State and Society in Iraq

Citizenship Under Occupation, Dictatorship and Democratisation

Benjamin Isakhan, Shamiran Mako, Fadi Dawood, Benjamin Isakhan, Shamiran Mako, Fadi Dawood

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781784533199
• eBook ISBN: 9781838609122
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

The activities of ISIS since 2014 have brought back to centre stage a series of very old and very troubling questions about the integrity and viability of the Iraqi state. However, most analysts have framed recent events in terms of their immediate past and without the contextual background to explain their evolution. State and Society in Iraq moves beyond a short-sighted analysis to place the complex and contested nature of Iraqi politics within a broader and deeper historical examination. In doing so, the chapters demonstrate that beyond the overwhelming emphasis on failed occupations, cruel tyrants, ethnic separatists and violent religious fanatics, is an Iraqi people who have routinely agitated against the state, advocated for legitimate and accountable government, and called for inter-communal harmony.When, the authors maintain, the Iraqi people are given agency in the complex process of consent, negotiation and resistance that underpin successful state-society relations, the nation can move beyond patterns of oppression and cruelty, of dangerous rhetoric and divisive politics, and towards a cohesive, peaceful and prosperous future - despite the many difficulties and the steep challenges that lie ahead.

Part I

Colonial Rule and the Making of Modern Iraq

1

The Ba‘qubah Refugee Camp, 1919–22: State–Society Relations in Occupied Iraq

Fadi Dawood

In addition to the thousands of individuals killed during the Ottoman genocide of 1915 against the Assyrians, Armenians and Greeks, thousands were also displaced from their ‘traditional’ homelands in a crumbling Ottoman Empire.¹ This resulted in an influx of refugees who found themselves in search of asylum. The Armenians found themselves seeking admission to what by 1920 had become the nascent Syrian and Iraqi states. Aleppo became home of the largest group of genocide survivors who had escaped the Ottoman Empire for Syria. Baghdad and Ba‘qubah in Iraq received thousands of Armenian refugees in the period following World War I.²

Multiple rescue efforts were organised in order to help the refugee populations in both Iraq and Syria. The League of Nations, British and French governments and American missionary societies, were all involved in helping with relief efforts directed at the Armenian and Assyrian communities. According to Keith Watenpaugh in his seminal work, Bread from Stones: The Middle East and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism, the efforts to help the refugee populations ushered a regime of humanitarianism that became a corner stone of foreign policy towards the Middle East. With the exception of a few organisations that sought to help both Muslims and non-Muslims in the period following World War I, the vast majority of efforts were focused on non-Muslim populations of the Middle East.³

In Iraq, both Assyrian and Armenian refugees found themselves the target of a humanitarian effort that sought to help the displaced populations as they migrated south towards a number of cities in Iraq, such as Mosul and Baghdad. Established Armenian communities in these cities were better able to integrate the arrivals into the larger social and political milieu of the modern Iraqi state. Assyrians, who found themselves without a power base in Iraq, were the focus of relief efforts by the aforementioned groups.⁴

Contextualised into the larger refugee relief regime of the post-World War I period in the Middle East, the events surrounding the resettlement of the Assyrian community, and the time they spent in Iraq as a refugee population, left a deep impression upon those who lived in Ba‘qubah during the years immediately following World War I. This chapter will examine life in the Ba‘qubah refugee camp from 1919 to 1922, in order to analyse state–society relations and changes that the Assyrian community experienced while many of the community members lived in the camp. The British military officials who were responsible for the administration of the camp were interested in the control and management of the refugee population, particularly with a view to containing any possibility of unrest. To demonstrate this, the first section of this chapter will briefly describe the geographical setting, physical space and facilities inside the camp. It will then examine the interaction of colonial officials with the Assyrian population and argue that the British management of the camp contributed to social and political changes that continued to influence the community long after the vast majority of the refugees were resettled outside of the camp in 1929. Colonial policies also contributed to the emergence of political fissures that split the Assyrian leadership inside the camp, as well as the community as a whole, as is indicated by the emergence of the Assyrian National Committee under the leadership of General Agha Petros. This chapter will illustrate the deep divisions created by the British colonial authority in Iraq between the various ethnic and religious communities even prior to the creation of the modern Iraqi state. These divisions eventually solidified the distance between the Iraqi state and the Assyrian population in the period of the British Mandate (1922–32).

