← Duologue with Leslie Heaney
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- [00:00]
A
All right, so we have so much to talk about, thousands of years of history in Iraq. And I'm just so grateful to you for taking the time to talk to me about this very important and very interesting subject and such an incredibly important part of the world. So I thought, you know, I'd start by just asking you the question. You know, we fought two wars in Iraq, give or take the past 30 years or so. Why is this region so important? Why has it always had such significance in history? I know that's a very broad question.
- [00:39]
B
It's a great question to start with. It's been probably the key crossroads since the very beginning of human history. And, of course, also so much was born there. So much started there with the invention of writing. The very first cities in the world and ancient Sumer, some of us will remember from grade school. They invent, I mean, just about everything that makes the modern world recognizable, from the wheel to coming up with the 12 signs of the zodiac or the way we count our seconds and hours, the very first kings, the very first organized warfare. All sorts of stuff is born there. And none of that really explains what might have happened 20 years ago. But the place has been unusually central to human development and human life, and a huge crossroads and meeting point and place of conflict between civilizations for thousands and thousands of years. It's in many ways the place where east meets. The Romans fought the Persians, largely in Mesopotamia, Iraq, for 700 years. The Ottomans fought the Persians there for three centuries and so on. So regardless of the direct causes of recent conflicts there, it has been far more than anywhere in the world, this meeting place, but also place of conflict between civilizations.
- [02:21]
A
Yeah, the sort of. The tension. Right. Of east versus West. It was interesting to me in reading it, and I admittedly have not gotten through all of the book, but it is such a fascinating and incredible story. And I loved. You mentioned Mesopotamia, being reminded about Mesopotamia and Babylon and those things that we sort of, you know, you mentioned grammar school was all kind of coming back to me in waves. But, you know, you first became interested in. In this history and really taking a look back, a deep look back at the history of this area because of your own experience living there as a reporter. Will you talk about that? And this is like we're in the early aughts, right, where you're there in Iraq when so much conflict was happening there at the time.
- [03:02]
B
So the American invasion of Iraq is in the spring of 2003, and it's about a year later, March, April of 2004, that the violence that becomes known as the insurgency really begins 2004. So that's when I started going there. And I spent years there working for newspapers, magazines, and always as a freelancer. So I didn't have all the resources that you have working for a big news organization, the TV channels, or the, you know, or staff positions at the major newspapers or magazines. And so I was on my own as a freelancer.
- [03:41]
A
Yeah, because Bartle, you probably like, you know, if you're working for NBC or abc, you have, I'm assuming you have advanced people, you probably have some sort of security information. Did you just buy like a one way ticket to Baghdad? I mean, what is that? What does that process look like? I mean, kind of the logistics of it. And what's your first stop?
- [04:02]
B
Yeah, and in my case, at the very beginning, I didn't know anything about this part of the world, but I'd secured an assignment from the great Lewis Lapham at Harper's to go and write about the Kurds. The Kurds live in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey. And I was writing about them all about the Kurds in all four of these countries. But in northern Iraq, I found myself there researching this piece on the Kurds. It was a year after the invasion, the insurgency was just getting going and. And I'm in northern Iraq writing about the Kurds. And I just couldn't not go down to Baghdad where the action was. And so the logistics, I mean, in that case, I took a taxi. I took. Rented a driver and a little car and drove south from Kurdistan into Baghdad, just as all this violence was starting to. And the world of journalism is extremely entrepreneurial. You know, it's kind of. It rewards hustle finding. I'd spent most of my career up to that point in business, and I didn't think of journalism this way. But I quickly learned that very much of that business is about hustle, is about a kind of entrepreneurial approach. Right. Getting yourself out there looking for these opportunities and so on.
- [05:26]
A
I mean, even just renting a car, there's no Avis, there's no Hertz. Right. You find yourself a driver somehow. Was your driver also your transit? Like, how did you.
- [05:34]
B
Yeah, frequently. Frequently. So in this case, I found my. The only safe place in Baghdad was a hotel used by, at least for me, hotel used by the Kurds. Hanging around in the bar of this hotel that was used by mostly Kurdish generals who had to go down to Baghdad for one reason or another. Hanging around there in the lobby, I found a little story that I was able to sell to The New York Times that appeared on the op ed page of the New York Times. And the Iraq story was immense at the time. So to get one of those stories is a big deal. The Financial Times in London saw that story and they called me up and all of a sudden I was kind of, you know, people were getting in touch with me and I was becoming an expert and I was getting a lot of this work. And the logistics, the physicality of the freelancer's life is very much like that. You know, you find little opportunity, you take a risk that you can trust a driver not to sell you to the terrorists. You find your way somewhere. You meet someone in a lobby or, or the coffee shop of a hotel, find a story, pitch it to someone. If you're lucky, it gets picked up, someone else reads it in another capital thousands of miles away, calls you up and offers you another opportunity.
