The Wafd’s struggle for Egypt’s independence met only partial success. Though Zaghlul and his colleagues secured Britain’s permission to present Egypt’s case to the Peace Conference, they learned on their arrival in Paris that the American delegation had just issued a statement recognizing Britain’s protectorate over Egypt. The hopes to which President Wilson’s soaring rhetoric had given rise were now dashed. The Egyptians were forced to negotiate directly with the British in London, rather than securing their independence as part of the postwar settlement. The years between 1919 and 1922 were punctuated with periods of civil disorder alternating with periods of negotiations between the British and the Wafd. In the end, the best the Egyptian nationalists could achieve was independence in name alone. In the interest of preserving order in Egypt, Britain unilaterally declared the end of the protectorate on February 28, 1922, and recognized Egypt as an independent sovereign state, subject to Britain retaining control over four key areas “of vital interest to the British Empire”: the security of imperial communications, defense of Egypt against outside aggression, the protection of foreign interests and minority rights, and the Sudan. Both sides recognized the limits of independence when put in these terms, which would allow Britain to keep bases, control the Suez Canal, and interfere in Egyptian domestic matters with nearly as much frequency as it had under the protectorate. For the next thirty-two years, Egypt and Britain would be locked in regular negotiations to redefine this colonial relationship, with Egyptians seeking their sovereignty and Britain doing its all to preserve the imperial order.

Events in Egypt were closely followed across the Arab world, nowhere more so than in Iraq. The three Ottoman provinces of Basra, Baghdad, and Mosul had come under British occupation in the course of the First World War. Though the British had given the people of Iraq many reassurances that they would enjoy self-government, their efforts to deny the Egyptians independence were grounds for concern. Upon the outbreak of World War I, British forces from India occupied the southern city of Basra and secured their control over the province as a whole. The British were intent on protecting the Persian Gulf gateway to their empire in India from encroachment by the Ottomans’ German allies. Once in Basra, the British extended their forces northward to engage the Ottoman Sixth Army. By November 1915, British forces had advanced to within 50 miles of Baghdad, whereupon they encountered superior Ottoman numbers. The British were driven back to Kut, where they withstood an Ottoman siege for four months before surrendering to the Turks in April 1916. The Ottomans had now scored two major victories against invading British forces?in Gallipoli and Mesopotamia. However, the British resumed their campaign in Mesopotamia, taking Baghdad in March 1917 and defeating the Ottoman Sixth Army in Kirkuk in late summer 1918. British troops occupied the province of Mosul in November 1918, even though technically it fell outside the territory conceded to British occupation by the terms of the armistice agreement. British control over Mesopotamia, as first recommended by the de Bunsen Report of 1915, had been secured.

It proved easier to conquer Mesopotamia than to impose a political order on the country—in 1918 as in 2003. The people of the three provinces—Kurds, Sunni Arabs, and Shiites—were divided in their aims and aspirations. Though the different communities of Mesopotamia were fairly unanimous in demanding the union of the three provinces into a single, independent state they called Iraq and placing it under a constitutional monarchy, they had very different views on what role Britain should play in that new state. Some large landowners and wealthy merchants put a higher premium on stability and economic growth than on full independence and openly supported British administration. Some Iraqi military officers, who had served with Amir Faysal in the Arab Revolt, saw Britain as a guarantor of Sunni political preeminence. However, the majority of Iraqis rejected the idea of foreign interference in their affairs. At the start of their occupation over Mesopotamia, the British had reassured the people of Iraq of their honorable intentions. The Anglo-French Declaration of November 1918, promising Allied support for “the establishment of national governments and administrations” in the Arab lands through a process of self-determination, was widely reproduced in the local press and reassured many Iraqis that the Europeans did not seek to impose a colonial settlement on them. As the Najaf-based newspaper al-Istiqlal (“Independence”) noted: “The two states, Britain and France, delighted us with their statement of intention to assist us towards complete independence and freedom.”²⁸ But Iraqis grew increasingly suspicious as months passed without any tangible progress toward Iraqi self-rule. Instead of helping the Iraqis set up their own government, the British seemed to be establishing their own administration over the country. When in February 1919 a group of Iraqis sought permission from the British authorities to send a delegation to Paris to secure recognition for their claims to national independence, the British authorities refused. When the Iraqis pressed the British to elaborate their plans for the political future of their country, they could not obtain a straight answer to their question. The British were, in fact, of two minds themselves on how best to rule Iraq. Some, like Sir Arnold Wilson, who as civil commissioner headed the British administration in Iraq, sought to establish the instruments of direct colonial rule on the model of British India. He even encouraged a steady stream of immigrants from India into Mesopotamia as a ready work force for a colonial administration. Others, like Gertrude Bell, who served as Oriental Secretary in Baghdad, thought it in Britain’s best interests to work with the Arab nationalists in Iraq. Bell argued that a Hashemite monarchy in Iraq would provide an ideal structure for informal empire, at far less cost to the British government and far less risk of confrontation with the growing Arab nationalist movement. The Iraqis did not know whom to believe—Bell, who seemed to support their wishes, or her boss, Sir Arnold Wilson, who seemed intent on the British ruling Iraq.