Review Essay - The British and the Making of Modern Iraq
Mesopotamia 1917–1920: A Clash of Loyalties—A Personal and Historical Record
Written by: Lieutenant Colonel Sir Arnold T. Wilson,
Oxford University Press, London, 1931, 323pp.
Review Essay by: Graeme Sligo
Sir Arnold Wilson was a British political officer in the service of the Government of India during World War I. He published two volumes on his experiences in Mesopotamia between 1914 and 1920. The first volume covers military operations from 1914 to 1917, when the British captured Baghdad; the second, released in 1931, dealt with the problems of civil administration in the British Mandate of Mesopotamia, including a revolt that swept the country in 1920. The author of this review essay was idly perusing the shelves in the library of the Royal United Services Institution in Sydney when he came across these volumes, noting with interest that the two most recent borrowings of Mesopotamia 1917–1920 had occurred in 1936 and 1981. Immediately, the question arose whether a perusal of Wilson’s Mesopotamia 1917–1920 might yield anything of interest to the observer of the current events in Iraq. A violent rebellion, some might say a nationalist insurgency, occurred in Iraq in 1920. What relevance, if any, do the events of the past have to the present?
The musings set out in this essay are not intended as a conventional review of Mesopotamia 1917–1920. Instead, the author, reading the work from a contemporary rather than an historical viewpoint, found that four distinct themes emerged. The first of these themes was the unity between political and military aspects in the calculation and execution of British policy. This factor remained a constant despite disputes, errors and feuding between various personalities and government departments. The second theme was the importance of the regional and international context on events in Iraq during 1920. For example, within the region, Turkish intrigues in the north, Persian (Iranian) and Soviet influences, and the impact of actions in Syria all had some bearing on events in Iraq. On the international stage, British officers who had served in the Arab revolt and in Syria were able to sway policy during the negotiations of treaties and agreements, including Versailles, San Remo and Sevres, and later at Lausanne. Third, in the light of contemporary events, is the recurrence of many place names that featured in the 1920 revolt: those of cities such as Baghdad, Nasiriya, Mosul and Karbalah. Finally, Wilson’s account provides ample evidence of the importance of experience, knowledge (including linguistic ability) and commitment by both the British civil servants and some military leaders to solving the problems that confronted them in Mesopotamia from 1917 to 1921.
In 1914–15, the British had anticipated that their military offensive against the Turks in Basra (and later Baghdad and Mosul) would lead to the withdrawal of the Ottoman authorities and produce a political power vacuum in the region. To deal with this likelihood, three senior and experienced political officers accompanied the British and Indian Forces sent to Mesopotamia: Sir Percy Cox, Sir Arnold Wilson and Gertrude Bell. As the senior member of this team, Cox was appointed, with admirable flexibility, an honorary Major General. Aged fifty in 1914, Cox initially accompanied the military force as Chief Political Officer. He later served as Civil Commissioner in Mesopotamia (1916–18), Acting Minister in Tehran (1918–20) and High Commissioner to Iraq (1920–23). Cox had served in the Middle East since 1893. He had previously been a civil servant in India and was fluent in Arabic and Farsi.1
Arnold Wilson was Cox’s deputy. Aged thirty in 1914, he had already served as a civil servant in Persia since 1909. Wilson had been the British representative on a commission surveying and settling the border between Persian and Turkish territory, finishing his work near Mount Ararat. When the war broke out in August 1914, he was forced to exit the region through Russia and returned to England via the Baltic before joining the Mesopotamian force in early 1915. Wilson was appointed to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel for the performance of his political duties with the force. He was later awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) for his reconnaissance under fire at Nasiriya in 1917. Wilson was Deputy Civil Commissioner in Mesopotamia (1916–18) and Acting Civil Commissioner and Political Resident (1918–20), thus bearing the brunt of the Iraq rebellion. He was also a pilot and often visited his staff in remote parts of Mesopotamia by air. Wilson was proficient in Farsi, Arabic, French, Spanish and three Indian languages.2
