June 26, 2013

FINEST HOUR 132, AUTUMN 2006

BY DAVID FREEMAN

Professor Freeman teaches History at California State University Fullerton. This article is the text of his presentation given to Churchillians of Southern California in Costa Mesa, 31 July 2004.

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In the summer of 1920, British and Indian troops under British authority occupied the ancient realm of Mesopotamia, or “Mespot,” as some took to calling the cradle of Western Civilization. Increasingly the British began to refer to the region as Iraq, an Arab term meaning “well-rooted country.” The troops had been there since fighting their way in against the Turks, who had controlled the land for centuries as part of their Ottoman Empire, until aligning themselves with the Central Powers, which were defeated in the Great War. Now, more than a year and a half since the formal end of hostilities, the occupying forces in Iraq faced an uprising.

In June, various tribes pursuing various goals took aim against their perceived common enemy: Britain. British soldiers, already tense from fatal native attacks the previous year, now endured a fresh round of slayings. For the second year in a row, a British officer sent out to ameliorate the crisis was ambushed and murdered. In the Shiite Moslem holy city of Karbalah a jihad or “holy war” was proclaimed against Britain. In London, press criticism of the government’s Middle East policy reached fever pitch.

“How much longer,” The Times demanded to know in a leading article on August 7th, “are valuable lives to be sacrificed in the vain endeavour to impose upon the Arab population an elaborate and expensive administration which they never asked for and do not want?”‘ An American missionary warned Gertrude Bell, special adviser on Arab affairs to the British Civil Commissioner in Iraq: “You are flying in the face of four millennia of history if you try to draw a line around Iraq and call it a political entity.”¹ Finally, after pouring in more troops from India, the British did quell the uprising, but only after suffering nearly 2000 casualties, including 450 dead.

By the time the strife ended in February 1921, Prime Minister David Lloyd George had decided to invite a new hand to take over the Colonial Office—and with it responsibility for instigating a political settlement in the Middle Eastern territories Britain had acquired during the war. On the last day of 1920, the Cabinet agreed to the creation of a special Middle East Department to be set up within the Colonial Office. On New Year’s Day 1921, the Prime Minister invited the Secretary of State for War and Air, who had urged the creation of the new department, to change portfolios and take charge of the ministry now exclusively responsible for Iraq. Thus Winston Churchill became Secretary of State for the Colonies, assuming office on 14 February 1921.

Churchill’s involvement with Iraq, like Britain’s, extended back into the war. The idea of an Eastern Strategy against the Central Powers—directing an Allied attack against the Ottoman Turks, who were perceived weak, and opening up a supply route to Czarist Russia—began with the ill-fated Dardanelles campaign, the championing of which had cost Churchill his job as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1915. Subsequently, the British attempted to instigate a revolt against the Turks among the Arab tribes that had long been subject to Ottoman rule.

But British intelligence was almost comically ill-informed about Arab and Moslem affairs. As a result, British authorities wrongly came to believe that the Emir (also known as the Sherif) of Mecca, Hussein Ibn Ali, could wield great power among the Arabs and supplant the Ottoman Sultan as Caliph, the paramount leader of the Moslem world. Hussein was a member of the House of Hashem, a Bedouin clan which claimed descent from the prophet Mohammed. He acted for the Turks as governor of the
Hejaz, the hilly regions of western Arabia along the Red Sea coast that include the holy cities of Medina and Mecca. If Hussein could be persuaded—and by persuaded we mean bribed—to declare a revolt against the Turks, the British believed other Arab chieftains would rally behind him, raising an army that would bring down the Ottoman Empire from within.

In the event, Hussein duly accepted tlie British offer and declared himself King of the Hejaz in 1916. But the new king’s sons, Ali, Abdullah and Feisal, failed to attract the anticipated level of support. The British soon learned that the real coming power among the Arabs was a rival chieftain to the east, the Emir of the Nejd, Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud. He also accepted a hefty British subsidy for defying Turkish authority, but was preoccupied with using his own forces to gain preeminence among the Arab tribes. For all their hopes, then, the British were left to drive the Turks from Arabia using almost exclusively their own troops and materials diverted from the Western Front: the one tiling they had hoped to avoid.