²⁹ By 1920 the Iraqis were convinced that the British intended to subject their country to colonial rule. They had witnessed the Egyptian Revolution of 1919 from afar. They had watched with growing concern as Britain abandoned Faysal’s government in Damascus and evacuated their troops from Syria and Lebanon, paving the way for a French colonial occupation there. It seemed as though Britain and France intended to deny independence to the Arab lands and to divide those territories among themselves—as of course they did. Iraqi suspicions were confirmed in April 1920, when the League of Nations assigned Iraq to Britain as a formal mandate. The Iraqis, who had always opposed the idea of a mandate as imperialism by another name, began to mobilize to confront British plans. The opposition was led by a new organization, the Guardians of Iraqi Independence, which had emerged in 1919 primarily among the Shiite community. The Guardians attracted many Sunni supporters with their demands for complete independence and a complete British evacuation from Iraq. They held their meetings in mosques to avoid British interference, alternating between Shiite and Sunni places of worship. This political collaboration between the Muslim communities of Iraq was unprecedented, and it laid the foundations for an Iraqi national community that transcended religious boundaries. The first public demonstrations against the British mandate in Iraq were peaceful. Shiite clerics, tribal leaders, and members of nationalist organizations demonstrated en masse in Baghdad in May 1920. The British responded immediately with a crackdown on all peaceful demonstrations and arrested those suspected of inciting opposition to the occupation. Under British repression, the Iraqi nationalists were driven from Baghdad to continue their resistance in provincial towns and villages. The Iraqi Uprising of 1920 broke out at the end of June, encouraged by the Shiite clerics of the shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala. The British made the mistake of arresting the son of the most prominent Shiite cleric, Ayatollah al-Shirazi, and he responded with a fatwa, or legal opinion, that encouraged revolt against foreign occupation. Fearing an escalation of the crisis, the British administration in Baghdad arrested a number of Shiite activists and tribal leaders they believed to be instigating the ferment. Predictably, the crackdown hardened what had begun as peaceful opposition into violent confrontation. The Iraqi resistance movement was both well-organized and disciplined. The leadership drew up guidelines for common action, which they had printed and distributed through local printing presses. One leaflet printed in Najaf in July 1920 decreed the rules of engagement: “Each head of tribe must make all their members understand that the goal of this uprising is the demand for complete independence.” ³⁰ The insurgent tribesmen were instructed to make “independence” their battle cry. They were to ensure the smooth administration of all towns and villages that fell under their control, they were to take good care of all English and Indian prisoners, and most of all they were to preserve all weapons, ammunition, equipment, and medicines captured from the British, as such supplies were “among the greatest means to achieve victory.” Initially, the uprising spread across all three provinces, though the principal area of conflict lay in the Middle Euphrates region, between Baghdad and Basra, with Najaf and Karbala at the center of the movement. Here, the British were forced to withdraw their troops as the insurgents took control of towns and villages, established local government, and managed to collect taxes and preserve order. Although the British managed to prevent any major outbreaks in the capital city, the areas surrounding Baghdad were soon overrun by insurgents. The tribes to the northeast of Baghdad raised a major revolt in August 1920 and, for one month, held Baquba and the other towns to the north of the Diyala River. Another major uprising took place to the west of Baghdad, in Faluja.³¹ The British hastily withdrew their troops to consolidate their forces before striking back—with a vengeance. Faced with a nationwide insurgency, the British had no choice but to reinforce their overstretched military in Iraq to regain authority over their new mandate. Fresh troops from India raised the number of British forces in Iraq from 60,000 in July 1920 to over 100,000 that October. In the course of September and October, the British completed their reconquest of Iraq with overwhelming force, using heavy artillery and aerial bombardment. They regained Faluja in early September, inflicting a heavy punishment on the local tribes. Later that month they proceeded against the tribes of the Diyala River. They then moved on to the Middle Euphrates. A journalist in Najaf described the British onslaught: “They attacked the houses of tribal shaykhs and burned them down, contents and all. They killed many men, horses and livestock.” The British were relentless in pursuing the insurgents and refused all negotiations. “The officers had no other interest than our extermination, or putting us on trial,? he continued. ?We agree to their request for a truce and they violate it. We allow them to withdraw with their arms when we have secured [territory] from them and they respond treacherously with attacks on us. In recent days there has been bloodshed and the destruction of populous towns and the violation of the sanctity of places of worship to make humanity weep.?³² With the surrender of Najaf and Karbala at the end of October, the uprising came to an end. The costs—human and material—were high. According to British estimates, over 2,200 British and Indian soldiers and some 8,450 Iraqis were killed or wounded.³³ There are no estimates for the material losses of the Iraqi people. The Uprising of 1920, referred to in Iraq as the “Revolution of 1920,” has a special place in the nationalist mythology of the modern Iraqi state comparable to the American Revolution of 1776 in the United States. These were not social revolutions so much as popular uprisings against foreign occupiers, and they marked the starting point of nationalist movements in both countries. Whereas most westerners have no knowledge of the 1920 uprising, generations of Iraqi schoolchildren have grown up learning how nationalist heroes stood up against foreign armies and imperialism in towns like Faluja, Baquba, and Najaf—the Iraqi equivalents of Lexington and Concord.