Imperialism's Impact on Iraq and Iran: A Historical Analysis

Introduction: Ottoman and British Imperialism in Iraq

The modern nation of Iraq was formed in 1932 when the Kingdom of Iraq gained independence from the United Kingdom. It had been placed under the authority of Great Britain as the British Mandate of Mesopotamia by the League of Nations in 1920. Prior to that, it was part of the Ottoman Empire. This delineates the history of imperialism in Iraq as beginning with the arrival of the Ottomans in the fifteenth century and extending through independence from Great Britain. These two stages of imperial rule had several different impacts on modern-day Iraq.

The first impact concerns the borders of the current state of Iraq, which were the direct result of British rule. The Ottomans had administered Iraq differently, organizing it into three main provinces. Under Ottoman rule, Baghdad, Mosul, and Basra were all provinces within the empire. Iraq was not Iraq in the sense of a modern nation-state; rather, it comprised governed territories delineated largely along ethnic lines. In Basra, the population consisted predominantly of Shia Arabs. In Baghdad, the population was more mixed—predominantly Sunni, but with a one-quarter Jewish population and a sizeable Shia presence as well. In Mosul, the population has long been predominantly Sunni. The Ottomans recognized and respected the demographic divisions, knowing that Shia holy sites, and therefore the Shia population, were concentrated in the south of the country. There was no attempt by the Ottomans to tie the different regions of modern Iraq together in any unified way—they were simply Ottoman provinces, unrelated to each other administratively.

The British redrew the internal boundaries of the region. The Sykes-Picot Agreement between England and France was the first attempt at creating such boundaries. The San Remo Agreement subsequently redrew the boundaries of the modern nations of Iraq and Syria (Stansfield, 2014). This resulted in the creation of what would become the modern state of Iraq. The country ended up with a Shia majority, a large Sunni minority, and a Kurdish region. In the post-colonial years, the entire country bled minorities—especially the Jewish and Christian communities—to the point where modern Iraq is 99% Muslim of some denomination (Stansfield, 2014).

The governance structure of Iraq, as the Kingdom of Iraq, was put into place by the British during their mandate. Stansfield (2014) argues that the British had greater trust in Sunni Arabs than in Shia Arabs at this time, and that this is why they chose to put the Sunni in charge of the new country, even though they were in the minority. He also argued that the state of Iraq today would not exist without the British: they created the idea of it, and the Sunni who were put into power built up the national story along their own vision. A unified Iraq came about only because the British invented it.

Governance in Iraq

The first question is why the British set up the new government in Iraq as a monarchy. The British enjoyed a more democratic form of government, yet the Arab countries in the mandate inherited a series of monarchies, some of which still exist today. One theory is that the Hashemite family—to whom power over Iraq, among others, was awarded—had assisted the British through the Arab Revolt, which helped create the conditions under which the British were able to take the areas from the Ottomans in the first place. The family was well-respected among Sunnis, tracing their lineage from the Prophet (pbuh) and having served as governors of Mecca for centuries (Dawson, 2014).

The creation of the state of Iraq, comprising a mix of Sunni and Shia, and then conferring power to a Sunni family when that denomination was in the minority, had long-lasting effects on the country. Through a succession of leadership, Iraq came to be ruled by the Baath Party, but remained under Sunni control. Privileges were often extended to Sunnis over Shia, though this was less pronounced under Saddam Hussein's rule. The Sunni rulers built a narrative about the nation-state of Iraq in order to solidify their hold on the territory, which otherwise might have been prone to sectarian fracture (Stansfield, 2014). This narrative focused on the Sunni perspective, and created alienation among the Shia, who under the Ottomans had not been subjected to Sunni rule—at least not in the south around Basra, where they had local governors and would rarely have encountered an Ottoman Turk (Stansfield, 2014).

