[Music]
I'm George Galloway and I'm Adam Geary
and together we are the history boys
every week on this patreon page we look
at great historical events historical
eras historical personalities who have
helped to create the situation we are
now in and if you don't understand how
we got to where we are you'll never be
able to work out how we get out of the
state we are in today we're looking at
Iraq country of just four letters that
has loomed large over the 21st century
and doesn't seem likely to shrink in its
importance
Iraq was an ancient civilization 700
years ago Iraq had the greatest library
in the history of the world when people
like me were painting our faces blue and
living in the forests when the mongols
sacked baghdad it was said that the
river tigris turned to different colors
in the same day first with the ink of
the books from that greatest library
that were thrown by the invaders into
the river and second it turned red with
the blood of the defenders a bit like
what happened in shock and awe when
George Bush and Tony Blair destroyed
Iraq all over again
Adam Geary is the history boy I'm just
his apprentice here Adam tell us the
ancient and then we'll move to the
modern history of Iraq well Mesopotamia
as it tends to be called when were
looking at ancient history was in many
ways the cradle of civilization along
with China and some of the Indus Valley
civilizations and what today is India
and
Gaston some of the greatest early
civilizations were in Babylon and in
fact the very essence of law as we know
it derives from Iraq the Code of
Hammurabi was Iraqi it was it was
authored not far from where bad dad is
today how sad
therefore that this long journey that
we're going to take is one from a
society that gave the world law in its
modern form albeit in the ancient days
to a place torn to shreds by supreme
lawlessness and a disregard for that
spirit of ethics that Hammurabi gave
Iraq Iraq has been conquered and it's
been embraced and it's frankly been
destroyed by many people after the air
of the Babylonians and the Assyrians we
see the Persian Empire and the Roman
Empire competing for influence
throughout the Mesopotamian world Iraq
became a great place again in the age of
the Arab caliphates where for a time
Baghdad was a great center of learning
of mathematics in particular the
invented algebra indeed a wonderful
center of learning during the Islamic
caliphates and in the ottoman period
which occurred after the arab caliphate
was conquered by the Ottoman Turks Iraq
was divided into three provinces that
remain very crucial to the understanding
of the modern state there was the vill
yet that's the Ottoman word for province
of Mosul in the north of Baghdad in the
middle and of Basra in the South three
cities that appear as much if not more
so in the newspapers and websites of a
news orientation in the 21st century and
who surely is it not the case that the
area now known as Kuwait was a part of
the Valaya of Basra therefore was Iraqi
that's incredibly important to the
modern history of the region and that
indeed is absolutely truth now the
ottoman period lasted 400 years
just over yet and the successor occupier
was of course the British they saw of
course the strategic importance of a
country on the Persian Gulf they were
beginning to see the importance of what
looked like a healthy reserve of black
gold oil underneath Iraq but also and
perhaps predominantly the British
regarded their our Mesopotamia colonial
possession as part of their historic
obsession of protecting the approaches
to India which was the jewel in the
British Empire's crown absolutely it was
thought at the time that any strategic
location on the crux of the wider
crescent-shaped door to the subcontinent
which frankly goes from the Caspian down
to the Gulf of Oman needs to be a
bulwark of Britain this explains British
aggression towards Iran there was a coup
a British coup in 1925 which was less
famous than another British American
coup in 1953 it explains why during the
late 19th century the so-called great
game period there were fears of Russia
going from the Black Sea into regions
further south both in terms of Western
Eurasia that's who we see Britain and
France provoking wars between Russia and
Turkey and also closer to this mouth to
the Indian subcontinent which which
developed into the lost great Russian
war with Persia in 1828 and all of this
the north eastern end of the Arab world
the geographical cultural and historical
Arab space which Iraq is a central part
of this has always been an area that's
been highly desired by Western colonial
factions who want to have a safe passage
from Southern and Eastern Europe into
South Asia the First World War of course
was fiercely fought in Mesopotamia the
Turkish forces
fought far more successfully than had
been imagined before they entered the
war it's not very much understood that
Iraq let's call it by a shorter name now
Iraq was a part of the Indian Empire the
British Indian empire was governed from
the India office not the Arab office in
Cairo and the huge casualties suffered
by the British forces in Iraq were
almost all Indian soldiers undivided
India yes India Pakistan Bangladesh even
Burma they lost tens of thousands of men
in places like cooked for example in the
long siege and then the bloody aftermath
of that siege it was one of the most
extraordinary focal points of the
so-called Eastern Front of the war and
of course afterwards even though
tactically the Turks fought very
valiantly in Iraq after the war because