- [06:46]
A
Do you have press credentials while you're doing this, or is this. I mean, I just. My only reference, and I think probably for some listeners is the movies are like, you know, Carrie Matheson in Homeland. I'm like, did you. I mean, you're not exactly, you know, you're. Don't necessarily physically blend in with the, with the group there. So you probably stood out a bit right in the bar.
- [07:06]
B
Yes, one does. And it was, you know, this was, I believe, the most lethal war in the history of journalism for journalists. And a lot of it was very, very, very scary. And yeah, you could have press credentials and I did. I had a letter from. Initially, you know, but none of that really, really mattered. But at the same time, being a freelancer, I was so much more free than the people working for the big news organizations. They had to stay in certain hotels, they had to travel with their security. Everything that they did had to be vetted first. And of course, I'm not even sure they were actually any safer because they were so much more visible. Traveling and working the way I did, I was able to really sort of be undercover, except as you point out, Leslie, for the way I look. I mean, I just don't look from that part of the world, but I was at least able to be really flexible. But people used to really flexible and keep a very low profile. And I think one was actually probably safer that way than with all the security. And of course, you know, and then the bad guys would know what hotels all those people stayed at, those would get blown up. It was probably an advantage, although I would say more scary to be, to be low key and on one's Own. And in terms of getting a story, you know, one just has so much lower of a profile. It's easier to get out there. But it was.
- [08:27]
A
Well, I also was reading, though, that you, you know, besides staying at, you know, hotels, you were staying in people's homes.
- [08:35]
B
Yeah, very much so. Very much so. And much of that then leads to this book. You know, you cannot survive years of being a freelancer in a place like that, at a time like that, without a fair amount of luck, I think, but far more importantly without. You really can't survive that experience without the courage and the hospitality of the people who you're moving amongst and staying with and so on. And this was a time when it was just as dangerous for any family you stayed with as it was for yourself. I mean, this was absolutely vicious.
- [09:08]
A
Do you mean dangerous for them to be allowing you, a Westerner, stay in their home?
- [09:13]
B
Yes, exactly. If, you know, if the bad guys, so to speak, found out, it was just as. Just as lethal for all these families as it was as it was for the journalists who were doing this stuff. And so what it meant for me was that I think I got to see the country a little more deeply than a lot of people in that business, but also that I came away with this extraordinary debt that I owed. These were, for me, really productive years. They went very well in terms of work. They were fascinating, incredibly rewarding, and I wouldn't have been able to do any of it without a huge amount of courage and from countless people that I was living with and moving amongst in Iraq. And so that debt that I ended up feeling towards the place, truly I owed my life to these people. It was a really important part. And then sitting down to work on this book, that took me well over a decade to write, but that was, you know, that was 10, 15 years of paying.
- [10:22]
A
A profound debt after having these deep relationships with people in that area. You obviously came to have a very deep understanding of the area, the history of the area and the people that live there. And you thought, I really want to tell this story about this extraordinary part of the world and its importance and its historical importance to the broader. To the broader world. Is that sort of what you kind of. That's when you made that decision. And then this is a history of this area that spans thousands of years. So what is the writing process for someone tackling this subject like such an enormous subject? And how did you decide what periods of time you were going to cover? I know the book takes you up to 1958, but it goes back 5,000 years.
- [11:14]
B
Yes. One question embedded in all of that is, where do you start? Where do you end?
- [11:22]
A
How do you decide where you wanna start?
- [11:25]
B
Yeah, sure. So we begin this story about 5,000 years ago, as you say, Leslie. And it's really roughly then that we date the beginning of civilization itself. The development of writing allows people to be organized enough to live in cities. And, of course, that is what civilization ultimately means. And so for me, that's a starting point, and one could easily start earlier than that. But just as important is, where do we end? And I choose to end this in 1958, when the last royal family of Iraq is murdered in the garden of a palace in Baghdad. So we end in 1958. We don't take it all the way up to more recent times. And that's very, very intentional because I think we all have. It was such a big story at the time, the Iraq war, that we all have opinions about it. And I just didn't want to infect the rest of the book with the reader's response to my own views on it or the way that I wrote it. You know, I didn't want the experience of reading this book to be tainted by having an opinion about or what the author had to say about something that I, the reader, have a strong opinion.
- [12:39]
A
Right.
- [12:40]
B
So I just wanted to kind of insulate it from all this, these recent emotions and opinions. And, of course, also in a case like Iraq, where the place is so very ancient and you're telling a story of thousands of years, what does, you know, the last 20 or 30 years even mean?
