State-Making, Nation-Building and the Military: Iraq, 1941-1958
Khaled Salih
Göteborg University
Nation-building, a central theme of nationalism, has been viewed by politicians, administrators and activists as a highly desirable, if not an imperative, goal over the last two centuries. As an academic topic it has attracted the attention of a large number of historians and social scientists for several decades. At times, nation-building was believed to be an easy and automatic process, following universal patterns which originated in the West. Despite time, place, historical and cultural conditions, it appeared that both old and new states had to undergo the Western processes of nation-building and could be analysed in the same terms. Nation-building is conceived and discussed within the perimeters of particular given states. However, over the last few decades political scientists, sociologists and historians have held lengthy discussions on ‘the withering away of the state’, ‘bringing the state back in’, ‘the return of the state’, ‘the limits of the state’, ‘political power beyond the state’, ‘the problem of the state’, ‘the difficulty of ...
Contents
Contents / 3 Acknowledgements / 5
Chapter 1 / 6 Introduction: Bringing a new State and a new nation into existence in Iraq / 6 State-making and nation-building: a conceptual framework / 12 Introduction / 12 State-making and nation-building / 12 Ethnicity, state and nation-building / 16 Military and nation-building / 21 Iraq as a case study in state and nation-building / 24 Introduction / 24 Forging nation models / 25 Analytical limitations, actors, period, events and previous research / 32 Analytical limitations / 32 Actors / 34 Period and events / 34 Previous research / 34 Aim and questions / 35 Method and material / 36 Verification of intentions / 38 Definitions / 40
Chapter 2 / 43 Nation-building in Iraq: intentions and assumptions / 43 Introduction / 43 Nation-building intentions / 43 British nation-building intentions in Iraq / 44 Iraqi nation-building intentions / 49 Nation-building assumptions / 54 Conclusion / 60
Chapter 3 / 61 Reorganisation of the Iraqi army, 1941-1948 / 61 Introduction: University of the Nation / 61 Identifying the needs to re-organise / 63 An efficient force made fit to take the field / 67 Resistance / 76 Conclusion / 77
Chapter 4 / 78 The Barzan question, 1943-1945 / 78 Introduction / 78 The events / 80 Peaceful settlement, calculated or immediate military action? / 82 The British position / 82 The Iraqi position / 89 The military solution / 95 Conclusion / 100
Chapter 5 / 102 Army and external and internal politics, 1945-1958 / 102 Introduction / 102 Part I Army and external politics / 102 A) The Palestine question and the war in Palestine in 1948 / 102 B) The Baghdad Pact, 1955 / 110 Part II: Army and internal politics / 113 K)al-Wathba of 1948 / 113 The army and al-Wathba / 115 B) The Intifadha of November 1952 / 118 Army and the Intifadha / 119 Conclusion / 120
Chapter 6 / 122 The coup and the revolution of July 1958 / 122 Introduction / 122 The importance of the revolution of July 1958 / 123 The coup of July 1958 / 125 Two conflicting visions / 129 Attempts to bridge divisions / 132 The role of the army / 133 Conclusion / 137
Chapter 7 / 140 State, nation-building and the military in Iraq / 140 Introduction / 140 Iraqi state-making and nation-building: wataniyya versus qawmiyya / 140 Using the army / 143 State-penetration / 152 Nation-building intentions and the control of the army / 156 Hegemonic control / 156 Sunni Arab hegemony / 159 Concluding remarks / 165 References / 167
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Although research may be a solitary undertaking resulting in a book bearing the name of one person, the whole enterprise is made possible only though the generosity of a number of other people, I have benefited from many people’s comments, criticism and suggestions. I wish express my profound debt to my supervisor Dr. Sune Persson for his encouragement, valuable comments, insightful criticism and helpful suggestions. Dr. Persson helped me at several crucial junctures to sharpen my focus when I tended to chase around new ideas. Many thanks are also due to Dr. Ulf Bjereld and Dr. Jonas Hinnfors who later so kindly served on my dissertation committee. Dr. Bjereld and Dr. Hinnfors, together with Dr. Persson, contributed in a constructive way to the completion and production of an integrated manuscript during the last year of my writing. They have also at different stages commented various parts of the manuscript. Professors Lennart J. Lundqvist and Rutger Lindahl read the last version of the manuscript and offered valuable suggestions.
