International Law, Imperialism & Labour Struggle in Iraq, 1917-1960 Ali Hammo

281 Pages·2017·10.96 MB·English

‘The Pomegranate Tree Has Smothered Me’: International Law, Imperialism & Labour
Struggle in Iraq, 1917-1960

Ali Hammoudi

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO
THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF
PHILOSOPHY

Graduate Program in Law
York University

Toronto, Ontario

April 2018

© Ali Hammoudi
Abstract

This dissertation delves into the legal and labour history of Hashemite Iraq (c. 1921-1958) to explore
the role international law and its institutions played in Iraq’s state formation, as well as, the imperial
control of the semi-peripheral region of the Middle East. By highlighting the historical specificity of
the semi-periphery in international legal history, it shows how Iraq was a laboratory for
experimentation with the concept of sovereignty. A unique doctrine of ‘semi-peripheral sovereignty’
was skillfully developed by the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations in Geneva
and embedded in the 1930 Anglo-Iraq Treaty to ensure Iraq’s ‘independence’ in 1932 maintained
geopolitical and imperial interests that were specific to the region, especially the extraction,
production and transportation of Iraqi oil to the Mediterranean.

The material effects of this international legal doctrine on the everyday lives of working class Iraqis
is traced by looking at how it intersected with British imperial law, land law, the transnational law of
oil concessions and pipeline agreements, criminal law and emergency law. The spaces and semi-
colonial enclaves of capitalist production and trade of the oil fields in Kirkuk, the railways in Baghdad
and the Port of Basra, and their corresponding governing structures are then detailed in micro-
histories with the aim of analyzing the manner in which the oil, port and railway workers organized
against the semi-colonial and imperial legality that was imposed upon them.

The dissertation ends with an analysis of the massive 1948 Wathba uprising against the revision of
the 1930 Anglo-Iraq Treaty. The Wathba, successfully prevented the re-imposition of imperialism in
Iraq, and would turn into the seed of the July Revolution in 1958. It is situated here within the wider
history of decolonization in the Third World to advance a novel methodological approach of the
‘conjuncture’ to understand anti-colonial and labour agency in relation to international legal history.
This study illustrates that undertaking a ‘conjunctural analysis’ illuminates how the agency of the
ordinary peoples of the Third World influenced international legal transformation. The doctrine of
semi-peripheral sovereignty and all juridical forms of semi-colonialism would be unequivocally
rejected through the Iraqi contribution to the drafting of the 1960 Declaration on the Granting of
Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. This dissertation therefore reveals the unique
constitutive relationship between international law, imperialism, and capitalism in the semi-
peripheral Middle East, while maintaining the importance of integrating the history of ‘class
formation’, ‘agency’ and ‘labour’ into international legal history.

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Dedication

To the People of Iraq
And to the memory of my Bibi,
Zahra Kubba

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Acknowledgements

In the same way that scholars only advance as they stand on the shoulders of giants, this work
would have been inconceivable without the help, support and encouragement of so many people.

First, I would like to thank my doctoral advisor, Professor Susan Drummond, who from our very
first meetings encouraged me to follow my heart in pursuing this particular project despite its
clear difficulty and my initial doubts. Susan’s advice in every step of the way and her insightful
comments guided my writing process and shaped this work. I am truly thankful for having had
her as my supervisor. Not only did she always make herself available, but acted more as a mentor
(and at times, a life coach).

I am indebted to Professor Thabit Abdullah, who was instrumental in making this project a
reality, reassuring me of the importance of this scholarly undertaking despite its unchartered
nature. My long conversations with him on Iraqi history had a great impact on my thinking and
on this work. I am grateful and honored for having had Professor Doug Hay on my supervisory
committee. Doug’s close readings and his detailed comments improved this work immensely.
Last but not least, I am thankful to Professor Sabah al-Nasseri for his constructive advice, which
shaped the early parts of this project.

I would like to thank my external examiner Professor Patrick Macklem, my internal examiner
Professor Raju Das, and the chair at my oral defense, Professor Obi Okafor, for their close
readings of my work and for providing extremely valuable feedback on how to take this project
forward.

I am grateful to the faculty and staff of Osgoode Hall Law School for their support and for
making the past five years a memorable learning experience, especially Professors Peer
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Zumbansen, Dayna Scott, Ruth Buchanan, Liora Salter, Faisal Bhabha, and Carys Craig. I am
also deeply appreciative of my professors from my days as an undergraduate at the University of
Toronto, Jens Hanssen and the late Amir Hassanpour, for their formative influence in kindling my
interest in Middle East history and encouraging me to pursue my doctoral studies. I am thankful
to the graduate student community of Osgoode, York, and Toronto for creating an innovative
space for emerging scholars, in particular Terrine Friday, Sara Ross, Klodian Rado, Sara Farhan,
Marco Valasquez, Mai Taha, Mazen Masri, and Sujith Xavier.

