'IRAQ AND THE PERSIAN GULF' [‎203r] (410/862)

MODERN IRAQ 293
Council of State to enable elections to be held for the establishment
of a Constituent Assembly (also promised in June) which should
enact the ‘Organic Law’ which was to be the basic constitution of Iraq.
It needed considerable pressure from the High Commissioner before
a provision was included for effective tribal representation. The-
Constituent Assembly of 100 members, 80 from the towns and
villages, 20 from the tribes, was not in fact elected and in being till
March 1924. Meanwhile, in March 1921, at a conference held at
Cairo by Winston Churchill as Colonial Secretary, it was decided to
create an hereditary kingship of Iraq and to offer it to Faisal, who
after the Syrian fiasco had retired to Mecca. This proposal had the
backing both of T. E. Lawrence ‘of Arabia’ who knew little about
Iraq, and of Gertrude Bell, who as former Oriental Secretary to the
Civil Commissioners at Baghdad knew the country and people
well. But the first official recommendation of Faisal for such a
position had come in August 1920 from the Acting Civil Com
missioner, the much criticized Colonel Wilson, whose view was that
‘Faisal alone of all Arabian potentates has any idea of the practical
difficulties of running a civilized government on Arab lines’.
The Council of State accepted Faisal as King unanimously with
the proviso that his government ‘shall be a constitutional, representa
tive and democratic government limited by law’. That the popular
will might be consulted in some form a survey of opinion was made
among representative bodies of local communities and among the
tribes. Except for the Kurdish districts of Erbil, Sulaimaniya, and
Ruwandiz, opinion, such as it was, was solid in Faisal’s favour (p. 308).
The formation of the State was completed in 1924 when the Consti
tuent Assembly adopted without any serious amendment the Organic
Law, the real constitution of Iraq, which established legislative,
judicial and administrative organs to replace the provisional Council
of State and Constituent Assembly (Chapter VIII). The first elected
Parliament met in July 1925, five years after the outbreak of the
Arab rebellion. In the interim the country was governed by the
King and Council of State under the advice of the High Commis
sioner.
The Anglo-Iraqi Treaty
The nationalists were not quietened by the establishment of an
Arab government under British tutelage. From the beginning the
term ‘mandate’ gave great offence to nationalist leaders. It was taken
in the sense of ‘command’ instead of ‘trusteeship’, although blameless