About Al-Istiqlal

Al-Istiqlal

Al-Istiqlal, whose name meant "Independence," was an Iraqi Arabic newspaper of the 1920 revolt against the British occupation of Iraq. It was published in versions in Baghdad and in Najaf, and it published detailed news of the revolution and the speeches of its leaders at a time when Iraq had no free national press of its own. The Baghdad paper, owned by Abdul Ghafoor al-Badri, fed the movement of the revolt in the capital and other cities and was influential enough for the British Mandate authorities to arrest a number of its editors. The Najaf paper, owned by the lawyer Muhammad Abd al-Husayn and issued from the revolt's own propaganda and news office under the slogan "No life without independence," first appeared on 1 October 1920 and ceased after eight issues. Together with its companion paper Al-Furat, Al-Istiqlal was remembered in Iraqi press histories as among the finest legacies of the revolution of 1920 and one of the most beautiful pages of the Iraqi press, a short-lived but formative episode in the country's journalism.

Iraq in 1920: Occupation and Revolt

Al-Istiqlal was born in the crisis that followed the First World War. British forces had occupied Baghdad in 1917, closing the Ottoman-era official newspaper Al-Zawra and issuing their own Arabic paper, Al-Arab, from 4 July 1917; other papers of the occupation period reflected the policy and viewpoint of the occupiers. When the mandate over Iraq was announced in April 1920, discontent materialised in May 1920 with mass meetings and demonstrations in Baghdad. Large gatherings were held at both Sunni and Shia mosques, showing that cooperation between the two main communities of Iraqi society was possible, and at one of the larger meetings fifteen representatives were nominated to present the case for Iraqi independence to the British officials; the acting civil commissioner, Arnold Wilson, dismissed their demands as impractical. An armed revolt broke out in late June 1920, encouraged by fatwas from the Shia religious leadership, and by late July the armed tribal rebels controlled most of the mid-Euphrates region. Using heavy artillery and aerial bombardment, the British suppressed the revolt by the end of October 1920, although elements of it dragged on until 1922. It was during those few months of insurrection that Iraq's revolutionaries attempted, for the first time, to give themselves a press.

A Press Born of the Revolt

The press of the 1920 revolution was a distinct and brief phenomenon. A modern study of the two Najaf papers noted that the whole of the revolt's press lasted only fifty-three days, and that Iraqi intellectuals were late to launch newspapers expressing the pulse of the revolution, relying mainly at first on the leaflets issued by Muhammad Rida al-Shabibi and on the revolt's propaganda office. The historian Dr. Kamal Mazhar, quoted in University of Baghdad research on war news in the revolt's press, held that this press occupied a distinguished place in history and needed to be studied and analysed to understand important aspects of one of the most important workshops of the national liberation of the Iraqi people, especially with regard to the role of intellectuals. The "Revolution" and "Independence" newspapers, that research concluded, were among the finest products of the great Iraqi revolution and formed one of the most important contents of the Iraqi press, an indispensable original source for any historian who tackled the events of the revolution. Al-Istiqlal stood at the centre of that small press, in both of the cities where the struggle for Iraq's future was being decided.

The Baghdad Paper

The Baghdad version of Al-Istiqlal belonged to Abdul Ghafoor al-Badri, and a survey of the Iraqi press under the British occupation listed it among the newspapers of the period that opposed British policy in Iraq. Its role in the capital was described in the 1970 book Press of the 1920 Revolution and the Stance of the Baghdad Papers toward the Revolution, by Abd al-Rasul Husayn and Adnan Husayn, which recorded that Al-Istiqlal nourished the movement of the revolution in the capital Baghdad and in the other cities, and that it was influential in general ideas, to the point that the British Mandate authorities hastened to arrest a number of its editors. The same account quoted the paper's own description of itself: it was like a free national leaflet serving the sons of Iraq and the Arab nation, defending what they defended and demanding what they demanded, unconcerned if traitors were annoyed by it, belonging to nothing but sincere patriotism and speaking only what matched the words and thoughts of the people. In a capital administered by the occupation, where the British had prepared and issued their own newspapers since 1917, such a paper gave Baghdad's nationalist public a printed voice, and the arrests of its editors testified that the authorities took that voice seriously.

