The Land of Coup d’Etat

Iraq is not a country that was made through history or by the unification of a group of peoples.

The facts are that the Middle East of today was mapped out and subdivided by the British intelligence office after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

The subdivision was made on behalf of the Arabs who had proven loyal to the British Empire. Iraq was made of bits and pieces of the lands that the British could cut away to make a country for the Sunni Hashemite tribal leader Ibn Ghazi who became the first king of Iraq.

Kurdistan was a piece of Iran, as the Kurds, the ancient Medes of Iranian origin, had for thousands of years been occupied by the Ottoman Turks. The Sunni part was a section of ancient Syria and the eastern part was taken from embattled Iran as Iran’s western border was the Tigris River. All this subdivision was done for the benefit of the British Empire, disregarding the interests of the people that they threw into one border.

Iraq was created in November of 1920. It was under  British control until 1932, but as soon as it became independent the government of King Ghazi suffered an attempted coup d’ etat by one of his own military officers in 1933. The instability of the country brought about the reoccupation of Iraq by the British government in 1941 to secure their interests in the oil fields. The British ended the occupation at the request of the new king in 1947.

In 1958, another Sunni general, Abd Al Ghasem, carried out a bloody coup against the young King Faisal and took over as the president of the new Republic of Iraq but lost his life in a third coup carried out by the Baathist Hassan Al Bakr in 1968, who in turn lost his presidency and his head in 1979 to Saddam Hussein, a younger and more ruthless leader of the brutal sect of the Baath party.

Knowing the history of Iraq’s Sunnis and the coups after coups against their own during the 83 years of their rule, how can anyone, let alone Maliki, be blamed for purging the military of Sunnis and the influence of the Baath Party that continues to be a threat?

The Sunnis have been in charge of Iraq from its inception, with a wealth of oil and gas and a small population that should have had the best of everything. But they have been corrupt plunderers of the wealth in absolute dictatorships who have not even gotten along with each other, let alone with the Shias, Kurds, and or the United States.

The Baath Party founders were Pan Arabists seeking unification of Syria and Iraq. The goal is to establish the Arab Empire or Khalifat of Shaam — their name in Arabic, the Islamic government of Iraq and Shaam, the name of the region after the Islamic military took over the lands in the seventh century.

Iraqis are a mismatched nation and do not have the patriotism that a nation should have. The Kurds have been Kurds for thousands of years but Iraq has existed for only nine decades.

The Sunnis have more loyalty to their, tribes, religion, and Arabism than to a country that was created recently by the imperialists who forced them to live with people they don’t like. Unless they are the ruling power, they will refuse to cooperate.

The Shi’ites have the city of Najaf, the center of Shiaism and are connected to the Iranian Shia power. They will only die for their corner of the country and only when the Grand Ayatollah Sistani, who is Iranian, not Arab, issues the fatwa. The backing of the Iranian ruling clerics gives them enough confidence to stand on their own.

For centuries, the hierarchy of the Islamic world has been telling the people that Islam is where their loyalty should lie. Patriotism for the homeland among the Moslems, especially Arabs, is a sin. In the countries that the British intelligence created, there is no love of the homeland and therefore it is no surprise that the Iraqi soldiers fled from the scene.

It is unfortunate that the American foreign policy makers and media analysts have no knowledge of the history and culture of non-Western countries. Secretary Kerry should know the history of the land of the coup d’etat. He should know that there is no possibility of democratic coexistence in Iraq.

The responsibility for what is going on in Iraq can be traced directly back to the British government, not the United States.