Lawrence had been given three connected assignments. The first was to explore and report back on how two defectors from the Turkish army, Major Aziz Ali al Mizri and Captain Muhammad al Faruqi, might be used to foment mutinies among Arab troops in Iraq. He was also, on their and the Arab Bureau’s behalf, to make contact with local Arab nationalists and discover their reactions to the imminent uprising in Hejaz. Lawrence’s second task was to meet Colonel Percy Cox, the Chief Political Officer with the Anglo-Indian forces in Iraq, and explain to him the policies and areas of responsibility of the new Arab Bureau. This required much patience and diplomacy since Cox’s employer, the Delhi government, distrusted the Bureau and feared that its sponsorship of Arab nationalism would harm Indian interests in Iraq. Lastly, Lawrence had to hold discussions with his opposite numbers in the intelligence section of D Force (the Anglo-Indian army in Iraq) and find ways in which they could work in tandem with Cairo. Here he would again have to act as a spokesman for the Arab Bureau and outline what was expected from the Arab Revolt.
All were difficult tasks. There could be no effective Arab policy until there was understanding and co-operation between Cairo and Basra. The present sourness owed much to the ‘bitter and outspoken anti-Indian attitude’ displayed all too publicly by Mark Sykes.1 Among his gaffes was a galling aside in which he declared that Muslims were better off under Turkish than British rule. One consequence of his insensitivity had been the treatment meted out to Gertrude Bell on her arrival in Basra at the beginning of March. She was lectured on the Indian Secrets Act and her correspondence was censored.2 To avoid such embarrassment, Lawrence was equipped with an Arab Bureau cipher book.3
From his personal standpoint, the first part of Lawrence’s mission was the most challenging. For over a year GHQ Intelligence in Cairo had been mesmerised by the possibility that disruptive mutinies could be kindled among Arab troops in the Turkish army. Throughout 1915 and early 1916 there had been an encouraging trickle of information from all fronts that Arab officers and conscripts were disheartened and restless. During January and February 1915 there had been reports that Arabs stationed near Alexandretta would throw down their arms. During the autumn Russian sources revealed widespread Arab desertions on the Caucasus front and Turkish officers placed in charge of suspect Arab and Kurdish battalions. Two Arab deserters, questioned at Gallipoli, told their interrogator that Arab battalions were riddled with insubordination and had to be kept back from the front. There was news of Arab desertions from Aden and, in March 1916, reports of general disaffection among Arabs serving with the 35th Division in Iraq. Two captured officers from this unit gave an indication of their feelings by their willingness to reveal all the military information they knew.4
These strands were pulled together by the extensive revelations of Captain al Faruqi of the 142nd Regiment, who gave himself up at Gallipoli on 20 September 1915. After hearing and believing what he had to say, General Sir Ian Hamilton immediately sent him to Cairo, where he was examined by Clayton, Sykes and McMahon. All were impressed by his sincerity; more significantly some of his disclosures were confirmed by independent sources.5 He bore out earlier prognoses about the unrest among troops at Alexandretta and he described how one engineer had deliberately botched work on the defences there and how other officers were busy spreading sedition and encouraging desertions. His assertion that officers from his own regiment were urging their men to desert was supported by a decrypt of a Turkish wireless message which described such activities. 6 Lawrence was among those utterly convinced by al Faruqi’s confessions and the workability of his plans, which, he later told Liddell Hart, would have culminated in a general Arab mutiny and uprising. As a result, the whole of Syria and Iraq could have been liberated from Turkish rule in February 1915.
Al Faruqi’s extravagant claims rested upon the hidden strength of al Ahd (the Covenant), an underground organisation of Arab junior officers bound together by Islamic oath and dedicated to the nationalist cause. All were men with a service grievance since senior ranks were a Turkish monopoly and their political loyalty was to al Fatah, a wider movement which embraced the educated middle classes of Syria and Iraq. These clandestine organisations were looking to Britain for backing, but if this was not forthcoming, al Faruqi ruefully admitted, they would turn to Germany and Turkey. In brief, Arab co-operation was open to all bids, although Britain’s would be most welcome.
