An extremely rare official report by Iraq Command (1922-1941), which was established to control Iraq from the air during the British Mandate. In covering the period from October 1922 to April 1924, it provides an overview of the post-WWI situation in Iraq and the early operations of the command. Such material is significant for its insight into how Britain implemented a “policing from the air” strategy in the interwar years, a development that has continued to shape the course of modern warfare and imperialism.
The decision to implement the policy in Iraq was taken by Winston Churchill, then Secretary of State for Air, as a reaction to the Great Iraqi Revolution of 1920. By 1922, Iraq Command held sole responsibility for operations, acting on several fronts: against the original uprising around Baghdad; countering Sheikh Mahmud Barzanji’s insurgency among the Kurds; and attacking the bands of Ikhwan raiders that made skirmishes into Iraq from Najd. The report covers all those actions (with accompanying maps of the territory) and reflects more generally on the use of air power.
Extremely rare. We locate just one copy in LibraryHub and OCLC, at the British Library.
Provenance: 1). Peter Hopkirk (1930-2014). Hopkirk was arguably the leading British authority on Central Asia in his lifetime, covering the region as a journalist and author. In addition to writing seminal works, such as The Great Game (1990), he was an avid book collector: “He had a huge collection of books … which filled his house in Fulham, west London, to the extent that his wife feared it might sink.” (Obituary, The Times). 2). Francis E.B. Witts (b.1941). Witts attended MECAS and spent much of his career in the Middle East, primarily at Morgan Grenfell, the merchant bank, with posts in Beirut, Cairo and Istanbul.