During the war the British reached an understanding with their French and Russian allies to partition the territories of the Ottoman Empire among themselves once the Turks were defeated. Russia would take the Trans-Caucasus; the French would occupy the Syria-Lebanon region (nominally this was to defend the Eastern-rite Christian community which existed there in communion with the Roman Catholic Church); and Britain was to take Mesopotamia. Palestine, which was then understood to be the lands along both sides of the Jordan river, was to become a buffer zone either under Arab rule or joint Anglo-French authority.

But the British then went on to make diplomatically ambiguous promises to Hussein about an independent Arab kingdom that might include Palestine, and capped their potentially conflicting pledges with the 1917 Balfour Declaration announcing that the British government viewed “with favour the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people.³

By the end of the war, of course, much had changed. President Wilson of the United States, insisting on the principle of self-determination, would not countenance Allied annexation of colonies belonging to the defeated states. Instead, adopting the suggestion of South African Prime Minister Jan Smuts, the Allies agreed to set up so-called Mandated Territories under Article 22 of the League of Nations covenant. This established the principle of international supervision of colonies.

Ottoman lands outside Turkey proper were “category A” mandates, theoretically requiring only administrative advice and assistance before becoming fully independent nations. Under this system, Britain formally took control of Mesopotamia as well as Palestine east and west of the Jordan. But occupation was only to be temporary until such time as British authorities worked out with the native peoples of the region how the land should be divided and who would assume governing power in the new countries.

Complicating matters further was the pro-Greek, anti-Turk policy of British Prime Minister David Lloyd George. At war’s end, British and French troops also occupied the Ottoman capital of Constantinople, cutting off most of the Turkish army from the European side of their nation. True to his Liberal roots, and believing Greece to be the coming power in the Levant, Lloyd George supported Greek efforts to gain control not only of the Turkish lands in Europe but also to invade the Turkish heartland of Anatolia and seize the Aegean coast. All this transpired while Lloyd George also insisted upon a drastic reduction in the military budget following the Armistice.

The man responsible for making these economies was Churchill, who had assumed the ministerial portfolios for both the Army and the Royal Air Force immediately after the election of December 1918. Churchill determined in the summer of 1919 that the most effective area for economy lay in reducing the 125,000 British and Indian troops stationed in Iraq. But even when this number was brought down to 60,000 by the following spring, the cost of occupying Iraq still amounted to £18,000,000 a year.

Churchill cautioned the army’s Commander-In-Chief in Iraq that “there can be absolutely no question of holding the present enormous forces at your disposal I would remind you that under the Turks Mesopotamia not only paid its way but supplied a revenue to the Central Government.⁴

In May 1920 the Allies presented the Ottoman Turks with the highly punitive Treaty of Sevres. Under force, the Sultan’s government was prepared to sign. But the real power in Turkey now lay with the leader of the Nationalist forces, Mustapha Kemal, later known as Ataturk, who vehemently opposed the treaty. Churchill feared that the Kemalists would stir up trouble for the British forces stationed in Iraq, increasing costs there both in terms of money and blood. Repeatedly and in vain, Churchill urged Lloyd George to abandon the Sevres treaty, which he believed unjust and unenforceable, and come to terms with Kemal as
the only way of securing a peaceful and economical settlement in the Middle East. The Prime Minister’s consistent disregard of Churchill’s advice ultimately led to his downfall.

It was at this moment, with Anglo-Indian troop strength cut by more than fifty percent from the previous summer, that the rebellion of 1920 broke out among the Arabs in northern Iraq. As British forces fell prey to one fatal ambush after another, Col. Arnold Wilson—who had served as Britain’s first Acting Commissioner for Mesopotamia— now suggested that hostility could be diffused if an Arab government were quickly established in Iraq under the leadership of Prince Feisal, the third son of King Hussein. Feisal had worked most closely with the British in fighting the Turks during the war, having as his liaison officer the famed Col. T.E. Lawrence.

