Enemy on the Euphrates (36 page)

However, were the government to rule out the evacuation option (as, of course, Wilson fully expected) and follow his advice for consolidating
the British position in Iraq, he informed the India Office that ‘I should be prepared, in any capacity, to assist in giving effect to the more virile policy outlined.’ In addition to stating his own strategic and military view of the situation, Wilson could not resist the temptation to reiterate his own political prejudices:

Whilst acting in accordance with spirit and so far as may be with letter of mandate, we cannot maintain our position as mandatory power by a policy of conciliation of extremists. Having set our hand to task of regenerating Mesopotamia we must be prepared to furnish alike men and money to maintain continuity of control for years to come. We must be prepared, regardless of League of Nations, to go very slowly with constitutional or democratic institutions, the application of which to Eastern Countries has often been attempted of late years with such little degree of success.
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Finally, and very pointedly, Wilson informed the India Office, ‘The above telegram has not been shown to or discussed with GOC-in-Chief … because he is in Persia.’

Wilson’s telegram had also been copied to Sir Percy Cox in Tehran, who showed it to Haldane. The general opined that it was ‘of an alarmist nature’, informing the War Office on 12 June that portions of the telegram ‘as worded, may cause undue concern’. He also telegraphed the War Office that he was satisfied with the number of troops he had at his disposal. However, prompted by Wilson’s telegram, the War Office – which apparently had no idea that Haldane was no longer in Iraq – cabled the general asking him to explain his absence from his HQ in Baghdad. Seven days later Haldane (who by now must have been fuming at Wilson’s intervention) felt obliged to return.

Nevertheless, corporate loyalty at the War Office rallied round General Haldane and Wilson was accused of meddling in purely military matters. So the spat between Wilson and the army continued, prompting the Army Council to send the India Office what must be one of the most prolix interdepartmental communications ever composed. ‘The Army Council’, it announced,

is of the opinion that the time has now come when the Secretary of State India will appreciate an expression of desire on the part of the Council that Mr Montagu may see his way to indicate to Lt.-Col. Sir A.T. Wilson KCIE, the advisability of leaving expressions of opinion on military matters to the responsible authority viz. the GOC in Chief, Army of Occupation.
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Consequently, Montagu felt obliged to raise the matter with Wilson, informing him that ‘as general practice you should avoid telegramming to me on purely military matters without knowledge and concurrence of GOC’.
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However, privately Montagu had some sympathy with Wilson’s action and did nothing further to dissuade him from making his views on the military situation known to the India Office. For his part, Wilson – who after all, had considerable military experience himself – made it clear to everyone that he had absolutely no intention of refraining from pointing out what he considered the shortcomings of the Army of Occupation and its commander.

Although Wilson was convinced that the main threat to his regime came from outside Iraq, he was nevertheless becoming irritated by the challenge to his authority posed by the political campaign for independence of Haras al-Istiqlal. They had been warned that he would deal firmly with them if they continued their agitation but it was becoming clear that they had chosen to ignore that warning. The military governor of Baghdad agreed that preparations should now be made to arrest some of the leading ‘extremists’ should the situation require it. Accordingly, on 9 June he informed the head of the Baghdad Police, ‘It becomes increasingly certain that we shall have no option but to arrest sooner or later ‘Ali Bazirgan, Ja‘far Abu al-Timman and Ahmad Daud. Also possible action of some sort will be necessary against Yusuf Suwaydi.’
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Meanwhile the movement for Islamic unity was spreading outside the capital and Kadhimayn. On 11 June Major Berry, the PO at Samarra, about seventy miles north of Baghdad, reported the presence of Muhammad Hassan, another son of the Grand Mujtahid, who had given ‘a big dinner party to which all the Sunni ashraf of the town were
invited’ on 8 June. The following day Hassan ‘had visited the same class of people, taking coffee with them in their own houses … In each house he pleaded for unity between the Shias and Sunnis. In several cases he stated that the British were shortly leaving this country … and that the governments of both Najaf and Karbela’ are in the hands of the people.’
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Similarly, on 14 June, ehe military governor and PO at Basra reported,