The Najaf Paper and the Propaganda Office

In Najaf, the revolt's intellectual centre, another newspaper bearing the name Al-Istiqlal was published under different auspices. Its owner was the lawyer Muhammad Abd al-Husayn, and its first issue appeared on 1 October 1920. The paper was issued from the revolt's propaganda and news office, the office that the leadership of the revolution had founded to supervise the issuing of the leaflets and war telegrams that inflamed feelings against the colonisers and carried news of the military movements and battles. A group of young intellectuals worked under the banner of that office, among them Muhammad Ali Kamal al-Din, Muhammad Abd al-Husayn himself and Baqir al-Shabibi. Accounts of the paper's production recorded that it was edited by Muhammad Abd al-Husayn and Muhammad Ali Kamal al-Din, the latter omitting his name for family considerations, while a modern study of the Najaf papers named Muhammad Abd al-Husayn al-Kazimi and the historian Abd al-Razzaq al-Husayni among those who supervised it. Dr. Nadim Isa Khalaf al-Jabiri, quoted in the Al-Mada supplements file on the press of the revolution, held that this newspaper played a prominent role in developing the revolutionary spirit among the masses. The Najaf Al-Istiqlal was thus not a commercial venture but an organ of the insurrection itself, produced inside its information apparatus.

Two Pages, Four Times a Week

The physical form of the Najaf paper reflected the conditions of a city at war. It was launched in large format with only two pages, it was printed four times a week, and the printing was done inside the press of Sheikh Sadiq al-Kutubi in Najaf. In its opening editorial, preserved in studies of the paper, the editors explained their intentions and their constraints. They lamented the country's lack of national newspapers and the inattention of writers and pen-holders in those critical days, and said that patriotism had driven them to issue Al-Istiqlal in Najaf, although it had been their intention to publish it in Baghdad, in order to refute the occupiers' falsehoods and their charges, to publish their barbaric injustices and lift the veil from their true nature, to make the nation's legitimate demands known to the world, to publish news of the battles and local events, and to keep the nation informed of a political situation whose course changed constantly. The paper would be published in easy language that everyone could benefit from, four times a week in two sheets because of the abundance of events and news, and if the editors sensed a response from readers they would issue it daily in four sheets; its subscription was set at ten qirsh a month so that notable and commoner alike could acquire it. The editorial closed its appeal with the saying that there is no impossibility for the brave heart.

"No Life without Independence"

The Najaf paper raised the slogan "No life without independence," and its pages attacked British colonialism and called for the continuation of the revolution against it. The pioneering Iraqi press historian Raphael Butti recorded that the editors of this newspaper wrote their articles under the whizz of the bombs. Yet the paper's tone was deliberately measured: studies drawing on Butti's history of the press in Iraq described Al-Istiqlal as a pure expression of free national thought that had always represented the voice of the Arab people in general and the Iraqi people in particular, committed to defending the legitimate rights of the people and standing beside their ambitions without hesitation, while practising moderation in its discourse and avoiding insults, contempt and wounding criticism that could disgrace journalistic work. Its first task, in that description, was to correct any error and repair corruption with the utmost effort and devotion, and it welcomed constructive proposals and listened attentively to the voices of the patriots. The combination the paper attempted, revolutionary purpose with editorial restraint, marked it out within the improvised journalism of the uprising.

