This Day In Iraqi History - Mar 12

1914 UK sent ultimatum to Ottomans If Ottomans wanted to increase tariffs had to allow merger of

Turkish Petroleum Company that was going to get oil concession in Mosul vilayet with the Anglo-Persian Oil Company 1^st sign UK wanted to control Mespotamian oil

1921 Start of Cairo Conference where Britain decided on its future MidEast policy with Mesopotamia

being a centerpiece Colonial Secretary Churchill’s main concern at Cairo Conference was cutting costs for London Said British troops would be withdrawn in Mesopotamia as quickly as possible Air power would be used instead for control Sir Percy Cox and Gen Haldane objected to Churchill’s troops reduction plan saying soldiers still needed in Mesopotamia Royal Air Force said it would need another year to set up in Mesopotamia Meant Churchill could not withdraw British troops as quickly as he wanted Most at conference supported a Hashemite either Faisal or Abdullah becoming ruler in Mesopotamia Churchill said putting Faisal in power in Mesopotamia would be part of larger policy to have Hashemites beholden to England in Mecca and Transjordan Churchill believed putting Faisal in power would lead to Mesopotamian govt that could run things and save UK money Churchill was open to creating a Kurdish state Thought would be a buffer between Turkey and Mesopotamia Sir Percy Cox and Gertrude Bell argued for a unitary Mesopotamian state that included Kurds at Cairo Conference

(Musings On Iraq How England Chose Feisal As 1^st King Of Iraq)

(Musings On Iraq interview with Princeton’s Sara Pursley on Sykes-Picot and creation of Iraq)

(Musings On Iraq Churchill In His Own Words On Mesopotamia/Iraq)

(Musings On Iraq review Churchill’s Folly, How Winston Churchill Created Modern Iraq)

(Musings On Iraq review Gertrude Bell And Iraq)

(Musings On Iraq review Gertrude Bell, Explorer of the Middle East)

(Musings On Iraq movie review Letters from Baghdad)

(Musings On Iraq review Supremacy And Oil, Iraq, Turkey, and the Anglo-American World Order, 1918-1930)

(Musings On Iraq review Kurds of Iraq, Tragedy and Hope)

(Musings On Iraq review The Chatham House Version and other Middle-Eastern Studies)

1959 Nasser gave 2^nd speech attacking Iraqi Communists Said that they would never be able to stop Arab

nationalism Said that Communists relied upon Shiites for support who opposed Arab nationalism Denied that he supported Col Arif against Qasim govt

(Musings On Iraq review Red Star Over Iraq, Iraqi Communism Before Saddam)

(Musings On Iraq Interview with Prof Johan Franzen on the history of the Iraqi Communist Party)

1970 Pres Bakr said war vs Kurds was over Kurds would have cultural autonomy and

national rights

(Musings On Iraq review of The Kurds, A Modern History)

(Musings On Iraq review Kurds of Iraq, Tragedy and Hope)

(Musings On Iraq review The Kurdish Revolt 1961-1970)

1974 After talks broke down with Baghdad and it imposed own law for Kurdistan KDP restarted

rebellion

1975 Baghdad offered KDP truce to allow its forces to retreat to Iran or surrender

(Musings On Iraq review Killing Hope, U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II)

(Musings On Iraq review The Great Betrayal, How America Abandoned The Kurds And Lost The Middle East)

(Musings On Iraq When The Shah and Nixon Manipulated The Kurds)

1979 At National Security Council Saddam decided that govt would take control of religious sphere to

protect country from ideas that could threaten the regime

1984 Iraq called off attacks into Basra marshes to try to recapture Majnoon Islands Iran lost 20,000 dead

30,000 wounded 1,000 captured Iraq lost 3,000 dead 9,000 wounded and 1/6 of its oil reserves

(Musings On Iraq review Iran-Iraq War Volume 2: Iran Strikes back, June 1982-December 1986)

1985 Iran Op Badr reached Tigris River and began building bridge across it then forced back Reached

Baghdad-Basra highway and took Qurna but then retaken by Iraqis 2 Revolutionary Guard divisions attacked from Majnoon Islands and forced Iraqis to retreat

(Musings On Iraq interview with Naval Postgraduate School’s Ostovar on history of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard)

(Musings On Iraq review Vanguard of the Imam, Religion, Politics, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard)

1985 Iraq started using chemical weapons against Iran’s Op Badr over next 4 weeks Iran claimed it

suffered 4,600 casualties as a result

(Musings On Iraq Origins Of Iraq’s WMD Programs)

1986 CIA said that Iraq facing worst situation since start of war after Iran captured Faw Peninsula Basra

Warned that if Iran carried out more offensives could break the Iraqi army and Saddam could be deposed

(Musings On Iraq interview with author Anthony Tucker-Jones on Iran-Iraq War)

(Musings On Iraq interview with author Tom Cooper on Iran-Iraq War)

(Musings On Iraq review Iran-Iraq War Volume 2: Iran Strikes back, June 1982-December 1986)

(Musings On Iraq review The Iran-Iraq War 1980-1988)

(Musings On Iraq review Iran-Iraq War, The Lion of Babylon, 1980-1988)

