Watch the videos of 1950s Iraq on YouTube and you glimpse something close to an idyll. It’s true that Pathé News was not big on gritty realism, but history relates that here it was not using a heavily rose-tinted lens; Hugh Trevor-Roper even went so far as to describe Iraq at the time as a Levantine Switzerland. Or you can go to Google Images, tap in ‘1960s Afghan women’ and be offered photographs of a mixed university biology class, and others of young women with short skirts, long hair and smiling faces.
This was life under the kings, and knowing what followed is enough to make a grown man weep. But let’s be hard-headed and forward-looking: the creation of new constitutional monarchies is a sensible solution to such clear and present dangers as Isis. Life without them has been a disaster in the Middle East. Why can’t we bring back the monarchs?
In Iraq the blood started flowing in 1958 when a group of army officers gunned down the royal family. The violence only increased when Saddam Hussein took power in the 1970s, but he did at least bring back one benefit of the old kingdom: stability. So despite it all — the genocide of the Kurds, the invasion of a peaceful and fairly liberal neighbour (the constitutional monarchy of Kuwait) — wise heads cautioned against his removal. Not only did he act as a bulwark against Iran, but like the old monarchy, he protected his own Sunni minority within Iraq. Nevertheless, America and its allies did topple Saddam — and then were somehow surprised when the new democratic republic ill-served the Sunnis. The persecution carried out by the Shia majority wasn’t as great as that carried out by the dictator, but its consequences couldn’t have been more terrible, as it became a devastatingly successful recruiting sergeant for the Sunni terrorists of Isis.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in