Enemy on the Euphrates (13 page)

On 17 November 1915 Sykes arrived in Cairo, the next leg of his journey home. Here he was shown some important correspondence between the British high commissioner of Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, and the Sharif of Mecca in which the former, on behalf of the British government, appeared to be offering some kind of independent Arab state to the latter if the Sharif and his four sons launched a revolt in the Hejaz against the Turkish government. In spite of continuing disagreements about the exact boundaries of this new Arab state – and Husayn was angling for a kingdom of vast proportions – all the signs pointed to an eventual revolt by the Sharif and his sons.

Sykes now realised that the conclusions of the De Bunsen report would require major revision. For not only was Britain’s principal ally clearly eager to fall upon the carcass of the Ottoman Empire but now a new predator apparently wanted to join the feast, demanding his very own and very substantial piece of flesh. Sykes himself had certainly looked forward to the day when Arabs, Kurds or some other ethnic group within the Ottoman Empire turned to Britain for support against the Turks, but he had never imagined such a group would be so bold as to strike out for full independence and on such an ambitious scale – this was not at all his vision of a ‘friendly native state’. Nevertheless, the die had now been cast and Britain would have to try to patch up an agreement with the French which somehow or other satisfied both countries while at the same time leaving Husayn with something for which he and his Arab movement would still be willing to fight. There was no question about it: it was going to be very difficult.

Then, out of the blue, the first hint of a solution emerged – if not a solution at least a step in the right direction. An Iraqi Arab deserter from the Ottoman army at Gallipoli, a certain Lieutenant Muhammad Sharif al-Faruqi, was brought in to see him and, during a long interview, Sykes must have begun to feel somewhat more confident of finding a way out of the maze into which he had somehow stumbled.

Sykes was informed that Lieutenant Muhammad Faruqi had deserted shortly before the latest major Allied offensive against Ottoman positions on the Anafarta Ridge at Suvla Bay (an offensive which had failed, like all its predecessors). He had told his initial military interrogators that he was a mulazim awwal (first lieutenant) in the 142nd Infantry Regiment, that he was twenty-six years old and had been born in the city of Mosul. The al-Faruqi, so he informed the British, were a branch of the al-‘Umari family, one of the leading Muslim families in Mosul who claimed descent from the caliph, ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab. After education at elementary and high school in Mosul, he had entered the Military Academy in Istanbul in 1909, where he enrolled in the infantry officers’ course. He had graduated in 1912 and was originally stationed with the 12th Faylaq (Corps) of the Fourth Army at Mosul, which was later moved to Aleppo. There he was appointed ADC to 12th Faylaq commander Fakhri Pasha.

But then, to the surprise of his interrogators, Faruqi informed them that he was part of a wide conspiracy whose ultimate objective was to bring about an uprising of Arab troops in Syria. He was a member of a secret organisation of Arab officers within the Ottoman army called al-‘Ahd, which he had originally joined in Mosul; but after his unit had moved to Syria he had also become a member of another, somewhat older secret organisation of Arab nationalists known as Jam‘iyya al-‘Arabiyya al-Fatat – the Young Arab Society. Al-Fatat had been founded by a small group of civilian Arabs in Paris in 1911 and had recently moved
its headquarters from Beirut to Damascus while al-‘Ahd had been established in October 1913 in Istanbul.
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In January 1915, the leaders of both al-Fatat and al-‘Ahd had joined forces in Damascus where they decided to send a message to Sharif Husayn of Mecca stating that they were ready to start a rebellion in Syria under his leadership.

On receiving this dramatic information, Faruqi’s interrogators informed British Intelligence in Cairo, whose chief, Brigadier Gilbert Clayton, immediately issued orders for the Arab lieutenant to be sent to Egypt for further interrogation. He arrived there on 1 September 1915 and the following day was introduced to Na’um Shuqayr, a Lebanese Christian who worked for British Military Intelligence and who was to be his ‘minder’ and translator. Shuqayr lived in a small house in the old al-Qahira district and Faruqi was instructed that, for the time being, he should live with Shuqayr.