The third influential member of the political staff of the Expeditionary Force in Mesopotamia was Gertrude Bell, a lady of independent means. At the start of the war, the British needed civilians with knowledge of the Middle East, and Bell joined the Arab Bureau in Cairo in 1915. She served with military intelligence in Basra from March 1916, and joined Cox and Wilson as Oriental Secretary three months later. Bell had lived in Teheran and Jerusalem in the 1890s and published translations of Persian verse. She conducted major expeditions from Jerusalem to Asia Minor (1905–06), from Aleppo through Mesopotamia along the Euphrates Valley (1909) and into central Arabia in 1913–14. She spoke Persian and Arabic, was highly influential in the establishment of the Iraqi monarchy in 1921 and founded the national museum in Baghdad.3
The unity of purpose between the British military and political personnel is a persistent feature of Arnold Wilson’s memoir. Even when describing his unhappy relations with General Aylmer Haldane, the Commander of the Mesopotamian Force from 1920, it was clear that Wilson knew how a good military–political partnership could work from his experiences with General Marshall (November 1917 – May 1919) and General MacMunn (May 1919 – February 1920).4 For Wilson, the nature and quality of military actions had to be linked with the political factors, and the political staff had to comprehend the limitations and logistics of the military forces. This close interrelationship had impact at both the operational and tactical levels.
At the operational level, the relationship translated into how much of Iraq and the Near East the available military force could dominate. For example, could the military control just the former Turkish provinces of Basra and Baghdad, or was there adequate military power for operations in ‘Kurdistan’ and Persia?5 The answer to this question rested, in turn, on deliberations of high policy from the British Cabinet and the sometimes differing policy ‘lines’ of the Foreign Secretary and the Secretaries of State for War, for India or for the Colonies.6 In balancing means with ends, there were a range of problems. The most immediate was the military problem of inflicting defeat on the Turks (including operations in Palestine and Syria) with the available forces. A second-order problem was the politico-military one of how to occupy and control the territory and population of the area once the Turks had vacated. This problem came with an additional query: was that occupation in line with eventual British wishes for territorial influence in the region?
At the tactical level, it was essential that military actions complemented political authority. Northern Iraq—noting that Iraq was not established until 1921—provided examples of both the negative and the benign. Kirkuk, then as now, was an ethnically divided city; both Kurds and Arabs sought control of the city. General Marshall was pressured by the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) to take Kirkuk from the Turks in May 1918 in order to relieve Turkish pressure on Persian Azerbaijan. This move was part of broader British policy in Trans-Caucasia. Lack of forces, however, compelled Marshall to evacuate Kirkuk, and the Turks reoccupied the city seventeen days later. Wilson cited the moral effect of this ‘loss of face’ on the local population, together with Kurdish doubts as to Britain’s intentions in the former Mosul province, as directly leading to the problems that British forces faced from tribal rebellions in South Kurdistan in 1919.7 However, in the following year, professionally executed military operations (including punitive operations) in Kurdistan, along with some outstanding work by British local political officers, limited the impact of the 1920s troubles among the Kurds.8
The unity of political and military aims was apparent in the Instructions sent in November 1917 by the CIGS to General Marshall. Quoted by Wilson, these instructions made it clear that the military commander was to operate in consultation with, and in certain areas on the advice of, the accompanying Chief Political Officer.9 None of this is to deny that there were quite serious policy differences between the political officers on the ground and London, Delhi or Cairo, and also between the different ministers and their supporting department of state. In addition, faced with diminishing forces, British policy evolved in response to events. These events included the turmoil caused in the Middle East by the Turkish defeat, the influence of the Versailles settlement in the region and pressure from American President Woodrow Wilson—all of which resulted in a putative diplomatic settlement with the Turks at Sevres.10 Despite these factors, throughout Wilson’s account, the unity of political and military actions, and the firm interrelationships between military commanders and ‘the politicals’ are a continuous feature of the narrative.
