How Baghdad Divided the Conquerors

Thus, Germany successfully divided the Allies. The senior British member of the Control Commission, Brig. Gen. John Morgan, wrote that the German officer corps wore the commission down, "'by a policy of continuous evasion of our demands until British ministers . . . would turn a deaf ear to all our reports, convinced that either Germany was disarmed or, if she was not, never could be."

Ultimately, with the accession of Germany to the League of Nations, the Allies agreed to withdraw the Control Commission at the end of 1926, its work only partially complete. The fig leaf at that time was the argument that with Germany now in the League of Nations, it was only appropriate that any monitoring be accomplished under League auspices and as part of the overall goal of general disarmament. No further inspections were conducted.

So the record of UNSCOM, Iraq and the Security Council is not unprecedented. The inability of an international organization to conduct coercive disarmament is demonstrated again. The long-term consequences--and their full cost--remain to be seen. *