- [12:55]
A
Anyway, you're trying to sort of set the table for the conflicts that exist even up till up to today, right? In that region, at that place. But to me, and I know you mentioned it, it took 15 years or 10 years to write, or maybe even 15 years. I mean, it was. It was a while, right? Because it was. It was such an extensive undertaking. And you did the amount of research that you did and research that you did using original texts. And I know that you went to libraries in Tehran and Damascus, which is Syria. So you're sort of outside, I guess you're looking at what were the. Those ancient borders, right? Those ancient areas. I mean, what is that? Like, you know, I was away with my husband Andrew, who, you know, well, this weekend, and I told him I was talking with you today. He's like. And he said, how do you get a library card in Tehran? I'm like, that's a great question. I'm going to Ask Bartol how you. But, you know, that whole process in.
- [13:49]
B
Tehran, there happens to be a wonderful library at the British Embassy. And the library that's probably certainly a collection that's been there for well over a century, and it's a wonderful library. So that was my little secret in Tehran. But elsewhere, there's still. In these ancient cities of the Middle east, there are streets dedicated to booksellers and so on. But this question of original research is a really interesting one, too. Every page that I write in this book, and sometimes every paragraph, and without question, frequently even a single sentence can be about something that whole bookshelves or even rooms of books have been written about, right? And any paragraph in this book of mine, just about any paragraph, there are many, many, many books have been written. And so much of your writing in a project like this is going to be standing on the shoulders of giants who've come before you and other historians. But at the same time, I think it's really important to try to be original and to use original sources as much as possible which exist, and especially in translation. So I don't need to learn how to translate cuneiform, right? You know, the Babylonian tongue and the cuneiform script. You know, thousands of pages of this material has been translated. And another great source of original sources is diaries and memoirs from people in later centuries. And so I encountered a bunch of great characters who I'd never really known very much about. And I tried to tell as much of the book through individual stories. So, you know, an early chapter about Gilgamesh, a late chapter about king Faisal the First, who in the 20s and 30s was the first king of Iraq after the First World War, and quite a few other of these individuals whose story I use to then tell that part of the history that I'm. I'm telling. So trying to use original sources where as much as I can, which is a lot, and to make it compelling and readable, telling narrative stories of these. Of these individuals.
- [16:06]
A
I should mention that I don't know if you remember you ever had in school is the Norton Anthologies, right? It was like the Norton anthologies. I think it was Norton of like, Art history. Right. It was like a survey book. And of course, and it would kind of take you through chronologically what happened from each period. But your book and the way you approach it is. It's such an engaging approach because you really tell it through people and through characters. Right. And that was a conscious decision, right, on your part to tell it that way?
- [16:38]
B
Yes, I just think it's partly more fun, Leslie.
- [16:41]
A
Right.
- [16:41]
B
It's more compelling and a narrative. An individual, yes, but also an individual going through some narrative challenge. Some of these people are very obvious. Alexander the Great, he dies at Babylon. We all remember how important it was to him to sort of adopt the ways of the Persian Empire as he tries to make his new empire, most of which is the Persian Empire he's conquered. But a familiar story, but many of us have forgotten that he died in Babylon and that it was at Babylon that he intended to have the capital of this new fusion of east and west that he set out to create. So that's Alexander the Great, of course, a well known figure, but many of us have forgotten this importance of Mesopotamia to him. Abraham Gilgamesh, Suleiman the Magnificent. Pretty well known characters, but often we find some very obscure ones who are really exciting, I discovered. And many of them are themselves great writers and so they become fun and compelling companions as we tell this piece of history. So in the middle 1500s, there's a, there's a Flemish ambassador from the Austrian emperor, ambassador to Constantinople, to Istanbul. And at the time of Suleiman the Magnificent, who's threatening all of Europe and coming up to the gates of Vienna with his, with his immense armies. And the Europeans are terrified of this. And so they sent this ambassador. He ends up being one called Ogier de Bourzbec. And he ends up being a wonderful writer and leaving the most amazing account of his time in the East. I think we end up reading the stories of individuals like that, almost like they were travel companions, compelling, witty, observant individuals who are also living through some personal challenge or narrative. So we have quite a few of these lesser known individuals who are wonderful discoveries.
- [18:46]
A
Well, I, you know, you mentioned Suleiman the Magnificent, by the way. I love these, you know, it's sort of like their street names or whatever. Right. You know, Alexander the Great, I don't know who gave them the other parts of their names, but obviously it captures the impact that they were having at the time. But when you just listed off some of those characters, you mentioned Gilgamesh as a name again. I remember from this is sort of was a flashback of elementary school history. Gilgamesh, remind me, he was very, very important figure and why should he matter to us now?
- [19:21]
B
We all have a sense that we're all familiar with that name. But who on earth was Gilgamesh? So that's how I had that feeling very much as I embarked on my chapter about him. So this is who he was. We know him because he was the hero, the eponymous hero, since we name it after him, of the first great epic ever written down, the first epic story. And there was so many versions of his story, and he was that over 1000 or even 2000 years of ancient Sumerian and Babylonian culture. And he appears in endless stories. Quite a few of these old stories have been discovered in cuneiform, buried in ancient palaces and found in archaeological digs in Iraq. And so we've kind of pieced together the Gilgamesh Epic from all these different sources, the very first narrative epic. He is almost certainly an historical figure, at least in my opinion, from about the year 2700 BC. And he's in the stories. And if he did exist historically, it would be the same. He was a king of the city of Uruk, which is where writing is born, about 3,000 years ago. And he's a king of Uruk a couple of few centuries after that. And he sets off on a great quest and that's the beginning of this epic story. But it's very interesting to think that he may actually have been a historical figure.
