Letters From Baghdad

by Bell, Gertrude

  A few weeks after the reoccupation of Ruwanduz, Sulaimaniya was temporarily occupied and Sheikh Mahmud fled across the Persian border. it had been hoped to set up some form of autonomous administration there with the help of friendly Kurdish leaders, but it proved impossible to lock up a large number of troops which might still be needed on the northern frontier, and no Kurdish chief could be found strong enough to resist the influence of Sheikh Mahmud without such backing. Sulaimaniya was accordingly evacuated on 20th June, 1923, and Sheikh Mahmud allowed to return there for a time and to resume his domination of the centre of the division, while the outlying parts were detached and placed under the Iraq administration.

  The frontiers having thus been strengthened and the Turkish menace for the time staved off, the field was free to deal with the agitation of the reactionary Shiah divines against the elections for the Constituent Assembly. By July, 1923, their demeanour towards King Faisal and towards the Iraq Government had become intolerably arrogant, and King Faisal saw no other way than to authorise the deportation of their leader, Sheikh Mahdi al Khalisi. The deportation was arranged and carried out exclusively by Arab agency, and was followed by the voluntary exodus to Persia of several other prominent Persian divines as a public protest. The Iraq Government decided that it would be unsafe to permit any of these personages to return before the conclusion of the elections and the ratification by the Constituent Assembly of the Treaty of Alliance with Great Britain. This decision, although it caused agitation in Persia, was accepted as wise throughout Iraq. King Faisal had during this period made a progress throughout the whole country for the purpose of explaining his policy and exhorting the people to take part in the elections, and I followed shortly afterwards in his steps, so that the people were left in no doubt as to the identity of purpose of the British and Iraq Governments. Having thus prepared the ground, the Iraq Government ordered that the elections should begin again, and the completion of the registration of primary electors, which had before been found impracticable, was everywhere carried through with success, the most distant tribesmen of the Euphrates and of the Kurdish hills enrolling themselves with astonishing alacrity. The political atmosphere had, in fact, cleared as if by magic and the progress of the elections, notwithstanding the complications of the Electoral Law, threatened to be so swift that it was necessary to delay it, for fear that the Constituent Assembly should sit before the various agreements subsidiary to the Treaty of Alliance with Great Britain were ready for its consideration. The registration of primary electors was finally completed by 16th December, 1923, secondary elections began on 25th February, 1924, and all results were declared by the middle of March, 1924.

  Apart from the labours of the Iraq Government and myself over the provisions of the "subsidiary agreements," the late summer and autumn of 1923 were marked only by the growing tension between Iraq and Ibn Saud consequent partly on raids carried out upon Nejd territory by the Shammar who had taken refuge in Iraq when Ibn Saud took Hail in 1921. Finally a conference was arranged at Kuwait under the presidency of Colonel Knox, lately Acting Resident in the Persian Gulf, to decide outstanding questions not only between Nejd and Iraq but also between Nejd and Hejaz and Trans Jordan. It met on 17th December, 1923, and was in a fair way to achieve some settlement, at all events between Iraq and Nejd, when on 14th March, 1924, a very serious raid by Akhwan, not less than 2,000 strong, was carried out upon the Iraq frontier nomads, 186 persons, men, women and children being killed, and 26,000 sheep and 3,700 donkeys captured. This aroused such indignation in Iraq that the conference had to be abandoned.

  In the meantime the Cabinet of Abdul Muhsin Beg had resigned on 16th November, 1923, as a consequence of differences of opinion with His Majesty King Faisal, leaving the subsidiary agreements incomplete. Jafar Pasha succeeded him as Prime Minister and concluded the discussion of the Agreements subsidiary to the Treaty. They were signed on the 25th March, 1924. The whole Instrument of Alliance was thus ready for submission to the Constituent Assembly, which was opened by His Majesty King Faisal on 27th March, 1924. The month had already been made eventful by the declaration of King Husain as Khalifa, which enhanced the prestige of the Hashimite house.