(Musings On Iraq review The Iran-Iraq War)

(Musings On Iraq review The Longest War, The Iran-Iraq Military Conflict)

1991 Govt operation to retake Najaf from Shiite rebels began

1991 Iraqi refugees fleeing country claimed govt forces used napalm to put down uprising

(Musings On Iraq interview with National Univ of Singapore’s Fanar Haddad on the Impact of the 1991 Uprising)

(Musings On Iraq Remembering The 1991 Uprising In Iraq)

(Musings On Iraq Saddam’s View of Iraq’s 1991 Uprising)

(Musings On Iraq When The US Helped Start A Rebellion In Iraq That It Didn’t Want)

1991 Wash Post OpEd by Ahmed Chalabi Criticized US for allowing Saddam to stay in power and put

            down 1991 uprising

(Musings On Iraq review The Man Who Pushed America To War, The Extraordinary Life, Adventures, and Obsessions of Ahmad Chalabi)

(Musings On Iraq review Arrows of the Night: Ahmad Chalabi and the Selling of the Iraq War)

1993 Iraqi army attacked Aweina Kurdistan killing 30

2002 VP Cheney made trip to Middle East to gain support for Iraq war

2002 Blair For Pol Adv Manning met with Natl Sec Adv Rice and said UK supported regime change in

Iraq but needed good strategy

(Musings On Iraq Review The Report of the Iraq Inquiry, Executive Summary)

2002 2 CIA reports said aluminum tubes Iraq tried to buy were for centrifuges and Iraq might be trying

to build a nuclear weapon Were for rockets

(Musings On Iraq How A Contested Aluminum Tubes Story Became The Basis For War With Iraq)

(Musings On Iraq How US Intelligence Created An Iraqi Nuclear Threat In 2002)

2003 Bush called PM Blair about vote on 2^nd UN resolution on Iraq Bush said if didn’t have votes

shouldn’t have a vote

2003 Bush called Mexican Pres Fox and Chilean Pres Lagos on 2^nd UN resolution Fox non-committal

Lagos said he would vote no

2003 Bush called PM Blair and said that vote on 2^nd UN resolution was dead

(Musings On Iraq Review The Report of the Iraq Inquiry, Executive Summary)

2003 UN committee reported on Iraq violating sanctions

2003 Iraqi scientists began private interviews with UN inspectors

(Musings On Iraq UN Inspectors Were Right Iraq Was Not A Threat)

(Musings On Iraq Iraq’s Rejection of UN Inspectors Led To Mistrust Over WMD and 2003 Invasion)

2003 Bush endorsed Def Dept plan for quick transition to Iraqi authority made up of exiles and Kurds

after war

(Musings On Iraq review Leap of Faith, Hubris Negligence, and America’s Greatest Foreign Policy

Tragedy)

(Musings On Iraq review State of Denial, Bush At War, Part III)

(Musings On Iraq review Hard Lessons, The Iraq Reconstruction Experience)

2003 UndersecDef Feith briefed NSC on postwar plans for Iraqi Foreign Min military and intel services

Said Foreign Ministry and embassies needed to be purged Wanted to disband intel services Republican Guard State Security Office and militias and cut Iraqi military to just 3-5 divisions

(Musings On Iraq Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction’s “Hard Lessons” – Part I: Planning for Postwar Iraq September 2001 to May 2003)

2003 White House reviewed plan to ship $1.7 bil in frozen Iraqi assets in U.S. to Iraq to pay for Iraqi

public workers and pensions

2004 Sadrists destroyed Gypsy village of Qawliya, Qadisiya

(Musings On Iraq Forgotten Destruction Of Qawilya, Iraq By The Mahdi Army)

2006 2 bombings of markets in Sadr City kill 58

(Musings On Iraq review Voices From Iraq, A People’s History, 2003-2009)

2006 US soldiers gang raped 14 yr old Iraqi girl in Mahmudiya and then killed her family

2007 Report Sadr met with Ayatollah Sistani and asked what he should do about attacks upon his

movement Sistani told him he could withdraw or take the consequences Sadr ended up leaving for Iran

2008 2^nd day of fighting Mahdi Army forced police out of Kut Came after Sadr said militia could defend

themselves during freeze Police raided Sadrists areas in city leading to fighting

2008 Pentagon said it would not publicly release its study that found no Iraq-Al Qaeda links based upon

600,000 captured Iraq docs Would not even be posted on the Internet

2008 US reported violence had hit nadir Hadn’t dropped from Nov 07-Feb 08 Avg number of insurgents

attacks went from 180 per day in Jun 07 to 60 per day in Jan 08

2008 Sir Synnott former CPA official in charge of south Iraq said UK wanted to portray stable Iraq after

invasion but didn’t spend time and money to rebuild country Said CPA focused on large projects but not small sustainable ones that would have benefited more Iraqis

(Musings On Iraq Review The Report of the Iraq Inquiry, Executive Summary)

2016 PM Abadi called on political parties to present their technocratic candidates for new cabinet Only

3 parties did so

2018 Municipal workers protested in Zubayr Basra over not getting paid for 2 months Threw stones at

govt offices

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