A Peace to End all Peace

by David Fromkin

  After the de Bunsen committee—which Sir Mark Sykes had guided—submitted its report on the postwar Middle East on 30 June 1915, the British government sent Sykes out to the East to discuss the committee’s recommendations with officers and officials on the spot. He traveled to the Balkans, to Egypt twice (on the way out and on the way back), to the Persian Gulf, to Mesopotamia, and to India. It was a major undertaking; Sykes’s journey lasted half a year. It gave him a unique exposure to a range of different points of view, but it was almost 1916 before he was able to meet with Cabinet members in London to tell them in person what he had learned.

  In his first stop in Cairo—on the way out, in the summer of 1915—Sykes met with Kitchener’s Middle East advisers in Egypt. Ronald Storrs, whom he had known before the war, introduced him to Gilbert Clayton. Religion formed an instant bond: Clayton was a devout Christian whose seriousness impressed Sykes deeply. They became friends as well as colleagues, although Sykes was more open in his dealings with Clayton than Clayton was in return.

  Sykes was introduced by his friends to Arabic-speaking personalities of engagingly pro-British views, and became an advocate of Clayton’s view that Syria should become British. He was led by Clayton and Storrs to believe that the populations of the region would welcome such a development. France could be given compensation elsewhere, he said; and, in any event, the only groups in France that wanted Syria were clerics or promoters of commercial concessions.1 Attracted by the plan espoused at that time by his friends and by Wingate for the Sherif Hussein to be elevated to the caliphate, a plan that accorded perfectly with his own view that the caliphate should be moved south, Sykes was won over to the Storrs “Egyptian Empire” scheme. This proposed a single Arabic-speaking entity, under the spiritual rule of the Sherif and the nominal temporal rule of the figurehead monarch of Egypt, to be governed from Cairo by the British High Commissioner—who was to be Lord Kitchener.

  There was, however, a current of opinion in Cairo that Sykes found disturbing: the talk of rivalry between Britain and France in the Middle East. Sykes did not believe that there were any serious grounds for disagreement between the two wartime allies; he thought that France did not really care about Syria, and could be induced to look elsewhere for her share of the winnings. His assumption was that the talk of rivalry was inspired by enemy propagandists. Only many months later did he learn that the anti-French talk (and more than talk) came from some of his own friends in Cairo; and he never learned that one of the ringleaders of the group was his friend Gilbert Clayton.

  II

  In India, at the opposite political pole, Sykes found a reception that was less than cordial. He was a young man, halfway through his first year in his first governmental job, and he had come out from London to tell India about the East. The man he had come to see was two decades his senior, had spent a lifetime in government service, and was one of Britain’s most distinguished foreign policy professionals. Charles Hardinge, a former ambassador to Russia, had been the career official in charge of the Foreign Office before coming out to India as Viceroy. As Governor-General, he served in a family tradition that harked back to the previous century; his grandfather had been Governor-General of India in the 1840s, the decade before the Mutiny. Hardinge’s policy was for India to occupy and annex Mesopotamia, and his view of Cairo’s proposals was that they were “absolutely fantastic” and “perfectly fatal.” He rejected the notion of Arab independence, however nominal; he wrote that “Sykes does not seem to be able to grasp the fact that there are parts of Turkey unfit for representative institutions.”2

  More inclined than ever to support Cairo against Simla, Sykes also came to believe that the conflict in views and in jurisdictions was harmful in itself. He argued that “our traditional way of letting various offices run their own shows, which was allright in the past when such sectors dealt with varying problems which were not related, but it is bad now that each sector is dealing in reality with a common enemy.”3 There was no central policy: Simla, Cairo, the Foreign Office, the War Office, and the Admiralty each ran its own operation, as did officials in the field, each working in ignorance of what the others were doing, and often at cross-purposes. The obstacles in the way of arriving at a policy were formidable: Sykes once counted eighteen agencies that would have to be consulted before an agreed decision could be reached.4

