NEAR EAST: Holy Skirmish

With a terrible, pregnant symbolism, World War II jumped last week from the birthplace of democracy to the birthplace of mankind. Five days after Athens fell, fighting broke out in Iraq, traditional site of the Garden of Eden. In its beginning the new conflict was a minor embarrassment to Britain; in its potentialities it was a threat as serious as any the British Empire had yet suffered.

A few days before Germany's Balkan campaign, a pro-German Arab nationalist, Seyid Rashid Ali El-Gailani, overthrew five-year-old Monarch Feisal II's pro-British Regent. Because of the threat implicit in this coup, the British sent 1,200 troops to Basra, Iraq's main port, at the head of the Persian Gulf. El-Gailani acquiesced in the landing and publicly subscribed to the 1930 Anglo-Iraq Treaty of Alliance which justified it ("The aid of . . . Iraq in the event of war or the imminent menace of war will consist in . . . use of railways, rivers, ports, aerodromes and means of communication").

But when the British last week notified Iraq of their intention to land reinforcements, Rashid El-Gailani objected on the grounds that it would be contrary to the treaty until the first 1,200 had passed through and out of Iraq. The British disagreed, charged that El-Gailani himself had violated the treaty by not granting full use of communications and airfields. The British were confined to two fields where they had been established under the treaty for years: Habbania, on the west bank of the Euphrates, 65 miles from Bagdad, a huge airdrome with cantonments for about 5,000 men, but equipped only with small guns and some 50 antique biplanes; and Shaibah, near Basra, basing a bomber squadron and an armored-car section.

El-Gailani's answer to the British was to send a concentration of Iraqi troops to the heights threatening Habbania airport, with an ultimatum to the British to cease all operations there. British Ambassador Sir Kinahan Cornwallis, a six-foot-four, big-boned, two-fisted runner, boxer and marksman who has had 35 years' experience in the Near East, replied that the continued presence of the Iraqi concentration at Habbania "might lead to an unfortunate incident."

Sir Kinahan and other British diplomats had no idea what an understatement "unfortunate incident" was. El-Gailani's reply to Sir Kinahan's warning was to send more troops to the heights, where they dug trenches, placed artillery and opened fire point-blank on the Habbania field. The British, though badly outnumbered, replied. The Iraqi claimed destroying 26 planes on the ground, but other planes took off and bombed the Iraqi guns. The same day the British in Basra warned the Iraqi troops there to withdraw. They agreed to, but did not. The British seized the Basra airport, dock area and power station. This week the British began a systematic bombing of Iraqi airports, claimed to have destroyed most of the Iraq Air Force.