Each day they walked the two miles from Shuqayr’s home to the HQ of the British Army at the Savoy Hotel, where Faruqi was ordered to begin writing a detailed account of all he knew about the activities and plans of al-‘Ahd. By 12 September Faruqi’s long statement, describing the situation of the ‘Arab movement’ in Syria prior to his desertion, the aims of the movement and his own role within it, was completed and typed up, ready for analysis. It was immediately passed to Brigadier Clayton and was to be the catalyst which would culminate in a dramatic turn in British policy towards the Arabs and the Middle East.

Over the next few days Clayton read and re-read Faruqi’s statement with a mixture of concern and excitement. Faruqi stated that, having met with the leaders of both al-Fatat and al-‘Ahd in Damascus, he had ‘thought of uniting the two societies in order to gain strength by union and to avoid mistakes in politics which history teaches us might occur from the military if left alone’, and indeed, it was he himself – so Faruqi claimed – that united the two organisations.
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The newly united body then carried out propaganda among Arab units and his organisation agreed that they were prepared to give Britain, in return for its help, ‘all concessions and privileges which do not touch the essential resources of our country and our independence’.

The first action of the new Arab organisation had been to send an officer to the Sharif of Mecca, after which they discovered that the Sharif was already in communication with the high commissioner in Cairo and that ‘the English have given their consent for the Sharif establishing an Arab Empire, but the limits of his Empire were not defined.’

Faruqi then went on to describe the circumstances of his subsequent arrest in Aleppo, his imprisonment during which the Turkish commander Djemal Pasha had tried – but failed – to get him to reveal what he knew about ‘the secrets of our society’. He and the other officers imprisoned with him were then released but ‘sent to Istanbul’. During the journey he and some of his companions tried to escape to Cyprus and from there to travel to Mecca and join the Sharif, but they failed as ‘we were under close surveillance’. On arrival in Istanbul they again ‘tried to escape but we could not get a chance of doing so’, after which Faruqi ‘was detailed as a commander of an infantry company fighting at Gallipoli’. He deserted at Gallipoli because he did not want to fight ‘my friends’ or do ‘service to my enemies … the Turks – who wish to kill me and my party’.

Some parts of the statement must have sounded rather odd to Clayton. Could this young lieutenant have really had the authority to unite the two secret Arab organisations? And the circumstances of his arrest and imprisonment – was he ‘released’? But if so, why was he then ‘sent to Istanbul’? As a punishment? And if he was sent there as some kind of punishment, did he or did he not actually try to ‘escape’? If the only thing that prevented him was that he was ‘under close surveillance’, he didn’t seem to have tried very hard.

Nevertheless, as he read on, Clayton began to push these doubts into the back of his mind as Faruqi’s statement became more and more interesting. ‘Ninety per cent of the Arab officers in the Ottoman Army’ were ‘members of our society’, he claimed, and not only Arabs but ‘a part of the Kurd officers’.
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Al-‘Ahd had carried out acts of open propaganda among the troops, telling them that ‘the British are our friends and our support for our independence’ and in April they had ‘raised revolt at Homs of the 107th Regiment and two battalions of Kurds and Arabs
of the 30th Division of the 12th Corps’. He himself would ‘guarantee to go to Mesopotamia and bring over a great number of officers and more especially from the 35th Division at Mosul who all know me’. And as if to emphasise the strength of the Arab movement of which Faruqi was, he claimed, a leading member, Shuqayr recorded that Faruqi had told him that if Britain did not agree to support the Arabs, they would get their independence by themselves.
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In the days that followed Clayton and Shuqayr elicited further information from Faruqi which added more depth and detail to his initial written statement and, rather unexpectedly in the light of that document, indicated that Faruqi appreciated Britain’s difficult relationship with its French ally with respect to
their
interests in the Middle East. Faruqi insisted that in return for their help, the Arab movement would insist upon an independent Arab state including the Arabian peninsula, Palestine and Iraq, but that they understood that France had ambitions in Syria. They expected Britain to help find a satisfactory solution to the Syrian problem but at the very least, they would insist that the Syrian inland cities of Damascus, Aleppo, Hama and Homs would be included in the Arab confederation to be established at the end of the war.