Against this background, the causes of the rebellion—or perhaps the insurgency—of 1920 were manifold. However, above all they reflected the power vacuum created by the military defeat of the Turks. Other influences were local manifestations of the recasting of the international order or the grievances and muscle-flexing of various ethnic, religious and political stakeholders. These stakeholders included Arab nationalists (mainly Sunni officers with Syrian experience who had served with Faisal in the Arab Revolt in 1916–18); the adverse influence of Shi’a divines and leaders, with strong links to Persia, who were opposed to secular government; and the Kurdish tribes, whose instability Wilson believed was due to the influence and intrigues of Turkish agents. Combined with all these local factors was the perception of British weakness following the San Remo announcement of a mandate and delays in revealing what British policy for the region would be. Arab perceptions were that ‘mandate’ meant British sovereignty and sparked a brief commingling of Shi’a and Sunni interests and cooperation prior to Ramadan in May 1920.11
For Wilson the troubles of 1917–20 really were two rebellions, not one. In the first, a series of incidents and revolts in South Kurdistan occurred between January and December 1919 in the vicinities of Sulimani, Zakho, Amadiya and Aqra, which included the killing of British officers and officials. In part, this instability was caused by expectations of autonomy or independence by the Kurdish tribes, as well as the vacuum left by the Turkish withdrawal and a failed experiment in indirect rule. The situation was stabilised by a brigade-sized force that combined punitive operations with the withdrawal of political officers from the mountainous northern sector, back to a line near Aqra-Dohuk.12
More seriously, the revolt in the Mesopotamian plains had its roots in the city of Najaf. The instability developed from 1917 and was spread along the pilgrim routes from Persia into the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, and from Syria (Dair-ez-Zor) into Najaf and generally down the Euphrates. Wilson noted the role of secret societies (nationalists) of Mesopotamian officers, formerly of the Ottoman army.13 In 1920 Wilson saw the centres of Sunni agitation as being Baghdad and Mosul proper, while the predominant Shi’a disturbance had its roots in regional areas of the old Turkish province of Baghdad. Substantial amounts of money flowed into Mesopotamian tribal and nationalist movements from Sharifian officials and officers in Syria. Ironically, the original source of these funds was the subsidy paid by the British to the Arabs who fought against the Turks in World War I. In late July 1920, when the French occupied Syria and deposed King Faisal this source of funding ended.14 In addition, Wilson believed that £7000 worth of gold from Turkish sources reached Karbala in May–June 1920.15
British punitive actions were severe. When a number of British officers and men were killed in an ambush at Tal’Afar in early June 1920, the British sent a column from Mosul. The column laid waste the harvest between the two localities, destroyed the suspects’ houses ‘chased the entire population of Tal’Afar, innocent and guilty alike, into the desert.’16 (Since 2004 Tal’Afar has been the location of the Australian Army training team in Iraq). In hindsight, the rebellion had roughly four phases. The first was the build-up phase from January to May 1920, in which urgings of jihad and influences from Syria and Persia reaching Mesopotamian centres resulted in a few acts of violence. During this period, Wilson believed that the decision was made to take violent action against the British civil administration. From May 1920 there were mass-meetings in Baghdad, taking place in turn at Sunni and Shi’a mosques, creating a dangerous and unusual confluence of interests.17
In the second phase of the rebellion, from June to July 1920, a series of armed attacks occurred in areas as far afield as Tal’Afar (4 June), and Baghdad and Najaf (in the last week of June). British outposts were besieged in July, at Kufa near Najaf (20 July – 17 October) and at Samawa on the lower Euphrates (4 July to the end of August 1920). Also in July, Hilla, Kifl and Rumaitha—all south of Baghdad on the Euphrates—were major problem areas. In the same month, when a major British column advanced south from Hilla to attempt to relieve Diwaniya and Rumaitha, the enterprise ended in disaster near Kifl and the column was forced to retreat. By late July rebels controlled much of the mid-Euphrates region. In the third phase, during August 1920, the rebellion spread to the west and north-east of Baghdad, to Fallujah, Ramadi, Baquba and Shahraban.18 From late August to September 1920 there were incidents, killings and sieges in the north, at Kifri, Arbil and Aqra. By October 1920 British forces had regained control, but they had used harsh measures, including air attacks and punitive expeditions to burn villages and impose heavy fines.19
