Page 279 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

276 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

While Iraq remained under British tutelage there was little disposition, or
opportunity, for her to engage in political activities in the Gulf. Her attention,
in any case, was fully occupied with internal difficulties and with troubles along
her border with Najd caused by the irregular movements of tribes and raids by

Ibn Saud’sikhwan. There had never been any love lost between the Hashimites
and the Saudis, and King Faisal of Iraq deeply resented the expulsion of his
family from the Hijaz by Ibn Saud in 1924-5 and the subsequent incorporation
of the kingdom of the Hijaz in the Saudi dominions. By 1930, however, the
frontier troubles had died down, and relations between Faisal and Ibn Saud
had improved sufficiently for them to conclude in that year an agreement of bon
voisinage. Two years later Iraq became independent, and the following year
Faisal died. The agreement, however, survived, and in 1936 it was converted
by his son and successor, Ghazi, into a treaty of friendship and alliance between
the two kingdoms.
Ghazi ibn Faisal took a much greater interest in the affairs of the Gulf than
his father had done. At his instigation an ‘Association of Arabs of the Gulf’ was
founded at Basra in 1936, with the object of disseminating propaganda in the
Gulf states in favour of union with Iraq. Much of the propaganda was directed
towards Kuwait, where it struck a responsive chord. Kuwait had had close
economic ties with Iraq ever since the foundation of the shaikhdom in the early
eighteenth century. Iraq supplied Kuwait with grain, vegetables, fruit and even
water from the Shatt al-Arab. The Al Sabah shaikhs of Kuwait owned date
groves and other property around Basra, and Kuwaiti shipping carried a fair
proportion of the trade of lower Iraq. Iraqi propaganda towards Kuwait bore

fruit at the close of 1938 and the beginning of 1939 in the form of resolutions
passed in the advisory council of the ruler of Kuwait, unfavourably contrasting
the poverty of Kuwait with the wealth of Iraq, and advocating union between
the two. The resolutions found little favour with the British government. King
Ghazi was reminded that when Iraq became independent in 1932 the Iraq-
Kuwait frontier (as delineated in 1923) had been confirmed in an exchange
of letters between the Iraqi prime minister and the ruler of Kuwait. At the same
time the ruler, Ahmad ibn Jabir Al Sabah, was made to dismiss his advisory
council and disown the resolutions. Riots followed in Kuwait, and Ghazi
wanted to intervene and occupy the shaikhdom. Pressure was exerted upon
him to refrain from doing so, and the affair came to an abrupt end in April 1939

when Ghazi killed himself in a motorcar accident.
More than twenty years passed before the question of a possible union
between Iraq and Kuwait was again raised in serious form. In these years

Kuwait’s economic condition had been radically transformed by the discovery
and exploitation of oil on a large scale, so that the desire for union on economic
grounds no longer existed. Nor did the prospect of union hold any attracuon
for Kuwait politically, for the Hashimite monarchy had been swept away by
violent revolution in 1958, and Iraq was now ruled by a military junta.