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History may have a say in US use of Iraqi bases

April 23 2003
By Ed O'Loughlin

The controversy over alleged US plans to maintain use of four Iraqi air bases could resurrect bitter resentments that overshadowed the first 25 years of the country's existence.

Before granting Iraq independence in 1930, the then colonial power Britain imposed a treaty on its client ruler, King Faisal, obliging Iraq to defer to Britain in military and foreign affairs.

At the heart of the treaty were two air bases - in Habaniya near Baghdad and Shui'bha near Basra - which for the next 25 years were occupied by British troops and auxiliaries. From the start, the presence of British forces in supposedly independent Iraq aroused deep resentment in the state's increasingly nationalistic intelligentsia and officer corps.

This anger was deepened by the belief that Britain was complicit in the Zionist expansion in Palestine, then already a major source of resentment in the Arabic-speaking world. Iraq's Hashemite monarchs were also uneasy at Britain's status as military overlord, but at the same time they saw it as the ultimate guarantee of their rule.

Faisal, from the Hejaz region of present-day Saudi Arabia, was installed by Britain as king of distant Iraq in recognition of his leading role in the Arab revolt against the Turks in 1917. The Hashemites therefore had little or no power base of their own in their newly created kingdom, formed from three Ottoman provinces seized from Turkey in the aftermath of the First World War.

From the start, the British presence in Iraq was neither token nor precautionary. Primacy was given to the Royal Air Force, which was repeatedly used to put down rebellions among the Kurds of the north and the Shiite Arabs of the south.

In 1941 Britain sent large bodies of troops from Jordan and India to put down a military coup that threatened to deprive it of the use of Iraqi facilities - and oil - in its war against the Axis. The operation was successful, but only after days of heavy fighting.

Britain did not vacate its two Iraqi air bases until 1955, and even then it insisted that Iraq sign a defence treaty giving it access to them in event of war. The new treaty provoked rioting and looting in the streets of Baghdad, and contributed to the nationalist sentiment amid which the last of the Hashemite monarchs was butchered in a 1958 coup.

Little wonder, then, that the US defence establishment had reacted with such hostility to last weekend's New York Times report that it, too, will ask a client Iraqi government to grant long-term facilities on its soil.

Citing "senior administration officials" in the White House, The New York Times said the US was looking at facilities at Baghdad airport as well as in the north, west and south.

"There will be some kind of a long-term defence relationship with a new Iraq, similar to Afghanistan," the source said. "The scope of that has yet to be defined - whether it will be full-up operational bases, smaller forward operating bases or just plain access."

On Monday, however, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld angrily denounced the report. "The impression that is left around the world is that we plan to occupy the country, we plan to use their bases over a long period of time, and it's flat false," he said at a Pentagon briefing. His denial is unlikely to carry much weight with the thousands of Iraqis who marched in Baghdad at the weekend, denouncing the US military occupation and calling on coalition forces to leave.



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