  During the course of his trip, Sykes explored the idea of establishing an overall bureau to assume charge of Arab affairs. Cairo was enthusiastic; on 13 December 1915, Clayton reported that he had started to assemble the nucleus of a Near East Office and hoped that Sykes would press forward with the project.5 Returning to London at the end of 1915, Sykes did press forward by proposing the creation of a central agency to coordinate policy: an Arab Bureau, to be established in Cairo under his own direction. The new Secretary for India, Austen Chamberlain, at the same time urged the creation of an Islamic Bureau, to combat seditious enemy propaganda in India, Persia, and Afghanistan. The Viceroy of India, in response, made it clear that he opposed the creation of any bureau that planned to intrude into areas within his jurisdiction, especially if Sykes and his friends were to be in charge. Early in January 1916 Asquith ordered an interdepartmental conference to consider the creation of an Islamic Bureau.

  At the conference, agreement was reached to accept the Sykes proposal, but with a major modification that cut the substance out of it. The Arab Bureau (as it was to be called) was not to be a separate body, but merely a section of the Cairo Intelligence Department. This was insisted on by Kitchener (represented by FitzGerald) and by the Foreign Office; they did not intend to surrender the control they exercised over British policy. Cairo was authorized to establish and staff a new entity; but a central agency to take charge of overall policy was not created—and that had been the point of the Sykes proposal. The various departments of government continued to make and carry out their independent and often conflicting policies. The leading role continued to be played by Kitchener, to whom the Foreign Secretary deferred. Sykes continued to make policy only as a representative of Kitchener, and not in his own right as chief of an independent agency; Kitchener, who did not wish to relinquish control, insisted that the situation should remain that way.

  The head of Naval Intelligence questioned the desirability of creating the new bureau in Cairo along the lines that Sykes and Clayton proposed; to placate him, his candidate, David G. Hogarth, an Oxford archaeologist serving as a Naval Intelligence officer, was named to be its head. Hogarth was a shadowy figure who had worked with British intelligence agencies before the war.

  Hogarth replaced the acting head of the Arab Bureau, Alfred Parker, a career army officer who was Kitchener’s nephew. From the outset Hogarth worked directly under Clayton, whose principal views he seems to have shared. Under Hogarth, the bureau fought to assert the views of Wingate and Clayton—who wanted to expand British Egypt’s control of the Arab world—as against those of the Foreign Office and the Government of India.

  An even-tempered, low-keyed officer of the Sudan government named Kinahan Cornwallis became Hogarth’s deputy, and Wingate’s secretary, an officer named G. S. Symes, came over to the Arab Bureau from the Sudan. Philip Graves, a former Times correspondent, also joined the bureau; and Hogarth brought in Thomas Edward (“T. E.”) Lawrence, a young man who had worked for him at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and over whose career he had presided ever since.* Lawrence was later to win renown as “Lawrence of Arabia.”

  At the beginning Clayton did not have an expert in Turkish affairs—and in waging an intelligence war against Turkey that was an evident disadvantage. Then he had a stroke of luck. On 10 December 1915, Wyndham Deedes—who had served in the Ottoman Gendarmerie before the war—arrived in Cairo from Gallipoli; in early January Clayton succeeded in co-opting him as deputy head of Egyptian Intelligence, where his knowledge of Turkish affairs proved an invaluable asset.

  Soon Cairo was bustling with young Members of Parliament and others ambitious to h
ave a say in Middle Eastern policy, revolving around the Arab Bureau. Among them were Aubrey Herbert, M.P., and George Lloyd, M.P., both Mark Sykes’s friends from before the war. At last Cairo had become a center of British policy-making for the Middle East; and Clayton had the satisfaction of knowing that in London the real makers of Britain’s Middle East policy were Cairo’s leader, Lord Kitchener, and his representative, Mark Sykes.

  23

  MAKING PROMISES TO THE ARABS

  I

  When Sykes returned from the East at the end of 1915, he brought back to London something more immediately startling and of more lasting importance than his idea of creating an Arab Bureau. What he brought was news of a mysterious young Arab who claimed that he and his friends could help Britain win the war. The young man’s name was Muhammed Sharif al-Faruqi.

