In the spring of 1917, while it was fire World War I It is relentlessly ignited, the wheel of destiny took place to set a new chapter in the history of Mesopotamia, where Britain came with all its cunning and brutal power to kidnap Iraq from the arms of the hidden Ottoman Empire; As it started invading it from the south of Basra, then it was swept Baghdad After a fierce resistance from the Ottomans, they replaced them in the loss of the famous battle of “Kut Al -Amara”; But Britain managed to absorb the shock, and then apply to complete its expansionary career with the annexation of Mosul and Kirkuk; Cursing its control over the entire Iraq.
In the game of deceptive policy, Britain concluded its deal with France, which was watching the region with greed under the shadows of the “Sykes-Pico” agreement for the year 1916, gave it a shares of Iraqi black gold for twenty-five years, a price for its concession and its departure.
The British were before and after they were looking to control Iraq’s oil, securing the wealth of Abadan and Al -Ahwaz in Iran, and tightening the grip on the roads that link its western far to the jewel of its eastern crown India. This step was to occupy Iraq also a painful blow to Germany and Russia’s ambitions; To cut off their dreams in controlling this rich land.
There is no suspicion that behind the Wittle of the British occupation of Iraq was hiding hidden motives and deep ambitions, but the British did not only do so, but they woven lies and promoted the idea of “the mandate” as they did in Palestine, Egypt and Sudan, and they promised the Iraqis with an independent state after a dust. World War IIHe pledged to respect the principles of US President Wilson, led by “the right of peoples to self -determination”, but those promises were only a mirage that hides their true intentions.
Then the mask soon was exposed, and they circumvented those covenants, which ignited a massive revolution in 1920, and under the pressure of popular anger, Britain was forced to retreat a step, so a royal Iraqi state established under its shadows, and Faisal bin Sharif Hussein, who had ruled Syria for a few months, came to the throne of Iraq.
Faisal was a hope for the Iraqis in salvation from the yoke of the occupation, which heavier in their causes, and thus the Iraqi royal era (1921-1958) began, but he would not have had storms, as he ended with a loud tragedy that swallowed King Faisal II, the grandson of the founder, his uncle Prince Abdul Ilah, and the loyal British man Nuri Al-Saeed.
How was the features of this monarchy? How did the boy Faisal II found himself on the throne of Mesopotamia under the tutelage of his Hashemite uncle? What raised the ire of Iraqi army officers until they revolted against this ruling? And why did they choose a bloody end that does not know mercy, long even long for the women of the Hashemite family?
Britain, its partners and the path of events
In the book “The History of Modern Iraq” by the historian Muhammad Suhail Tahsosh, we see the threads of a cunning plot that the British weave against the Arabs who used each other and then turned against them, to expel the Ottomans from the fronts of the Hijaz, the Levant and Iraq during World War IUnder the leadership of Sharif Hussein and his sons, the princes Faisal, Ali and Abdullah, as the Arabs thought that freedom was waiting for them, but the British deception was the price.
There is no suspicion that the British Naksa from their promises ignited the 1920 uprising, which rocked the pillars of the English occupation, and they did not find an escape from returning to the Hashemite family again, to culminate in Faisal Al -Awal bin Sharif Hussein, king on the land of Mesopotamia on August 23, 1921, in an attempt to calm the Iraqi popular anger.
Hence the journey of the monarchy in Iraq was launched, where the throne was punished by Faisal I until his departure in 1933, then his son Ghazi I, whose rule ended in 1939 in a mysterious accident, to be succeeded by his son, the boy Faisal II (1935-1958). The columns of British influence in the country.
In April 1939, after the killing of King Ghazi in a mysterious car accident, Nuri Al -Saeed was assigned to form his fourth government, and after only five months the Second World War broke out between Britain and France on the one hand, and the Hitler Germany on the other hand, as Germany was with its growing influence in Iraq and the convergence of King Ghazi with it supported Arab rights and resists ZionismAnd, which made King Ghazi’s convergence with her a direct threat to the British interests.
In the midst of his fourth ministry, and while Prince Abd al -Ilah al -Hashemi, the uncle of the boy, was silently, Nuri al -Saeed opened the doors of Iraq to the British armies, and he was not satisfied with that, but rather sent two Iraqi military teams to drown in the sands of the Libyan desert or the Balkan mountains, fighting alongside the British against the axis countries.
With the speed of lightning, Al -Saeed and Abd al -Ilah cut the relations with Germany, and threw all the weight of Iraq in the arms of the British occupier, and there is no doubt that this blind rush sparked the anger of the Iraqi patriots, so Nuri Al -Saeed turned into a symbol of betrayal in their eyes, and every time he felt the danger or the popular explosion he was escaping from the storm by submitting his resignation, waiting for the accusations to calm down to return again, as the historian narrates Jaafar Abbas in his book “Political Developments in Iraq”.