  The debates on the Treaty and Agreements in the Constituent Assembly lasted until 10th June, 1924, the issue growing more and more doubtful as the country deputies fell under the influence of certain extremist lawyers and coffee-house politicians of Bagdad. There was much misrepresentation and some solid ground for dissatisfaction in the heavy burdens imposed on Iraq by the obligation simultaneously to expand the Army, redeem the capital cost of the railway and shoulder a large share of the Ottoman Debt. This difficult position had been brought about mainly by the cutting down of the Treaty period from twenty to four years. For whereas, under the arrangements contemplated in the original Treaty, Iraq would have been able to expand her army very gradually, she was now forced into a feverish and most expensive programme, with little real hope of being able in so short a time to produce an army fit for external defence. Moreover, at the Cairo Conference of 1921, which laid down the original policy, the future revenues of Iraq had been gravely overestimated on the basis of the momentary prosperity succeeding the war. With shrunken revenues and increased obligations, it was feared that the conditions of the Financial Agreement must, if Iraq attempted to fulfil them, drive her to bankruptcy. Another great objection felt to the Treaty was that it contained no definite undertaking that the economic and judicial capitulations, formerly enjoyed in the old Turkish Empire by certain European Powers and by the United States of America, should be abrogated. There was merely a clause laying down that in consequence of the "non-application" of these immunities, effect would be given to reasonable provisions to safeguard the interests of foreigners in judicial matters.

  On 20th April, 1924, the Committee of the Assembly, appointed to study the Treaty and Agreements, presented a report containing some able criticism, the work of Yasin Pasha, President of the Committee. Agitation against the Treaty, which had already led to the attempted assassination of two pro-Treaty deputies, increased and it became clear that, without some assurance regarding future financial treatment, there was little hope of passing the Treaty. On the other hand it was not feasible to accept any amendments in the Treaty and Agreements before ratification, as this would have thrown all the relations between Great Britain and Iraq back into the melting-pot and have created difficulties both in England and in Iraq. Finally, His Britannic Majesty's Government gave an undertaking that, after ratification, they would reconsider the financial obligations of Iraq. This somewhat eased the situation, but also in some quarters increased the expectation of further British concessions and the anti-Treaty agitation continued. His Britannic Majesty's Government therefore resolved to put an end to a tension which was becoming dangerous, by bringing the Iraq Mandate before the League of Nations at the session of June, 1924, and announced that, if the Iraq Assembly had reached no decision by 10th June, this would be taken as a rejection of the Treaty. As a result, the Constituent Assembly accepted the Treaty and Agreements shortly before midnight on 10th June, stating in a rider to their resolution that they did so in reliance on the assurance that, after ratification, the British Government would "amend with all possible speed the Financial Agreement in the spirit of generosity and sympathy for which the British people are famous."

  The acceptance of the Treaty was a notable landmark, for it has been the only instance since the close of the war of a complete and voluntary agreement to define future relations between Great Britain and an Arabic speaking community, made under freely elected representative institutions on both sides. That the nation on the whole was satisfied with the decision was testified by the number of congratulations which I received from all parts of the country.

  The Treaty and agreements were placed before the Council of the League of Nations on 20th September, 1924. The League took note of these documents and, on 27th September, 1924, accepted them as giving effect to the prov
isions of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League for the regulation of the relations between Iraq and the Mandatory Power. The Treaty and Agreements were ratified by His Britannic Majesty King George V on 10th November, 1924, and by His Majesty King Faisal on 12th December, 1924.

  After disposing of the Treaty the Constituent Assembly proceeded to the consideration of the Organic Law and the Electoral Law, which were passed, the first on 10th July and the second on 2nd August, 1924. The programme laid down for Iraq in Mr. Winston Churchill's announcement of 12th October, 1922, as a necessary preliminary to the admission of Iraq to the League of Nations and the termination of mandatory relations, had been the ratification of the Treaty and subsidiary Agreements, the bringing into effect of the Organic Law and the delimitation of the frontiers. Iraq had now fulfilled her part of the programme. The delimitation of the frontiers depended on Great Britain and Turkey. Jafar Pasha and his Cabinet, exhausted with their efforts, resigned office, the Constituent Assembly was dissolved, and Yasin Pasha al Hashimi was made Prime Minister.

