Enemy on the Euphrates (49 page)

Bradfield then turned to Buchanan and said, ‘I must try to stop this.’ He burst out of the room, shouting in Arabic and was immediately shot dead. A few minutes later Wrigley also left the room and was also killed.

A moment later a crowd of Arabs crashed into the Buchanans’ room. According to Mrs Buchanan they were ‘short-built men, dirty and repulsive looking. Their ‘
abas
were tucked in at the belt to keep them out of the way. They were armed with curved knives, daggers and rifles … the whites of their eyes gleamed horribly.’
²⁴
One of the Arabs seized Mrs Buchanan and her husband fired his revolver at her attacker. Then he himself was shot dead.

Mrs Buchanan was slightly wounded in the fracas, captured, but otherwise left unharmed – in spite of whatever despicable intentions she had inferred from the ‘horrible gleaming eyes’ of her attackers. She was taken to the house of a local sheikh, who offered her his protection as his ‘guest’, and she was imprisoned in conditions of relative comfort until her eventual release. As it happens, Mr Baines of the government grass farm was severely wounded during the fighting but survived in captivity until his own release. As far as can be ascertained, none of the non-European members of the garrison were harmed.

When the circumstances surrounding the events at Shahraban were made clear to Wilson he became furious. Haldane would later claim that
he had no idea that there were British personnel at Shahraban, an argument easily disposed of by Wilson:

From Sir Aylmer’s account it is equally clear that he was not prepared to send troops from Baghdad to their rescue. Why he should say that he was unaware of the existence of these officers at Shahraban is inexplicable; not only had their names appeared regularly in every printed list of Political, Levy and Irrigation Officers furnished to General Head-quarters, but the decision to retain Levies at Ba’quba, Shahraban, Qizil Robat and Khanaqin under British officers had been reached a few months before after full discussion with the General Staff.
²⁵

Many of Haldane’s subordinates agreed with Wilson, including General Leslie who, a month later, wrote to the civil commissioner expressing his own shock at only recently hearing of the ‘abandonment to their fate’ of the officials at Shahraban.
²⁶
However, while the loss of the British officers at Shahraban was naturally to be regretted, in Haldane’s eyes – and in the eyes of the majority of the army and Civil Administration – a far more serious loss of life had taken place only a few days earlier.

In June, Colonel Leachman had informed Wilson that he was unhappy with the behaviour of the Zauba‘ tribe whose traditional lands lay between Falluja and Baghdad, and was planning to ‘pay a visit’ to its chief, Sheikh Dhari ibn Fadara. Actually, Dhari was not known for espousing pro-independence views or having any particular sympathy for the Istiqlal movement in neighbouring Baghdad, although presumably he was aware of its existence. Moreover, as a Sunni, he had little or no relations with the rebellious Shi‘i cities, Najaf and Karbela’.

In reality Sheikh Dhari’s principal interest was the welfare of himself and his immediate family, regardless of the current holders of power in the country. For example, the Austro-Hungarian explorer and Arabist Alois Musil, who travelled by way of the Falluja–Baghdad road in 1915, relates the following tale of the crafty Sheikh Dhari:

Our guide explained to us in what manner the Government recruited volunteers. The Wali summoned all the chiefs to Baghdad and when they
were there, he asked them to accept military service voluntarily. Every recruit was to get ten to twelve gold Turkish pounds. Each chief then named offhand the number of volunteers in his clan and received at once the amount due to him. Thus, for instance, Dhari, chief of the Zauba‘, announced 170 men and was paid, accordingly, two thousand gold pounds. But no one in his whole clan would hear of going to war. Finally, he made ten poor fellows who were indebted to him join the colours as a means of paying him, but only after threatening to take all they had if they persisted in their refusal. And in this way he sent to war ten men instead of 170, keeping, of course, the two thousand pounds all for himself.
²⁷

