The Mesopotamian Campaign: The British Experience in Iraq in the First World War

The war in Mesopotamia is a classic case study in Strategy and Objectives, Military Warfare and Planning and Decision Making at their best and worst. The planning for the British campaign started many years before World War 1, but unlike the Schlieffen Plan, Plan 17, or Plan 19A, the plans for the initial campaign were well executed and achieved their desired result. The plan soon unravelled and it is here where the real value of the campaign can bear fruit. The lessons learned are salient today in the Persian Gulf as the Allied Coalition of twenty-eight nations squares off in the desert in Iraq. Although the hostilities are only weeks old, there is enough anecodtal evidence for some analysis.