One of the central arguments of this dissertation started out in a paper presented at the Third
World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) Conference at the American University of
Cairo in February 2015. A version of Chapter 7 was published in a special TWAIL issue of Third
World Quarterly (2016, Vol. 37, No. 11, pp.2028-2046). My ideas were shaped by the
discussions I had during this process and I am grateful for having had the opportunity to engage
with this vibrant intellectual network during my time as a doctoral candidate.

Several parts of this dissertation were presented at writing workshops, particularly the Institute
for Global Law & Policy in Bangkok and the Transnational Law Institute in King’s College,
London. The feedback I received in these workshops has undoubtedly improved this work. In
particular, I would like to thank, Nesrine Badawi, Filipe Madeira da Silva, Matt Canfield, Alice
Riccardi, John Reynolds, and Adrian Smith. I would especially like to thank Professor Tony
Anghie for providing valuable comments on one of my chapters.

The research for this dissertation would not have been possible without the tireless assistance of
the archivists, librarians, and staff of the British National Archives at Kew, Osgoode Hall Law
Library, the Yale University Library, the British Library, and the United Nations Office at
Geneva Library. I would like to thank Peter Housego, chief archivist of the British Petroleum
Archive at Warwick University’s Modern Records Centre in Coventry. I would also like to thank
Jacques Oberson of the League of Nations Archives, as well as, Remo Becci and Jacques
Rodriguez of the International Labour Organization Archives in Geneva.

Closer to home, I would like to thank the late Shamil al-Nahir, who was kind enough to connect
me with several veteran Iraqi communists. I will ever be grateful for his assistance. I would also
like to thank Hussein al-Ghazali for providing me with much-needed books from Iraq. To my
family: Zaid, Rusul and my parents, Nada, and Imad. I could not have done any of this without
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your unconditional love and support throughout the years. It should be mentioned that this work
was written in the spirit of remembrance of the life of my grandfather, Lt. Col. Ibrahim al-Ghazali
and to his generation who struggled for a free sovereign Iraq.

Lastly, I would like to acknowledge the omnipresence of music (my everlasting source of
inspiration) throughout this lengthy writing process. A final homage goes to the saxophone of
Pharaoh Sanders, the trumpet of Donald Byrd, the drums of Idris Mohammad and the piano of
Horace Silver.

Ali Hammoudi, Toronto, April 2018.

