Letters From Baghdad

by Bell, Gertrude

  On the Diyala the process of consolidation was necessarily slow, for not only had the country suffered greatly from long devastation by Turkish troops, but until the autumn of 1917 the canal-heads were still in the enemy's control.

  The Tigris gave us no further trouble; those tribal leaders who had joined the Turks again on our retirement from Ctesiphon had thought it safest to remain with them when they in turn retreated towards Mosul; meanwhile their sons, or other suitable kinsmen, had been installed for the time being in their holdings along the river and were now occupied in the cultivation of their lands, much as in time of peace. A most favourable impression was created at this time in the Tigris area by our decision to rebuild Kut-al-Amara, a task which was undertaken partly from expediency and partly in the way of a memorial to those among the beleaguered garrison and friendly Arab inhabitants who had given their lives in the defence of the town. Kut, since the Turks evacuated it in their hurried flight before General Maude had been left completely deserted; a tottering ruin among the palm groves; its streets choked with mud or blocked with barricades; its houses riddled with shells or undermined with dug-outs. The work of reconstruction was supervised with much skill and judgment by the District Political Officer and the country-side saw in the regeneration of the town not only profit and advantage to themselves but also some pledge that a new order of things SO solidly established must have come to stay.

  on the Euphrates west of Bagdad there was little to be done for the moment and it was not until Sir Harry Brooking's successful push in November 1917 had brought about the capture of Ramadi that the tribal Sheikhs of that area began to come in.

  On the middle Euphrates, from the Hindiyeh barrage to Samawa, the position was a curious one. Not a single British soldier was located south of the barrage until December 1917; nevertheless that area being the centre of an important grain growing district, irrigated by the Euphrates canals, could not in the interests of the Army be altogether neglected and a political Officer had accordingly been sent to Hillah in May 1917. His authority however did not extend to Diwaniyeh and southward thereof, where the local Sheikhs, after their visit to me on our first entry into Bagdad, had to be left pretty much to their own devices. It was typical of our slender hold on the middle Euphrates during this first summer that a small Turkish detachment which on our occupation at Bagdad had found itself isolated at Diwaniyeh and unable to get away with the retreating army, held out there until the end of August. It was commanded by a fire-eating Circassian, who, having shot His superior officers when they showed a disposition to surrender, had barricaded himself and his party in a caravan-serai on the river bank and completely terrorised the inhabitants, who regarded their unwelcome guest and his bomb-throwing men with no little dismay and made several attempts to oust them lest their presence should involve the town in hostilities with us. It was only when a visitation from some air-craft convinced him that the game was up that he surrendered with the 30 odd men who had stood by him to the end. On his arrival at Bagdad I had occasion to interview this gentleman and learnt that he considered that the Turks having forgotten him and left him completely in the lurch., he was now free to offer himself for service either with us or with the Arab Army in Hejaz. His artless overture could not however be accepted and as an officer-prisoner he spent the remainder of the war in the less exciting atmosphere of a prisoner's camp in India. He was a stout- hearted, attractive fellow; I trust fortune has since smiled on him.

  But the most thorny problem on the Euphrates at that time was not so much the tribes as the Holy Cities of Islam, Karbala and Najaf. As in other cases on the lower Euphrates the Sheikhs of these towns, after their visit to me at Bagdad, had been sent back to their homes with pious instructions from me to maintain law and order themselves; and in order to strengthen their hands and give them some official recognition, small monthly allowances were provided for them; but before many weeks had passed it became evident that the arrangement was working unsatisfactorily both for the towns and for us. On the one hand the Sheikhs were found to be abusing their positions and making hay while the sun shone; while, worse still, the existence of a brisk trade in supplies to the enemy, both on the Iraq front and in Syria, was brought to light. If further trouble was to be avoided closer control had clearly become essential, and British Political Officers were accordingly posted at Karbala, and at Kufa in the Shamiyeh district on the border of which lies Najaf. These officers for the time being had to rely entirely on their own judgment and force of character and were often placed in positions of great difficulty and no little personal risk. Karbala it is true gave no serious trouble, but Najaf, where the town was in the hands of a lawless crew of local Sheikhs, remained a thorn in our side for some time to come. Fortunately, while the urgent need of food supplies for the population no less than for the army endowed the Euphrates basin with an ever increasing importance, military stringency had been somewhat eased as the danger of any serious attempt on the part of the enemy to move against Bagdad was diminishing, and so it was considered that troops could now be spared to complete the effective occupation of the area behind our fighting line. I accordingly made a tour of the district in December 1917 in order to be in a position to advise the G.O.C.-in-Chief as to the various points where, from the administrative point of view, detachments could advisably be placed. It was of course undesirable, and indeed incompatible with our previous announcements, to place troops in the Holy places themselves, and this made it especially difficult to exercise full control at Najaf, where the lawless elements in the town were being excited by persistent Turko-German propaganda, clear evidence of which was found a little later among enemy papers captured by our troops at Ramadi and Hit. Unfortunately affairs here culminated in the murder of a most promising young officer, Captain W. L. Marshall, who after serving with much credit in a similar post in the Holy City of Kadhimain was selected for the difficult charge at Najaf on account of his special qualifications and experience.