Turkey as a whole was vanquished we see
two names who I think we're going to see
and hear for that matter a lot in this
series and that's the name of mr. Sykes
from England and mr. picot from France
who after it became clear that the
Ottoman Empire one way or another was
going to disappear as a political entity
in the Arab world the Arab world was
divided much the way that someone would
divide a pie well I saw I was a member
of the British Parliament as you know
for almost 30 years and I used to walk
past everyday the room in Parliament in
which mr. Sykes and mr. picot the
English and French statesman they would
have called them at the time responsible
for this division of the pie it's quite
crucial to understand first of all this
dichotomy between Cairo and the India
office in terms of the British Empire
but also the perfidious nature
of Albion then some would say as now
because sykes-picot whereas you say in
that room dividing up the pie between
Britain and France but they were doing
so entirely in secret so they were
deceiving their Arab partners in the war
against the Ottomans in the first world
war the Cairo office Lawrence of Arabia
and others were promising the Arab
uprising one thing if the British should
be victorious in the war Sykes was
promising picot something different and
they were doing things in the
Mesopotamia region that even other
British officials in Cairo didn't know
let alone their French Imperial partners
it's a really classic example of the
two-facedness of British Imperial policy
was it not absolutely because the Cairo
office is where the so-called British
Arabists were and this isn't Arabist as
in Arab nationalists as in NASA only
shadow flock this is an Arab is desert
in Englishmen concerned with conquering
the Arab world meanwhile the
Orientalists were sitting in Bombay and
elsewhere throughout India Calcutta all
the great centers of well great the
centers of rule in the subcontinent we
configured Karachi as well another great
Center and they saw the Arab world
merely in terms of material and
geographic strategy where they didn't
even care to create a deceptive dialogue
the way that the progeny of Sykes in
Pico did once they got the wire in at
the office in McMahon and in Cairo was
communicating with Hussein from the
Hashemite family a series of messages
which were clearly enough that the
British would favor our United and
independent Arab world
should the Ottomans be defeated but that
wasn't what the British intended at all
it was possibly one of the biggest lies
ever told certainly in the 20th century
while Lawrence was leading the so-called
Arab revolt with the telegrams coming in
from Cairo that there would be a single
United Arab world as there was under the
Turks but importantly for the air the
proto Arab nationalist it would be under
an Arab flag for the first time since
the Caliphate of the Arabs was subsumed
by the Caliphate of the Ottoman Turks
the opposite happened the Arab world
became more divided than in any time
before the very for ancient period
talking about before Hammurabi and not
only that but everything was done for
the advantage of Britain in France and
later on the advantage of the Zionists
rather than to the advantage of the
Arabs themselves who wanted those two
simple things that were falsely promised
freedom in unity the First World War was
amongst many other things that we have
already discussed on the history boys
the dawning of the age of oil as king
and by the end of the First World War
the British were certainly keenly aware
of the the oil reserves of Iraq and
indeed of Iran and elsewhere in the Gulf
region they were determined therefore to
keep hold of Iraq for many reasons not
just the approaches to India argument
and so they established didn't they
Hashim I kingdoms there but if any of
those as one did show any signs of
independence we were even ready to
regicide we were even ready to kill
Iraqi Kings we were determined that
Iraqi leaders would be puppets of the
British absolutely right there were
three original Hashemite kingdoms that
the British gave and the Hashemite
family a very important family in the
region as they are the Sharifs of Mecca
the guardians of the most holy city in
the air
in all of Islam these three kingdoms
were the kingdom of the hedges in the
western part of the arabian peninsula
Transjordan which was later shortened to
jordan and ironically syria which was
then swapped and the french took Syria
and Britain put the Hashemite in Iraq we
can only imagine the reason for it it's
an even shorter word than Iraq and it's
oil so preferred yes Albion even had his
way with the French but not so much as
he had with the Arabs that were deceived
now the he Joss was the first of these
three kingdoms to go when in nineteen
late 1924 the British switched sides
from the respected Hashemite dynasty
that actually was instrumental in
organizing the Arabs during the Arab
revolt and they gave it to a group of
backwards people that on the Turkish
maps was simply referred to as the
Wahabis and they switched sides in the
war between the Wahabis and the
Hashemites and this led to the creation
of Saudi Arabia after the family the
leading family Al Saud indeed and this
became effectively a state that was a
kind of kleptocratic nepotistic pseudo
British puppet state certainly before
the price of oil exponentially rose
later on in 1970 yes becoming
effectively an American colony at bitter
Lake when Roosevelt met the leader of
the Al Saud King Abdulaziz but let's go