  The northern frontier and the Kurdish mountains had been fairly peaceful during the latter part of 1923, and the first half of 1924. In Sulaimaniya, however, Sheikh Mahmud had persisted in overstepping the boundaries laid down for him when allowed to return after the withdrawal of the troops in July, 1923, and he had to be continually threatened from the air, his headquarters being occasionally bombed. In the middle of May, 1924, exaggerated reports of the agitation in Bagdad against the Treaty had encouraged him to more active rebellion. The adjoining division of Kirkuk became affected and intensive air action was taken against Sheikh Mahmud, with the result that he abandoned Sulaimaniya, which was occupied in July, 1924, by a column of Iraq Army Cavalry, supported by Assyrian Levies. Sheikh Mahmud again fled over the Persian frontier and the remaining portions of the Sulaimaniya Division were placed under a very loose form of civil administration on behalf of the Iraq Government. This has not secured complete tranquillity from the local depredations of outlaws, but the town of Sulaimaniya is now again flourishing and the prosperity of the district is gradually returning. The zone of disorder has, at all events, been pushed far back from the borders of the settled districts of Kirkuk and Arbil. Sulaimaniya itself, like the Indo-Afghan border, has never from the remotest times been completely pacified, and it is too much to expect that this will now be accomplished in the twinkling of an eye.

  In Article 3 of the Treaty of Lausanne it had been provided that the frontier between Turkey and Iraq should be laid down in friendly arrangement to be concluded between Turkey and Great Britain within nine months, and that, in the event of no agreement being reached, the dispute should be referred to the Council of the League of Nations. Pending the decision, the two Governments had undertaken that no military or other movement should take place which might modify in any way the present state of the territories in question. During May and the first week of June, 1924, Sir Percy Cox had carried on in Constantinople fruitless negotiations with the Turkish Government on the frontier question. The Turks had been adamant in their demand for the whole Mosul Vilayat, and their intransigence had probably been encouraged by the reports from Bagdad that the Iraq Constituent Assembly was about to reject the Treaty with Great Britain. On 9th June, 1924, the day before the Iraq Assembly accepted the Anglo-Iraq Treaty, the Constantinople negotiations had broken down. There was now nothing left but a reference of the frontier dispute to the League of Nations, and, in the meanwhile the Turks became active on the frontiers. They sent the Wali of julamerk with a small escort to visit Chal, which they had been informed in October, 1923, was claimed by the British Government to lie within the sphere of the Iraq Administration, and in the course of his progress he was ambushed by some Assyrian Christians and taken captive, but released. At the beginning of September, 1924, the Turks concentrated troops for the invasion of the Assyrian area, and on the 14th they crossed the River Haizil into what was undoubtedly Iraq territory. They were met by an attack from the air and driven back and thereafter diverted their march to the north through the territory of the Sindi Guli Kurds (still Iraq territory), through which they moved and laid waste the Assyrian country, driving the Assyrians, some 8,000 in number, down into the valley of Amadia, where they had to be supported by the Iraq Government. It was a remarkable testimony to the success of the Iraq Administration and to the good relations maintained with the Kurds that this incursion by the Turks did not lead to a general rising on the Mosul frontier against Iraq, which would have been unfortunate, as the League of Nations was at that moment sitting at Geneva to determine the delimitation of the Turco-Iraq frontier. Ultimately, the Turks agreed before the League to preserve the status quo until the frontier was decided. A preliminary dispute as to the line of the status quo was settled by a special meeting of the League at Brussels in October, 1924, and this provisional line has since been known as the "Brussels Line."