In March 1920, Feisal had proclaimed himself King of Syria and Palestine, making it clear that by “Syria” he meant Mesopotamia as well. The British government did not support his claim “though,” according to Gen. Sir Henry Wilson, “L[loyd] G[eorge] rather favoured it.”⁵ More seriously, Feisal had defied the territorial ambitions of the French, who drove him from Damascus on July 25th, making him available as a potential ruler elsewhere.

Setting up Feisal in Iraq was delayed until the rebellion could be put down. The new British commander holding this responsibility was Lt. Gen. Sir Aylmer Haldane, an old colleague of Churchill’s going back to their days together in India, who had been captured and imprisoned with Churchill in South Africa during the Boer War.

Haldane naturally wanted reinforcements sent to Iraq, but Churchill as War Secretary explained that financially this would be “very difficult,” and directed Haldane to prepare plans for a withdrawal if necessary.⁶ Seeking an economical way to stifle the violence, Churchill desired the RAF to develop gas bombs, “especially mustard gas, which would inflict punishment upon recalcitrant natives without inflicting grave injury upon them.”⁷ Meanwhile, Churchill expressed his anxieties in a letter to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon:

It seems to me gratuitous that after all the struggles of war…we should be compelled to go on pouring armies and treasure into these thankless deserts. We have not got a single friend in the press upon the subject, and there is no point of which they make more effective use to injure the Government. Week after week and month after month for a long time to come we shall have a continuance of this miserable, wasteful, sporadic warfare, marked from time to time certainly by minor disasters and cuttings off of troops and agents, and very possibly attended by some very grave occurrence. Meanwhile the military expenses of this year alone will probably amount to something like fifty millions.⁸

Ultimately, the British utilized the Government of India to pour in new troops and restore order. Securing a permanent settlement then became the next objective.

Churchill had strong credentials for taking up the position of Colonial Secretary. Apart from his experience in both military and civil administration, his first position in government had been as Under Secretary at the Colonial Office during the premiership of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. Before taking up his new position, Churchill assembled a very capable Middle East team. Sir John Shuckburgh came from the India Office to direct the new Middle East Department. T.E. Lawrence agreed to become the minister’s special adviser on Arab affairs. On the spot in Iraq, joining the military commander Haldane, was Sir Percy Cox, who became the Civil Commissioner and retained Gertrude Bell as the Arab expert taken on by his predecessor.

On 8 January 1921 Churchill telegraphed to warn Cox and Haldane that it was “impossible for us to throw upon the British taxpayer the burdens for military expenditure which are entailed by your present schemes for holding the country.”⁹ Unless Iraq could be governed inexpensively, withdrawal to the Persian Gulf was inevitable. Churchill was prepared to make a sincere effort to fulfill what he regarded as undesirable mandate obligations taken on by his country, but he was not prepared to burden the Exchequer in any meaningful way. He envisioned an inexpensive custodial administration resting upon air power as the primary means of enforcing authority.

To this end Churchill looked to Air Marshal Sir Hugh Trenchard, the father of the RAF, to develop a suitable scheme. RAF officials were enthusiastic, believing the experience would provide them valuable lessons in planning and administering air defense systems. Cox and Haldane expressed doubts. Churchill remonstrated that “no province in the British Empire had ever been acquired by marching in and maintaining a large regular army at the cost of the British Exchequer, but always by skillful and careful improvisations adapted to its special needs.”¹⁰

On February 7th Churchill scolded Haldane for maintaining a cavalry regiment along the Upper Euphrates at a cost of £100,000 a year for the “purpose of gathering taxes, and that the taxes gathered do not exceed one quarter of the cost of their collection.”¹¹ The Colonial Secretary was further upset by and quashed a proposal to spend £300,000, to build new barracks in Baghdad for British troops that he intended to evacuate as quickly as possible. The one area where Churchill did not intend to economize was in subsidies granted to the competing emirs Hussein and Ibn Saud. The £60,000 paid annually to each was viewed by Churchill as a cost-effective way “to dole out benefits of various kinds to each on condition that they play our game & don’t bite each other.”¹²

Pacifying the Arab population of Mesopotamia was far from Churchill’s only responsibility in the Middle East. To begin with, the Arabs of Iraq were themselves divided religiously between the Shiite and Sunni Moslems. The Shiites in the south outnumbered the Sunnis around Baghdad, who generally had controlled the region for the Turks. In the northern province of Mosul was a separate group of Sunni Moslems. These were the Kurds, whose ethnic distinction from the Arabs generated another source of friction and nurtured hopes for an independent Kurdistan. Additionally, there were minority Jewish and Assyrian (also known as Nestorian) Christian populations.

