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Iraq
GEOGRAPHY AND POPULATION
Boundaries
The border with Iran has been a continuing source of conflict
and was partially responsible for the outbreak in 1980 of the
present war. The terms of a treaty negotiated in 1937 under British
auspices provided that in one area of the Shatt al Arab the boundary
would be at the low water mark on the Iranian side. Iran subsequently
insisted that the 1937 treaty was imposed on it by "British imperialist
pressures," and that the proper boundary throughout the Shatt
was the thalweg. The matter came to a head in 1969 when Iraq,
in effect, told the Iranian government that the Shatt was an integral
part of Iraqi territory and that the waterway might be closed
to Iranian shipping.
Through Algerian mediation, Iran and Iraq agreed in March 1975
to normalize their relations, and three months later they signed
a treaty known as the Algiers Accord. The document defined the
common border all along the Shatt estuary as the thalweg. To compensate
Iraq for the loss of what formerly had been regarded as its territory,
pockets of territory along the mountain border in the central
sector of its common boundary with Iran were assigned to it. Nonetheless,
in September 1980 Iraq went to war with Iran, citing among other
complaints the fact that Iran had not turned over to it the land
specified in the Algiers Accord. This problem has subsequently
proved to be a stumbling block to a negotiated settlement of the
ongoing conflict.
In 1988 the boundary with Kuwait was another outstanding problem.
It was fixed in a 1913 treaty between the Ottoman Empire and British
officials acting on behalf of Kuwait's ruling family, which in
1899 had ceded control over foreign affairs to Britain. The boundary
was accepted by Iraq when it became independent in 1932, but in
the 1960s and again in the mid-1970s, the Iraqi government advanced
a claim to parts of Kuwait. Kuwait made several representations
to the Iraqis during the war to fix the border once and for all
but Baghdad has repeatedly demurred, claiming that the issue is
a potentially divisive one that could enflame nationalist sentiment
inside Iraq. Hence in 1988 it was likely that a solution would
have to wait until the war ended.
In 1922 British officials concluded the Treaty of Mohammara with
Abd al Aziz ibn Abd ar Rahman Al Saud, who in 1932 formed the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The treaty provided the basic agreement
for the boundary between the eventually independent nations. Also
in 1922 the two parties agreed to the creation of the diamond-shaped
Neutral Zone of approximately 7,500 square kilometers adjacent
to the western tip of Kuwait in which neither Iraq nor Saudi Arabia
would build permanent dwellings or installations (see ______).
Beduins from either country could utilize the limited water and
seasonal grazing resources of the zone. In April 1975, an agreement
signed in Baghdad fixed the borders of the countries. Despite
a rumored agreement providing for the formal division of the Iraq-Saudi
Arabia Neutral Zone, as of early 1988 such a document had not
been published. Instead, Saudi Arabia was continuing to control
oil wells in the offshore Neutral Zone and had been allocating
proceeds from Neutral Zone oil sales to Iraq as a war payment.
Data as of May 1988
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