The conjunctural in international law: the revolutionary struggle against semi-peripheral sovereignty in Iraq

Abstract

This article will detail an event of revolutionary action in the historiography of anti-colonial and anti-imperial struggle in Iraq, namely al-Wathba (‘the leap’) of 1948, utilising it as an example to address the limitations of the methodology and analysis of Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) scholarship. I will argue that there is a disconnect between notions of agency and structure in TWAIL analyses and that therefore TWAIL scholars should consider studying the conjunctures that allowed certain movements ample room to struggle against the imperialism of international law in the first place. I will use the example of the Wathba to illustrate how a conjunctural analysis may be undertaken, analysing its implications for the international legal order. I will then move to highlight the significance of labour to the conjuncture in question. Finally, I will demonstrate how events like the Wathba illuminate the transient and provisional nature of the foundations of international law, while emphasising its structural constraints.

Keywords:

• Law
• labour
• Middle East Iraq
• methodology

Notes

1. Ayyub, al-Yad, al-Ard wa’l Ma’, 286.

2. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 15.

3. Baxi, “What may the ‘Third World’ Expect?,” 720.

4. Romulo, quoted in El-Ayouty, The United Nations and Decolonization, 35.

5. Romulo, quoted in El-Ayouty, The United Nations and Decolonization, 34.

6. For a good overview of the literature, see Gathii, “TWAIL.”

7. Mickelson, “Rhetoric and Rage,” 406.

8. Okafor, “Newness, Imperialism and International Legal Reform,” 178.

9. Anghie, “The Evolution of International Law.”

10. Ibid.

11. Taylor, “Reclaiming Revolution.”

12. Ibid., 273.

13. Rajagopal, International Law from Below, 293.

14. Taylor, “Reclaiming Revolution,” 263.

15. Taylor, “Reclaiming Revolution,” 274.

16. Taylor, “Reclaiming Revolution,” 271.

17. Althusser, For Marx, 250.

18. Althusser, For Marx, 178.

19. Althusser, For Marx, 180 (emphasis in the original).

20. Koivisto and Lahtinen, “Historical–Critical Dictionary of Marxism,” 274.

21. Ibid.

22. See Parmar, Indigeneity and Legal Pluralism in India.

23. Batatu, The Old Social Classes, 546. It should be noted that I am not referring to the ‘event’ here in the same manner as Alain Badiou does.

