Winston's Folly: How Winston Churchill's Creation of Modern Iraq led to Saddam Hussein

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As Colonial Secretary in the 1920s Winston Churchill made a decision regarding the Middle East that was to have calamitous consequences. Scholar and strategic policy consultant, Christopher Catherwood discusses how Churchill created an artificial monarchy of Iraq after the First World War, forcing three radically different peoples to combine under a single ruler. Today's map of the Middle East, the rise of Saddam Hussein and Gulf Wars of 1991 and 2003 are the unwitting legacy of a conference led by Churchill in Cairo in 1921. Inducing Arabs under the rule of the Ottoman Turks to rebel against their oppressors - abetted by T. E. Lawrence - the British and French during the First World War convinced the Hashemite clan that they would rule over Syria. In fact, Britain had already promised the territory to the French. Partly to make amends and partly for pragmatic economic reasons, Churchill created a single nation state, Iraq, and made the Hashemite leader Feisel king of a land with which he had no connection. Catherwood dissects Churchill's decision - the results of which continue to cause terrible grief to Iraq's indigenous peoples and anxiety to the rest of the world.

Author Bio

Christopher Catherwood, as constultant to the Blair cabinet's Strategy Unit, worked in the Admiralty building where Churchill was based (1939-40) as First Lord of the Admiralty. He teaches history at the universities of Cambridge and Richmond (Virginia), where he is annual Writer in Residence. His books include Why the Nations Rage: Killing in the Name of God, Britain's Balkan Dilemma in World War II and Christians, Muslims and Islamic Rage.