By far the most important problems which occupied the attention of the civil administration in Iraq in the period between the two wars were the related problems of land tenure, irrigation and tribal settlement. Yet twenty years of energetic efforts to solve these problems did not succeed in fully removing the various impediments to settlement, and the history of Iraq during the Thirties was punctuated by "tribal disturbances" and acute agrarian unrest, which threatened the stability of the young state. Perhaps the most important reason for this failure Is the lack of scientific study of the actual conditions and the local practices of the tribal system, and the absence of a comprehensive policy designed to place these problems in their true perspective, and enable the policy of the government towards the tribes, land tenures, irrigation, transport and other agrarian questions to be coordinated into one coherent whole. In December 1931t Sir Ernest Dowson, who was asked to, recommend a sound system of settlement and registration of rights to land, wrote that "there was almost a complete lack of precise, authoritative and systematic information in the Headquarter Offices of Government In regard to land conditions generally and to the methods of holding, transferring and transmitting land actually practised from day to day by the great mass of landholders and agricultural peasantry throughout all parts of the country. "Sir Ernest Dowson, in his report (An Inquiry into Land Tenure and Related Questions, Iraq Government, 1932) from which this passage is quoted (P-5). gives a short summary of some nineteen pages only on the "existing conditions" (pp., 10-29)0 and devotes the greater part of the remainder to his major purpose of suggesting a machinery for the survey, registration and settlement of disputes in land. The result of his recommendations were the Settlement Commissions established in the country since 1932# which have achieved valuable and lasting work in the areas that they have so far covered. But they have not yet really tackled the purely tribal areas of Mantafig, Amara and Diwaniyya, and there is ample reason to believe that they will not be equally successful in the settlement of rights to land in these areas unless the Law of Settlement is drastically amended. Furthermore, land tenure and land policy is only one (though a very important one) of the agrarian problems and must be coordinated with such other problems and policies as the irrigation policy# the transport problem and the administrative and judicial procedure to be followed in the tribal areas. On these problems and their relationship very little has been written and still less published.