Wilson paid tribute to the soldiers of the Indian Army, mainly Muslim, who made up the bulk of the British forces. He also acknowledged the loyalty of the local Arab police and levies. These forces, trained and officered by the British, had remained loyal to their commanders. Certainly that loyalty had been severely tested as,
The Islamic rites of burial were refused to those who had died in the service of the Civil Administration; the wives of those who remained loyal to us were in some cases compelled to return to their fathers’ tents, in other cases publicly violated, and their children cruelly beaten in the streets.20
Casualties in the rebellion amounted to about 6000 Iraqi and 500 British (British and Indian) dead. In March 1920 the British forces comprised 133 000 men, of whom 47 000 were combatants. Much of the force was in Persia or protecting lines of communication to Persia, and only about 34 000 were available for duty in Mesopotamia.21
Wilson believed that a range of external and internal actors influenced the agitation and rebellion from 1917 to 1920. The principal ‘external players’ were Turkey, Syria and Persia. Wilson’s comments on Persia and the Shi’a religious leaders have contemporary echoes:
The Shi’a priesthood of Karbala and Najaf were bound to Persia by the closest ties of religion and financial interest and, in many cases, of race; they were in intimate touch with their colleagues in every important town in Persia, and their religious bigotry was informed by a measure of rugged patriotism ... The uprising amongst the Shi’a tribes of the Middle Euphrates in 1920 was fostered by and owed its success primarily to the intervention of the ulama, who in their turn were influenced to some extent by British policy in Persia, though mainly by a desire to prevent the establishment in Iraq of any form of Government strong enough to be able to ignore them.22
Of the internal players, Wilson also remarked on the attitudes of some tribal chiefs:
The disturbances of 1920 were essentially a clash of loyalties—loyalty to the behests of religious leaders and Shaikhs, themselves little respected and often openly despised, [and] loyalty to racial ties and to oaths reluctantly made.23
The historian Charles Tripp specifically noted:
The spread of the revolt was largely determined by the view taken by local leaders about the ways in which British rule might affect their own situation. Thus, the tribal sheikhs of the regions of Kut and Amara not only refused to join the revolt, but also worked against it.24
Wilson tended to stress both external and internal factors, including the delays in articulating British policy. Many commentators are highly critical of Wilson for the Indianisation of the civil service, noting that he favoured direct rule, which had been used in much of British India. He was reluctant to adapt to the realities of the post-Versailles reordering of international affairs that were forcing the British to move towards a model of indirect control or influence.25 The move towards a policy of indirect control occurred when Faisal became King of Iraq in August 1921. Military operations only take one so far, and as Lord Ashdown has noted in a contemporary context, there must be ‘a political destination’.26
The last major theme in Wilson’s account was the dedication, experience and knowledge (including linguistic ability) of the British civil servants and some military leaders in Mesopotamia from 1917 to 1921. Of the political officers, Wilson mentioned Major E. B. Soane, who went into Khaniquin in 1918, well north-east of Baghdad on the Persian border. Wilson describes Soane as:
a scholar, with a first-rate knowledge both of Persian and Kurdish languages and dialects, with a profound understanding of the mentality of the peoples amongst whom he had lived and worked for many years before the war. He professedly embraced the Shia’ [sic] faith in 1905, having first equipped himself so thoroughly with a knowledge of the details of religious observances and doctrinal tenets of the Shia’ schism ... Kurds served him with a loyalty that they scarcely ever vouchfaced to their leaders: their leaders obeyed him because they feared as well as admired him, and because only by obedience could they hope to continue to exercise authority over their countrymen, and of all motives the desire for power is, amongst unsophisticated communities, the most powerful.27