Efforts are undoubtedly being made from Baghdad to induce certain persons in Basra to raise an agitation in support of that in Baghdad … These efforts which have increased of late are carried out chiefly by means of letters addressed to individuals by name and sent not through the medium of the post but by hand of persons travelling by train. The object is to cause any form of agitation that may be pointed to as an indication that the people of Basra do not desire British rule in any form.
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By now, Wilson was seriously considering ordering the arrest of the Baghdad nationalists, but on 16 June, Bonham Carter, the judicial secretary, wrote to him urging caution. ‘The local situation’, Bonham Carter explained ‘is improving’, adding that Colonel Balfour, the military governor, agreed with him and that ‘the movement has gone too far for the arrest of a few leaders to stop it.’ Therefore, ‘Let us get out our Announcement. The extremists will not accept it but I believe it will have a good effect on the moderates.’
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The ‘Announcement’ to which Bonham Carter referred was the latest turn in the British government’s meandering Iraq policy. Since the end of April the proposals for a ‘Provisional Civil Government’ which had been drawn up by the committee chaired by Bonham Carter himself had been slowly chewed over by the Foreign Office, the India Office and the special Interdepartmental Conference chaired by Lord Curzon; but neither politicians nor mandarins were very happy with the proposals emanating from Wilson’s administration. The problem with the proposed ‘Bonham Carter’ constitution – as Curzon had explained at a meeting of the conference on the afternoon of 17 May 1920 – was that instead of providing for an Arab government ‘advised’ by Britain, the Bonham Carter constitution was little more than a British
administration infused with Arab elements. It was simply too openly imperialistic. Eventually, after further meetings, on 1 June it was decided that since Sir Percy Cox would be returning from Tehran to Baghdad and his original post as civil commissioner later in the year, no official announcement about Iraq’s future government should be made until Sir Percy himself had reviewed the matter.

However, the following day, unaware of this decision, Wilson had already outlined the main points of the Bonham Carter Committee’s report to the Arab delegates at the Baghdad madhbata, giving a strong impression that the matter was a fait accompli. Whether it was for this or some other reason, on 7 June Montagu telegrammed Wilson authorising him to make an announcement about Sir Percy Cox’s ‘impending return’ but also informing Wilson that ‘subject to reservations on points of detail your recommendations [i.e. the proposals of the Bonham Carter Committee] are accepted in principle as furnishing generally suitable basis on which to construct provisional institutions such as are postulated by the Mandate’.
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So understandably Wilson now concluded that he had got his way. The official announcement of the provisional government was to be made after the end of Ramadan, on 18 June.

Equally encouraging to Wilson, in a separate telegram from Montagu on 7 June, the secretary of state acknowledged the ‘magnificent work’ carried out by Wilson’s administration in the ‘intermediate period’ and that he wished to ‘take this opportunity of conveying to you [the government’s] most cordial and grateful acknowledgements of the high ability and unflagging zeal with which during the past two-and-a-half years you have devoted yourself with such markedly successful results to your difficult and laborious task.’

However, on 16 June the Interdepartmental Conference met yet again and this time flatly rejected the Bonham Carter proposals. Instead they came down firmly in favour of the ‘friendly native state’ concept – there would be an Arab government in Iraq, albeit one effectively controlled by British ‘advisors’. The conference’s decision was ratified by the cabinet the following day and Wilson was instructed to publish in Baghdad
an announcement markedly different from the one he was currently preparing – that ‘His Majesty’s Government, having been entrusted with the Mandate for Iraq, anticipate that the Mandate will constitute Iraq as an independent state under guarantee of the League of Nations’. The mandate would ‘contain provisions to facilitate the development of Iraq as a self-governing state until such time as it can stand by itself’. To this end, Sir Percy Cox would be returning to Baghdad ‘in the autumn’ and would be authorised to ‘call into being, as provisional bodies, a Council of State under an Arab President and a General Elective Assembly representative of and freely elected by the people of Iraq’. This new announcement was to be made on 21 June.