That was just the situation in Iraq. To the west lay Palestine, which the British had vaguely promised to both the Arabs and the Jews. To the south, Ibn Saud made little secret of his desire to push Hussein out of the Hejaz and to unify the bulk of the Arabian peninsula under his rule. Finally, any settlement Churchill reached had to be acceptable to the French, who had attendant responsibilities and an agenda of national interests in Syria and Lebanon.

Upon agreeing to move to the Colonial Office, Churchill intended to visit the locus in quo for himself, but he never got beyond Nice. Instead he decided to hold a conference in Cairo that would resolve the major outstanding questions. To this meeting all of the British principals were summoned, including Sir Herbert Samuel, the British High Commissioner in Palestine, whom Churchill privately referred to as “King Samuel.”¹³ The Colonial Secretary himself, filling the role of plenipotentiary authority, arrived in Cairo on 10 March to shouts from an Arab crowd chanting “Down with Churchill!” ¹⁴

The Cairo Conference opened two days later on 12 March 1921, with discussions about establishing Feisal as the ruler of Iraq. Naturally, Col. Lawrence supported his friend’s candidature, stressing that while Feisal did not personally come from Mesopotamia, he nevertheless made an ideal compromise candidate suitable to the various rival claimants for power within Iraq itself. Even if this were not strictly true, British agents in Iraq would be employed at great lengths to create the illusion that it was true, and engineer what appeared to be the spontaneous desire of the Iraqi people for a Hashemite monarchy.

While Feisal’s position was debated, word reached Cairo that the prince’s older brother Abdullah had arrived in Amman with 230 men, apparently en route to Damascus for the purpose of liberating Syria from the French (although Abdullah claimed he had merely come north for his health). Churchill’s solution to this potentially disastrous development was to buy off Abdullah in such a way as to glue together a general settlement of all the major issues.

PARTITIONING PALESTINE, UNITING IRAQ

Palestine would be partitioned. The lands east of the Jordan river, then referred to as Transjordan, would be set up as an independent Arab state with Abdullah as king. This would fulfill Britain’s pledge to give at least part of Palestine to the Arabs, as well as securing French control of Syria. The much smaller but more fertile portion of Palestine west of the Jordan would serve as the region of settlement for a Jewish National Home, in fulfillment of the Balfour Declaration. The British military commander in Palestine had already warned that his troops were probably insufficient to control Transjordan, where few Jews had ever settled; he proposed abandoning it to the much greater Arab population as a way of reducing both troubles and expense.

The advantage of this resultant Hashemite policy, Churchill argued, was that Feisal in Iraq, Abdullah in what afterwards became known as Jordan, and their father in the Hejaz, each knew that not only his own position, but that of his other family members, depended on abiding by their agreements with Britain. Pressure applied in one sector, Churchill noted, would be felt in all three. British aerodromes in Jordan and Iraq would provide inexpensive means of exercising pressure as well as maintaining civil order. To placate Ibn Saud—who might well object to the elevation of a rival clan along his northern and western borders—the Colonial Secretary proposed raising the Bedouin chiefs’ subsidy to a hefty £100,000 per year, which Churchill rationalized as much less than the cost of a single Indian brigade.

There still remained the matter of the Kurds. Here British opinion was divided. Churchill favored a separate Kurdish state as a buffer zone between Iraq and Turkey. Sir Percy Cox and Gertrude Bell disagreed, insisting that Mosul should be included within a united Iraq.

Finally it was agreed that for the moment, the Kurdish lands should continue as a separate administrative entity within the authority of the British Civil Commissioner in Baghdad. This effectively killed any chance of creating an independent Kurdistan. Control of the region’s potentially rich oil fields probably had been the deciding factor. 

