The Kingdom of Iraq under British Administration, or Mandatory Iraq ( ), was created in 1921, following the 1920 Iraqi Revolt against the proposed British Mandate of Mesopotamia, and enacted via the 1922 Anglo-Iraqi Treaty and a 1924 undertaking by the United Kingdom to the League of Nations to fulfil the role as Mandatory Power.
Faisal ibn Husayn, who had been proclaimed King of Syria by a Syrian National Congress in Damascus in March 1920, was ejected by the French in July of the same year. Faisal was then granted by the British the territory of Iraq, to rule it as a kingdom, with the British Royal Air Force (RAF) retaining certain military control, but de facto, the territory remained under British administration until 1932.
The civil government of postwar Iraq was headed originally by the High Commissioner, Sir Percy Cox, and his deputy, Colonel Arnold Wilson. British reprisals after the murder of a British officer in Najaf failed to restore order. The most striking problem facing the British was the growing anger of the nationalists, who continued to fight against the imposition of British authority. British administration had yet to be established in Iraqi Kurdistan.
History
Early unrest
Three important anticolonial secret societies had been formed in Iraq during 1918 and 1919. The League of the Islamic Awakening (Jam'iyya an-naḥda al-islāmiyya) was organized at Najaf. The Muslim National League (al-Jam'iyya al-waṭaniyya al-islāmiyya) was formed with the object of organizing and mobilizing the population for major resistance. In February 1919, in Baghdad, a coalition of Shia merchants, Sunni teachers, and civil servants, Sunni and Shia ulama, and Iraqi officers formed the Guardians of Independence (Harās al-istiqlāl). The Istiqlal had member groups in Karbala, Najaf, Kut, and Hillah.
The Grand Mujtahid of Karbala, Imam Shirazi, and his son, Mirza Muhammad Riza, began to organize the insurgent effort. Shirazi then issued a fatwa (religious ruling), pointing out that it was against Islamic law for Muslims to countenance being ruled by non-Muslims, and he called for a jihad against the British. By July 1920, Mosul was in rebellion against British rule, and the insurrection moved south down the Euphrates River valley. The southern tribes, who cherished their long-held political autonomy, needed little inducement to join in the fray. They did not cooperate in an organized effort against the British, however, which limited the effect of the revolt. The country was in a state of anarchy for three months; the British restored order only with reinforcements from India.
The Iraqi revolt of 1920 was a watershed event in contemporary Iraqi history. For the first time, Sunnis and Shias, tribes and cities, were brought together in a common effort. In the opinion of Hanna Batatu, author of a seminal work on Iraq, the building of a nation-state in Iraq depended upon two major factors: the integration of Shias and Sunnis into the new body politic and the successful resolution of the age-old conflicts between the tribes and the riverine cities and among the tribes themselves over the food-producing flatlands of the Tigris and the Euphrates. The 1920 rebellion brought these groups together, if only briefly; this constituted an important first step in the long and arduous process of forging a nation-state out of Iraq's conflict-ridden social structure.The Assyrian Levies, a military force under British command, participated in the Kirkuk Massacre of 1924 of Kurds;Arabs and Turkomen. (See Simele Massacres of 1933)
On 1 October 1922, the Royal Air Force (RAF) elements stationed in Iraq were reorganized into the RAF Iraq Command, which came about partially as a result of the 1920 revolt. This new command was primarily designed to suppress any threats to the Hashemite monarchy. Air control was considered by the British government as a more cost-effective method of controlling large areas of territory than land forces, an idea that was heavily promoted by RAF officer Hugh Trenchard. During the 1920s and 30s, the RAF Iraq Command participated in the suppression of numerous protests and revolts against the Hashemite monarchy. Historian Elie Kedourie noted that "the North [of Iraq] as a whole had to be coerced [into submission] by the Royal Air Force." When the Kurdish leader Sheikh Mahmud launched an armed rebellion, the British used the newly established Iraqi army to suppress the revolt, but that proved ineffective. The British then resorted to deploying the RAF, which suppressed the revolt. In the same period, rebellions by the Shia in the South were also suppressed by the RAF.