Iraq and the 1948 War: mirror of Iraq's disorder

Abstract

Iraq's role in the 1948 War was ambivalent. Its leaders were the first to advocate coordinated military intervention in Palestine by the armies of the Arab states. Yet its own army, despite being the largest single Arab force in Palestine by the end of the war, did little beyond occupying defensive positions in the hills of the West Bank. Similarly, Iraqi ministers called repeatedly for the imposition of an Arab oil and trade boycott of the Western powers supporting partition, yet did nothing to implement it. During the war itself, Iraq initially rejected all cease-fires, but failed to back this up with more effective military strategies. Following the fighting, the Iraqi government refused to participate in armistice talks and seemed intent simply on withdrawing its troops as rapidly as possible. The marked disparity between the uncompromising rhetoric of successive Iraqi governments and the rather timid nature of their actions has laid them open to charges of hypocrisy and double-dealing. This was so at the time, both in Iraq and in other parts of the Middle East. In February 1949 it led the prime minister of the day, Nuri al-Saʿid, to establish a parliamentary committee of enquiry into the war. This remarkable document – Taqrir Lajnat al-Tahqiq al-Niyabiyya fi Qadiyyat Filastin [Report of the Parliamentary Committee of Enquiry into the Palestine Question] – was published by the Iraqi government in September 1949. It provided an opportunity both for the public airing, but also for the public vindication of the records of successive Iraqi governments and military commanders in the years leading up to 1948 and during the war itself.