This was also the message of Major al Mizri, the founder of al Ahd, who had fled from Constantinople to Cairo in April 1914. By August he was seeking British assistance and, sensing his value, Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary, placed £2,000 at his disposal.7 Al Mizri saw Britain as the champion of people straining for freedom, well aware no doubt of her past assistance to Greece and Italy. Idealistic young Arabs looked to Britain as their friend, he wrote to Kitchener in February 1915.8 ‘C’est cette jeunesse qui vous demande une amitié noble et franche et non pas une domination ou protectorat,’ he pleaded. He contrasted the present plight of the Arab people with the position of the Irish, who had just been given self-government by magnanimous, freedom-loving Britain; apparently he was unaware that the Home Rule Act had been suspended several months before. Al Mizri predicted that with British support the Ar abs would rise up, form an army and fight the Turks in the Caucasus. If Britain held back, he warned that they would seek an understanding with the Turks. Kitchener passed the plea to Maxwell, who did nothing about it until 11 October when, alerted by the news of al Faruqi’s revelations, he asked the Foreign Office to issue a proclamation of support for Arab nationalism.
Al Mizri and al Faruqi were members of that class of educated Arabs which Lawrence despised for their reliance on Western political philosophies, but even he acknowledged that they had their uses. His job in Iraq was to discover just how useful they could be. McMahon, won over by the two Arab officers, had persuaded Grey and Austen Chamberlain, the Secretary of State for India, to sanction their employment as agents behind Turkish lines in Iraq, where they would mobilise their contacts in al Ahd and al Fatah and trigger a series of mutinies and tribal uprisings.
It was a desperate stratagem devised in an emergency. Since 3 December 1915, General Townshend and 14,000 British and Indian troops had been besieged at Kut and attempts to relieve them had been beaten back. On 7 March 1916, the Turkish commander, Khalil Pasha, had suggested surrender terms. Three days later, Townshend, a keen student of Napoleonic campaigns, replied with a proposal that an agreement might be reached along the lines of that made between Marshal Masséna and the Austrians in 1800. This would involve, among other things, a cash payment to the Turks. General Lake, the commanding officer of D Force, was scandalised and, after reading Townshend’s telegrams on the subject, Asquith concluded that ‘he was off his head’.9 Everything had to be done to save Kut and prevent its surrender on terms which, while they were thought honourable by Townshend, would humiliate Britain.
Lawrence was therefore sent out to save Kut by means of subversion behind Turkish lines, or, in his words, ‘to see what could be done by indirect means to relieve the beleaguered garrison’. His mission was, as he knew, a forlorn hope, but the situation was so desperate that any stratagem was worth trying. His authority came from Robertson and Austen Chamberlain, who, on 24 March, cabled the Viceroy and General Lake with an outline of the project.
In view of [the] Sharif’s intention to make an attempt at once to detach [the] Arab element from [the] Turkish army in Arabia and Syria, it is thought desirable that [a] corresponding move should be made in Mesopotamia [that is, Iraq]. Authority has been given [by] McMahon to send Faruqi and possibly al Mizri also to get in touch with [the] Turkish army there with this object.10
The plan was abhorrent to Lake, who found Cox of like mind, so on 30 April he protested to Robertson. Al Mizri and al Faruqi were nationalists whose ‘political views and schemes are too advanced to be safe pabula for the communities of occupied territories’. Their presence in Iraq would be ‘inconvenient and undesi
rable’ and two of their proposed contacts, Nuri es Said and Dr Shahbandah, had already been deported by Cox as subversives. Lake doubted whether they could get through Turkish lines, and added that previously when Arabs claimed ‘to be able to influence their compatriots in the Turkish ranks’ they had been ‘unable or unwilling to face the risks and practical difficulties involved’.11
McMahon vainly tried to placate Lake with a telegram of 1 April in which he pointed out that it was not his intention to send al Mizri into Turkish territory.12 What he had in mind was a propaganda exercise, since the presence of al Mizri in Iraq would advertise the new Anglo-Arab ‘unity of interest’ to Arab soldiers in the Turkish army. He might even swing the Iraqi Arabs behind Hussain.
In London, Robertson, already certain that Kut’s fall was imminent, had come up with an ingenious scheme to buy off one of the Turkish commanders in Iraq. Something of the sort had been tried a year before when Admiral Hall, the Director of Naval Intelligence, had employed agents to offer £4 million to the various Turkish officials for free passage through the Straits. There had been an indication that venal Turks might be susceptible to such bribes when, in April 1915, Jamal Pasha had secretly enquired whether Britain would recognise him as independent ruler of Syria in exchange for taking the province and the Fourth Army out of the war.13 Robertson had in mind a £1 million incentive and Lawrence was to find a suitable go-between.14 Kut might be saved and Robertson spared the unwelcome duty of having to despatch to Iraq troops needed on the Western Front.
