'Our Guy' for Iraq Leader May End Up Biting Us
We haven't been here before, but our British allies have and there is much that we can learn from their experience. They captured Baghdad in 1917 in the course of World War I.
At the time, the Arabic-speaking Middle East was ruled by the Muslim but Turkish-speaking Ottoman Empire. When the war began, the Ottoman government joined in the fighting on the German side and against England. When the war ended, in 1918, the victorious British found themselves in possession, among other things, of the three Ottoman provinces that were later merged to form a single unitary state that was to be called Iraq.
In 1918 and 1919, its hour of triumph, the British Empire garrisoned the Middle East with an army of a million men. No other significant military force in the region could dispute Britain's mastery. Iraq's future seemingly was for Britain to determine. It is from Britain's experience in that respect that Americans entering the year 2004 have so much to learn.
The Ottoman Empire collapsed suddenly and unexpectedly in the autumn of 1918. Taken by surprise, London had not gotten around to formulating detailed plans for governing postwar Baghdad, Basra and Mosul.
Americans in 2003 found themselves in a similar situation, albeit -- or so we are told -- for a different reason. Plans existed at some level of government in Washington, but those in operational charge of the American-led invasion of Iraq apparently ignored them.
A fundamental flaw in British Middle Eastern policymaking in those long-ago years of the early 20th century, and also in American policymaking now, was a division within the government itself.
In the United States, the most visible of many disputes relating to Iraq is that between the departments of State and Defense. In Britain, it was between the government in London and its advisors in British Cairo, and then also between London and the British government in India.
It was British India that had sent its forces to capture the provinces of Basra, Baghdad and Mosul and that hoped to retain control of at least Basra for itself. But London's Middle East policy coordinator, Sir Mark Sykes, warned that "if you work from India, you have all the old traditions of black and white and you cannot run the Arabs on black and white lines."
