The Same Mistakes

The tinkle of expensive glassware mingled with the murmur of subdued conversation and the swift, deft movement of red-coated waiters in the grand ballroom of London's Grosvenor House one day last week. Distinguished guests sipped and chatted at the invitation of the Iraq Petroleum Co., to celebrate the opening of a $115 million new 30-inch pipeline to the Mediterranean that promises to more than triple the output of Iraq's oil. The assembled guests watched a movie of the pipeline's construction, and applauded vigorously at the progress it augured. "You can be bloody sure," an I.P.C. press-agent confided to a newsman, "that we're not going to make the same mistakes Anglo-Iranian made in Persia."

What the oilman forgot was that many of the mistakes that plagued the far-off, troubled Middle East had been made long since. Iraq, like Iran, is a land of degenerate wealth and desperate poverty--shot through with resentment at the Westerners whose activity has increased the one without diminishing the other.

Last week, less than three days after the cocktails were downed in Grosvenor House, the streets of Baghdad were aflame with a new explosion of that resentment. Rioting Iraqi shouted "Down with Foreign Imperialism!" and "Down with Forged Elections!", stoned the windows of the British Embassy and swarmed into the offices of the U.S. Information Service, setting it afire. Some 60 civilians and policemen were wounded and eleven or more killed. Regent Abdul Illah hastily appointed his army chief of staff, General Nur El Din Mahmoud, as Premier. General Mahmoud declared martial law in Baghdad Province, and a measure of order was restored by tear gas and armored-car patrols.

What had touched off the rioting? Partly it began because in illiterate Iraq, elections rigged by the government in power are all too common. Last July, a few months after negotiating a new, generous 50-50 split of oil revenues with the I.P.C., Nuri El Said had to resign the premiership. A "caretaker government" was supposed to ensure the fairness of elections, but the four parties aligned against Nuri are far from satisfied that his caretakers are any better than he himself.

Some of the opposition are for prompt amendment of the constitution, to shear the King's power; some are for nationalization of the oilfields, some for land reform, some merely against alliances with the West. Behind them, but in the forefront of the rioting, were Communist partisans, happy to direct the troublemaking against Britain and the U.S.

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