back to Iraq when it was no longer
possible for royal personages - hold on
we were still determined one with there
was a shadowy figure called Nuri side
the only thing to say about him well he
was certainly one of the more
controversial figures in all of this and
to just sort of broaden the lens of it
to talk about Iraq's transition from a
monarchy to a republic we have to go to
1958 when a man called Qasim B
came the leader of Iraq now this worried
the British a great deal they thought he
was a communist and too close to the
Soviet and he certainly had many
alliances with the Communist Party of
Iraq but he wasn't at all as close to
the Soviet Union as he was suspected of
being that's not untypical in the
postwar period
you only had to not hate the Soviet
Union to be suspected of being an agent
of the Soviet Union never never true is
our strategic words spoken the night
yeah Abdul Karim Qasim is still revered
by some people in Iraq he was an Arab
nationalist leader you might say he was
an early NASA but he was overthrown then
in his in 1963 by a coup involving
appearing now on our stage for the first
time the Baath Party except at that time
and once or twice subsequently the bath
party was in alliance with the British
and the Americans to overthrow Qasim
it was a very peculiar set of
relationships this was what both is
called the Ramadan revolution where
Qasim was executed and the reasons for
this are many Qasim was very close to
leftist factions in Iraq the Baathists
were leftist one would think this
wouldn't be a problem and the Arab world
as it is in so many other nations
struggling for independence it is and
for the following reason narcissism of
the small difference as March would put
it very much so
Qasim was very much in Iraqi nationalist
so much so that the Arab nationalists in
the Baath Party who favored a more pan
Arab East style ethos of NASA and of
mashaallah flock they said that this man
is getting too close to some of the non
Arab minorities on the fringes of Iraqi
society in a geographical sense and one
peculiar feature about communist parties
in the Arab world is they don't use the
language of Arab nationalism in ways
which tended to resonate with other
Arab nationalists so and and there's
quite a lot to that because while they
were talking about the fraternal
Brotherhood of mankind using Soviet
language the Baathists like the
Nazareth's spoke more directly to at
least a large proportion of the Arabs
the Arab communists were compromised
also by the important role played by the
Soviet Union in the birth of Israel very
much so people tend to forget that well
Vladimir Putin is certainly more
pro-israel than Brezhnev that the most
pro-israel Soviet leader in history up
to the time of his death was none other
than Stalin and this is a fact that sort
of erased from history because of how
after 56 and I think much more
importantly after 67 the Soviet Union
became very much pro-arab
very much for the Palestinian cause but
at the beginning Stalin saw Israel as a
place where he could spread communism
very easily in the Middle East because
certainly the European Jews who became
the Zionists of Palestine were people
exposed to more communist literature
than the Arabs of Iraq which or Syria or
Palestine which had a very different
tradition and many would say that
Russia's very close relationship with
Tel Aviv today is based on a similar
strategy just to race the word socialism
or communism so the bath is somehow in
power in 1963 a man called Saddam
Hussein was a young a junior actor in
the event so his 1963 but he becomes
much more important later doesn't he
indeed a quick your phrase about those
who are the most similar quarreling the
most in November of 63 the Baathists
were overthrown by their own allies
because there was a thought that they
weren't being nasara snuff and wanting
to unite with Syria and with Egypt
incidentally Syria had about this
revolution in 63 as well in 66 the
possibilities split and I just get this
right the Baathists whose raison d'etre
was to unite the Arab
world couldn't even unite two countries
next door to each other when they were
in power in both countries first the
Baathists fell out with each other in
Iraq and then the Iraqi bosses and the
Syrian Balthus fell out in 66 how
different things would have been if they
had lived up to a flex idea of our Abuna
tea well the Arab world if it were a
united arab republic or a united arab
confederation would be I think the
biggest state in the world after China
and India with all the oil that goes
with it and great seaports and great
whether it would be a superpower so this
petty arguing over inexplicably petty
political rivalries has turned an Arab
world that could have been a superpower
on the level of the US Russia and China
into a place where the superpowers play
football with people's economy is no
idea how sad as some 140 years and more
in the Arab world myself how sad that
makes me feel but well expressed
so the Baathists come back to power and
Saddam Hussein is the strongman vice
president they used to call him at the
time ultimately becoming the president
the 70s were something of a golden age
for the Iraqis and for the bath one day
they certainly were the president at the
time whose name is forgotten because of
Saddam's more controversial to put it
mildly legacy it was a man called Ahmad
Hassan al-bakr and this was an error in
the 70s where a combination of a long
lost and organized central government
plus rising oil prices it emancipated
the government emancipated women