Its Companion: Al-Furat

Al-Istiqlal did not appear in Najaf alone. Before it, the revolt's supporters had issued Al-Furat, the first newspaper of its kind in that context, whose first issue appeared on 7 August 1920 and which published only five issues before it stopped. Al-Furat came out in four pages of relatively small size, rich in inspiring words, and it was administered by Sheikh Muhammad Baqir al-Shabibi, one of the prominent pioneers of the secret Haras al-Istiqlal society, who supervised the printing of the revolutionary publications himself from the outbreak of events until their subsiding and distributed them in all the cities touched by the revolt. The paper acted as the official spokesman of the revolutionaries, conveying the teachings of the independence movement, documenting the events of the revolution including the daily facts of the fighting, and issuing independent supplements on the day's developments. The historian Abd al-Razzaq al-Hasani gave it special appreciation, describing it as one of the most prominent journalistic documents embodying the spirit of Iraqi struggle at that delicate stage, and saying that it kept adding fuel to the fire. When Al-Furat ceased, Al-Istiqlal followed it from the same milieu and the same office, and the two papers together amounted to only thirteen issues.

Eight Issues and Silence

The Najaf Al-Istiqlal published eight issues before it ceased. Its first issue had appeared on Saturday, 18 Muharram 1339 in the Hijri calendar, corresponding to 1 October 1920, and its last on Thursday, 30 Muharram 1339, corresponding to 13 October 1920. In less than two weeks of publication, at four issues a week, the paper exhausted its run. The brevity was not a failure of will: the paper had been founded in the last phase of a revolt that British artillery and aircraft were already suppressing, and by the end of October 1920 the insurrection in the mid-Euphrates had been defeated. In Baghdad, the companion version of the paper had already felt the weight of the Mandate's response in the arrest of its editors. When the revolt ended, the institutional shelter that had made the Najaf paper possible, the propaganda and news office of a functioning insurrection, ended with it, and Al-Istiqlal disappeared from Iraqi streets as completely as the revolution that had created it.

Why the Revolt Press Was So Brief

Scholars who studied the two Najaf papers listed the reasons for the shortness of the revolt's press. First, the intellectuals were late in launching newspapers representing the pulse of the revolution and reflecting its vision, relying mainly on the leaflets issued by Muhammad Rida al-Shabibi. Second, the resources needed for printing, paper and tools, were scarce because of the war. Third, financial means were rare. Fourth, the papers appeared at the end of the revolution, as the military decision approached: Al-Furat itself had appeared more than a month after the revolt broke out. Even so, the two papers were distributed in ways designed to reach the widest possible audience: the leaders of the revolution in Najaf and the surrounding areas found support in these newspapers, whose copies were distributed and pasted on the doors of mosques so that the voice of the revolution reached the broadest segment of society. Abroad, too, the papers attracted great attention, especially in countries such as Turkey and India, where the press took them up in literary writings that shed light on the events of the revolution. A press of thirteen issues, in other words, was read far beyond the two cities that printed it.

Legacy in Iraqi Press History

Al-Istiqlal's afterlife was in the historiography of Iraq. A historical survey of the Iraqi press called Al-Furat and Al-Istiqlal the most important newspapers of the revolution of the twentieth, expressing the tongue of the revolutionaries and their demands, the finest legacy the revolution left to the newspaper world and among the most beautiful pages of the Iraqi press. The revolt's papers became a recognised field of study in their own right: the 1970 volume on the press of the 1920 revolution and the stance of the Baghdad papers, University of Baghdad research on war news in the revolt's press, journal studies of the editorial identity of the Najaf Al-Furat and Al-Istiqlal, and the Al-Mada supplements file on the press of the great Iraqi revolution all treated Al-Istiqlal as a primary document of 1920. That attention rested on what the paper had been: in Baghdad, a nationalist sheet that the Mandate answered with arrests; in Najaf, the printed voice of an insurrection's own information office, written, in Butti's phrase, under the sound of bombs, and committed in its eight issues to the proposition of its slogan, that there was no life without independence. Few Iraqi newspapers were shorter-lived; few were more completely of their moment.