of anarchy for three months; the British restored order only with reinforcements from India. The Iraqi revolt of 1920 was a watershed event in contemporary Iraqi history. For the first time, Sunnis and Shias, tribes and cities, were brought together in a common effort. In the opinion of Hanna Batatu, author of a seminal work on Iraq, the building of a nation-state in Iraq depended upon two major factors: the integration of Shias and Sunnis into the new body politic and the successful resolution of the age-old conflicts between the tribes and the riverine cities and among the tribes themselves over the food-producing flatlands of the Tigris and the Euphrates. The 1920 rebellion brought these groups together, if only briefly; this constituted an important first step in the long and arduous process of forging a nation-state out of Iraq's conflict-ridden social structure.The Assyrian Levies, a military force under British command, participated in the Kirkuk Massacre of 1924 of Kurds;Arabs and Turkomen. (See Simele Massacres of 1933) On 1 October 1922, the Royal Air Force (RAF) elements stationed in Iraq were reorganized into the RAF Iraq Command, which came about partially as a result of the 1920 revolt. This new command was primarily designed to suppress any threats to the Hashemite monarchy. Air control was considered by the British government as a more cost-effective method of controlling large areas of territory than land forces, an idea that was heavily promoted by RAF officer Hugh Trenchard. During the 1920s and 30s, the RAF Iraq Command participated in the suppression of numerous protests and revolts against the Hashemite monarchy. Historian Elie Kedourie noted that "the North [of Iraq] as a whole had to be coerced [into submission] by the Royal Air Force." When the Kurdish leader Sheikh Mahmud launched an armed rebellion, the British used the newly established Iraqi army to suppress the revolt, but that proved ineffective. The British then resorted to deploying the RAF, which suppressed the revolt. In the same period, rebellions by the Shia in the South were also suppressed by the RAF. Coronation of Faisal At the Cairo Conference of March 1921, the British set the parameters for Iraqi political life that were to continue until the 1958 revolution; they chose a Hashemite, Faisal ibn Husayn, son of Sherif Hussein ibn Ali former Sharif of Mecca as Iraq's first King; they established an Iraqi army (but kept Iraq