Another political officer of a similar stamp was Lieutenant Colonel Leachman, of whom Wilson wrote:
In dealing with Arabs, particularly with nomad tribes, Leachman had qualifications unrivalled in Mesopotamia and not excelled by any British officer in all Arabia ... His personal courage, his mobility, and his intimate knowledge of the people with whom he dealt, had made his name a household word amongst Arabs, and children named after him were to be found in every tribe on the Tigris. His death [near Fallujah on 12 August 1920] was the signal for a series of outbreaks on the Euphrates between Fallujah and Hit.28
There were many other remarkable examples of the extraordinary character and ability of political officers, including Captains Hay and Littledale at Arbil with some local levies, who held out against the rebels for over a month, from 12 August until relieved on 14 September 1920. Wilson’s narrative conveys the enormous determination of the political officers to relate to the various inhabitants, and despite the influx of officers from India, a willingness to learn the languages and engage with their troops and local levies or those for whom they were responsible. By 1917 Wilson had served in Persia and Mesopotamia for ten years. Cox had been in the region for thirteen years in the rank of Political Resident or higher, while Soane had fifteen years’ experience in Persia and the region. Men such as Cox and Wilson, who had commenced their service in the Indian Army, were compelled as subalterns to learn the dialects of their regiments, and there was a ready acceptance of the need for fluency in the local languages. Wilson recounts that, during the Mesopotamian campaign, on hearing a familiar tone, he rushed out of his tent to discover and converse excitedly with soldiers from the 32nd Sikh Pioneers—his original regiment.
Sir Arnold Wilson has been criticised on many counts, especially for his handling of the rebellion and his preference for direct rule in Iraq. He ceased his duties as Acting Civil Commissioner in October 1920. Sir Percy Cox resumed the role of Civil Commissioner in Teheran, and with Gertrude Bell ‘created’ the Hashemite monarchy of Iraq. However, Wilson’s connection with Iraq did not end in 1920. Before being elected to the House of Commons as a member for a constituency in Hertfordshire, he was resident director in Persia (1921–26) of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (later known as British Petroleum or BP). He also worked for the company on his return to the United Kingdom. With the outbreak of World War II, at age fifty-five, he was unwilling to remain sedentary while others served. In 1939, though still a Member of Parliament, Wilson volunteered for the Royal Air Force. While serving as gunner the following year, he was killed when his aircraft was shot down in May behind German lines.
Military commanders and their staffs working at the campaign level must seek to comprehend the political or strategic objectives and aim to achieve military conditions that satisfy those objectives. Yet the vicissitudes of politics, the turn of events and the chance inherent in military operations can conspire to create a very fluid environment for the formulation and administration of policy. The initial intentions of the British in Mesopotamia in 1914 may have been pre-emptive. There was certainly the need to impress the Arab chiefs in the Gulf and secure Abadan and Basra as important points in the lines of communication infrastructure between India and Suez.29 As the war progressed, policy remained fluid as the Allied Powers considered the consequences of Turkish defeat and the power vacuum that it would cause in the region.
The events in Mesopotamia between 1917 and 1920 have been described by one writer as ‘Inventing Iraq’.30 Certainly, it is a fascinating case study of military operations within a highly complex political and ethnic scenario, where the defeat of one entity—the Turks—created a myriad of complexities for British political officers such as Wilson and Cox to deal with. The contemporary situation in Iraq is not the same as that in 1920—each is of its own time. The reader of Mesopotamia 1917–1920 does, however, become aware of the fractured and complex society that became Iraq. The tribal and religious intricacy, and the removal of Turkish administrative structures and Turkish-supported Sunni officials, created a legacy that has many enduring features.