educated them infrastructure was being
built people were driving cause Iraq was
a good place to be for an Iraqi has the
highest number of PhDs of any Arab
country we're sending them all over the
world many people watching this will
have met some of those Iraq bill
powerful army about which
or later had a science base that's why
the whole canard about weapons of mass
destruction and so on could fly in the
first place even though by the time it
was used it was a fake a fake cannot as
a kebab has to be the science base of
Baathist Iraq the education base the
position of women it was the Acme of
modernity in the Arab world it certainly
was living standards were incredibly
high as they should have been the idea
that the Iraq we see today as a poor
country as a broken country Iraq could
be one of the wealthiest countries in
the world and in the 1970s it was
certainly on the way the Hanging Gardens
of Babylon that long disappeared figment
of ancient law was on the road to being
rebuilt under our backers government in
the seventies all the more peculiar then
that the Iraqi regime allowed itself
this is at least my interpretation to be
seduced by its own enemies in its own
area in the Arab world and by the
imperialist powers to launch an attack
on Iran because they altogether feared
home any and the Islamic Revolution in
Iran indeed and this was under Saddam
another element that half of this story
that happened just before the first
salvors were fought were fired in the
Iranian Iraq war was this in Alberta's
last years of power he was working to
reconcile with Syria and unite the two
countries this vote was very unpopular
with Saddam for the simple reason that
Hafez al Assad the then President of
Syria being the older of the two men
would have perhaps being the leading man
of the Alliance so Saddam famously
purged his own Politburo of those
suspected rightly or wrongly of being
Pro
with Syria he then consoled some of them
with his own hand very it was one of the
most dramatic moments certainly that
gave Saddam the reputation internally
certainly that he continued to have the
iran-iraq war was a disaster
and it was an unnecessary disaster the
rhetoric about Iran exporting its style
of Islamic Revolution was much like that
spread by many others it shouldn't have
been taken seriously but some in the
Arab world especially in the secular
Baathist Arab world did take it
seriously especially in sin in Iraq
which had a a multi-ethnic a name and
more importantly a multi-religious
government I should say it wasn't all
Sunnis ruling over a majority Shia
population as the rumor goes in the same
way that Syria isn't Alawite Shia ruling
over a majority Sunni population as the
rumor goes quite so
so Iraq on the face of it wins the
iran-iraq war though wins it a very
great cost yes not the least of the cost
being that the conservative kingdoms
around it who would put huge amounts of
money into the Iraq war effort they
declared particularly Kuwait that these
were not grants there were loans and
Kuwait wanted the money back this
excited an antipathy towards Kuwait
which led to an even bigger blunder by
Saddam namely the attempt to bring back
into Iraq the Kuwait which had been
stolen from her by imperialism yes this
was in the late 80s and early 90s Kuwait
was also accused of slant oil drilling
meaning the pipe is pounded into the
ground so to speak in Kuwait but it has
a little fulcrum and it goes under the
ground into bars almost under - actually
indeed and this was the beginning of the
Gulf War and it was a very inauspicious
beginning in many ways because we have
to remember in the 1980s Saddam was a
friend
of the Soviet Union and a friend of the
NATO powers namely the United States and
we also can't forget that at the same
time Ronald Reagan was selling money to
the Iranians in order to filter the
money to the right-wing Sandinistas in
Nicaragua making matters even weirder
it's said even though it's ferociously
denied by tape Iran that Israel
America's best buddy in the region was
arming the Iranians because at that time
they were more afraid of an Arab
nationalist with a strong military like
Saddam than they were afraid of Khomeini
and the Islamic Revolution you couldn't
make it up except it's history great is
recovered by the imperial powers the
Kuwaiti rulers having all run away no
resistance there but inevitably it was
taken back and the longest and darkest
night for Iraq ensued I myself was a
regular visitor to Iraq at that time
after 93 I was there doesent scores of
times Iraq under sanctions was not the
Hanging Gardens of Babylon but there
were a lot of metaphorically speaking
hanging children who were dying like
flies under the most brutal siege
conditions imposed by the so-called
civilized world in what became known as
the rocky sanctions though sanctions
doesn't actually do justice to what
happened the Iraqis were systematically
starved and effectively a genocide began
particularly of the youngest Iraqis
hundreds and hundreds of thousands of
children dying because of sanctions and
your journey into Iraq in the 90s was of
course to try to reverse history what
was it particularly that brought you to
Iraq at this most desperate time up
until then you are in Iran you know it's
funny you ask that because
I had never been in Iraq before 1993 and
I wouldn't have been welcome if I had
first because I was associated in
earlier days with the leftists in Iraq
who have been driven out of the country
and then because in the iraq-iran war I