  The Frontier Commission, consisting of three Commissioners, eminent subjects of Sweden, Belgium and Hungary, reached Bagdad in January, 1925, and spent three months in examining the frontier. They were accompanied by General Jawad Pasha, who had recently commanded the Turkish forces on the Iraq frontier, as Turkish assessor, and Mr. Jardine, a British Administrative Inspector in the service of Iraq, as British assessor. The Turks had, in the preceding negotiations, demanded a plebiscite of the inhabitants of the Mosul Vilayat, but this had been resisted by the British on the grounds that the circumstances of the population made a plebiscite impracticable. The League of Nations had left the methods of enquiry entirely to the discretion of the Commissioners, who went a long way towards satisfying the Turkish demand and besides undertaking a detailed study of the racial, geographical and economic factors of the problem, made secret enquiries from representatives of all sections of the inhabitants in the territories under dispute, as to which government they would prefer, that of Turkey or Iraq.

  QUESTION OF THE CHRISTIANS OF MOSUL AND OF THE NESTORIAN OR ASSYRIAN MOUNTAINEERS.

  One of the chief matters of concern to the Frontier Commission appeared to be the future of the Christians of Mosul, and especially of the Nestorians or Assyrians, who, as narrated above, were at the time of the visit of the Commission refugees in Iraq territory. They numbered altogether about 20,000 souls, some from regions lying considerably beyond the northernmost frontier claimed by Iraq and some from the Hakkiari mountains north of Amadia, which were included in the Iraq claim. They had revolted against Turkey in 1916 at the instigation of Russia, and then, being deserted by the Russians after the revolution, had fought their way through Persian territory to a junction with the British troops, losing two-thirds of their number in the process. The British had brought them into Iraq and maintained them there for three years, after which some were temporarily settled on vacant Iraq lands near Amadia and some encouraged to filter back to their deserted homes to the north. There they had stayed, repairing the damage as best they might, until once more expelled by the Turkish incursion of September, 1924. Numbers of them had, from 1921 onwards, entered the British service as Levies and had displayed magnificent fighting qualities, helping in the suppression of sporadic Kurdish insurrections and in the expulsion from Ruwanduz in 1923 of the Turkish irregulars. They were united in a determination never again to submit themselves to Turkish rule. In order to reassure them as to their future, two successive Iraq Cabinets, those of Jafar Pasha and of Yasin Pasha, officially pledged the Government of Iraq to provide lands in Iraq for those Assyrians who might be dispossessed of their original homes by the decision of the League of Nations and to devise a system of administration for them which should ensure to them the utmost possible freedom from interference. It can hardly be doubted that this liberal attitude on the part of the Government of Iraq had its influence on the deliberations of the Frontier Commission. The Commission terminated its labours in the third week of March, 1925. Its report could not be prepared in time for the June session of the League, and was held over till September..
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br />   POLITICAL EVENTS AFTER THE DEPARTURE OF THE FRONTIER COMMISSION.

  It had not been thought advisable to proceed with elections for the first regular Iraq Parliament until the Frontier Commission had completed its labours. The promulgation of the Organic Law passed by the Constituent Assembly in July, 1924, had consequently been delayed, so as to avoid an interregnum between the close of arbitrary Cabinet Government and the introduction of a Parliamentary régime.

  On 21st March, 1925, on the eve of the departure of the Commission, the Organic Law was officially promulgated amid widespread rejoicings, and orders were given for the completion of the new lists of primary electors and for the commencement of the parliamentary elections. The Cabinet of Yasin Pasha had, shortly before taking these steps, passed four notable measures vital for the future prosperity and stability of Iraq. The first was the signature of an agreement with the Anglo-Persian Oil Company for the dredging of the bar at the mouth of the Shatt al Arab, so as to allow vessels of heavy draught to enter the Port of Basra. The second was the signature of a trade transit convention with Syria. The third was the grant to the Turkish Petroleum Company of a concession for the development of oil throughout the Bagdad and Mosul Wilayats, and the fourth was the signature of long term contracts with some hundred British advisers and officials, whose experience and devoted industry were thus secured for Iraq throughout the first and most difficult stage of her career as an independent State.