- [21:07]
A
Well, I think you're looking at these 5,000 years, right? And until about 500 years ago. So for the first 4,500 of those 5,000 years, this area of the world was kind of the focal point of history. History that I guess, you know, depending on how you look at it, you know, Eastern history, Western history, but that was really kind of where all the action was happening.
- [21:31]
B
We make or repeat the claim. I think it's accurate that if you divide up the history of the world into 500 year segments for the last 5,000 years, so 10 of those, I think for nine out of 10 of those, the biggest city in the world was in Iraq, whether it was Uruk. So this Uruk that Gilgamesh was a king of, where writing certainly was invented, certainly the first writing found is from there. This is a place that had a population of 80,000 people in roughly 2000 B.C. 4,000 years ago, they had 80,000 people living there at a time when there was almost no other city in the world. And then through Iraq's long history, we got all these other cities. We get Babylon for centuries and centuries, the leading city of the world. Much later, Baghdad is for centuries the location of the Caliphate and the greatest city on Earth and so on, and quite a few others. So for most of each of those 500 year chunks, nine out of 10 of them, you can make the argument that the biggest city on earth was in Iraq. This is where we started, Leslie, this discussion just how extraordinarily central and fundamental this place is.
- [22:56]
A
The title of your book is the Land between Two Rivers. And I think it was the Treaty of Versailles, right, where what we know as modern day Iraq was actually. The borders were actually created. But before then, obviously there were all different kinds of tribes and groups living there and different borders. How would you say sort of that event, the Treaty of Versailles, in creating those borders, kind of shaped or changed that part of the world.
- [23:23]
B
It's a fantastic question, Leslie. And you mentioned the name of the book, Land between the Rivers. The rivers, of course, are the Tigris and Euphrates. And the Greeks gave it the Greek name Mesopotamia. The rather like Persia is a Greek name for Iran. The Greek name for Iraq was Mesopotamia. Iraq itself was a very ancient name for this part of the world and for example, for centuries under the Ottoman Empire.
- [23:57]
A
Bart, I have a question. Sorry to interrupt you. So if Mesopotamia is a Greek name, is Iraq a Arab name or a.
- [24:08]
B
Arab language or even pre Arab? One theory is that it comes from Uruk, the city. And after Uruk, there were many other Sumerian cities that superseded Uruk and so on. But it was very fundamental. The city Uruk then in Arab. In the time the Arab invasion of this part of the world is in the seventh century A.D. and by then already names very similar to Iraq are being used for this flood plain of the Tigris and Euphrates river that the Greeks called Mesopotamia. So the name Iraq is ancient. Ancient, ancient long predates Europeans in the 20th century. And it always referred to a place that also had a name among the Greeks, which was Mesopotamia and the Ottomans, who lasted. The Ottoman Empire lasted for so long over such a huge part of the Middle east and with so many countless different nationalities and religions inside that Ottoman Empire. So the Ottoman Empire is often held out as a kind of marvel of how to make things work and last in this difficult part of the world. The Ottomans for Iraq was divided into three provinces in the south and the center and the north that completely, perfectly correspond to the three parts of Iraq that we know today. If we recall the days back when Iraq was in the news all the time, you had the south, the Shia south, and the center around Baghdad, and the Kurds in the north. You. You probably remember all of that. That corresponds perfectly to the three Ottoman provinces of Iraq that for centuries were kind of loosely overseen by Baghdad and then ultimately reporting to the Ottoman capital at Constantinople. So that's an example of how this area, this flood plain between the two rivers with the Kurdish foothills in the north has immemorially been something of a unit. But what happens after the First World War? Your question about the Treaty of Versailles is that the Ottomans, who've been there for centuries, are now gone. And what does the world do with all these former Ottoman lands? I mean, places like Egypt and Libya, they were all ancient places. They were their own provinces even under the Roman Empire. So these are ancient places. But the idea of national borders had.
- [26:40]
A
Never existed because you had kingdoms. Is that the. Because they were kingdoms there?
- [26:44]
B
Well, they were all. They were. Most of it was under this Ottoman Empire, you know, for many, many centuries. So the idea of the Westphalian European style nation state just hadn't existed, was foreign to the this part of the world. But what are you going to do in 1919, 1920 in the wreckage of this Ottoman Empire? What we're trying to answer now, Leslie, is this question about these lines in the sand. Right, right. Are these nations the kind of false creation of arrogant and cavalier European imperialists in the years after World War I? This is the great truism that most of us hear.