Nevertheless, as far as Wilson was concerned nothing had
really
changed. He knew that he would remain in charge of Iraq until some unspecified time in the autumn and he had absolutely no intention of slackening the reins of British power, of conceding anything to the ‘extremists’, or slowing down the remorseless engine of tax revenue collection. No, indeed: he would continue to run a tight ship as he had always done so that when Sir Percy eventually returned he would be able to hand over to him an efficient, well-run British administration. After that, his lofty task completed, his duty to the empire discharged, he would seek some other role commensurate with his experience and abilities.

Meanwhile, the reliable Colonel Leachman was sending in broadly encouraging reports from the Dulaym Division on the Upper Euphrates which suggested that the situation on the Syrian frontier was becoming more tractable. On 18 June he telegrammed Wilson from Ramadi, having just returned from ‘Ana with three LAMB armoured cars. With the exception of one particular sheikh, the Dulaym tribes were ‘very quiet’.

In spite of our retirements above ‘Ana, inexplicable to the Arabs, and the mass of propaganda at work and the bad example set by the town of Baghdad, the general population of this Division is wonderfully behaved, and every credit is due to the Sheikhs of the Dulaym for this attitude.
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However, there was one exception: ‘the tribes around Falluja, the Zauba‘ especially, are restless owing to their proximity to Baghdad’; consequently Leachman informed his chief that he would be ‘visiting them in a few days’. And being paid a ‘visit’ by Leachman was the kind of experience that would soon knock any trouble-makers into shape.

While Wilson’s attention had been focused on the threats on the frontier and political agitation in the capital, resistance to British rule had been steadily increasing in the mid-Euphrates region, the Shi‘i heartland. So as if to underline his determination that, pending the arrival of Cox, the status quo would be rigorously enforced, the day after he had been obliged to publish the new announcement on the future of Iraq, Wilson authorised the political officer responsible for the Hilla Division to arrest a group of leading nationalists.

At the time of the British occupation the population of the mid-Euphrates region represented a mosaic of varying stages of transformation, from nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes in the west to settled cultivators in the area around Hilla town. There was a two-way movement of population: some nomads were moving towards a more settled life while some settled tribes were moving back to semi-nomadism by abandoning cultivation for sheep raising, primarily because of deteriorating land conditions caused by the silting-up of old irrigation channels and the diversion of river courses which shut off water supply. The principal tribal confederations in the region were the al-Fatla with around 7,150 fighting men, the Khaza’il with 2,500, the Shibl with 3,500, the Bani Huchaym with 12,360 and the 10,000-strong Bani Hasan, many of whose sections had fallen into poverty as a result of the deteriorating land conditions and some of whom had reverted to raiding and plundering their neighbours.
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The tribes were very conscious of the reality of the struggle for land and alive to closely related issues of land tenure and tax collection, and their warlike reputation owed much to the prevailing socio-economic conditions on the land.
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Consider, for example, the Bani Huchaym confederation whose twelve sections occupied the lands from Rumaytha at the southern end of the mid-Euphrates to Khidhr in the Lower Euphrates. Describing this
confederation, Gertrude Bell stated that it had ‘never been submissive to civil control’ and that ‘for many years before the war, Ottoman authority had been set at defiance’, conceding that ‘if we affected a partial pacification, order was never completely established’.
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Although tax assessments were lighter than some other parts of the Diwaniyya Division within which this region fell, the Bani Huchaym resisted crop measurements by the APO and as a result fell into arrears of revenue payments. When the sheikh of one of its sections, the 1,200-strong al-Sufran, was ordered to present himself at Samawa in September 1919, he refused to go. As a result, the following month his villages were bombed. The British then enticed the sheikh’s brother into declaring himself the legitimate head of the section but the majority of the tribesmen refused to recognise him. In an attempt to enforce his authority, the pro-British sheikh entered the village accompanied by a bodyguard of Arab shabana who had been authorised to impose upon the al-Sufran a fine of 500 rifles. But when the shabana attempted to do so, they were set upon and forced to flee, leaving two of their number dead.