The Cairo Conference concluded on 22 March. Churchill and his wife Clementine left for a tour of Palestine, arriving in Gaza to shouts from yet another Arab crowd: This time it was “Cheers for the Minister!” and “Down with the Jews!”!¹⁵ As these cries were made in Arabic, the Churchills and their host, Sir Herbert Samuel, somewhat misunderstood their reception, and beamed at the mob’s enthusiasm.

On this visit Churchill had to contend with Arab leaders who wanted to control all of Palestine and expel the Jews and Zionist leaders, who hoped to convince Churchill to open at least part of the Transjordan to Jewish settlement. Churchill strongly supported Zionism and was greatly impressed by all the Jewish settlers had accomplished. Yet he remained firm that the line would be drawn at the River Jordan. As for the Arab claims, he curtly pointed out that it had been the armies of Britain, not the Arabs of Palestine, who had liberated the region. In Solomon-like fashion, the British had opted to partition the country between the Arabs
and the Jews—and the matter was therefore settled.

Churchill remained resolute that the Balfour Declaration be given a chance. Yet, a flaw in Churchill’s master plan would propagate over time, as Professor David Fromkin has pointed out: “Seventy-eight percent of the country had already been given to an Arab dynasty that was not Palestinian.”¹⁶

Indeed to this day, eastern Palestine remains officially “the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,” currently under the leadership of King Abdullah II, great-grandson of the man Churchill installed in Amman in 1921.

EXPLANATIONS AND REPERCUSSIONS

After his return from the Middle East, Churchill reported to the Cabinet, which ratified the actions he had taken in Cairo. In June the Colonial Secretary made a much-anticipated statement on these transactions to the House of Commons. Churchill dismissed the fruitlessness of attempting to determine whether taking on the responsibilities of the mandate was wise or not: “Moving this way and that way,” he said, in the agony of the Great War, struggling for our lives, striking at our enemies, now here and now there, wherever it was thought best, we eventually emerged victorious in arms and encumbered with the responsibilities which so often attach to the victor. We are bound to make a sincere, honest, patient, resolute effort to redeem our obligations, and whether the course be popular or unpopular, I am certain it is the only course which any British Government or British House of Commons will in the end find itself able to pursue….¹⁷

As for Iraq, Churchill explained that Britain could choose between the Turkish policy of discouraging national aspirations, setting up administrations of local notables, and exerting influence through the jealousies of one tribe—or adopt the more noble policy of building “up around the ancient capital of Baghdad, in a form friendly to Britain and her Allies, an Arab State which can revive and embody the old culture and glories of the Arab race.”¹⁸

This speech was greeted as a great triumph and brilliant exposition of policy.

Unfortunately for the best laid plans of the British, the local notables of Iraq were busy exerting their influence by burying their jealousies, and binding together to promote one of their own as ruler under the slogan “Iraq for the Iraqis.”¹⁹ The leader of this movement, Sayyid Talib, was the dominant local ruler in Basra, the southern city with access to the Persian Gulf. Sir Percy Cox invited Talib to take tea with him at the Residency in Baghdad. Upon his departure Talib was arrested on Cox’s orders, and deported to Ceylon on the charge of threatening to incite violence.

Feisal himself then arrived in Basra on June 24th, with Cox encouraging him to campaign for popular support so as to keep up the pretense that the Iraqis—not Britain— had freely chosen their new leader. A plebiscite was held, with the results announced on 18 August as an overwhelming victory for Feisal, who was duly crowned five days later as the first king of the nation that then became officially known as Iraq.

As Churchill had feared, however, the Turks began stirring up trouble for the British that same summer in northern Iraq. Cox advised London that anti-British, pan-Islamic literature translated into Urdu was being distributed to Indian soldiers in Iraq, calling upon them to murder their officers and desert. The Turks were also making gifts of arms to leading sheiks along the Iraqi border. Churchill was unfazed by these developments, but he did renew his efforts to convince Lloyd George that all which had been accomplished stood in jeopardy if the government did not come to an agreement with Kemal. For their part, the Turkish
Nationalist forces rejected the Treaty of Sevres, which had been accepted by the Sultan, and declared war against all those who attempted its implementation.

