Letters From Baghdad

by Bell, Gertrude

  It 'was in the same spirit that a few days later when the British Expeditionary Force first set foot on Turkish soil at Fao, I issued a similar announcement to the riverain Arabs, assuring them that it was with the Turks only that we were at war and not with the inhabitants of the country and that so long as the Arabs showed themselves friendly and refrained from going about armed or harbouring Turkish troops, they had nothing to fear from us.

  In furtherance of this policy it was our duty as far as military exigencies permitted, to enable the peaceable inhabitants of the territory gradually falling under our occupation, to carry on their normal vocations; but the initial difficulties involved in setting up a civil administration with war in lively progress were naturally considerable and were greatly enhanced in this case by the fact that the Turkish régime having been almost entirely alien, all Turkish officials and those non-Turks who had been employed in the administration, fled with the retreating armies as each centre was evacuated, and we found no local material whatever with which to replace them. Consequently for the time being, and indeed for the whole duration of the war, personnel for the administration had either to be recruited from the British and the British Indian material serving with the Army, or to be borrowed from India. Nevertheless, as soon as we had settled down in Basrah a beginning was made towards the establishment of a system of government which would be consonant with the spirit of our announcements. For this branch of my duties I had separate Offices and Staff and divided my working hours between the Army G.H.Q., whether at the Base or in the Field, and my Civil Headquarters at Basrah. It was here that Gertrude Bell joined me in the circumstances above described, as also did Captain Arnold Wilson, (now Lieut. Colonel Sir Arnold Wilson, K.C.I.E., etc.). The latter had been serving with me for some years before the War, first in the Persian Gulf Residency and later at Mohammerah, but for the past year he had been on deputation as one of the British representatives on the TurkoPersian Boundary Commission, a body which had been surprisingly successful in its labours and had fortunately completed them just in time for its members to disperse before hostilities commenced. About the same time too I received a valuable reinforcement of Officers from the Government of India, including Mr. Henry Dobbs, who later on, as Sir Henry Dobbs, was to succeed me as High Commissioner in Mesopotamia — a senior official of the Indian Civil Service, with mature experience in revenue and fiscal matters, who at once set himself to get the revenue administration on to an effective working basis. Other senior members of the Political Department of the Government of India placed at my disposal about the same time were Colonel S. G. Knox, afterwards judicial Commissioner and Colonel R. E. A. Hamilton, now Lord Belhaven and Stenton, who became Political Agent at Koweit, in succession to Major W. H. L. Shakespear. The latter had been deputed to the court of His Highness Ibn Saud on the outbreak of war and his tragic death in a desert battle between Ibn Saud and his rival Ibn Rashid deprived his country of a most gallant and capable officer whose services could ill be spared at the time. Another new comer was Mr. H. St. J. Philby of the Indian Civil Service, afterwards to earn distinction as a traveller in Central Arabia. Other good men and true came and went according to the needs of my working staff which had to be augmented or modified as the tide mark of war advanced in our favour and left a continually expanding tract of country under our administration.

  In this brief sketch it is not possible or necessary for me to deal with the military aspects of the campaign and I must pass over the eventful winter of 1915 and the spring of 1916, which witnessed Townshend's victorious advance up the Tigris, culminating in the battle of Ctesiphon; his retirement to Kut, with its siege and final surrender; and the terrible trials of our troops in their gallant attempts to relieve the beleaguered garrison, the moving story of which has been told so graphically by the official "Eye-witness," the late Umund Candler, in his "Long Road to Bagdad."

  During this period steady progress continued to be made with the creation of administrative machinery in all its branches throughout the Basrah Vilayet, and Gertrude Bell worked devotedly as Oriental Secretary to myself or my deputy, Captain Wilson, in the Bastah Secretariat. During the late summer of 1915, I had arranged to rendezvous at Ojair with the Sultan of Nejd for the purpose of concluding the Treaty negotiations, which had been interrupted by His Highness' abortive campaign above referred to, and a year later after the final signing of the documents, His Highness was invited first to a durbar at Koweit to meet the Sheikhs of Koweit and Mohammerah and other important tribal Sheikhs with whom we were now in touch; and afterwards to Basrah for a short visit, in the belief that it would be of interest and value to him to see the working, and the immense proportions, of a great military base and port such as Basrah had now become, and would also be a useful means of demonstrating to the inhabitants of the Basrah Vilayet the very close relations existing between us and the great Arab Chiefs of the principalities on their borders. I remember well with what delight and enthusiasm Gertrude Bell entered at this time into all the arrangements for Sultan Ibn Saud's visit, looking forward keenly as she did to making the acquaintance of this great and attractive actor on the Arabian stage; alike for the immediate interest of the prospect and also, I cannot help thinking, in the latent hope that it might lead to an s expedition to his capital when the clouds of war had dispersed. Ibn Saud, who had heard me speak of Gertrude Bell and of her pre-war expedition to Hayil, had never before come in contact with any European woman and the phenomenon of one of the gentler sex occupying an official position with a British Expeditionary Force was one quite outside his bedouin comprehension; nevertheless when the time came he met Miss Bell with complete frankness and sangfroid as if he had been associated with European ladies all his life.