  At the time of this tragedy I myself was on my way to Cairo to attend a conference regarding Arab affairs, but thanks to effective handling of the matter by the Commander-in-Chief and my deputy Colonel Arnold Wilson, heavy retribution was meted out to those concerned, 12 persons suffering the death penalty, while five were transported for life and two for a shorter period.

  At Cairo under the hospitable roof and wise direction of the High Commissioner, Sir Reginald Wingate, I found a gathering of distinguished officers immediately concerned with the Arab problems of the moment; David Hogarth, once "A Wandering Scholar in the Levant" now, as I write, President of the Royal Geographical Society, at that time (as Commander Hogarth, R.N.V.R.) Director of the Arab Bureau: Ronald Storrs, Oriental Secretary at the Residency, the "Perfect Storrs" of King Hussein's despatches, since knighted and now Governor of Cyprus : Gilbert Clayton, Director of Intelligence at Cairo, now Sir Gilbert Clayton and (1927) on an important mission to King Ibn Saud: George Lloyd, now Lord Lloyd, our High Commissioner in Egypt: and last but not least T. E. Lawrence, soon to win lasting fame for his exploits with the Arab contingent and later for his wonderful story of "The Revolt in the Desert." A truly brilliant constellation!

  Our deliberations ranged over all the problems in which we in Mesopotamia and they in the Hejaz were mutually interested. I was chiefly concerned with the difficult one with which both alike were confronted in the bitter personal relations existing between our two Arab allies King Hussein and the Sultan of Nejd; relations which made it hard to decide how most advantage could be derived from their co-operation, either in combination or independently. I should mention that during the preceding winter an important Mission, consisting of Mr. H. St. J. Philby, on my behalf, Colonel R. E. A. Hamilton, Political Agent at Koweit, representing Koweit interests, and Colonel F. Cunliffe-Owen, on behalf of the military authorities at Bagdad, had proceeded to the capital of the latter potentate at Riyadh, to report on the situation in Central Arabia generally and in particular on the possibilities of a renewed
campaign against Hayil, where Ibn Rashid was still active in Turkish interests and a difficult factor in the situation. Their report had been received shortly before I left for Cairo.

  While there I received a summons to proceed on to London for the discussion of various current questions connected with Mesopotamia, and again, while en route back to Bagdad, I was directed to make a further diversion to Simla to confer with the Government of India. On arrival there I learnt that His Majesty's Minister at Teheran, Sir Charles Marling, who for months past had been having an extremely harassing time in the endeavour to combat Turko-German activities in Persia and the lively pressure which they were exercising upon the Persian Government, had been ordered home on sick leave and that it was desired that I should relieve him. I ventured to urge that having been with the Army in Mesopotamia from the commencement of the War I would much prefer to see the campaign through in my present post, but as it was considered that with British troops on the Bagdad-Enzeli line and questions for discussion continually arising between His Majesty's Minister and the G.O.C. in Mesopotamia, it was of great importance that the incumbent of the British Legation for the time being should be an officer with war- time experience of events and conditions in Mesopotamia and Persia, I did not feel justified in pressing my objections and left forthwith for Bagdad and Teheran. I halted at Bagdad only long enough to collect a convoy of cars for the conveyance of my wife and myself and our meagre war-scale belongings and we proceeded with all despatch to Teheran. At the moment of our passage the question of Persia's entry into the war against us was hanging by the slenderest of threads, her idea apparently being that as the Central Powers were evidently going to win, it would be profitable for Persia to be in with them at the finish. I even received a telegram at Hamadan, en route, suggesting that I was too late for the fair and had better not come further, but we pushed on without incident and I relieved Sir Charles Marling on the 15th September 1918, he returning by the same convoy next day.