Over the next year, Churchill continued to develop plans for garrisoning Iraq with the RAF in conjunction with a newly-created constabulary made up of Iraqis themselves. A target date of October 1922 was set for when this authority would succeed the army as the primary entity for keeping the peace. But while these plans were being developed, Feisal began to cause difficulty for his British masters. In short, Feisal wished to have no masters at all, for fear that being seen as a puppet ruler undermined his authority.

No sooner had he ascended the throne then he insisted on a treaty with Britain giving him complete autonomy and dissolving the restrictions imposed by mandate status. Such a move presented diplomatic obstacles. The other mandate powers, such as France, Italy and Japan—who along with Britain occupied positions on the League Council (the League of Nations equivalent to the UN Security Council)—could object that no such treaty would be legally valid under the terms of the mandate. Only the League Council could approve full independence. But Feisal desired the legitimacy conferred by an equal treaty—not the inferior status of a supplicant approaching the League.

In the British Cabinet, Arthur Balfour as Lord President of the Council preferred going to the League. But Churchill was for making quick work of the business and further reducing the British taxpayers’ burden so far as Iraq was concerned. He authorized Cox to begin treaty negotiations with Feisal. Predictably, these dragged on for months, Feisal objecting to the use of the word “mandate” in the treaty and demanding the immediate right to appoint his own diplomatic representatives abroad. Churchill supported the latter concession but was overruled by the Cabinet, leaving the talks to continue along lines with which the responsible minister disagreed.

For his part Churchill became increasingly exasperated with Feisal. Cox now described the Iraqi king as “crooked and insincere,” warning Churchill that the man they had set on the throne was now “encouraging anti-British feeling throughout Iraq.”²⁰ Feisal, Cox warned on 23 August 1922, “is playing a very low & treacherous game with us.”²¹ A week later, on September 1st, Churchill further cautioned Lloyd George that there was “scarcely a single newspaper—Tory, Liberal or Labour,” which was not “consistently hostile” to Britain’s remaining in Iraq. “Moreover,” Churchill added, “in my own heart I do not see what we are getting out of it.”

Churchill advised delivering an ultimatum to King Feisal, demanding that he agree to the terms of the treaty as laid down by the British or threatening to clear out altogether and leave the King to the tender mercies of his benevolent subjects. “We are paying eight millions a year,” Churchill concluded, “for the privilege of living on an ungrateful volcano out of which we are in no circumstances to get anything worth having.”²²

But Lloyd George did not concur and refused to quit Iraq. “If we leave,” the Prime Minister replied to Churchill, “we may find a year or two after we have departed that we have handed over to the French and Americans some of the richest oil fields in the world.”²³

THE END OF CHURCHILL’S INFLUENCE

At this point the ongoing quarrels between Greece and Turkey took center stage. Greek forces in Anatolia collapsed and went into full retreat before Mustapha Kemal’s Nationalist forces, raising the prospect of fighting between the Turks and British forces stationed in Anatolia at Chanak. Prime Minister Lloyd George, fatally for his political career, worked himself up into his bellicose best, preparing, with Churchill’s full support, for a possible war with Turkey, while appearing to enlist the consent of the Dominions without actually consulting them.

Nearly lost in these dramatic events was the culmination of Churchill’s Iraqi settlement. On September 11th Feisal agreed to allow Britain “to support an application by Iraq for membership of the League of Nations” once an Anglo-Iraqi treaty was concluded.²⁴ This essentially amounted to acceptance of mandate status, and Cox expressed his satisfaction. On October 1st the RAF assumed responsibility for garrisoning Iraq. Four days later Feisal accepted the final draft of the treaty which, Churchill informed the Cabinet, “conformed in all respects to the requirements of the League of Nations” while completing the government’s plan to develop Iraq as an independent nation within the British sphere of influence.

The Lloyd George government, however, while accepting the Iraq treaty, was a coalition dominated by the Conservatives, who balked at the possibility of a war with the Turks. When the Tories withdrew their support from the Liberal prime minister, Lloyd George and his Cabinet were forced to resign, turning in their seals of office to the King on 25 October 1922.

