But the British and French entered into a secret agreement called the Sykes-Pekoe agreement before the war ended. When the peace conference at Versailles ended, the British renegged on their promise to Faisals father for his own state. Instead the British and French rolled out a map and divided up the empire into Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine. To form Iraq, Britain squeezed together three mutually hostile regions: Kurdish tribal lands: the Sunni Muslim region around Baghdad, and the Shia south. The result was an unstable, chaotic country. Iraq became a British colony and soon Faisal was placed on the throne in Baghdad in 1921. .
In 1958 Iraqi General Abd al Karim Qasim led a coup and overthrew King Faisal II. Qasim declared Iraq a republic. He created an alliance with the Soviet Union and the Iraqi communists to defeat the Kurds. Qasim shunned Egypt's Nasser who wanted Iraq to join Egypt in recognizing Cairo as the capital of the Arab world. Qasim chose to stick with the communists so Nasser incited the Iraqis against him. In 1959 all came to a head when every possible communal group took out their hatreds on each of their enemy groups for fear of being lost in the power struggle. Once the Kurds and pan arabs were defeated by Qasim, he turned on the Communists and threw them in jail. The Baath party filled the gap and increased their power base. On October 1959, a Baath hit squad including a twenty something Saddam attempted a coup. Qasim survived and Saddam escaped to Egypt where he was a guest of Nasser. He attended college and was known as a street thug. In 1963 another coup ended Qasim rule. The nationalist Baath party led by Ahmad al-Bakr took over rule of Iraq. Saddam was invited to return to Iraq, but the al-Bakr government did not last and Saddam was briefly jailed. By 1968 the Baath party had resumed power and al-Bakr was the leader while Saddam was the head of the secret police.