Organisation and Colonial Discipline

In 1919–20 about 40,000 Assyrians and Armenians arrived for settlement at the Ba‘qubah refugee camp. The camp was located about 40 km north of Baghdad, in the small town of Ba‘qubah. The Assyrian refugee population at the time was divided into two major groups: those from the Hakkari Mountains and those from the Urmia region. The Assyrians of the Hakkari were divided into Ashirats and Rayats, and totalled 14,327 individuals. The term Ashirat denotes the semi-independent tribes of the Hakkari Mountains who, until World War I, had lived in villages with very little interference from the local Kurdish chiefs or the Ottoman government. Rayats were the Assyrian tribes that lived in Kurdish-controlled territory and had to pay a tax to the Kurdish chiefs who managed the villages on behalf of the Ottoman government. A total of 10,252 Urmia Assyrians settled in the refugee camp but they did not adhere to the tribal divisions of the Hakkari Mountains; they identified with their villages and towns of origin in Iran.⁵

The Ba‘qubah refugee camp first became operational in late November 1918, and the vast majority of the refugees arrived in the early months of 1919. Both British and League of Nations officials were mainly concerned with the Assyrian population in Ba‘qubah as part of the force that had helped the British and French armies to defeat the Ottoman Empire during World War I.⁶ The first wave of refugees to settle in the camp were those who had reached Iraq as part of the Assyrian military contingent that fought with the Russian, and later British, forces in the Hakkari Mountains and the western regions of Iran. In the camp, Hakkari Assyrians continued to be divided according to their ‘traditional tribal affiliation’ under the leadership of General Agha Petros, the commanding officer of the Assyrian forces during World War I. Petros and his troops came to Ba‘qubah from the Hamadan province in Iran, where the Assyrian forces had fought with British officers during the summer and autumn of 1918.⁷

Originally named the ‘Jeloo’ refugee camp by British officials at the conclusion of World War I, the name of the camp was changed to Ba‘qubah in the early months of 1919. Russian and Iranian troops had referred to the Assyrian forces as ‘Jeloo’ during the war, using the name of one of the Assyrian tribes. British colonial officials adopted that name to describe all arriving Assyrian refugees, but they soon realised that only about 700 of them belonged to the Jeloo tribe. As a result, the officials changed the name of the camp to Ba‘qubah, after the name of the neighbouring Iraqi town.

The British military administration of Iraq established the camp some 40 km north-east of Baghdad. Built around the left bank of the Diyala river, its private and public buildings were constructed with brick and mud – building materials that were easily obtainable from the area around the river. The area that surrounded the town of Ba‘qubah was very fertile, with plentiful fruit trees and vegetable gardens. Ba‘qubah was a quiet town that had little contact with the urban centre of Baghdad. Its inhabitants, who were largely affiliated with local tribes, used the Othmaniyeh canal, which fed the Diyala river, and the plains next to the canal, for the watering and grazing of sheep and other livestock. Ba‘qubah’s population relied heavily on the production of wool and dairy for their economic well-being. The British found this grazing area used by Ba‘qubah’s inhabitants to be the most suitable for the construction of the refugee camp. When they decided to occupy the area, they banned the local Arab population from using their ‘traditional’ pasture land, particularly around the Othmaniyeh canal.⁸ Depriving the local population of vital grazing grounds left them disgruntled with both the British and the Assyrian refugees. As a result, the population of the town became hostile, and from the early days after the establishment of the camp Bedouin tribal sheikhs organised regular attacks against the refugees. This hostility continued to threaten the population of the camp until at least 1927–8.⁹

The camp itself was divided into three sections: A, B and C. Armenians were settled in Section A, the majority of the Assyrians from Hakkari and a small number of Armenians in Section B, and a mix of Assyrians from Urmia and a small number of Hakkari Assyrians in Section C. Each of these sections was administered by a senior British officer who was in charge of keeping its residents within the confines of their respective area, and oversaw their welfare, cleanliness, and discipline. In order to enforce order and security inside the camp, each officer was assisted by five non-commissioned soldiers. By 1920 a total of 3,000 British a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• About the Author
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface: Whither Iraq?
• Introduction: State–Society Relations in Iraq: Negotiating a Contested Historiography
• Part I: Colonial Rule and the Making of Modern Iraq
• Part II: Republican Iraq: State–Society Relations Under Authoritarian Rule
• Part III: Communal Strife and Re-Emergent Authoritarianism in Post-2003 Iraq
• Conclusion: Lessons from the Past for a Future Iraq
• Bibliography
• Index
• eCopyright