[1395] Of October 3 1932 in Iraq

The Daily Kos writes a primer on events leading to October 3 1932.

Three-quarters of a century ago today – October 3, 1932 – British imperialists who had ruled Iraq on paper since the spoils-dividing Anglo-French Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 (and in reality since their victory in Baghdad against the Ottomans in 1917) gave up everything. Except for their military bases, their imposed oil contracts and their right of future intervention.

During their 383-year reign in the region that today we call Iraq, the Ottoman autocrats established three provinces that reflected divisions reaching back 900 years to the Islamic conquest of Mesopotamia: Kurdish Mosul, Sunni Baghdad, Shiite Basra. In their far briefer rule, the British first administered two provinces, Baghdad and Basra, getting Mosul from the French a few years later. [An Iraqi Anniversary Unlikely to Be Celebrated in Baghdad. Daily Kos. October 3 2007]

75 years later, English is still the language of the occupier except that that quaint spelling style is no more.

That asides, it is interesting to find out that the suggestion to internally break Iraq into 3 parts is not without precedent: the Ottoman did it once.