- [27:26]
A
But picture is that the case, though.
- [27:29]
B
I think it's wrong and I think trying to correct that is a big part of that part of this book. Again, picture the world in 1919, 1920. The empire, the Ottomans that had sat on top of these places for 500 years is gone and can't be replaced. So what are we going to replace it with? Some form of local sovereign states? And so those borders have to be drawn. Then the question is, were they drawn badly? Were they drawn ignorantly by these arrogant imperialists like we're told? And the fact is that most of the countries that have most, not all that emerged follow pretty ancient borders. So to come back to Iraq, our example, and this was a big part of all the discussions during the American War, there was, is this just a fake country? That's, you know, that's where this conversation gets us to. Right. Is this a real place? And are these, or are these borders just fake? And the place is not tenable and doesn't mean anything. And so we argue in this book that the place is far from being a recent creation. It's just about the oldest and most fundamental, if not sovereign entity in a modern way. It's a place. It's very much a place.
- [28:51]
A
But part of the tension of that region has to do with conflicts between different tribes. Like we mentioned the Shias and the Sunnis and I think the Kurds also. That are in Iraq. And I think you mentioned sort of this kind of what we've been told about. Maybe it's, you know, the borders weren't. Weren't drawn correctly or, you know, the sort of. The west was insensitive to those tribes. But you're saying that in fact, those borders that are there were borders not in all cases, but in some cases that had been there, you know, for centuries, meaning they were just sort of natural lines were different that had sort of, kind of been developed into provinces or kingdoms under the Ottoman Empire or others.
- [29:37]
B
Yeah, that's a very, very important argument that this book makes, is that Iraq is a real place and that its current borders that were drawn up in 1920 reflect almost as perfectly as they could be expected to something that is very, very ancient and very real. Maybe the most ancient and real fact in all of political life around the world is this place that said inside it cohabit lots of groups, as you say, who are very different and as you didn't say, but it follows, who are frequently at war with each other. And just because there's conflict doesn't mean that something's wrong frequently. I mean, it's just in the nature of life. And I think it's in the nature of life in that part of the world since the beginning of history. So we do have a place where the various groups cohabit so ethnically as opposed to religiously, but ethnically, Iraq has its Kurds in the north, and then the rest of the country is largely Arab, but there are many, many ancient other minorities. And then the big religious fault lines, and there are tons of religious minorities we won't even mention here because we don't have time, but that are fascinating. But, you know, broadly, Iraq is home to this schism in Islam between the Sunnis and the Shias. That schism was born in Iraq and the country today, as it has ever since the schism was born in the year 680ad. You have these groups that are really theologically at war with each other, cohabiting in this piece of geography. But that doesn't mean that the piece of geography doesn't have its own ancient reality. Politically, what is the.
- [31:20]
A
So just for us laypeople just to kind of give an overview of those tensions or of the dynamics between these groups. And I can't recall if it's the Shia or the Sunnis, but, you know, one is sort of traditionally been kind of in power, right, in government power, am I right about that? And one not. And then the Kurds have been persecuted a bit. Would that be fair to say? And will you just talk a little bit about that so people can understand the dynamic of the area?
- [31:50]
B
Such important questions. And that's another reason that I set out to write this book. I mentioned earlier another reason. But, you know, I noticed after years and years working in Iraq that we consumers of, in theory, of quality journalism and media have spent years now following this part of the world. And if you asked any of our friends who reads the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the Economist and the London papers, what is the difference between a Sunni and a Shia, or what's the difference between the Kurds and the Arabs and the Persians, none of us would know. I mean, we've been so ill served by what we've read and consumed. These basics that explain most of the news that we're reading about that part of the world, that these basics still haven't been explained to us. So it's great that you ask. The Sunni Shia split is very, very complicated. But I think it comes down to one basic thing. To answer your question, the Shias everywhere except for Iran, where they rule, have largely been the ones excluded from power. And so it's a big part of Shia theology that earthly power, political power, is illegitimate because their messiah figure has not yet returned to the world and everything will. All earthly rule will be illegitimate until he returns. So that's the Shia outlook and in that sense, the outsider, because they had lost the succession struggle. After the Prophet Muhammad dies in 632, Muhammad dies intestate, like Alexander the Great. He dies without a will. And so there are huge wars that follow. And in those wars, the Shia side is the losing side. And that might explain why, in their theology, earthly power is corrupt and illegitimate until their Messiah comes back.
- [33:50]
A
I see, but.