By late July 1920 Leachman, like all the POs of the Civil Administration (including Wilson himself), was under great physical and psychological pressure. The rebellion seemed to be gaining ground every day and neither he nor they could understand the failure of the army to protect them or crush the rebels. Leachman wrote to his parents with customary directness, saying, ‘I should like to see another two divisions sent out here and a regular slaughter of the Arabs in the disaffected areas. It is the only way.’
²⁸
On 6 August he recorded how ‘we are still in the throes of internal strife. The whole of Mespot seem to be fighting.’ In the same letter he reported how he was shortly to be sent to Palestine to assist in carrying out a railway survey, apparently on Wilson’s recommendation. His response was typical of the man: ‘It is madness to leave my district at such a time … but Wilson is mad … I have very nearly had as much of this as I can stand.’
²⁹

These were the last words that Colonel Leachman committed to paper. It seems that even this tough, brutal and sardonic soldier was beginning to crack under the strain. His behaviour thereafter has never been satisfactorily explained. On 11 August the police chief of Leachman’s Dulaym Division informed him that ‘the country was up in arms’.
³⁰
Later that day Leachman motored to Baghdad from his base at Ramadi to discuss the Palestine assignment with Wilson and to try to find his personal servant and driver, Hassan, who had absconded on a drinking bout. After speaking with Wilson, he informed him that he was returning via Falluja, where he would arrive about 3.00 p.m. and at which time he would telegraph Wilson. However, he also mentioned
in passing that he had sent a message to Sheikh Dhari, stating that Dhari should meet him at the Arab police post at Khan Nuqta, midway between Baghdad and Falluja, on his return journey from Baghdad. He also asked Wilson for the authority to waive the repayment by Sheikh Dhari of certain advances made to him for the purpose of seed grain the previous year.
³¹

It was a strange, inconsequential matter to attract Leachman’s attention at a time when he had only recently been informed that most of the district for which he was responsible was now ‘up in arms’. Nevertheless, by the following morning, 12 August, having failed to locate the whereabouts of Hassan, Leachman set off with another driver and reached Khan Nuqta at around 11.00 a.m.

Dhari, his two sons and a strong contingent of his tribal horsemen were waiting to meet Leachman and the two men were beginning a conversation when some Arab merchants arrived on the scene and claimed that their caravan had been attacked and looted. Leachman immediately ordered twelve of the thirteen Arab police at Khan Nuqta to try to intercept the robbers. Then, a short while after the police had departed, the older of Dhari’s two sons, by name Khamis, shot and killed Leachman, apparently on his father’s orders.
³²

Hard as nails, brave, brutal and a racist, in the casual, conventional racism of the day, Leachman was a man who – in the words of an obituary in
The Field
magazine – ‘could shoot a tribesman dead for misdeeds in front of the tribe, and not a hand would be raised against him’.
³³
But whatever angry words passed between Leachman and Sheikh Dhari, whatever insults were laid upon the haughty tribal chief, whatever blows may have been inflicted on him by Leachman’s cut-down polo stick – in Sheikh Dhari and his clan, the redoubtable Brevet Lieutenant Colonel Gerard Leachman had finally met his match.
³⁴

Sayyid Muhsin Abu Tabikh, Mutasarrif (Governor) of the liberated areas, photograph taken
c
.1924

The majority of British officialdom both inside and outside Iraq never could appreciate the extent to which their Arab adversaries were an organised force: that the insurrection had a formal leadership, structures of control, a press and a political programme, albeit one which was largely grounded in religious belief. On the contrary, to the vast majority of British politicians, military and officers of the Civil Administration the rebellion was mere lawlessness. While they themselves were convinced that they were fighting for ‘the very existence of civilisation in the Middle East’, a victory for the rebels would mean ‘only anarchy’.
¹
Indeed, whenever the British witnessed some indication of purposeful organisation on the part of the Arabs or behaviour they could recognise as ‘civilised’, they immediately attributed it to some sinister outside involvement of European (or sometimes US) origin.