Wilson’s account of events in Iraq is personal and somewhat idiosyncratic, but it does reward the reader with some important historical context about Iraq. For this reviewer, the unity of purpose between the British civil and military officers was a significant factor in determining the fate of British policy in Iraq. So too were the political, cultural and religious influences from Turkey, Syria and Persia. Wilson’s recounting of the religious themes and hotspots of the 1920 rebellion—Najaf, Tikrit, Karbala, Fallujah among them—also has much contemporary resonance. Tikrit, for example, is described by Wilson as ‘a town which, though the birthplace of Saladin, had gained an evil reputation throughout the centuries as the home of brutal and boorish folk...’31
Finally, whatever verdicts historians may pass on the events of 1917–1920, it is unmistakable that the achievements of the British rested on a small number of political officers, such as Wilson, Cox, Bell and others. These were people with enormous administrative talents and linguistic skills who committed their lives to an imperial ideal. Of course, it is impossible to draw conclusions about the fate of modern Iraq and the American-backed Iraqi Government from the events of 1920. However, as British intellectual and commentator, Malcolm Muggeridge, once observed, ‘History, like wood, has a grain in it which determines how it splits’.32
Endnotes
1 Philip P. Graves, ‘Sir Percy Zachariah Cox’, in The Dictionary of National Biography 1931–1940, Oxford University Press, London, 1949, pp. 196–9.
2 E. Bonham-Carter, ‘Sir Arnold Talbot Wilson’, in The Dictionary of National Biography 1931–1940, Oxford University Press, London, 1949, pp. 910–12.
3 W.D. Hogarth, ‘Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell’, in The Dictionary of National Biography 1922–1930, Oxford University Press, London, 1937, pp. 74–6.
4 See Arnold Wilson, Mesopotamia 1917–1920: A Clash of Loyalties—A Personal and Historical Record, Oxford University Press, London, 1931, pp. 1–2, 21, 135–6, 270–1, 276–7.
5 For example, ibid., pp. 27–8, 43–4, 311–2.
6 Some examples are at ibid., pp. 260–1, 264. In particular there were disagreements between the Foreign Office (Curzon) and the India Office (Montagu), and on the ground in 1920 between Wilson (India Office) and General Haldane (War Office).
7 Ibid., pp. 8–9, 86–8, 127.
8 Ibid., pp. 154–5, 290–1.
9 Ibid., pp. 2–3.
10 Toby Dodge, Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation Building and a History Denied, Columbia University Press, New York, 2003, pp. 7, 8. Dodge noted a number of criticisms of Wilson by contemporaries, and the increase in the power of the Colonial Office at the expense of the India Office in Middle East policy-making.
11 Wilson, op. cit., pp. 24–5.
12 Op. cit., pp. 30, 44.
13 Ibid., pp. 251–2, 310–12.
14 Ibid., pp. 146, 151, 153.
15 Ibid., pp. 227–8 and Charles Tripp, A History of Iraq, 2nd edn, Cambridge University Press, London, 2002, p. 28.
16 Ibid., pp. 259–60, 266.
17 Ibid., p. 310.
18 Ibid., pp. 273–4.
19 Ibid., pp. 284–91, 301; Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World, Random House, New York, 2001, p. 408.
20 Ibid., p. 298.
21 Ibid., p. 271; Tripp, op. cit., p. 44.
22 Ibid., p. 34.
23 Ibid., p. 71.
24 Tripp, op. cit., p. 44.
25 For example Dodge, op. cit., pp. 8, 15–16; MacMillan, op. cit., pp. 397–8.
26 Speech by Lord (Paddy) Ashdown (June 2003) quoted in Niall Ferguson, Colossus: The Price of Americas Empire, Penguin Press, New York, 2004, pp. 225–6.
27 Wilson, op. cit., pp. 82–3.
28 Ibid., pp. 152, 292.
29 Tripp, op. cit., p. 31; Lieutenant Colonel Sir Arnold T. Wilson, Loyalties Mesopotamia 1914–1917, Oxford University Press, London, 1930, pp. 8–9.
30 Dodge, op. cit.
31 Wilson, ibid., p. 274.
32 Malcolm Muggeridge, The Infernal Grove, Fontana, London, 1975, p. 33.