- [33:51]
B
So that's one theory of it, and it's completely true. Okay, this, we're talking about, the Sunni Shia difference. It starts off as just a succession struggle among a bunch of a small group of people who know each other very well. But there are serious theological differences as well. And they come from this Sunni Islam. Mainstream Islam is born in the Arabian Peninsula. It explodes out of the Arabian Peninsula in a series of incredibly successful invasions. And it spreads through conquest, without question, proudly. So it spreads through conquest, and the two great places it conquers are the Byzantine Empire and the ancient Persian Empire. And when Sunni Islam conquers the Persian Empire, the Persians are infinitely more numerous. Their culture is far older and deeper than the desert culture of the seventh century that gives birth to Sunni Islam. So when Sunni Islam invades Persia, the great ancient Persian Empire, I think it's inevitable that Persian ideas won't be entirely colonized by these less numerous, less sophisticated Arabs. And so there's an idea of a Persian religious idea that expresses itself within Islam. And that is. And theologically, that's where Shiism comes from. So Shiism comes from two parts. You know, they lose the succession struggle, just a political thing. But also the ancient religious ideas of Persia are very different from the religious ideas of the Arabs who successfully conquered the Persians. And so I think it's inevitable that Persian religious ideas assert themselves, and they do that in Shiism. So, yes, it starts as a political dispute among some insiders in a small part of the world. But there are very big differences as well that come from the idea that Shiism is essentially the ancient Persian religious outlook.
- [36:10]
A
Are the Kurds there? They're just another tribe.
- [36:15]
B
Yeah, so the Kurds, so Sunni, Shia, it's a religious split. And then in Iraq, the main ethnic split is between Arabs and Kurds. And then of course, over the border to the east are the Persians. So the Kurds are. Some Kurds are Sunni, some Kurds are Shia. But ethnically, which most academics would define as a matter of language, the Kurds are the world's largest stateless nation. They exist in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, but they don't have their own nation. Iran is the land of the Persians, whose blood and cultural heritage and language are completely different from that of the Arabs. And then of course, there are the Turks. And each of these, Arab, Turk, Persian, Kurdish, and other, smallest one. Each of these is its own ethnicity, its own language and history and blood. And then you have laid over that all the religious differences.
- [37:21]
A
So your book ends with the slaughter of the last royal family in 1958. Is the royal family. I'm assuming they're Sunni, based on what we just talked about. What was that about? Who was there? Just sort of. Was it a military coup kind of uprising? Was it like a French Revolution type thing that coming from the people, what was the. What was the impetus for that? And then what was the outcome of that? I mean, how did that then, you know, how do we now get to modern day Iraq out of that, that event? A lot of questions in that, Bartle. I like to throw a lot of questions that you want.
- [37:56]
B
It's great. And you make it also such a pleasure to discuss. Leslie. Thank you. It happens in 1958 on July 14th. So your raising of the French Revolution is very apt. July 14th, 1958. And this revolution in Iraq against the royal family is essentially a colonel's coup. It's a coup led by a thuggish group of mid level army officers. And it leads us to the world of Saddam Hussein joins this group. He himself as a very young man joins this group a little later as a kind of thuggish enforcer type. And we have a very civilized period In Iraq from 1920, 21, right after World War I until 1958, a very hopeful period under this monarchy. But their roots just aren't strong enough to withstand that brutal 20th century of, of what I call these twin collectivisms of national socialism and international socialism. Nazi sympathies among much of the Iraqi army during World War II, communism, a major force in the country rising the 40s and 50s. And this kind of delicate civilized plant of the monarchy just doesn't have the deep roots to survived that brutal 20th century.
- [39:36]
A
So you mentioned after World War I, King Fossil comes to power, right. Was he an installed monarch, A Western installed monarch, and then it was his line that, that continued that. So when you say they didn't have deep roots, it's kind of because.
- [39:50]
B
Great question. So again, Picture the World 1918, 1919. The Ottomans after centuries are gone and now what do we do? The Western powers, in Iraq's case, the one that's given the mandate, Great Britain, are exhausted by World War I, of course, as are the French in nearby Syria. The League of Nations gives these countries what are called mandates with a capital M. And so London is the mandatory, the mandate power for Iraq, very reluctantly. Churchill, who's a key player at the time in the 1920s as these countries are being built, is constantly speaking in Parliament and writing about how the Iraq entanglement is the last thing that the British want. We all know how exhausted those European powers are right after World War I. Anyway, they have these mandates and the mandate is to kind of operate and shepherd these countries towards the point where they can, and they use these words, stand on their own. So what are we going to do with Iraq? Well, what's worked for the British perfectly well for themselves is the constitutional monopoly monarchy. They try to set up a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Now you need a king. And that's your question, Leslie. And the theory is, and I understand it, that anyone from Iraq is going to be far too controversial with most Iraqis. He'll be from the wrong religion, he'll be from the wrong tribe, he'll be from the wrong ethnicity. A local Iraqi will inevitably be far too unpopular with Too many Iraqis. So let us find someone else. They find Faisal. He had great credibility in the Arab world in these years, right after World War I. He'd been the leader of the so called Arab Revolt, the rising of Arabs against the Ottomans During World War I, with T.E. lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, Faisal. He's the son of the Sharif of Mecca. Mecca, the holy city. The Sharifs of Mecca for a thousand years had been the hereditary rulers of Mecca. Incredible prestige from the family and incredible personal prestige of Faisal from this desert war that he'd led against the Turkish overlord. So he's a pretty good choice. He's also a good choice, it transpires, for other reasons. Very sophisticated, very intelligent. So he comes to Iraq. He's never, you know, he speaks with a different Arabic accent. He's probably barely even heard of Iraq. He's from Mecca and he arrives there for his very first visit, already having been chosen as the king. So you can imagine the challenges that he has in growing roots for his monarchy. And the place is almost impossible to rule.
