'IRAQ AND THE PERSIAN GULF' [‎200v] (405/862)

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HISTORY
Origins of the Mandate
All this was in 1918. It was only later that this nationalist tendency
became an anti-British agitation. The cause of this change lay in the
main outside Iraq in Syria, where the Allies and Faisal’s Arabs be
came seriously estranged over the future status of Syria. A second
and potent cause lay in the long period of delay, due to events in
Europe and Turkey, in settling the future status of Iraq. The
years between the armistice and the legal institution of the mandate
in 1922 gave time for the belief to be established that the British
were weak and had no settled policy. The root cause of the estrange
ment between Allies and Arabs was that while certain declarations of
independence, however guarded, had been made to Husain and
Faisal, the Allies (Great Britain, France, and Russia) had also made
a secret agreement between themselves in 1916, known as the Sykes-
Picot agreement, for the disposal of Ottoman provinces in a way
that certainly conflicted with all the hopes entertained by the Arab
followers of Faisal. This agreement, though virtually abandoned
in all other respects, remained the basis of French claims to the
political control of Syria. Hence when, after Faisal had established
an Arab State in central Syria (October 1918), French opposition
became gradually apparent, his Iraqi supporters began to take an
interest in Iraqi affairs that increased as their hopes of Syrian inde
pendence waned. Propaganda embittered by Arab experiences in
Syria, money, men, and arms began to flow from Syria into Iraq.
Paradoxically the main source of supply was the large subsidy paid
by the British to Faisal during the period of provisional government
in Syria (Oct. 1918-Aug. 1920). Another source of unfriendly agi
tation lay in the return to Iraq after the armistice of all those Arab
officials and officers who had remained loyal to the Turks during the
war; being of the effendi class their influence in politics at Baghdad
was naturally considerable, their attitude was anti-British, and their
interest lay in the immediate creation of an extensive Arab officialdom.
A fresh turn was given to the situation by the publication of the
Covenant of the League of Nations which contained in Article XXII
the notion of the ‘mandate’, designed to protect peoples ‘not yet able
to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern
world’. The definition ran as follows: ‘Certain communities formerly
belonging to the Turkish Empire have reached a stage of develop
ment where their existence as independent nations can be provision
ally recognized, subject to the rendering of administrative advice and