In the periods of emptiness between the governments of Nuri Al -Saeed, the star of the patriots in the country emerged, as the scene Rashid Ali Al -Kilani, who rose to the prime minister for the third time in 1941, topped the shoulders of the army and the people, and at the height of the great popular support, the guardian Abdul Ilah was forced to flee outside the country, leaving Nuri Al -Saeed to reel after his resignation.
However, Britain would not allow the game of control of control of this ease, as a huge army required more than ten thousand soldiers from India, and unleashed a new invasion that started from Basra in the south towards Baghdad, and for a full month, fierce battles took place, as the superior British air force crushed the Iraqi army under its overwhelming power, and in the end, Rashid Ali Al -Kilani and his companions did not find the army Iran, leaving behind them a land under the yoke of the occupation again.
For this reason, Britain has returned to its grip on Iraq with a more violent and hard power, while the guardian Abdel -Ilah Al -Hashemi, after returning from his exile, turned to a tool in the hands of the British, more subjugated and subordinate, and while World War II was nearing the end, the Palestine issue emerged in 1948 a bleeding wound in the heart of the Arab nation.
Some Arab countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, eastern Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria have united under the banner of the League of Arab States, declaring their armies to liberate Palestine, but the differences between them and the conspiracies of the Security Council and bad plans eventually led to the withdrawal of those armies; Leave Palestine alone in the face of its fate.
The withdrawal of the Iraqi army has shook the souls of the Iraqis, and they were very angry, and for this reason on July 23, 1948, the streets of Baghdad exploded with angry demonstrations, starkly with the refusal to withdraw, and demanding the continuation of fighting against the Zionist movement backed by the Security Council.
In the midst of this boiling, many leaders and politicians, led by Prime Minister Ali Muzahim Al -Bajah Ji, realized that the betrayal of the guardian Abdul Ilah was not just a coincidence, as he was complicit with the British managing the threads of a conspiracy that contributed with full force in the Nakba of Palestine, and that is revealed by the supporter of Al -Wandawi in his book “Iraq in the reports of the British Secret Police.”
Military organizations and the beginning of revenge
The Iraqis are certain that the ownership bound by the British occupation are the origin of all their tragedies, especially since the beginning of World War II, and in a deeper way yet Nakba 1948At that time, secret political and military organizations began to grow in the land of Iraq, and it should be upon them a dream “toppling the monarchy and restoring national dignity” as they described it.
The national and nationalist officers in the army saw that the setback is nothing but a reflection of the regime’s weakness and its dependency, and they realized that victory starts from the heart of Baghdad before it reached Palestine, then the changing change was caught and raised inspired by the revolution of July 23, 1952 in Egypt, which inflamed the enthusiasm of the Iraqi people and its parties and its organizations, and that is what the supporter of Al -Waddawi is supported in his previous book, where that moment was the beginning of the count And he is about to collapse under the weight of a sweeping popular anger.
After the ignition of the July 1952 revolution in Egypt, declaring the fall of the property there, the same spark caught the Iraqi army officers, in September of the same year, when the Major Rifaat Al -Hajj Sri and Lt. Col. Rajab Abdul Majeed began to ignite the change of change, in a complete secrecy in connection with reliable officers who gathered them in secret cells inspired by the organization of the “free officers”, with one goal: Its roots.
By the end of 1952, a pre -prepared plan to eliminate the young king Faisal II and his uncle Abdel -Ilah and Prime Minister Nuri Al -Saeed was already succeeding, but Nuri Al -Saeed’s travel at the last minute postponed the attempt, as Walid Muhammad Al -Adhami narrates in his book “The last night, the Al -Rehab Palace massacre.”
Then came in 1956, carrying winds with him Triple aggression On Egypt, and in the midst of this Suez war, the trio Abdelilah, Faisal II, and Nuri Al -Saeed revealed their real face, where they stood silent while Britain, France and Israel were destroying Egypt, and when they entered soviet union The aggressors were forced to retreat, Nasser was victorious, then the Iraqi military and politicians realized the depth of their government’s betrayal and dependence on the western colonizer.
This year, the seeds of the rebellion matured inside the Iraqi army, where two large organization were formed: the first “the Supreme Committee for National Officers” – which later became “the free” – led by Rifaat Al -Haj Siri, who had postponed a previous attempt to the coup. The second is the “Mansourieh” organization, led by the commander of the nineteenth brigade, Abdul Karim Qasim and his companion Abdul Salam ArefBy 1957, the two organizations united under the banner of the “national officers”, and Abdul Karim Qasim took the leadership of the oldest age and rank, and from here, the military wheel began to take place to uproot the monarchy, and the time was approaching the moment of decisiveness that would shake the pillars of Iraq!