  Nothing was known of al-Faruqi then; and little is known of him now. He emerged from obscurity in the autumn of 1915, and held the attention of the British government well into 1916, before slipping back into obscurity and dying young, killed on a road in Iraq in 1920 during a tribal raid. During his months in the spotlight in 1915–16, he directly or indirectly led Britain to promise concessions to France, Russia, Arabs, and others in the postwar Middle East. As middleman between British officials and Arab leaders, he was either misunderstood or else misrepresented each to the other. One can only guess at his motives. To the twentieth-century Middle East, he left a legacy of misunderstanding that time has not yet entirely dissipated.

  II

  The background to the astonishing al-Faruqi episode was the quasi-agreement Lord Kitchener had reached with the Emir Hussein of Mecca at the outset of the war. As noted earlier, Lord Kitchener, regarding the Emir Hussein as a spiritual rather than a material force,* had initiated a correspondence with him in the autumn of 1914 that had been concluded on terms satisfactory to both men. Hussein* was to do nothing for the moment; he would not use his spiritual prestige against Britain in the Ottoman war (as Kitchener had feared he might do) and, at some future point, he would use it in favor of Britain (as Kitchener hoped he would do when the war was over and British rivalry with Russia resumed).

  Matters having been settled early in 1915, the British Residency in Cairo was surprised to receive another letter from Hussein half a year later, in the summer of 1915, suddenly demanding—without explanation—that almost all of Arab Asia should become an independent kingdom under his rule. (As indicated earlier, British officials were unaware that Hussein would understand that they were offering him a kingdom when they suggested that he should become the Arab caliph; and it was the kingdom, not the caliphate, that tempted him at the time.)

  Hussein’s unexpected demand, coming without explanation after months of silence, aroused wonder and mirth in British Cairo. An amused Ronald Storrs commented that Hussein ought to be satisfied to be allowed to keep the province of the Hejaz. Storrs commented that Hussein “knows he is demanding, possibly as a basis of negotiations, far more than he has the right, the hope, or the power to expect.”1 Sir Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner in Egypt, not wishing to discourage Hussein, gently replied to him that discussion of Middle Eastern frontiers ought to be postponed until the end of the war.

  But Hussein’s sudden demand for an independent Arab kingdom was by no means the unreasonable act that it appeared to be at the time in Cairo. Unbeknownst to McMahon and Storrs, what had happened in Mecca was that in January 1915 Hussein had discovered written evidence that the Ottoman government was planning to depose him at the end of the war—and indeed had postponed deposing him only because of the coming of the war.2 He promptly sent his son Feisal to see the Grand Vizier in Constantinople, but learned that there was little chance of persuading the Porte to reverse this decision.

  The Young Turk plan to depose him forced Hussein, against his inclinations, to consider opposing Turkey in the war. Fearing that to do so might isolate him in the Arab world, Hussein sent Feisal to Damascus to sound out the possibility of obtaining support from the Arab secret societies headquartered there. In carrying out this mission, Feisal stopped in Damascus twice: en route to Constantinople to see the Grand Vizier, and again on his way back from Constantinople afterwards.

  On his first stop in Damascus, in late March 1915, Feisal was told that there were three Ottoman army divisions with mainly Arab soldiers concentrated in the Damascus area, and that the secret society conspirators believed that these divisions would follow their lead. Though they talked of leading a revolt against Turkey, the members of the secret societies also expressed reservations about doing so. For one thing, most of them believed Germany would soon win the war; they were bound to ask themselves why they should join the losing side. For another, as between the Ottoman Empire and the European Allies, they preferred to be ruled by Moslem Turks than by European Christians.

  Although evidence of what they were planning is scanty, the secret societies apparently were inclined to set up a bidding competition between Britain and Turkey for Arab loyalties. They advised Hussein (through Feisal) not to join the Allies unless Britain pledged to support independence for most of Arab western Asia. With such a British pledge in hand, the secret societies could then have asked the Ottoman Empire to match it.