  During the 20-odd months that I spent as British representative at Teheran events had continued to move apace in Mesopotamia. In fact at the time I left Bagdad both General Allenby and General Marshall were on the point of launching their respective autumn campaigns. In Palestine the former's forces were concentrating in the coastal plain and on September 19th commenced those brilliant operations which resulted in the destruction of the Turkish army, and the occupation of Damascus and Aleppo. On October 1st the desert mounted corps and the Arab army entered Damascus amidft scenes of great enthusiasm.

  In Iraq, Sir William Marshall opened his campaign on the 23rd October, determining to combine a frontal attack on the Turkish position across the Tigris at the Fatha Gorge, with the advance of a column simultaneously from Kifti, with the object of threatening the Turkish communications. With such Success were his plans crowned that by the 30th October the greater part of the opposing force had surrendered and the Pursuit of the remainder was in active progress; we were within 12 miles of Mosul the following day when news of the Armistice reached the Commander-in-Chief. Two days later Mosul itself was occupied.

  As I have explained in an earlier paragraph, the Turkish Administration in Mesopotamia having been almost entirely an exotic one and the personnel having disappeared with the retreating troops as we advanced, we had no alternative, if we were to fulfil our promises to the inhabitants, but to create a provisional administration from the only sources available to us during the war, namely British and British Indian personnel drawn from the Army or borrowed from India. No other course was possible either for myself, in so far as there was any personal element in the matter, or for my locum tenens, when I proceeded on deputation to Persia. There has been a disposition in some quarters to suggest that having regard to the pronouncement made to the inhabitants by Sir Stanley Maude on our entry into Bagdad, under instructions from home, and to the Anglo-French declaration promulgated by his successor Sir William Marshall in November 19 18, alluding respectively to the realization of the "natural aspirations of the noble Arabs" and "the establishment of national government" that, on the conclusion of the Armistice some prompt nationalization of the administration should have been attempted. This argument is plausible in theory and had the settlement of the Peace terms followed closely on the heels of the Armistice it might have been feasible in practice; but the actual course of events was far otherwise.

  The work of peace proceeded very slowly; six months had already elapsed before the Terms to be imposed on Turkey were even discussed. It was not until May 1920 that, as the result of the San Remo Conference, the allocation of the Mandate for Mesopotamia to Great Britain was made known and even this announcement remained inoperative until confirmed in August 1920 by the Treaty of Sèvres, destined in turn never to be ratified. Meanwhile the spirit of President Wilson's 14 Points, with their potent element of " self determination," was gradually permeating the East — not only Mesopotamia but Islam in general — while at the same time our military position in the conquered territory was rapidly being weakened by the reduction of the army in Iraq to the irreducible minimum. A vast tract of country from Mosul to the Persian Gulf now lay under our civil administration and it would have been nothing short of dangerous, apart from the mere loss of efficiency involved, to embark upon any drastic change in the structure of that administration while the situation was so fluid. I emphasise this aspect of the question because when disturbances arose later, there was a disposition, as is so often the case when arrangements do not work quite according to plan, to confuse incidental phases of the unrest with its fundamental causes.

  By the end of the war the people of Mesopotamia had come to accept the fact of our occupation and were resigned to the prospect of a permanent British administration; some, especially in Basrah and the neighbourhood, even looked forward with satisfaction to a future in which they would be able to pursue their commerce and agriculture with a strong central authority to preserve peace and order. Throughout the country there was a conviction, which frequently found open expression, that the British meant well by the Arabs, and this was accompanied by a frank appreciation of the increased prosperity which had followed in the track of our armies and, no doubt, by a lively sense of favours to come, in the way of progress and reform. But with the Armistice, and the Anglo French declaration by which it was immediately followed, a new turn was given to the native mind. In Bagdad, where political ambitions are more highly developed than elsewhere in Iraq, within a week of the publication of the Declaration the idea of an Arab Amir for Iraq was everywhere being discussed and in Mohammedan circles met with universal approval, though there was no consensus of opinion as to who should fill the rôle. At first the choice hovered between a son of Hussein, Sherif of Mecca, (later become King of the Hejaz); a member of the family of the Sultan of Egypt; and a magnate of Mosul. The venerable Naqib of Bagdad was also mentioned, and in some quarters a preference for a republic was expressed; but the latter idea was repugnant to most Moslems, while the Naqib showed no disposition to abandon his dignified religious seclusion in exchange for high Office of State.