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Table of Contents

Abstract ....................................................................................................................................... ii
Dedication ................................................................................................................................ iii
Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................ iv
Table of Contents ................................................................................................................... vii
List of Figures ............................................................................................................................ x
List of Abbreviations & Acronyms .................................................................................... xi
Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 1
I. The imperial lines of the law & the invisible lines of agency ......................................................... 1
II. The specificity of the geo-political space of the Middle East & the economic logic of
Sykes-Picot ............................................................................................................................................................... 3
III. Four underlying interventions & arguments ...................................................................................... 5
IV. Chapters’ overview ...................................................................................................................................... 11
V. A note on sources & the limits of writing a legal & labour history of the Middle East .... 16
Chapter 1: The Semi-Colonial Uses of Positivist Duality in Law or How Law
Underdeveloped Iraq .......................................................................................................... 18
I. Introduction ...................................................................................................................................................... 18
II. The ‘invention’ of the customary law of the tribes of Iraq .......................................................... 19
III. The Tribal Criminal & Civil Disputes Regulation: its origins, juridical characteristics &
wide implications ............................................................................................................................................... 24
IV. The positivist ‘duality’ of law in Iraq & its limitations ................................................................. 31
V. Land tenure, property & the origins of capitalist relation in Iraq ............................................ 35
VI. How law underdeveloped Iraq: the necessity of law in the history of semi-colonialism
.................................................................................................................................................................................... 47
VII. Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................................... 50
Chapter 2: A Brief History of the 1936 Labour Law & The Formative Years of
the Early Iraqi Working-Class Movement .................................................................... 51
I. Introduction ...................................................................................................................................................... 51
II. The formative years of the Iraqi working class movement ........................................................ 52
III. The Railway Strike of 1930: the workers’ ‘school of struggle’ ................................................. 56
IV. The General Strike of 1931: the entry of the working class into the political arena ...... 59
V. The appropriation of legality by the working class: the Labour Law of 1936 & its
significance ............................................................................................................................................................ 64
VI. Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................... 72
Chapter 3: The Making of Semi-peripheral Sovereignty in International law – A
Doctrine of Independence for the Exploitation of Iraqi Oil .................................... 75
I. Introduction ...................................................................................................................................................... 75
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II. The principles behind the Mandate system under international law and the significance
of the ‘A’ Mandates ............................................................................................................................................. 76
III. The concept of the ‘semi-periphery’ & its significance to international law ...................... 82
IV. Iraq as ‘model mandate’: the instrument of the treaty and its uses in international law
.................................................................................................................................................................................... 85
V. The manufacturing of Iraqi independence & the obfuscation of the economic
dimensions of semi-peripheral sovereignty ........................................................................................... 93
VI. The principle of economic equality, the ‘open door’ or the freedom of capitalist
accumulation under international law ................................................................................................... 102
VII. The independence of oil pipelines: semi-peripheral sovereignty in relation to oil
concessions in the Middle East .................................................................................................................. 104
VIII. Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................. 113
Chapter 4: The Oil Workers’ Struggle Against the Legal Spatiality of
Imperialism in the Iraqi Oil Frontier ........................................................................... 115
I. Introduction ................................................................................................................................................... 115
II. Urban migration & the labour question in post-war Iraq ......................................................... 116
III. Everyday life in an oil company & the miserable conditions of the Iraqi oil worker .. 118
IV. The Gāwūrbāghī strike & the limits of Iraqi law in penetrating imperial spatiality .... 125
V. A critique of a company narrative & a semi-colonial ideology of trade unionism ......... 132
VI. Law & Space in the Iraqi Oil Frontier: the pipelines of law in a desert space ................. 139
VII. Pressure Points of Oil Imperialism & Capitalism; or how to use space to sabotage law
................................................................................................................................................................................. 143
VIII. Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................. 147
Chapter 5: The Railway & Port Workers’ Struggle Against the Semi-Colonial
Legality of the Iraqi State ................................................................................................. 148
I. Introduction ................................................................................................................................................... 148
II. The Iraq State Railways as imperial arteries of communications ......................................... 149
III. The legal structures that govern the institutions of the Railway Directorate ................ 151
IV. The first communist ‘experiment’ in strike action at Schālchīyyāh & its significance 153
V. ‘To Balsara’s Haven’: The struggle of the Port workers of Basra & their victory ........... 162
VI. Seeing like an expert: trade unionism as subversion & reform as counter-revolution
................................................................................................................................................................................. 169
VII. Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................. 177
Chapter 6: The ‘Magical Weapon’ of Permanent Emergency – A Technique in
the Semi-Colonial Governance of Iraq ......................................................................... 178
I. Introduction ................................................................................................................................................... 178
II. The uses of the criminal law by the Iraqi state & the criminalization of progressive
thought and action .......................................................................................................................................... 179
III. The Magical Weapon of Emergency as a Technique of Governance ................................... 185
A. The origins & uses of martial law: tracing the history of the doctrine of emergency
............................................................................................................................................................................. 187
B. The normalization of emergency rule in Iraq ............................................................................ 190
C. The Intifāda of November 1952: the introduction of emergency as a governing
technique ........................................................................................................................................................ 193
D. The Rule of Semi-Colonial Law: Hussein Jamīl & the ‘legal aporia’ of emergency ..... 197
IV. Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................... 203
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Chapter 7: The Defeat of the ‘Covenant of the Slave’: al-Wathba as an Anti-
Colonial Conjuncture Against International Law .................................................... 204
I. Introduction ................................................................................................................................................... 204
II. The limitations of the study of revolutionary agency in TWAIL analysis .......................... 205
III. The British Empire’s ‘New Clothes of Treaties and Pacts’ ...................................................... 209
IV. The making of the 1948 Portsmouth Treaty & its implications ........................................... 210
V. The ‘Wathba of the people’ takes form .............................................................................................. 212
VI. The British Assessment of the Wathba & the ‘logic of the resisting people’ ................... 220
VII. The Wathba from the lens of the labour movement ................................................................ 222
VIII. The wide implications of the Wathba & its contribution to the conjuncture of
decolonization in international law ......................................................................................................... 224
IX. The significance of labour & working-class agency to the conjuncture of decolonization
................................................................................................................................................................................. 229
X. Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................................... 232
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 234
I. The lines of expansion & contraction of the international legal order ................................. 234
II. The juridical forms of sovereignty in international law & their relation to capitalism
and imperialism ................................................................................................................................................ 237
III. Legality as a question of strategy and tactics in revolutionary struggles ........................ 239
IV. Conjunctural analysis & the writing of history for the present ............................................ 241
Bibliography ......................................................................................................................... 246

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List of Figures

Figure 1: Iraq (Political) map, 2009. Perry-Castaneda Library Map Collection
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/iraq.html ........................................................................................................ xii
Figure 2: MPK1-426 Sykes Picot Agreement Map signed 8 May 1916 by Royal Geographical Society:
UK. .......................................................................................................................................................................................... xiii
Figure 3: Map of Baghdad showing the railway workshops in the Schalchiyyah neighborhood. (Naval
Intelligence Division, Handbook, supra, ft. 665, at 511). .............................................................................. 154
Figure 4: Batatu's map showing the location of the Battle of the Bridge. (Batatu, the Old Social Classes,
at 556). ................................................................................................................................................................................ 218

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