Page 280 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

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situation, in fact, had been reversed: republican Iraq now coveted Kuwait’s
wealth and abominated her shaikhly form of government. Iraq’s opportunity
to move against Kuwait came in June 1961 when Britain formally acknowl­
edged Kuwait’s independence and terminated her agreements with the
shaikhdom. Half-a-dozen days later, on 25 June, the Iraqi prime minister,
Major-General Abdul Karim Qassim, announced his intention to incorporate
Kuwait in the republic of Iraq. He claimed, as justification for his action, that
the shaikhdom had once been part of the Ottoman empire, that it had been
administered until 1914 as a district of the vilayet of Basra, that sovereignty
over it had passed to Iraq as a successor state of the Ottoman empire, and that
Iraq had wrongfully been deprived of her inheritance by the arbitrary separa­
tion of Kuwait from Iraq by Britain after the First World War. Qassim’s entire
case was spurious. Kuwait had never been an integral part of the vilayet of
Basra nor had it ever been administered from Basra, despite frequent attempts
by Ottoman valis of Basra, acting on their own initiative, to bring the shaikh­
dom under their control. Legally, the shaikhdom had been regarded by the
Sublime Porte as an autonomous qaza, or district, of the empire, and the ruling
shaikh up to 1914 had been invested by the Porte with the rank of q aim-ma q am,
or district governor. The validity of the Iraq-Kuwait frontier of 1923,
moreover, had been recognized by the Iraqi government in 1932.
Qassim’s move was frustrated by the dispatch of British troops to Kuwait at
the request of the ruler. They were later replaced by a mixed force provided by
Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other Arab states. The crisis passed and the issue
became dormant, although Qassim never ceased, up to the time of his over­
throw and death in February 1963, to proclaim his intention of annexing
Kuwait. His successors were prepared to let the matter rest, and on 5 October
1963 they publicly acknowledged the sovereignty and independence of Kuwait
within the frontiers confirmed in 1932. Less publicity was given to the price
exacted-a ‘loan’ of $85 million from Kuwait and an undertaking that the 1961

agreement with Britain would be abrogated at the first favourable opportunity.
Few observers really believed that the issue had been truly buried, if only
because of the character of post-revolutionary politics in Iraq, where every coup
d’etat or frneute at Baghdad seemed to bring to power a regime more extreme
and sanguinary than its predecessor. There were also the inescapable facts of
geography: Iraq’s seaboard on the Gulf was exceedingly narrow, a mere few
dozen kilometres in length, in comparison with Kuwait’s coastline of three
hundred kilometres. Kuwait had far and away the best harbour in the upper
Gulf, while Iraq’s only outlet to the sea had for centuries been the Shatt
al-Arab, the waterway formed by the confluence of the rivers Tigris and
Euphrates, and, in its lower reaches, the Karun. Even before the Second
World War Iraq’s control over the Shatt al-Arab had been challenged by
Persia, and it was to be contested again with increasing vigour from the late
J950s onwards.