24. Benton, “From International Law to Imperial Constitutions,” 599.

25. Ibid.

26. Anglo-Iraq Treaty of Alliance [1922] Cmd. 2370.

27. Wright, Mandates under the League, 60.

28. League of Nations Official Journal, Vol. V, at 1217.

29. Treaty with H. M. King Faisal [10 October 1922] Cmd. 1757.

30. Brown, “Constitutionalism, Authoritarianism, and Imperialism,” 936.

31. See Pederson, “Getting out of Iraq.”

32. Treaty of Alliance between United Kingdom and Iraq [1929–1930] Cmd. 3627.

33. Ibid.

34. Colonial Office, Special Report, 11.

35. Permanent Mandates Commission (PMC), “Minutes,” XX, 134.

36. See PMC, “Minutes,” Sess. 18, 19, 20.

37. See PMC, “Minutes,” Sess. 20, 168–176.

38. Ibid.

39. Mitchell, Carbon Democracy, 47, 102.

40. Bentwich, “The Termination of the A Mandates,” 191.

41. Batatu, The Old Social Classes, 544, 551.

42. Marr, The Modern History of Iraq, 103.

43. Ibid.

44. Batatu, The Old Social Classes, 550.

45. Humaidi, Al-Tatwurat, 519–525.

46. Ibid.

47. Schalchiyyah is a working-class neighborhood in Baghdad.

48. Batatu, The Old Social Classes, 551.

49. Ibid.

50. Batatu, The Old Social Classes, 553.

51. Humaidi, Al-Tatwurat, 533.

52. For the full text, see al-Hasani, Tarikh al-Wizarat, 249.

53. Batatu, The Old Social Classes, 557.

54. Al-Chadirji, Mudhakkirat.

55. Davis, “History for the Many?,” 293.

56. British Embassy, Baghdad to Foreign Office, 21 May 1948, enclosing minute on strikes at IPC [FO 371/68479].

57. Al-Nou‘aman, al-Hizb al-Shyou’i al-Iraqi, 126.

58. Ibid.

59. Quoted in al-Nou‘aman, al-Hizb al-Shyou’i al-Iraqi, 123.

60. Batatu, The Old Social Classes, 622, 624.

61. Mitchell, Carbon Democracy, 103.

62. Batatu, The Old Social Classes, 622.

63. Batatu, The Old Social Classes, 625.

64. Batatu, The Old Social Classes, 563.

65. Bedjaoui, Towards a New International Economic Order, 88 (emphasis in the original).

66. Justin Rosenberg, quoted in Koivisto and Lahtinen, ‘Historical–Critical Dictionary of Marxism,’ 273.

67. Ibid.

68. Hardt and Negri, Empire, 263.

69. See Finocchiaro, Gramsci and the History of Dialectical Thought, 164.

70. Col. Abdul Karim Qassim’s words, quoted in Batatu, The Old Social Classes, 806.

71. See Romero, The Iraqi Revolution of 1958.

72. Marr, The Modern History of Iraq, 105.

73. al-Nida’ newspaper (Cairo, February 5, 1948), quoted in Humaidi, Al-Tatwurat, 546.

74. Furedi, Colonial Wars, 4, 88–108.

75. Furedi, Colonial Wars, 89.

76. Ibid.

77. Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, GA Res. 1514 (XV), UN GAOR, 15th sess., 947th plenary meeting, UN Doc. A/RES/1514 (XV) (14 December 1960).

78. Quayson-Sackey, cited in Quaye, Liberation Struggles in International Law, 111.

79. Quaye, Liberation Struggles in International Law, 108–109.

80. Quaye, Liberation Struggles in International Law, 112.

81. Declaration on the Granting of Independence.

82. Sharma, Afro-Asian Group in the UN, 205.

83. Ibid.

84. El-Ayouty, The United Nations and Decolonization, 60.

85. Anand, “Attitude of the Asian-African States,” 14.

86. Pachachi, Iraq’s Voice at the United Nations, 9.

87. UN GAOR, 15th Sess., 937th plenary meeting, UN Doc. A/PV 937 (6 December 1960), 120–138.

88. Ibid.

89. Ibid.

90. Ibid.

91. UN GAOR, 15th Sess., 926th plenary meeting, UN Doc. A/PV 926 (28 November 1960), 1002.

92. See, for example, Eslava and Pahuja, “Between Resistance and Reform”; Chimni, “Third World Approaches”; and Anghie, Imperialism.

93. Minute by Wells (Embassy, Baghdad), 7 April 1948, F0 624/130, quoted in Fuccaro, “Reading Oil as Urban Violence,” 228.

94. Batatu, The Old Social Classes, 589.

95. Farouk-Sluglett and Sluglett, “The Social Classes,” 127–128.

96. Rodney, How Europe underdeveloped Africa, 276.

97. Furedi, Colonial Wars, 38.

98. Ibid.

99. British Embassy to Baghdad to Rt. Hon. E. Bevin, Foreign Secretary, “Street Demonstrations in Baghdad,” London, 2 July 1946, [FO 371/52406].

100. D. L. Busk, Baghdad to Rt. Hon. E. Bevin, Foreign Secretary, London, 21 August 1946 [FO371/52456].

101. Maul, “The Morse Years,” 54.

102. Pahuja, “Decolonization and the Eventness of International Law,” 99.

103. Ibid.

104. Marks, “False Contingency,” 10.

105. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 178.

106. See Jayussi, Trends and Movements, 199.