  Except for the interruption of this "royal visit " and an occasional week end trip to Basrah to enable me to keep in touch with passing events in the sphere of the civil administration and to see to the welfare of my wife, who at this time was engaged in good works among the troops in Basrah, I was able to remain with Sir Stanley Maude's Headquarters on the Tigris front throughout the winter campaign, which saw the recovery of Kut, the sudden crossing of the Tigris at Shimran and the subsequent advance on Bagdad, ending in its occupation on the 11th of March 1917.

  The fall of Bagdad was an event full of significance and pregnant with possibilities both for ourselves and for the enemy. Throughout the Empire and among our allies the brilliant success of General Maude's campaign aroused the utmost enthusiasm, so that the tragedy of Kut seemed almost effaced in the public mind; while for the Turks the loss of Bagdad not only deprived them of their base of operations in Mesopotamia but laid them open to an Anglo-Russian offensive in the Mosul Vilayet. The prospect of joining up with our Russian allies as a prelude to concerted operations in northern Mesopotamia had always been one to conjure with in Force "D." A year previous a Russian Cossack patrol from General Baratoff's force, then at Kermanshah, had reached our lines at Ali Gharbi on the Tigris after a daring ride of 200 miles through the mountains of Pusht-i-kuh. They were naturally welcomed by us with great cordiality, and during the few days that they remained in our Camp to rest their horses before starting back their Officers were decorated by the G.O.C.-in-Chief with the British Military Cross " in recognition of this exploit and on this, the first meeting of British and Russian troops, as allies in the field, for 100 years." The meeting of the two armies later on was consequently looked forward to with great expectations, destined unfortunately to be grievously disappointed. Though we knew it not at the time, the date of our victorious entry into Bagdad coincided almost exactly with the abdication of the Tzar and the Bolshevik upheaval, and the Russian Troops on the Persian line had already been impregnated with the virus of bolshevism and were getting out of control. It was consequently the more unfortunate that military exigencies not only precluded our extending our occupation up to the frontier of Iraq near Khanikin, but obliged us to acquiesce in the occupation of that town by General Batatoff's troops. Wha
tever its Military aspect might be this phenomenon greatly upset the political situation at the time. The inhabitants of Khanikin Had had bitter experience of a hostile Russian occupation in 1916, but now decided to refrain from all opposition, because on this occasion the Russians came as our allies and with our consent, if not at our request. A great revulsion of feeling, however, was caused by their behaviour and in the process we ourselves rapidly lost prestige and sympathy among a race which had always been friendly to us. Military considerations were of course paramount but this Russian occupation left us a legacy which gave trouble for a long time to come. After a couple of months the Russian force withdrew and their ravages in the district were completed by the Turks who forthwith reoccupied it and it was not until December 1918 that we were in a position to assume control ourselves. When we did so we found the town in a state of acute misery, for the Turks when they retired had left it in the joint clutches of starvation and disease and it was with these formidable adversaries that the work of administration was confronted. Major E. B. Soane, the remarkable character to whom the charge was entrusted and who in addition to a very strong personality possessed the then rare accomplishment of a fluent knowledge of the Kurdish language, laboured devotedly for months at his task, which grew in direct ratio to the success achieved, for no sooner did the Kurds on either side of the frontier hear that help was to be had from the British Authorities at Suleimaniyeh than they poured down from the mountains starving and typhus stricken, to be brought slowly back to health or else to die in our camps and hospitals. Nevertheless by the early summer of 1918 when Major Soane, worn out by incessant toil, was compelled to take a year's rest, the battle was won and his successor Major Goldsmith, found the crops springing up and repeopled villages arising from the ruins which had been wrought.

  But I am straying too wide from the track and will return for a few moments to the days of our entry into Bagdad. We found the pre-war British Residency in use as a Hospital, in which the Turks had left us an unwelcome legacy in the shape of their worst cases of wounds and disease. Its sanitary condition was indescribable, but other hospitable accommodation was gradually found for the inmates and the Residency after a thorough cleansing and overhaul was fitted up as Army Headquarters, a function which it still fills for the Royal Air Force to-day: but whereas the military Staff was already in being, my civil Staff for the Bagdad Vilayet was nonexistent and had to be created. I was allotted a house on the river bank below the Residency which had before our entry been the Austrian Consulate and there I began to form a Secretariat. My first act on arrival had been to seek out any of the old local employees of the pre-war Residency Staff, both because I was anxious to learn what might have happened to them at the hands of the enemy and also because, if forthcoming, I knew they could be very useful to me at this period, with their knowledge of the communities and individual inhabitants of Bagdad. To my great regret I found the family of Narcessian, the faithful Armenian Dragoman of the Residency, in the depth of despair; their father had been sent for by the Turkish Police shortly before our arrival and had not returned. He was never heard of again nor was I able to obtain any evidence as to the precise fate which had befallen him, but he was a man who had doubtless made enemies in the course of his duties as British Dragoman, quite apart from any grudge the Turkish Police might have had against him, and there seemed little doubt that he had met with a violent death during the period of uproar which intervened between the Turkish retreat and our arrival. My next act was to visit His Reverence Saiyid Abdurrahman Effendi, the Naqib, or Chief Noble, of Bagdad; head of the Sunni community and custodian of the shrine of Abdul Qadir Gilani, upon whose attitude towards us and influence with the people of Bagdad a good deal depended. Under the old régime of Sultan Abdul Hamid the Naqib had enjoyed a position of great dignity and stood high in public esteem and no doubt owed a considerable debt of obligation to the former Government; but under the Young Turk régime he had become of less account and indeed had little to thank them for. At this time his position was obviously a delicate one and his attitude had naturally to be one of reserve, yet I enjoyed his frank and wise co-operation in all measures affecting the welfare of his countrymen and likely to mitigate as far as might be the rigours and inconveniences of a military occupation. I saw a great deal of him in the course of my duties and the feelings of mutual confidence which were established between us at this time were to stand me in good stead later on, and are now a grateful memory.