Lawrence was ignorant of these exchanges, the controversy generated by his mission and Robertson’s hare-brained scheme. He reached Basra on the evening of 5 April, was met by Gertrude Bell and Campbel–-Thompson, his one-time Karkamis associate, now employed to decipher Turkish telegrams, and taken straight to Cox at Headquarters. Cox found Lawrence extremely vague about how he could fulfil his orders, which he understood as giving ‘assistance ... to a certain project’ which had been proposed by the War Office.15 Cox cabled Colonel WH.(‘Bill’)Beach, the officer commanding D Force’s intelligence section, for exact instructions. Beach replied, ordering Lawrence to report to him at D Force’s forward HQ at Wadi, having first discussed the business with Cox and obtained an Arab officer on parole from Captain More, an intelligence officer stationed in Basra.
It was an awkward and probably frosty exchange. Cox ended the interview by telling Lawrence how strongly he disapproved of his orders. The proposed exercise in sedition could not be kept secret and, when known, would injure local British interests. What he meant was that anti–Turkish agitation among the Arabs might easily rebound on its creators and make Iraq ungovernable in the future. But he was a servant of the government, and so he delivered to Captain More the names of local Arab nationalists who might co-operate.
Lawrence had set his hopes on enlisting Sayyid Talib Pasha, whom he later called the ‘John Wilkes’ of the Arab independence movement, presumably on account of his arrant opportunism. Before the war, Sayyid Talib had been first a supporter of the Young Turks and then an Arab nationalist. A feudal landowner in Basra, he had, on the eve of the Anglo–Indian landings in Iraq, offered his services to the invaders, whom he hoped would appoint him amir of Basra. Cox believed him untrustworthy and a source of future resistance to British occupation, so he was deported to India along with another local nationalist, Lieutenant Nuri es Said. All that Cox could offer Lawrence were two of their former cronies, whom he interviewed the following day at More’s house. Without revealing why their help was needed, Lawrence asked if they would be willing to cross Turkish lines and approach certain officers. They refused because of the danger.
Disheartened but not surprised, Lawrence returned to Cox and candidly admitted that the project was unworkable. ‘To bring off a coup by sending an Arab prisoner on parole across Turkish lines’ was impossible and none of the local nationalists dared take the risk. He had been placed in an invidious position by superiors wildly casting about to find ways in which to avert a disaster at Kut. He had been sent to Iraq to investigate ways in which the loyalties of Arab soldiers and civilians could be undermined and had arrived to find that he was also expected to procure an agent bold enough to cross Turkish lines, approach a Turkish general and secretly offer him £1 million. No such fools could be found in Basra, nor were there any signs of Arab nationalist fervour. On 9 April, Lawrence wired Clayton with the bleak result of his canvass of local feelings. ‘Sayyid Talib and some jackals’ made up the nationalist faction, and ‘There is no Arab sentiment and for us [the] place is negligible.’16
In compliance with Beach’s orders, but without an Arab renegade, Lawrence left Basra for Lake’s front-line headquarters at Wadi on 9 April. Supplied with ration biscuits, ten loaves and ten tins each of bully beef and jam, Lawrence was put aboard an Irrawaddy paddlesteamer which had been pressed into the King Emperor’s service. The Tigris was in flood and cold winds and rain blighted the cruise, although at Headquarters it was confidently believed that these conditions would hamper the Turkish army investing Kut. When the rain stopped, swarms of flies emerged to plague everyone.
For the first time in his service career, Lawrence witnessed life at the front. His arrival at Basra had coincided with Lieutenant-General Sir George (‘Blood Orange’) Gorringe’s attempt to relieve Kut. Among Lawrence’s fellow passengers was a detachment of ‘Cumberland territorials’ (in fact men from the Lancashire battalions of the 38th Brigade) on their way to reinforce Gorringe’s division. When, on 19 April, he arrived at Lake’s headquarters on the river gunboat Waterfly, a battle was in progress. Kut was twenty miles to the west and the British front was five miles off.
