By Gareth Porter
"The threat by the George W. Bush administration last week to withdraw all economic and military support from the Iraqi government if it does not accept the US-Iraq status of forces agreement has raised the stakes in the political-diplomatic struggle over the issue.
However, most Iraqi politicians are now so averse to any formal legitimization of the US military presence – and particularly of extraterritorial legal rights over US troops in the country – that even that threat is unlikely to save the pact......
Maliki and other Iraqi politicians remember very well the cost paid by politicians who fell afoul of Iraqi nationalists' efforts to revise the 1930 Anglo-Iraqi treaty, which gave the British special military privileges in Iraq that limited Iraq's independence.
When the Iraqi government revised the treaty in 1948 to extend it for 20 more years, it hoped to limit British military influence. The British agreed to evacuate the bases, but were given the right to return in the event of war. The revised treaty also set up a Joint Defense Board, which nationalist officers viewed as a symbol of continuing British domination.
The new agreement triggered mass protests in Baghdad, which was brutally put down by Iraqi police, killing 400 people. The first Shiite prime minister of Iraq, Salih Jaber, who renegotiated the agreement, was soon forced out of office.
In 1954, US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, looking for allies against the Soviet Union, pressured Iraq to join the Baghdad Pact with Britain, Turkey, Iran and Pakistan. The British government wanted Iraqi membership in the pact as a means of assuring British access to military bases in Iraq after the Anglo-Iraq pact expired in 1958.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Said preferred to stay out of the pact, but he needed US military assistance to rearm Iraq. In a parallel to the tactic now being applied, the Eisenhower administration said he would get no arms and even threatened to cut all existing economic assistance to Iraq unless Said joined the pact.
Said gave in to that pressure and joined the pact in 1955. But three years later, nationalist officers overthrew the monarchical regime of Iraq and killed Said......."
"The threat by the George W. Bush administration last week to withdraw all economic and military support from the Iraqi government if it does not accept the US-Iraq status of forces agreement has raised the stakes in the political-diplomatic struggle over the issue.
However, most Iraqi politicians are now so averse to any formal legitimization of the US military presence – and particularly of extraterritorial legal rights over US troops in the country – that even that threat is unlikely to save the pact......
Maliki and other Iraqi politicians remember very well the cost paid by politicians who fell afoul of Iraqi nationalists' efforts to revise the 1930 Anglo-Iraqi treaty, which gave the British special military privileges in Iraq that limited Iraq's independence.
When the Iraqi government revised the treaty in 1948 to extend it for 20 more years, it hoped to limit British military influence. The British agreed to evacuate the bases, but were given the right to return in the event of war. The revised treaty also set up a Joint Defense Board, which nationalist officers viewed as a symbol of continuing British domination.
The new agreement triggered mass protests in Baghdad, which was brutally put down by Iraqi police, killing 400 people. The first Shiite prime minister of Iraq, Salih Jaber, who renegotiated the agreement, was soon forced out of office.
In 1954, US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, looking for allies against the Soviet Union, pressured Iraq to join the Baghdad Pact with Britain, Turkey, Iran and Pakistan. The British government wanted Iraqi membership in the pact as a means of assuring British access to military bases in Iraq after the Anglo-Iraq pact expired in 1958.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Said preferred to stay out of the pact, but he needed US military assistance to rearm Iraq. In a parallel to the tactic now being applied, the Eisenhower administration said he would get no arms and even threatened to cut all existing economic assistance to Iraq unless Said joined the pact.
Said gave in to that pressure and joined the pact in 1955. But three years later, nationalist officers overthrew the monarchical regime of Iraq and killed Said......."
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