  Directly the news of our occupation of Bagdad got abroad I was perforce overwhelmed with visitors; first the notables of Bagdad and then the tribal Sheikhs from near and far, many of whom had never submitted to the authority of the Turkish Government and were complete strangers to Bagdad. Some attempt had to be made to determine and record from whence these visitors came, what their relations were to one another and what was their relative importance among themselves, matters not at all easy for new comers to diagnose. It was in connection with this task that I began to feel the want of Gertrude Bell's indefatigable assistance and decided to bring her and one or two others up from the Basrah Office to form a nucleus for my Secretariat at Bagdad. All sheikhly visitors from the countryside had to be interviewed, entertained, given small presents and sent back to their homes with injunctions to keep the peace and get busy with their agriculture; so that a great proportion of my time during daylight was spent in these interviews and Miss Bell acted as the strainer through which the individuals filtered through to me, accompanied by a brief note as to what their tribe was, where they came from and what they wanted. I was thus saved endless time in getting to the point. I remember that when I told him that some of my office staff were coming up from Basrah, including Miss Bell, the G.O.C.-in-Chief expressed considerable misgiving at the news, as he feared her arrival might form an inconvenient precedent for appeals from other ladies, but I reminded him that her services had been specifically offered to me by his predecessor as an ordinary member of my Secretariat; that I regarded and treated her no differently from any male officer of my Staff, and that her particular abilities could be very useful to me at the present moment. In due course she arrived and was not long in establishing happy personal relations with Sir Stanley Maude and it is a sad memory to me now that she and I were both members of his party at the entertainment in Bagdad City a few months later which proved to be his last appearance in public, before his tragic death from cholera a few days later, at the height of his success.

  These first six months of our occupation of Bagdad were indeed no easy period for the Civil Administration. The Army was fully occupied consolidating its position round Bagdad and needed to husband its strength to the utmost for the coming winter campaign and so detachments for outlying places could not be spared; nor, for fear of inconvenient incidents, could civil officers be allowed to go far afield. In these circumstances it was naturally difficult for tribesmen to believe, especially in the face of the violent Turko-German propaganda which was rife at the time, that the existing régime at Bagdad was at all secure or that the Turks would not eventually return. Even in Bagdad itself great uncertainty prevailed as to the intentions of the Allies, even if they did win the war; in fact up to the time of our successful offensive in the Autumn of 19 18 it was the general impression that the Central Powers would be victorious or at any rate that nothing more than a stalemate would result.

  Those who prided themselves on their intimate acquaintance with world politics declared that Iraq would undoubtedly be handed back to Turkey in exchange for the liberation of Belgium. Such rumours found their echo among the Sheikhs in general, causing many of our firmest friends to waver, or at least to wait on events. Altogether, in view of the actual political situation and the fact that with our Occupation of the Bagdad Vilayet the military régime found itself confronted with many difficult problems of a nonmilitary aspect, H.M's Government came to the conclusion that some development of my status as Chief Political Officer to the G.O.C.-in-Chief was now called for. Accordingl
y, from the beginning of July 1917, my designation was altered to that of " Civil Commissioner," and while I still, of course, remained subject to the supreme authority of the Army Commander I was given the right henceforth of direct communication with the Secretary of State for India, in whose name the instructions of H.M's Government, in other than military matters, were thereafter issued; and sound advice and judicious support from that Department of State never failed the head of the Civil administration during the three difficult years which were to pass until 1921, when in connection with a new and significant development of policy the direction of affairs in Iraq was transferred to the Colonial Office. But of this more anon.

  During the period of which I am speaking, the summer of 1917, the limits of our occupation beyond Bagdad were roughly; on the right flank, Baquba, on the river Diyala; in the centre, Samarra, on the Tigris line; and on the Euphrates west of Bagdad, Falluja; and thence back to the Hindiyeh barrage on the same river.