REVOLT IN IRAQ

Evening Star, Issue 22032, 18 May 1935, Page 15

REVOLT IN IRAQ

THE TROUBLE SPREADING Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright LONDON, May 17. The ‘ Daily Mail’s ’ Basra correspondent says the revolt has spread to the Nasiriya area, to which troops are being rushed by motor lorries from Basra and Bagdad. Special tribunals have been appointed to try the captured rebels. [A previous message stated; The 22 : yeiir-old King Ghazi has proclaimedS martial law in the area where some tribes revolted. He ordered Iraqui aeroplanes to bomb the rebel strongholds. Several chiefs have already surrendered, and their followers have been dispersed.] ■ . t ( A FAVOURED LAND The Bagdad corrlspondent of ‘(.The Times,’ wrote recently; For a late-coraer to the community of nations Iraq has been singularly favoured by fortune. She attained her political independence with an ’ ease which makes her less-fortunate Arab neighbours green with envy, and was given a remarkably good start in life by her mandatory, Great Britain. Moreover, she has been endowed, without any effort on her part, with a handsome income from her oilfields, which makes it possible for her to contemplate at the present time a fiveyear plan of capital expenditure to the tune of £BOO,OOO a year on communications and irrigation schemes. . . . Materially Iraq is in a very good position. What she needs now is a long period of internal stability in which to develop her economic strength and _ build up a good native administration on the pattern of that left her by her late _ British rulers. Her period of probation under mandatory rule was none too long, and her three provinces are not yet so cjosely knit together that a dose of indifferent administration would not strain their loyalty to one another and to the Central Government. It is tqo early yet to prophesy about the way she will go. Some of her friends have noted with concern the rapid changes of Government which have taken place at Bagdad since the death of King Feisal, and the tendency of her politicians to regard Ministerial office mainly as ■ a means of providing their families and friends with well-paid jobs. The effect of this s.ytem is ruinous to the country, for it means that with every change of Government the higher officials aro shifted from their posts to make way for friends of the new administration, with the result that those displaced are given a powerful additional incentive to fight and intrigue against their supplanters, in order to get back again and -restore the fortunes of their party.