The poor governance in Iraq would eventually collide with United States economic imperialism, specifically relating to the country's oil wealth. Saddam Hussein projected an image of a leader with strong support, but that support was relatively thin and held mainly by his own Baathist followers. Other ethnic groups, who had acquiesced out of fear, left at the first opportunity. The Sunni rule that had been cultivated over decades since independence wilted very quickly, as other groups in Iraq had never particularly strong support for Sunni leadership—especially given the circumstances under which that rule had come to exist, a legacy of the British.

The arrival of the Americans in the 2000s is an example of new imperialism. In this case, oil was the primary driver of the invasion. The United States may have been content to operate through economic imperialism, but had been shut out of the market in favor of European companies. Hussein was known to use oil—the main economic driver of Iraq—as a political tool. The rich oil reserves of the country gave Iraq the leverage to resist economic imperialism. Hussein, in the days before the U.S. invasion, reached out to European oil companies such as TotalFinaElf and Repsol to sign extraction deals, as a means of maintaining the country's control over the critical resource, its internal finances, and its ability to resist American economic influence (The Economist, 2002).

These moves did not work in the face of a U.S. military invasion. The subsequent occupation of the country by American forces ushered in a new era of imperialism. If oil wealth and a strong military had allowed the Sunni to rule Iraq since independence, that era was over. The new era was characterized by the United States government installing its own preferred leaders in the country and seeking to manage Iraq's transition toward a more democratic state.

This fractured state and fractured governance represent another new era in Iraq's history with imperialism. The U.S. decision to invade was based on an imperialistic agenda, much of which was transparent from the outset. But it was this imperialist invasion that broke up the strong governance the country had built under the Baathists. Once again Iraq fell apart, largely along sectarian lines. Nordland and Al-Salhy (2014) note that sectarian violence came in waves in post-invasion Iraq. The old hostilities that existed between Sunni and Shia in this artificially created country were renewed in the absence of a strongman leader to enforce discipline.

The Kurdish Quasi-Independence

The area where the Kurds had lived under Ottoman rule was generally a singular contiguous region. At the end of the Ottoman Empire, the British, French, and Turkish powers decided to split Kurdish territory. The Treaty of Sèvres in 1920 was never ratified, but it contained the blueprint for the partition of that territory, ostensibly to weaken the Kurds politically. This treaty proposed the creation of Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia as kingdoms, as well as autonomous states for the Armenians and the Kurds. The final treaty on the region—the Treaty of Lausanne—left out the latter two states. The reason for this change has been attributed to the oil interests of the British and the French. The British were intent on controlling the major oil-producing areas and, knowing they were going to control Iraq, sought to extend Iraqi territory into Kurdistan. The result was that Kurdistan would be split between Iraq, Syria, and Turkey (Malanczuk, 1991).

The Kurdistan issue remains unresolved to this day and therefore continues to have resonance in the context of modern Iraq. The Kurds have been able to maintain their own political and cultural identity over this period, winning some measure of autonomy within the Iraqi state in 1970. This autonomy continued when the Americans invaded Iraq, with the Kurds siding with the coalition against Saddam Hussein. While political obstacles kept the question of an independent Kurdistan off the table after the conflict, Kurdish Iraq became a de facto independent nation anyway. Kurdistan became the only secure part of the Iraqi state, with its own governance and its own territorial integrity. Observers are skeptical that Kurdistan will ever be granted full de jure independence, but the region still enjoys de facto independence from the rest of Iraq, even as questions about regaining territorial sovereignty over Kurdish areas of Turkey and Syria remain unresolved (The Economist, 2015). The unresolved Kurdish issue is another example of the legacy of imperialist ambitions and colonial rule, nearly a hundred years later.

The Kurds also remain a significant force combating the Islamic State. While the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad has been ineffective at combating the rise of IS, the Kurds have largely held on to their critical territories and have been able to expand southward toward Kirkuk as the Iraqi army fled under IS pressure. This in turn created an opportunity for the Kurds to sell oil via pipelines running through Turkey (The Economist, 2015).

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