KINGDOM OF IRAQ

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 689, 15 November 1933, Page 3

KINGDOM OF IRAQ

BRiTAIN'S TASK KEEPING ORDER AMONG , MEDLEY OF RACES AND CREEDS. REGENT MASSACRES. It was my first morning in Bagdad, and I was sitting at breakfast at my hotel in the cool February sunshine, surrounded by sp,arrows. * I noticed a waiter who loeked different from the people I had met. He was dressed in European fashion. He was not an Arab or a Jew, and I was ! rather sure that he was not an Armenian. He seemed almost Greek. I asked a British officer at the next table who- the nian was, writes J. T. Jones, formerly editor of the Times of Mesopotamia, in the News-Chro-nicle. "Oh, he just a Christian." I s,a.id, "I dare say, hut of what race is he?" "Oh," drawled the officer, "he is just a Christian. Lots of them about here, don't you know." Later, I found that he was one of the Assyrian Christians, a people who claimed to he remnants of the ancient imperial Assyroians, who fought for Britain in the war, and who then settled in Iraq, their home in the Hakkiari Mountains having been included in Turkey. They main body is settled amcng their age-long focs, the i Kurds, hefty mountaineers of incr-e-dible strength. Many of these Christians go about wearing ordinary eaps or slouch hats, and are thus easily distinguishable from the Jews, who wear fezzes; from the Persians, who wear the peaked caps ordered by the Shah; and from the Arabs, who wear either the traditional headdress or the postwar "sidara" cap, said to have been invented by the present Ir.aqui Minister in London, Jaafar Pasha. The Christians' womenfollc go about unveiled. These are the people v/hose patriarch, the Mar Fhimun, has just been deposed from Iraq, following fhe massacre of hundreds of his people by— (so he alleges — -the Iraq Army. It is a dangerous development. I had not been in Bagdad a. day when I was told that the High Commissioner — then Sir Henry Dobhs — - wished to see me before I began my duties. I went, and he talked to me frankly about the difficulties of keeping steady that strange cauldron of .a. kingdom, where apparently one could never be quite sure of anything. Racial Hotch Potch. I soon found that Iraq was a very different place from what I had imagined. Modern statescraft has a tough proposition in a country so 1-ong habituated with strife, where Arabs, Jews, Kurds, Assyrians, Seljuk Turks, Persians, Telkaifis and Armenians rub shoulders, and where clash the creeds of Suuni Moslems, Shiah Moslems, Jews of ancient foundation, Christians of nine or 10 varieties, Sabians (descendants, so they say, ef the Egyptians saved when the Red Sea ciosed over Pharaoh) and Yezidis, the devil worshipp-ers of the North. There ,are, roughly, 2,700,000 Mos- ■ lems (Arabs and Persians) in Iraq, 90,000 Jews, 80,000 assorted Christions, and 40,000 people of other religions. Religion rules them and makes them separate communities with their own laws, social habits and vener.ated traditions. They hardly ever inter-marry. How they all make a living is one of the many mysteries of Iraq. But, 'of course, much is possible in a land where dates grow in profusion, where one can buy a basketful of grapes for twopence, a p,a.ir of turtle doves for sixpence, a chicken for ninepence, and a slleep for 12s 6d. The making of Iraq iiito a modern State may he said to be Britain's effort to knock sense into a territory which seemed to defy consolidation. How dramatically simple was the British Govermnent's announcement in 1920 that the attempt was to be made: "Sir Percy Cox will be authorised to call into being, as provisional bodies, a Council of State under an Arab President, and a General Elective Assembly, representative of, and elected by, the population of Mesopotamia, and it will be his duty to prepare, in consultation with the General Elective Assembly, the permanent organic law." Sir Percy did so, very valkntly, King Feisal had just begun the thirteenth year of his reign, and now our man.'late over Iraq hias come to an end and Iraq is a me'mber of the League of Nations. But her entry into the league makes no vital difference to our responsibilities. Our relations with Ir,aq are treaty relations, and by that treaty we are bound for many years to come. Inf.rni Founhations. A wise man of the East said: "The edifice that has not firm foundations, make it not lofty; and if thou dost, tremhle for it." We tremble. The case of _ the Assyrian Christians places us in a

corner. Let us remember the brave story. The Assyrians revolted against Turkey in 1916 at the instigation of' >Russia. Then, deserted by the Russians, they fought their way through • Persian temtory to a junction witli the British troops, losing two-thirds of their number in. the process. From 1921 onwards many of them entered the British services as levies. These Assyrian levies were at the personal call of the 'High Commissioner and they often did work which drew upon them the wrath of the Arabs. In the treaty with Turkey in 1924 we allowed' the Assyrians' natunal home to become part of Turkey. To reassure them ahout their future two successdve Iraq Cabinets, one of wh'om under the premiership of the present Iraq Mindster in London, officially pledged the Government of Iraq to provide lands in Iraq for those Assyrians who might be dispossessed of their original homes iand promised them the utmost possible freedom from interference. Now, in 1933, we hear of this reported massacre, and talk. of finding land for th'a Assyrians in Syria 01* Persia. Preblem of the Jews. Of the many other minorities in Iraq, each of which is a problem, the most interesting iand important are the Jews. "Wje hear a lot about Palestine, but nobody reminds us that Iraq is an ancient home of the Jews. Abraham came from Ur. Jews now in Iraq claim that they are descended from the remnants of the Babylonian captivity. When the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Southern Mesopotamia tecame practically the Jawish fatherland, and here two famous Jewish schools of law were developed and the main lines of modern rabbinism laid down. To-day you have only to watch the yearly pilgrimages of the Jews to lEzra's Tomh on tbe Tigris to see that they are not only in Iraq, but of Iraq. The Mesopotamian Jews are gentl,e folk, clever and prosperous. But they are afraid of the Moslems — t lafraid of some sudden intolerance, and, with a few exceptions, they veil and segregate their women, and conform as much as possible to the Moslem view of behaviour. And this is Iraq, where the oil is, and where lair liners halt on their way to India. "What will our policy be.