Parts of the manuscript were read and commented upon by several others to whom I have a special debt: Professor Björn Hettne of Padrigu, Dr. Martin Peterson of the Inter-European Research, Sir Sam Falle, former British official in Iraq, and Cecilia Malmström, Staffan Damolf, Urban Strandberg, all three at my department. And also by others attending the International Politics Seminar and the Common Research Seminar at the Department of Political Science. Dr. Borhanedin A. Yassin of Lund University read the whole manuscript and made numerous valuable suggestions which I gratefully acknowledge.
I spent the academic year of 1993/1994 at the Middle East Centre, St. Anthony’s College in Oxford. Professor Roger Owen, former director of the Centre, and Dr. Derek Hopwood, current director of the Centre, made my stay both possible and stimulating. I owe them and the Centre’s other staff members special thanks.
For their financial support during these years, I am indebted to Goteborg University, the Swedish Institute, and the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies.
Andrew Clarke applied himself to the arduous task of proof-reading the English text. I wish to express my whole-hearted appreciation. The cover design is made be Stefan Petersson to whom I am grateful.
My wife, Ann-Catrin Emanuelsson, provided the cocoon of warmth and love, and offered intelligent comments that nurtured this project along. This work could never have been completed without her patience, encouragement, and unceasing support. The demands imposed by the research and writing of this study have also shaped the lives of our sons Roshbin and Theodor. Thank you all.
Khaled Salih Goteborg, November 1996
Chapter 1
Introduction: Bringing 'a new State and a new nation' into existence in Iraq
Since World War II some 50 former colonial or dependent territories have become independent states in the sense that they have become member states of the United Nations. ... Many of these newly independent countries still face the task of building a national political community, and we do not know whether they will succeed. Their efforts may be compared with the nation-building of Western countries during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Ideally we should be able to analyze both processes in the same terms. Reinhard Bendix, 1964
Nation-building, a central theme of nationalism, has been viewed by politicians, administrators and activists as a highly desirable, if not an imperative, goal over the last two centuries. As an academic topic it has attracted the attention of a large number of historians and social scientists for several decades. At times, nation-building was believed to be an easy and automatic process, following universal patterns which originated in the West. Despite time, place, historical and cultural conditions, it appeared that both old and new states had to undergo the Western processes of nation-building and could be analysed in the same terms. Nation-building is conceived and discussed within the perimeters of particular given states. However, over the last few decades political scientists, sociologists and historians have held lengthy discussions on ‘the withering away of the state’, ‘bringing the state back in’, ‘the return of the state’, ‘the limits of the state’, ‘political power beyond the state’, ‘the problem of the state’, ‘the difficulty of ...
1 Bendix, Reinhard 1964, Nation-Building and Citizenship. Studies of our Changing Social Order. New York, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., p. 1.
2 However the revival of many minority nationalisms in Western Europe in the 1960s has shown the developmentalist models of many political scientists to be flawed. Those models predicted that a gradual decline in territorial-based loyalties as communications within the state would transform all ethnic and religious groups into a single community. Primordial loyalties (in terms of core-periphery ethnic cleavages), it was predicted, would be replaced by modem functional cleavages (such as class). See Deutsch, Karl W. 1961, ‘Social mobilization and political development’ American Political Science Review, vol. 55, pp. 494-505 and Rokkan, Stein 1970, Citizens, Elections, Parties. New York: McKay.
See for example Rivkin, Arnold 1969, Nation-Building in Africa: Problems and Prospects. New Brunswick/New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. In a comparative sense, the Nordic countries have applied peaceful, though not unproblematic, methods of resolving conflicts between states and peoples on their way to nation-building. For a new examination of the image of homogeneous, peaceful and harmonious Nordic nation-building projects see Ethnicity and Nation-Building in the Nordic World. Edited by Sven Tagil. London: Hurst & Company, 1995.
Khaled Salih
State-Making, Nation-Building and the Military: Iraq, 1941-1958
Göteborg University
Department of Political Science Göteborg University State-Making, Nation-Building and the Military: Iraq, 1941-1958 Khaled Salih
Goteborg Studies in Politics 41 Editor: Bo Rothstein
Doctoral Dissertation Department of Political Science Goteborg University Sprangkullsgatan 19 411 23 Göteborg Sweden