Churchill’s involvement with Iraq was at an end. On top of it all, during the midst of the domestic political crisis, Churchill had undergone an emergency appendectomy on October 17th. Then, in the general election that followed the change of government, he also lost his seat in Parliament, giving rise to his famous jest that in a twinkling he found himself “without an office, without a seat and without an appendix.”

FROM THEN TO NOW

Having driven out both Greek and Anglo-French forces, the Kemalist National Assembly in November 1922 deposed the Sultan, terminated the Ottoman Empire, and proclaimed the Republic of Turkey. The now irrelevant Treaty of Sevres was replaced in July 1923 with the Treaty of Lausanne, which essentially codified the existing situation in the Middle East. The Turks did challenge the status of Kurdish-dominated Mosul, but in 1925 Leo Amery, Colonial Secretary in the Baldwin government (with the support of Churchill, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer) successfully defended the Iraqi claim to this territory before the Council of the League of Nations.

The reign of Hussein Ibn Ali as King of the Hejaz proved short-lived. In 1924 Ibn Saud finally succeeded in conquering Hussein’s territory, which he unified with his own to proclaim in 1932 the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The discovery of oil there came six years later. Hussein went into exile—flrst in Cyprus, where he received an honorary British knighthood, and finally in Jordan, where he died in the kingdom ruled by his son Abdullah.

Abdullah himself required British military protection to defend his own kingdom against the Saudis. He was later assassinated on 20 July 1951 and succeeded by his son Talal, who was forced to abdicate the following year because of mental illness. This brought to the throne the long-reigning King Hussein, who was in turn succeeded by his son, the present King Abdullah II.

Iraq’s Hashemite monarchy survived nearly half a century. Feisal himself died in 1933. His son King Ghazi was killed in an accident in 1939. Finally, in 1958 King Feisal II, grandson of his namesake and only the third king in the line, was assassinated, along with the entire royal household, in a military coup d’etat that brought to power the Baath Party, which traced its political pedigree to the Nazis by way of Vichy France and neighboring Syria.

It is noteworthy, however, that Churchill’s air-power scheme proved very effective in its time. Iraq is an eclectic nation that one way or another has always been held together by force. But this also raises the question as to why the British encountered so much difficulty in their occupation of Iraq. Ultimately, according to David Fromkin, the British failed to realize their enemy’s identity:

It was Britain herself. In a region of the globe whose inhabitants were known especially to dislike foreigners, and in a predominantly Moslem world which could abide being ruled by almost anybody except non-Moslems, a foreign Christian country ought to have expected hostility when it attempted to impose its own rule. The shadows that accompanied the British rulers wherever they went in the Middle East were in fact their own. ²⁵

What lessons are there for today in Churchill’s Iraq experience? The primary one may be that, while the character of the inhabitants offers food for thought, the judgments of 1922 may not be valid eighty-five years later. For example, everything about Britain’s Middle Eastern policy before, during and just after the First World War was based on one paramount and, as it turned out, erroneous assumption: that Britain would indefinitely control India. Oil was not then the main issue. All strategy was formulated to secure the control of, access to and defense of India. Thus, the shape of the modern Middle East was largely
determined by an assumption that became false almost as soon as the 1922 settlement had been reached.

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ENDNOTES

1. Quoted in David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Making of the Modern Middle East. New York: Avon, 1990,452.

2. Ibid., 451.

3. Original draft cited by its author, Leopold S. Amery, in My Political Life, vol. II, War and Peace 1914-1929, London: Hutchinson, 1953, 117.

4. Quoted in Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill vol. IV, The Stricken World 1916-1922. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1975, 476.

5. Ibid., 479.

6. Ibid., 494.

7. Ibid., 494.

8. Ibid., 496.

9. Ibid., 511.

10. Ibid., 516.

11. Ibid., 522.

12. Ibid., 523.

13. Ibid., 514.

14. Ibid., 544.

15. Ibid., 558.

16. Fromkin, 514.

17. Gilbert, 595.

18. Ibid., 596.

19. Fromkin, 507.

20. Gilbert, 816.

21. Ibid., 816.

22. Ibid., 817.

23. Ibid., 818.

24. Ibid., 824.

25. Fromkin, 468.