had effectively supported Iran on the
basis that I knew that this was a
disaster
for Iraq and for Iran and that had been
done at the behest of the very worst
people in the imperialist world and in
the Arab world but in 1993 I could
already smell the suffering of the Iraqi
people and I went there and touched it
and at that point Iraq entered my
bloodstream and that has never left it
indeed so close to Iraq did I become
when I would hear someone say the word
Iraq I would turn as if they'd called my
name so deeply was I involved from 93
until 2003 in the issue of Iraq indeed
you could say Iraq has not just changed
but dominated my life ever since because
I paid quite a high political price for
my stand with Iraq it said that the
Iraqis are good friends and bad enemies
and I think that's true from my point of
view this is a controversial point
Iraqis are the best of the Arabs
certainly I saw the best of them because
I was their friend I was a very good
friend and they were very good friends
to me and there is simply heartbreaking
to me that we failed to stop the war
which then destroyed Iraq do you share
my view that they will never again be a
single Iraq that will never again be an
Iraq that even remotely approximates to
that golden age in the 1970s that we
disgust I'm incredibly pessimistic about
it right now the u.s. appears to be
using Basra in southern Iraq as a place
to launch another war against Iran only
this time the ringleader of the aunty
Iranian movement is a Shia Arab which
puts to rest this sectarian narrative
this simplistic trichotomous narrative
we heard about Iraq now speaking of
three I want to take you back to 2003
possibly the most fateful year in the
modern history of the Middle East the
most fateful year in your storied
political career you warned the world
not to weld the world you want the US
and UK and its fledgling little allies
not to invade Iraq both within the House
of Commons in London and on the streets
of London I'd like you to tell a bit
more about well perhaps I can sum up by
what has turned out to be the last
conversation I ever had with Tony Blair
as you know I currently made a movie
called the killings of Tony Blair it's
available on Amazon I choose it's the
biography of that he doesn't want you to
see which is the ocean sea is the one he
doesn't want you to see but in my last
conversation with him I told him three
things first of all that the fall of
Baghdad if you invade this was a couple
of weeks before the war the fall of
Baghdad will not be the beginning of the
end just the end of the beginning
secondly the Iraqis will fight you with
their teeth if necessary until they have
driven you from their land and thirdly
if you invade and occupy Iraq you will
begin a cascade of fanatic extremism
which will spread across the whole of
the Muslim world and which will we were
standing in the houses of parliament
which will one day be in this building
looking for you and looking for me
to kill
I shrivel as I repeat it because all
three of those predictions it's crystal
clear came perfectly true if anything I
underestimated the ghastliness
of the third the cascade of extremism I
had in mind could not in my wildest
nightmare have included Isis the heart
eating head-chopping fanatic barbarians
who would end up not just in London and
everywhere else in the world but
literally inside the gates of the House
of Commons and neither I nor Blair were
butchered by a man with two swords but a
police officer a friend of mine for many
years that I spoke to every morning as I
entered Parliament gave his life's blood
at the hands of this extremist with two
swords the fall of Baghdad it's clear
was just the end of the beginning the
war would rage on and rages on still
fifteen years after the invasion of Iraq
Iraq is still at war
Syria's of war Libya's at war Yemen is
at war
Saudi Arabia is at war Civil War perhaps
by the talisca war comes our youth and
blood is running everywhere from from
what we call the Far East through the
Middle East and well into the West the
streets of Paris London Berlin and other
places can I bother you but can I just
say speaking of the warnings you gave
you you were talking about the warnings
you gave in the British House of Commons
in London but there was another famous
place where you gave a warning a few
years after and that was the US Senate
now that V
Theo has been seen so many times around
the world over a hundred million times
yeah but what isn't so known about that
event is where were you just before what
was going through your head
obviously you address the House of
Commons scores of times hundreds of
times throughout your life it's the
first and last time that you address the
US Senate I'd love you to talk more
about that the US Senate appearance was
probably my finest hour probably my
greatest day it brought me to the
attention of very large number of people
including in the United States and
attention which I've managed to retain
by and large I tried to put the
Americans on trial they thought they
were putting me on trial I tried and I
think I succeeded in some measure in
putting them in the dock rather than
myself but I think and can take no
pleasure from whatever great days I had
in having been proved comprehensively
right because the cost has been so
catastrophic and the first cost and the
worst cost has been paid by people I
came to love and about whom I still
dream the people of Iraq we've been
there history boys I've been George
Galloway I'm Adam Geary and we'll be
back next week God willing
[Music]