Then Faruqi injected a trace of menace into the discussion. The membership of al-‘Ahd, he claimed, was so powerful that in spite of the fact that both the Turks and Germans knew about their pro-British aims, neither dared try to suppress them. In fact the Turks and Germans had already turned to the leaders of al-‘Ahd and practically promised to fulfil their demands if al-‘Ahd and its followers threw its full weight behind them. The Arabs, Faruqi assured Clayton, would much prefer to ally themselves with Britain, in whom they had greater trust, but time was pressing: unless the British gave the Arabs a positive reply to their request for arms and assistance within a few weeks at the most, they might be forced to return to the Turks and Germans and obtain from them the best possible terms available. The British should not prevaricate. The Arabs could not delay indefinitely. Fortunately he, Faruqi, was now here in Cairo and had been authorised by al-‘Ahd to receive the British response.

On 11 October, Clayton wrote a lengthy memorandum for the
high commissioner in Egypt, McMahon, offering his own evaluation of the situation. He also copied the memorandum to General Sir John Maxwell, the C-in-C of the British Army in Egypt. Clayton pointed out that Faruqi’s reports, together with other information he had received about the ‘Arab movement’ during the year, had convinced him that a crisis point was fast approaching. Britain needed all the help it could get in the Middle East, especially if it would help sway Muslim opinion away from the continuing menace of jihad. Clayton also underlined the fact that the objectives of the Arab movement as stated by Faruqi were remarkably similar to those which Sharif Husayn had made to the British in recent correspondence, but that both Faruqi and the Sharif were insisting on a clear statement as to the borders of a future Arab state. This was the key issue.

McMahon received the memorandum the following day along with advice from Clayton that he should contact the Foreign Office to get clear instructions about how they should now proceed. The memorandum was forwarded immediately to Sir Edward Grey, the foreign secretary. At the same time General Maxwell cabled Kitchener at the War Office, insisting that a powerful organisation of Arab officers and tribal sheikhs had decided that the time had come to act. The pressure was on, and it was being applied at a particularly crucial moment. The previous day Kitchener, faced with mounting evidence of failure at Gallipoli, had asked Sir Ian Hamilton for an assessment of the losses which might be incurred should an evacuation have to be carried out. In other words, Britain was now facing the real possibility of humiliation at the hands of an army of ‘orientals’.

The next day, 13 October, Kitchener authorised Maxwell to open discussions with ‘the Arabs’, giving him full powers to do anything that would ensure their adherence to the Allied cause and asking him to report immediately what the Arabs’ demands were. Three days later – the day on which Kitchener was finally compelled to dismiss Hamilton from his command at Gallipoli – General Maxwell replied that Iraq (except perhaps the vilayet of Basra), and the Syrian districts of Damascus, Aleppo, Homs and Hama, would have to be included in
whatever new Arab state was established. And he further emphasised the urgency of the situation, informing Kitchener, ‘In my opinion the time is passed for vague generalities … we may have a united Islam against us unless we make a definite and agreeable proposal to the Sharif at once.’
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Meanwhile, further discussions were taking place with Faruqi and on 18 October McMahon cabled the foreign secretary stating that it was now absolutely clear that, unless Britain gave a firm promise to Sharif Husayn that Britain would help the Arabs establish an independent state including the Arabian peninsula, Syria, Palestine and Iraq – except for Basra where Faruqi had apparently conceded that Britain would enjoy ‘special measures of control’ – the Arabs might throw their weight behind the Germans and create a pan-Islamic union against the Allies.

That was sufficient. Sir Edward Grey immediately drafted a telegram to McMahon stating, with some qualifications about the exact extent of British control in Iraq and the need to respect existing treaties with Arab chieftains, that ‘the important thing is to give our assurances that will prevent Arabs from being alienated, and I must leave you discretion in the matter as it is urgent and there is not time to discuss exact formula’. Grey then passed the draft telegram to Kitchener for his approval, which, given with alacrity, ensured that High Commissioner McMahon assumed ultimate responsibility for launching the ‘Arab movement’.

There are no minutes of Sykes’s meeting with Lieutenant Faruqi, so we do not know how or when the discussion between them first began to take the turn it did; nor can we be certain about exactly who led whom along the winding path which at some point clearly began to stray further and further from the destination Faruqi had specified in his previous interrogations and interviews and which the Sharif himself had clearly mapped out. But we can get a fairly clear idea of its tenor from the rather garbled telegram Sykes sent to Sir Percy Cox on 22 November 1915.