The September lunch was attended by 36 members and by our Speaker, Bob Kermeen, who last spoke to us at our April 2014 lunch.

His topic at that time was “Iraq's weapons of mass destruction”. This time he continued with Iraq as his subject and provided a fascinating and detailed history lesson entitled,“The creation of Iraq from WW1 to Saddam Hussein”. Once again his talk was supported by an impressive array of slides and video footage.

Bob traced the history of Iraq from the Ottoman Empire which, at its height, encompassed most of southeastern Europe, portions of the Middle East now occupied by Iraq, Syria,Israel and Egypt, parts of North Africa, and large parts of the Arabian Peninsula.

Ottoman rule over Iraq lasted until WW1 when the Ottomans sided with Germany. Iraq was carved out of the Ottoman Empire by the French and British, as agreed in the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement and control passed to the British who later established the Kingdom of Iraq in 1932. Bob covered in detail the subsequent revolutions and coups which led to Saddam Hussein taking power in 1979. What came out of the talk was the extent to which Western powers have interfered in the affairs of the Middle East over the years and the number of times that their decisions have proved to be wrong. Bob concluded that the Saddam years were not all bad as he established a National Health system, enabled wives to work, provided compulsory education to the age of 12, established a national road system, etc.