Historical Setting

The 1925 Iraqi Constitution, which remained essentially unchanged throughout the Hashemite period, was to a large extent a British legacy.⁵ British occupation of the three Ottoman provinces - Basra, Baghdad and Mosul - began as a preemptive move in 1914 to protect British interests at the head of the Persian Gulf.

These interests had, in large part, been born out of Britain’s concern to protect its trade route to India. They grew as trade with the Gulf area developed, but especially with the discovery of oil in commercial quantities in southern Iran in 1908 and with the British Navy’s decision to convert its fleet from coal to oil fuel. After the outbreak of the First World War, when it became obvious that the Ottoman

Constitution Making (US Institute of Peace Press, 2010), www.usip.org/sites/default/files/Framing%20 the%20State/Chapter21_Framing.pdf; Saad Jawad, ‘The Iraqi Constitution: Structural Flaws and Political implications’ LSE Middle East Center Paper Series 1 (November 2013), eprints.lse.ac.uk/54927/1/ SaadJawad_Iraqi_Constitution_LSE_Middle_East_Centre_WP01_Nov2013.pdf. A more detailed discussion is provided by Nathan J Brown, Constitutions in a Nonconstitutional World: Arab Basic Laws and the Prospects for Accountable Government (SUNY Press, 2002).

³ Feisal Amin Al-Istrabadi, ‘Reviving Constitutionalism in Iraq: Key Provisions of the Transitional Administrative Law’ (2005) 50 New York Law School Law Review 270.

⁴ See especially Noga Efrati, Women in Iraq: Past Meets Present (New York, Columbia University Press, 2012).

⁵For the full text of the 1925 Constitution in English and Arabic, see CA Hooper, The Constitutional Law of Iraq (Mackenzie & Mackenzie, 1928); and ‘Abd al-Razzaq al-Hasani, Tarikh al-wizarat al-‘iraqiyya, vol 1, 7th edn (Afaq ‘Arabiyya, 1988) 339-54.

Empire would join with the Central Powers, Britain sent troops to occupy Faw and Basra.

The occupation of Basra in November 1914 began a process that ended with the occupation of Baghdad in March 1917 and of Mosul in November 1918. In 1920, Britain was awarded the mandate over Iraq and accepted responsibility for building an Iraqi state. In 1921, at the Cairo Conference, Britain's plan for Iraq coalesced. It was there, in Phebe Marr's words, that ‘the three pillars of the Iraqi state were conceived’.^[981] These pillars were a British-backed Arab monarchy, a treaty that would legitimise the British presence in Iraq, and a constitution. Iraq's first constitution had been drafted and re-drafted starting in 1921, but was not promulgated until March 1925. A ‘gift from the West', as a British judge in Iraq once termed it,^[982] the 1925 Constitution shaped the political and legal landscape in Iraq for years to come. While promising all Iraqis equal status as pertaining to their rights and obligations as well as equality before the law, the Constitution also legalised British strategies aimed at imposing order and enabling their indirect rule of the country. Specifically, the British sought to control Iraq through those individuals they perceived as, or found useful to construct as, Iraq's authentic leaders. Yet, the articles of the Constitution that were designed to tie tribal, religious and secular-oriented leaders to the British-dominated state had harsh and long-lasting implications for Iraqi women, particularly their political and legal enshrinement as second-class citizens.

III.

<< | >>

↑

Source: Albert Richard, Guruswamy Menaka. Founding Moments in Constitutionalism. Hart Publishing,2019. — 272 p.. 2019

More legal literature on Laws.Studio

Historical Setting

More on the topic Historical Setting: