Nuri al-Said

Nuri Pasha al-Said Al-Qaraghuli CH (Arabic: نوري السعيد, romanized: Nūrī al-Saʿīd;‎ December 1888 – 15 July 1958) was an Iraqi politician and statesman who served eight terms as Prime Minister of Iraq. He served in various key cabinet and governmental positions in Iraq during its British Mandate and post-independence Hashemite period.

From his first appointment as prime minister under the British Mandate in 1930, Nuri was a major political figure in Iraq under the monarchy. The 1930 Anglo-Iraqi Treaty granted Britain permanent military prerogatives in Iraq, but also paved the way for the country's nominal independence and entry as a member of the League of Nations in 1932. Nuri was forced to flee the country after the 1941 Iraqi coup d'état which brought a pro-Nazi government to power, but following a British-led intervention he was re-installed as prime minister.

During the early fifties, Nuri's government negotiated a fifty-fifty profit-sharing agreement on royalties with the Iraq Petroleum Company as oil began to play a significant role in the Iraqi economy. The agreement, along with the establishment of the Iraqi Development Board, provided for a series of ambitious schemes and projects to foster comprehensive economic growth in Iraq, and the private sector came to dominate the country's economic activity. However, the working conditions of the poor remained poorly addressed, which further contributed to the growth of anti-monarchist sentiment. The formation of the Baghdad Pact in 1955 exacerbated discontent in the country.

A controversial figure throughout most of his career, Nuri was deeply unpopular amongst several segments of Iraqi society by the end of 1950s. His political views, regarded as a blend of Iraqi nationalism, Conservatism, pro-Western sentiment, anti-Communism, and anti-Nasserism, were believed by his detractors to have failed in adapting to the country's changed social circumstances. A coup d'état took place in July 1958 and led to the overthrow of the Hashemite monarchy. Nuri attempted to flee the country but was captured and killed.

He was born in Baghdad to middle class Sunni Muslim family of Circassian origin. His father was a minor government accountant. Nuri graduated from the Ottoman Military College in Istanbul in 1906, trained at the staff college there in 1911 as an officer in the Ottoman Army and was among the officers dispatched to Ottoman Tripolitania in 1912 to resist the Italian occupation of that province. He was an elusive guerrilla leader, with Jaafar Al-Askari, against the British in Libya in 1915.

After being captured and held prisoner by the British in Egypt during World War I, he and Jaafar were converted to the Arab nationalist cause and fought in the Arab Revolt under Emir Faisal ibn Hussain of the Hejaz, who would later reign briefly as King of Arab Syria before he was installed as King of Iraq. On one operation Nuri rode with T. E. Lawrence and his British Army driver as crew of a Rolls-Royce Armoured Car.

Like other Iraqi officers who had served under Faisal, he went on to emerge as part of a new political elite.

Nuri headed the Arab troops who took Damascus for Faisal in the wake of the retreating Ottoman forces in 1918. When Faisal was deposed by the French in 1920, Nuri followed the exiled monarch to Iraq, and in 1922 became first director general of the Iraqi police force. He used the position to fill the force with his placemen, a tactic that he would repeat in subsequent positions; that was a basis of his considerable political clout in later years.