do exactly the same. Iraq has many financial resources, what is lacking goes beyond that.

So let me go onto my second point which relates to the question of 'Funding.' Even though I have lobbied hard, wanting desperately to talk to Iraqi politicians, they are having none of it. Why? Because they want to keep their 'oil funding' for themselves, it is not in their interests to have real development. Corruption is a better kept secret when there is anarchy. It seems the doll is being spent on 'fat cats' that fall within the mentioned 'nucleus' of family members. Like I said, Iraq is not poor, those who think it is, are certainly misinformed. The Iraqi Parliament has plenty of money, and quite frankly, I hope they feel ashamed of themselves for wasting it on silly adventures.

I also hope the British and American Government feels ashamed of itself for believing in Iraqi politicians who have done nothing for our country apart from bickering among themselves, sipping tea on grand golden chairs, and hiding themselves away in the Greenzone which is guarded by endless tanks. So furious am I with the Iraqi Government, and their partners in crime, for supporting those who are doing nothing to get this country moving. How are you supposed to develop a country when most of these politicians have no background in economics or international relations?

Let me give you an example of an absolute waste of money endorsed by the Iraqi Financial Ministry, and all the bureaucrats who have done little or nothing. In the outskirts of Basra, they are building a Football Stadium, so that the Gulf Football games can be held there in 2013. It's Iraq's version of the Olympic games or so they say? Now should this really be a priority of a country which has no proper roads, electricity, sewage system, internet connection, educational schools and so on?

How can you invite international tourists to come and stay in Iraq when Basra does not even have an airport to allow flights to land? Scrap that, what about a decent road to walk on or a shopping mall to entertain its visitors. My goodness, what on earth is going on? How many millions are being spent on these silly incentives that are pocketed by bureaucrats? This is just one small example of money wasted and there are plenty of others which I will explore in my next article, which will also touch upon international relations and why we are doom to failure. So will Iraq get better? I do not know, what I do know, is that the fictional story of Ali Baba and his 40 thieves is in fact based on a true one, most likely the life of our politicians.

If you are a Chevening scholar or alumnus and you would like to submit a blog entry, please get in touch. You can get in touch with me, Declan Byrne, via the Chevening Community website, the official Chevening groups on Facebook or Linkedin or you can contact your local British Embassy/High Commission. Entries should be 700 to 1000 words please. Remember that you can link to your own blog page if you have more to say. We would be particularly interested to hear about the experiences of the UK from our 2011/12 scholars.

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Iraq, My Homeland, Or So I'm Told | Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office Blogs

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Our latest Chevening Conversations blog is by Iraqi scholar Seja Majeed. Seja studied law at Brunel University in 2009/10. Iraq, my homeland, or is it? Yes my parents are Iraqi, thus by default I am also Iraqi. But isn't there more to one's identity then simply deriving your parents genes.

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Being a young British Iraqi Shii in London: exploring diasporic cultural and religious identities between Britain and Iraq - Contemporary Islam

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Relying on an ethnographic research conducted both in the UK and Iraq, this article explores issues of cultural and religious identities among London-based young British Iraqi Shiis. Using Stuart Hall’s notions of ‘articulation’ and ‘new ethnicities’, I analyse how different realities and experience…