Lawrence’s reception on board the Waterfly was dusty. ‘The local British had the strongest objection to my coming; and two Generals of them were good enough to explain to me that my mission (which they did not really know) was dishonourable to a soldier (which I was not).‘17 One was certainly Lake and what stuck in his throat was not Lawrence’s mission as the corrupter of a Turkish general, but his orders to encourage disobedience among Arab soldiers and rebellion among Arab civilians. On the Iraq front the Arabs were widely seen as despicable, craven and malevolent neutrals. They murdered the wounded, ambushed small units and plundered both British and Turkish supplies. In January, Lake had commanded punitive operations against them, and in Basra Lawrence would have heard the common joke that the British and the Turks ought to declare a truce, join together and set about the Arabs.18 Lawrence’s assertion that ‘conditions were ideal for an Arab movement’ in Iraq would have been greeted with disbelief and ridicule. What was more, the Anglo-Indian army was not fighting its way through Iraq so that it could be delivered into Arab hands when the war was over.
Moreover, Lake and his brother officers were Victorian and Edwardian soldiers (Lake had fought Afghans and ‘Fuzzy–Wuzzies’) whose gentlemanly code was violated by the notion that the military crime of mutiny could be considered a legitimate instrument of war. Lawrence’s plans may also have been an uncomfortable reminder that the loyalty of Indian sepoys was becoming more and more brittle.19
What the staff at Wadi thought about Robertson’s project for buying off an enemy commander is not known. Certainly Lawrence’s position as an officer under Robertson’s orders would have assured him brusque treatment by Lake and his staff. Robertson considered their performance had been disgraceful. ‘Very little courage and determination’ had been shown in Iraq and he was keen, in his own words, to inject some ‘ginger’ into those in charge.20 Since he had taken full control of the Iraq front on 16 February, Robertson had tormented Lake and the aptly named General Sir Beauchamp Duff, Commander–in–Chief of the Indian Army, with a series of telegrams in4 which he made it clear that he regarded Lake as an incompetent dotard unfit for active command.21
Lawrence was not completely isolated among the blunderers. He got on well with Colonel Beach, with whom he had useful discussions on intelligence techniques and procedures. There was also th
e consolation of Aubrey Herbert’s company, although his outspoken remarks on maladministration added to the general tension. Herbert had left Cairo as Admiral Wemyss’s army liaison officer on 22 March and he had arrived at Wadi on 14 April. Wemyss had been there for three days and, like Herbert, was blunt in his observations about the Indian government and its generals. ‘This expedition,’ he wrote, ‘has been most scandalously starved and in my opinion the troops have been asked to perform the almost impossible.’ He and Herbert were there to oversee arrangements for river transport and riverine operations to save Kut, although neither held out any hope for its defenders.22 Herbert tried to wire Austen Chamberlain with a warning that the town would fall, but his message was censored by Indian officers who already sensed that their ill-conducted campaign would soon be a national scandal.
Between 19 and 21 April, Herbert and Lawrence were kept busy with routine intelligence activities, although Lawrence may not have been able to give them his closest attention since he suffered a bout of malaria. Herbert interviewed some Arab POWs, taken during the recent fighting. One confessed that he was unhappy about his capture because ‘his own people might think he hadn’t fought well’, which was perhaps not what Lawrence had hoped to hear. He later reported to Clayton the more cheering news that there was widespread defeatism among the 35th and 38th Divisions, a conclusion which rested on evidence collected at Kut.23
Just before midnight on 22 April, headquarters at Wadi received a message from Gorringe. His exhausted army had been fought to a standstill at Sanniyat, twelve miles short of Kut. He had lost 9,700 dead in just under three weeks and what remained of his forces could not maintain the offensive.24 This news, long dreaded in London and Wadi, began a series of bizarre events which ended with Herbert, Lawrence and Beach being ordered to conclude negotiations for the surrender of Kut. It has been assumed that Lawrence and Herbert had been kept at Wadi for this purpose, but in fact they were called in at the last moment. Their value in the emergency rested on Herbert’s fluency in Turkish and Lawrence’s in Arabic, although in the end their talks with Khalil Pasha were in French. As Lawrence observed in his report on D Force’s intelligence section, in Iraq all interviews with POWs were conducted through native interpreters and the only Arabist, Captain More, was based at Basra.25
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