- [42:49]
A
So how old is he? Is he, I mean, is he coming in?
- [42:52]
B
He's in his 30s now. At the beginning, I would say, you know, he's just, he's just been fighting the Turk, the hated Turkish overlord. He's a hero of that. He's son of the Sharif of Mecca and he's, he's welcomed. There's a very large Jewish community at the time, especially in Baghdad, many Christians, the Shias, Sunnis. He is by and large welcomed. And so the whole 20th century experiment starts quite hopefully.
- [43:21]
A
And was the parliament there, or their version, was that elected by the people or. I mean, is.
- [43:28]
B
Yeah, it's a very interesting thing. You know, how do you start with building a parliamentary or republican system? Should we call it democratic system through a republican or parliamentary shape, which of course, you know, the Americans we had to go through in 2003. 4, 5. Harvard Classmate of mine, Noah Feldman, was the main author of the new Iraqi constitution in 2004. He did a wonderful job. A brilliant man. But how do you start de novo, shall we call it democratic system? For example, somebody writes these rules. Well then who's going to write the rules for the referendum that approves them? Right. How are you going to have your first parliamentary elections if you don't have a parliament to write the rules? Fair rules for the election? It's very chicken and egg, extremely difficult. And it becomes, I think one of the answers is a sort of iterative thing where you have someone has to appoint representatives from major communities. They have to get together, set up something that becomes the first democratic step, maybe electing a new body. And then that body will write the interim constitution and then the country will vote on that. And so through kind of iterations, you can square that circle or figure out that chicken and egg dilemma. And so they do. They do. And soon enough it's in 1932 that the British are able to argue to the league of nations that Iraq is ready to stand on its own. And by then it's had many round of parliamentary elections, numerous parliamentary governments, and then of course, the head of state is the king. And it doesn't last long. Right. This is 1932. He's kind of, he's been on the throne since the mid-20s. And by 1958, the whole thing collapses.
- [45:25]
A
I never realized the significance of that region during world war I. There were so many Nazi spies in what is now Iraq. And there's a book that I read, I didn't finish, it's about this assassination attempt because there was a summit of. They got Stalin and FDR and Churchill all got together in Iran. It was, it was in Iran. Yes, but in that, that neck of the woods. But that all over. I mean, you just mentioned, you know, the Nazis there. And I didn't realize that the middle east was, you know, at play there, I guess, for supply lines and all that.
- [46:07]
B
Yeah, yeah. So I make the argument in the book that one of the great historical what might have been is what if Hitler instead of invading Russia had moved east out of north Africa into, into Iraq, he would have got all of its oil and so on. The Turks and Persians would have joined his side. And instead it was a tiny but very interesting. It's one of the forgotten theaters of World War II. There are quite a few, but one is in Iraq. The British have a tiny airfield. The pro British monarchy is overthrown by a mini coup backed by the Nazis. So Hitler's Germany is now, he's now running the show in Iraq. And the last little outpost standing in their way is this tiny British airfield where I spent quite a lot of time called Habaniyeh, I don't know, maybe 40 miles from Baghdad. And there's an amazing story, as these British training and convalescent airmen prevent and in one little obscure theory, save the world. If Hitler had got his hands on Iraq's oil, very much of what he needed in Russia, he wouldn't have needed. And case can be made that the whole outcome of the war was changed by this Heroic little.
- [47:34]
A
That's right. Because he.
- [47:36]
B
It's an incredible story.
- [47:37]
A
He would have had better. He would have had the resources that he needed. Right.
- [47:40]
B
He would have had all the oil that he needed.
- [47:42]
A
Right. Yeah. Because the proximity there to Russia.
- [47:46]
B
Yes. And then important powers that were waiting to see who was going to win, but were quite sympathetic to Hitler's side in that war. Turkey, Iran, important places may well probably would have joined his side and everything could have been very, very different. So that may have been the last time that Iraq was truly crucial in global events. But, so tell me.
- [48:12]
A
So you mentioned. So we have these kind of thugs that kill the royal family and sort of take over kind of like a military coup. And the Saddam Hussein that we all know is sort of maybe a young, you know, kind of hanging around that group and then became a part of that group. And then there's the, you know, the invasion of Kuwait. Right. We're in the early 90s. And then the most recent war in Iraq that we just have been talking about at the outset, where you were there. And then you also mentioned your friend, I think Noah Feldman is his name, you just said, who helped him write, I guess, their version of the Constitution. I mean, what is the state of Iraq today and is it stable? And are they allies? I mean, they're not allies in our traditional, you know, but where do they kind of sit?