  Meanwhile Colonel Wilson, Acting Civil Commissioner, received instructions from H.M's Government to endeavour to elicit the views of the population of the occupied territories on the following points:-

  (i) Were they in favour of a single Arab State under British guidance extending from the northern boundary of the Mosul Vilayet to the Persian Gulf?

  (ii) If so, did they consider that the new State should be placed under an Arab Amir?

  (iii) In that case, whom they would suggest?

  On the first point there proved to be unanimous agreement. On the other two points the replies forthcoming were so divergent that they afforded little indication to H.M's Government as to the general feeling of the country and for the moment the solution of the problem remained in abeyance; I am speaking of the winter of 1918-19. During the ensuing year considerable progress was made with the introduction of natives of the country into the administration i
n subordinate positions, but not always with happy results. Meanwhile uncertainty as to the policy and precise intentions of H.M's Government still prevailed and the local situation was much complicated by the course of events in Syria. There an Arab Government assisted by several British advisers had been set up, from Aleppo to Damascus, immediately after General Allenby's entry in October 1918. At its head was the Amir Faisal, and it was practically independent as far as administration was concerned, though under the supreme control of the British Commander-in-Chief and upheld by the presence of his troops. During the campaign of the previous year the leading officers of Faisal's army had been nearly all of Iraqi origin, many of them Bagdadis, and they avowedly aimed at a federated Arab state of Syria and Iraq under an Arab prince; accordingly when in March 1920 Faisal was proclaimed King of Syria the Iraqis responded by proclaiming his brother the Amir Abdullah, King of Iraq. Hardly had this incident occurred when on the 5th May the assignment of the Iraq mandate to Great Britain was publicly announced, and of course set all tongues awagging.

  Meanwhile, as acting Minister in Persia, I was naturally absorbed in the heavy duties of my own sphere and had not fully realised the turn which matters were taking in Iraq. I was the more surprised therefore to receive a telegram one morning from H.M's Foreign Office, informing me that it was desired that I should return to my post in Mesopotamia; but that on handing over to my successor in H.M's Legation I was to come first to London. The particular juncture from the point of view of our Persian interests seemed to me the worst possible one for a change of horses, but there were obvious limits to which I could press that point of view without danger of being misunderstood and having with due deference submitted my own opinion I resigned myself to the final instructions of H.M's Government and began to prepare for early departure. In due course my relief arrived and on 10th June my wife and I left Teheran, reaching Bagdad 4 days later. There we stayed with Colonel Wilson for 2 days while arrangements were being made for our onward journey, and I was able to learn from him and from Gertrude Bell the latest developments of the situation. A few days previously, on the 2nd June, Colonel Wilson had interviewed a self appointed Committee of 15 Bagdadis, which had been formed to voice opposition to the Mandate and had asked to be allowed to lay their views before the Civil Commissioner. After hearing what they had to say Colonel Wilson had undertaken to urge H.M's Government to expedite to the utmost a definite pronouncement of policy and in communicating the purport of the interview to London, he suggested abandonment of the idea of a provisional Government, recommending in the alternative that as soon as the terms of the Mandate had been settled a Constituent Assembly should at once be convened to deliberate upon the future form of Government. An announcement was accordingly drafted in the terms of which, just before leaving Bagdad, I concurred so far as concerned myself, and with the approval of H.M's Government this was sent to the leading delegates a few days later, on the 20th June. It stated that Mesopotamia was to be constituted an independent state under the guarantee of the League of Nations and subject to the Mandate of Great Britain, and that Sir Percy Cox was to return in the autumn to establish a provisional Arab government, pending preparation of a permanent organic law, to be framed with due regard to the rights, wishes, and interests of all communities of the country. But, alas, by now the fuse of disaffection had burnt too close to the powder, and probably nothing could have prevented the explosion. On 2nd July the tribesmen at Rumaithah, in the Lower Euphrates area, broke into open revolt.