For example, in the aftermath of the destruction of the Manchester Column there was widespread public concern for the fate of the 150 men who had been captured by the insurgents and imprisoned at Najaf. Lurid stories about their treatment began to circulate, causing considerable anxiety about their safety. However, on 9 August Churchill reported to Parliament that General Haldane has received assurances from the rebel leaders that they had ‘issued communiqués stating that the Arabs look on prisoners as a sacred trust’ and that they were ‘ordering the subordinate sheikhs to treat them well’.
²

Nevertheless, a senior official of the India Office, drawing attention to this report mentioning the issuing of ‘communiqués’ by the rebels and
their desire for the good treatment of their prisoners, opined that if this were true, it would indicate that the leadership of the insurgency must be European, or at least a ‘European-trained Oriental’. To support this contention the official in question pointed out that ‘both the publication of communiqués and the sentiment expressed [about prisoners] are absolutely un-Arab’.
³

In reality, by mid-July 1920 the insurgents had rapidly put together a formidable state apparatus to replace that of the occupying power and had little difficulty in mobilising the individuals required to man the structures of governance in the territories from which the British were being steadily expelled. Indeed, given the serious problems of logistics, communications, mobilisation and finance which, from the outset, they had to face, they had little choice.

In Najaf, the transition to insurgent rule had taken place relatively smoothly. The British decided to withdraw their garrison on 9 July as part of Haldane’s plan to concentrate his forces in a few highly defensible centres and a few days later, the local police surrendered their weapons and the British flag on the serai was pulled down.
⁴
On the same day, Agha Hamid Khan, the pro-British governor of the city who had been reinstated after the defeat of the 1918 uprising in Najaf, fled to the nearby town of Tuwairij, his position being taken by a local notable, ‘Alwan al-Haj Sa‘dun. Soon afterwards an ‘Executive Committee’ was set up to run the city.

In Karbela’, the Grand Mujtahid Taqi al-Shirazi, on learning of the uprising at Rumaytha, first attempted to negotiate with the Civil Administration.
⁵
He dispatched two emissaries to Baghdad with a letter calling upon Wilson to negotiate in the interests of stopping the bloodshed. Shirazi asked for a cessation of military operations, a general amnesty and a return to their homeland of all those who had been expelled from the country. Wilson, unsurprisingly, refused to meet Shirazi’s delegation.

This was the turning point in Karbela’. On hearing of Wilson’s rebuff of Shirazi’s attempt at negotiation, the leading men of the city assembled in the town hall and summoned Mirza Muhammad Bahadur Khan, the
representative of the British authorities, to appear before them. When he obeyed they ordered him to hand over all government property to a special committee set up to administer these valuables.
⁶

Bahadur Khan, although himself a Persian, in a city of profound Persian influence, was a loyal supporter of the occupying power, having formerly been the oriental secretary to Sir Percy Cox. He prevaricated and made much of the complexity of responding to their request: it would take at least two days to complete a proper inventory of the government’s assets and effects, he informed them. However, in reality he was secretly planning to use this respite to try to arouse opposition to the insurgents.

Although there was no permanent British garrison in Karbela’ there was a strong contingent of locally recruited police. Bahadur Khan had already gained pledges of support from the chief of police, Muhammad al-Amin, and a few of his men. His plan was to seize control of the government serai, which was situated on the southern edge of the town, fortify the building and hold out until such time as they could be relieved by British troops from Baghdad.
⁷
Meanwhile they would issue exhortations to the local population to reject the insurrection and join them in the serai. So as night fell, Bahadur Khan, Muhammad al-Amin and a few police crept into the government building, barricaded the entry points and began to fill sandbags and drill a well to secure adequate water supplies for an anticipated blockade. However, this ‘loyalist’ rebellion was short lived. The majority of the police, being men of Karbela’, knew that their true loyalties lay with their fellow citizens.