- [49:05]
B
Where do they sit? First of all, the country itself has been quite the last real round of violence. There was the eruption of ISIS about 19, sorry, 2014, 15, and probably a decade ago now, which has now been dealt with and gets us to the steady state we're at currently, which is really that it is thoroughly politics in Iraq are thoroughly dominated by Iran. I'd say that there's been not only military, but diplomatic and economic as well, withdrawal almost completely by the US and that's left a vacuum where Iran, which will always play a huge role in Iraq. Just because Iran is important in Iraq doesn't mean that the place either shouldn't exist or that everyone's doing something wrong. You know, Iran is just a huge fact of life in Iraq. Always has been, always will be. But, you know, the Iraqis themselves are Arabs. They're not Persians. Right. The Iranians are Persians. So people in Iraq are different ethnicity, different language from Iranians. They don't want to be dominated by this power to the east. But without any serious counterweight, the essential heft of Iran is just greater. You know, it's a very much bigger.
- [50:31]
A
But do they have the same you know, it's funny how, and it could just be because I'm not following as closely as I should, but they don't. You know, Iran obviously has its, is very much, you know, has its position towards the United States, it has its position towards Israel. I don't know, kind of where Iraq fits. You mentioned that there's been a rise there, you know, or there was a spike of some ISIS activity there 10 years ago. You know, it's interesting, I kind of don't know where they, where they fit. Maybe they don't know where they, they fit either. And are they having elections now? I mean, has that government held or are they more conservative? Does Sharia law dominate Iraq the way it does Iran? What kind of.
- [51:16]
B
It's very much more free than Iran. I mean Iraq's had a, had quite successful, I think unique since the first elections in 2005, first post Saddam elections which were very, very successful.
- [51:30]
A
I remember right, there was record turnout.
- [51:32]
B
And I think record turnout, peaceful, the purple fingers, you'll remember. I mean, incredibly successful. That was 2005, 20 years ago. Since then there have been numerous successful elections. But every government of course is somewhat chaotic, corrupt, all sorts of problems, different factions controlled by Iran, this and that, Sunni, Shia disagreements, everything very, very messy. But much of that is just endemic to the neighborhood and doesn't mean again that some bigger conclusion of non viability should be drawn from it. But right now, you know, I think to a regrettable and unnecessary degree and to a degree that the Iraqi people would themselves not choose, the government's recent governments in Baghdad have been thoroughly dominated by Iran. And I think that's largely because of the vacuum of Syria's pushback from other directions. Which is too bad I think, because the potential in Iraq for a good friend to the west is excellent. Iraqis don't look over the border and want to be dominated by a Persian neighbor, speaks a different language, who they've been war with forever. Most Iraqis are Shias, Iran is Shia, but still Iraqis fought very hard for the Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein in his ten year war against Iran. The Iran Iraq war as bloody as any war of modern times, right? And the foot soldiers for the Sunni dictator in Iraq were the Shia poor of Iraq. And they fought very hard against the Shia Persian over the border. I think there will always be violence and other corruption and other other facts of life, but I think there's real potential in Iraq. Remember, these are people who throughout that insurgency never actually descended into civil war, into serious communitarian violence of Communities themselves fighting each other. They never did. Despite every provocation, despite how hellish life had been under Saddam for decades, one community against another. So I think the place shows incredible potential. And then the people showing up with such courage to, you know, election after election, generally electing or re electing, if the choice could be described in very crude terms. The pro Western tendency, you know, so Iraqis showing up to vote in huge numbers, time for a time, almost never electing. Should we just call it the bad guys? Right. They don't look across the border and want to be. Have anything to do with the. With the failing Iran of this evil mullah regime. They don't want it. Of course they don't. They want to be modern. So there's huge potential there. And I think it's regrettable to consign it forever to an Iranian regime that isn't even legitimate in Iran.
- [54:32]
A
Well, I think, Bartle, you. If your goal, your initial goal in setting out to do this was to pay back the debt to all of those that opened their homes to you while you were there, you have paid it back in spades. I mean, this is such an incredible book, as I said, because it is covering a lot of time. I have not finished it yet, but what I have read, I have just learned so much. And I think it's so important for all of us to have a really deeper understanding of the history of that area, which has such an important role in not only what's happening there today, but where our civilization stems. So thank you so much for writing it. Thank you for joining me. Sorry for our technical difficulties as we set out this morning, but I'm just so delighted to have the chance to talk to you about it. You and I could spend hours more getting. And then there's so much here we have to. I can't wait for the sequel. You gotta write the sequel from 1958 to today so we can cover that next.
- [55:34]
B
Can't wait. Leslie, thank you so much.