Diyala’s geopolitical relevance in the 1920 revolt

Iraq’s 1920 revolt is widely considered one of the founding moments of contemporary Iraq. The event contributed to dramatically shift the trajectory of British rule in the former Ottoman vilayets of Baghdad, Basra and Mosul, making it clear that the area could not continue being administered through masked forms of direct rule. As such the revolt has been extensively analyzed even if most of the analyses dealing with it mainly focused on two key areas: the geopolitical axis linking Baghdad to the ‘atabat in the Middle Euphrates and the territories lying west of Baghdad and the Upper Euphrates. Yet the revolt was not confined within these boundaries only. East of Baghdad, the Diyala province was impacted by significant upheavals too. Despite being scarcely covered by the main studies focusing on the 1920 revolt, Diyala was far from being a secondary operational theatre due to its critical economic and geopolitical value. As such the Division had significant value both for the insurgents and for the British command, which gave priority to its recovery, dispatching its forces to the area as soon as it could spare some units from the protection of Baghdad. Moving from these assumptions, the paper aims at analyzing Diyala’s significance within the 1920 revolt, focusing on the province’s complex human terrain, its socioeconomic value and its geopolitical importance.

Keywords: Iraq, Diyala, revolt, mandate, geopolitics.

Andrea Plebani, La rilevanza geopolitica di Diyala durante la grande sollevazione irachena del 1920 in "STORIA URBANA " 174/2023, pp 65-85, DOI: 10.3280/SU2023-174003