A government in a coma
Revolutionary officers conspired to liquidate Prince Abdel -Ilah, the Crown Prince and Prime Minister Nuri Al -Saeed, in one blow, but then they decided to keep the young king Faisal II alive; His father, King Ghazi, was in the eyes of the revolutionaries, the military and civilians, a national symbol that paid his life for his attempt to remove British domination from Iraq, and this rebellion was brewing in secret, while the Iraqi government, under the leadership of the trio, remained soaked in a deep slumber.
Tawfiq Al -Suwaidi, the former Iraqi Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs in that last government, narrates an eyewitness to the massacre that signed the Hashemite family, how the government was ignoring the volcano that boils under its feet, as he reveals in his memoirs that the King of Jordan at the time received accurate information about a secret organization within the Iraqi army that promises the coup, but the Iraqi army commander refused to ratify a great mockery, claiming that these movements are merely!
The warnings did not stop there. According to Tawfiq Al -Suwaidi in his memoirs, signals came from Turkey and reports from the Iraqi internal security services that predict imminent military moves, but the trio; Faisal II, Abdel -Ilah, and Nuri Al -Saeed, remained unaware, refused to confront the truth, and even the Turkish president Adnan Mandars In June 1958, one month before the coup, his old friend, Nuri Al -Saeed, warned directly of a conspiracy to be woven into the army, but Al -Saeed in an angry tone described it saying: “This information is incorrect, and nothing is believed in it,” closing his eyes from the storm that was about to sweep them all!
The day of the massacre
As we saw, the ruling trio was steeped in his negligence, without realizing that the zero hour was approaching, as the “Free National Officers” took advantage of a golden opportunity that was given to them, which is the presence of King Faisal II and his uncle Abdel -Ilah and Nuri Al -Saeed in Baghdad, at a time when orders came to move the twentieth brigade of Jalawla in eastern Iraq to Jordan to support its army at that time.
Then the national officers took advantage of the brigade’s passage through the capital, Baghdad, as an ideal cover to pounce on the Al -Rehab Palace without provoking suspicion, and in the meantime the king was preparing his bags to prepare for his marriage ceremony and travel with his bride to Europe.
But with the first threads of July 14, 1958, the revolutionaries rushed strongly; Abdul Karim Qasim and Abdul Salam Aref led their units to surround the sovereign headquarters in Baghdad, and through the radio, their words were raised like the thunderbolt: “The property ended, and the Republic took up!”, And the army surrounded the Al -Rehab Palace, the stronghold of the Hashemite Hashemite family, and they rushed to the interior, nothing in front of them.
Then King Faisal II and his uncle, Abd al -Ilah and his grandmother, were forced by Princess Nafisa and some other princesses to go out to the palace garden, then the categorical order came to shoot and liquidate them all, as they all fell on the other “in a human block of meat and blood … and the King Faisal fell back on the shoulder of another victim, then the execution order was submitted In front of him, and he fired his machinery again towards the king and the prince, and his companion said to him: “Why” (why?) He replied: Until I make sure! ” He replied firmly, as Walid Muhammad Al -Adhami narrates in his book “The Last Night, the Al -Rehab Palace massacre.”
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Nuri Al -Saeed was trapped in his home, and he realized that he would not escape him, so he brought out his pistol and ended his life himself, and the revolutionaries were not satisfied with that, but they dragged the bodies through the streets of Baghdad, displaying them as a voctrum of victory until their features were distorted in a tragic scene.
There were only a few of the ruling family, including Princess Bint Al Sharif Ali, the aunt of the king and the sister of Abdel -Ilah, who fled with her children and her husband, disguised, moving between the shelters, until she finally found her sanctuary at the Saudi embassy, and in her memoirs “The Dhococial of the Ethnicity”, the exciting story of her escape and the scenes of the massacre that dug in her heart is not a wound!
On the other side of Baghdad, the news arrived in Princess Badia like a thunderbolt through secret and close eyes: everyone in Al -Rehab Palace has died, King Faisal II, the twenty -three -year -old young man, and her brother Prince Abdul Ilah, and others were slaughtered in a massacre that was left.
After that, she did not hesitate for a moment, she gathered her children and her husband, and she set out wandering on her face to escape the specter of death, in her memoirs, describing that terrifying moment by saying: “I did not carry anything with me, I left everything behind, and I went out with my black” from my home, I do not know where, and I did not imagine that this compulsory exit is my last era in my home! “
Since that moment on July 14, 1958, Iraq has made its first steps towards the republic on the ruins of a bloody massacre that shook its pillars, which was caused by the assets of these people in the arms of the occupier and its absolute dependency!