  After his meetings in Damascus. Feisal proceeded to Constantinople to meet with the Grand Vizier. When he returned to Damascus on 23 May 1915, on his way home, he found the situation considerably changed. Djemal Pasha, the Turkish governor of Syria, had scented an Arab plot and taken steps to smash it. He had crushed the secret societies, arresting many of the ringleaders and dispersing others. He had broken up the three Arab army divisions, and had sent many of their officers away to Gallipoli and elsewhere.3

  A handful of the remaining conspirators—six men according to one account, nine according to another4—now told Feisal that they could no longer initiate a revolt against the Ottoman Empire; Hussein should do it, and they would follow him—if Hussein could first induce the British to pledge support for Arab independence.

  The men of the secret societies had drafted a document defining the territories that were to be Arab and independent. The document was called the Damascus Protocol. Feisal brought it back from Damascus to Mecca. It set forth the demands that the Emir Hussein was to submit to Britain. Hussein had nothing to lose in making the demands. Doing so would help him obtain support from the secret societies—for whatever that might be worth—when he launched his revolt; it would also stake his claim to leadership in Arabian and Arab politics, and would help to justify his support of Christians against Moslem Turkey. So in the summer of 1915 he sent his letter incorporating the Damascus Protocol demands to the British Residency in Cairo, where the demands—as has been seen—were not taken seriously.

  III

  Lieutenant Muhammed Sharif al-Faruqi, a 24-year-old Arab Ottoman staff officer from Mosul (in what is now Iraq), was a secret society member stationed in Damascus at the time of Feisal’s first stop there in early 1915. He may have been among those who met with Feisal there at that time; if not, he learned what had been said from colleagues who had attended the meeting.

  Al-Faruqi was one of the secret society officers ordered out of Damascus and sent by Djemal Pasha to the Gallipoli front, where casualties were high. Sending suspected Arab plotters to the front lines to be killed looked to be a deliberate policy of Djemal’s in crushing sedition. On the other hand, there were valid military reasons for sending troops to reinforce the Gallipoli front where the Ottoman regime was fighting for survival. Al-Faruqi may have suspected, but could not have been sure, that his posting to Gallipoli showed that Djemal suspected him of treason.

  Al-Faruqi kept in touch with secret society officers who remained in Damascus. From them he learned further details of what Feisal and Hussein were doing. He learned that the remnant of the secret societies in Damascus had encouraged Hussein to lead an Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire if Britain would first agree to support the Damascus Protocol: the secret soc
iety program for Arab independence. He learned, too, that Hussein had in fact written to the British in Cairo in the summer of 1915 incorporating the Damascus Protocol in his letter and presenting it as his own set of demands for his establishment as monarch of an Arab kingdom comprising almost all of Arab western Asia.

  In the autumn of 1915, Lieutenant al-Faruqi deserted the Ottoman forces at Gallipoli and crossed over to Allied lines. He claimed to have important information for British Intelligence in Cairo, and was promptly sent to Egypt for interrogation. Perhaps he feared that Djemal was about to obtain proof of his membership in the anti-Turkish conspiracy, and decided to escape while there was time. Perhaps he hoped to win glory by playing a lone hand in world politics. Whatever his motives, he acted on an impulse of his own: nobody had entrusted him with a mission.

  Al-Faruqi spoke little English, and it is difficult to tell from the fragmentary historical record the extent to which he was correctly understood or the extent to which words were put in his mouth by those who wanted to hear what they claimed he said. Under interrogation by British Intelligence officials, the young officer claimed to be a member of the secret Arab military society al-’Ahd. He invoked the name of its leading figure stationed in Damascus, General Yasin al-Hashimi, Chief of Staff of the Ottoman 12th Division, and although al-Faruqi admitted that “I am not authorized to discuss with you officially” the proposals of al-’Ahd, the young deserter pretended—for whatever reason—to be a spokesman for the organization and was accepted as such by Gilbert Clayton, the head of British Intelligence in Cairo.5 Though his story was unverified, British Intelligence believed it and did not investigate further. He was not in fact a representative of al-’Ahd or indeed of any other group: Clayton had been duped.

  What gave plausibility to al-Faruqi’s claim to represent al-’Ahd was that—from his colleagues in Damascus—he knew the details of the British correspondence with Sherif Hussein and knew about the demands that Hussein had sent to Cairo in the summer of 1915.