Gertrude Bell
Middle East Study Group
Grand Lake Neighborhood Center
July 1, 2006
GERTRUDE BELL & BRITISH COLONIALIST POLICY IN IRAQ
Desert Queen, Janet Wallach’s excellent biography of Gertrude Bell, also provides us with an immensely readable history of the crucial period of Iraq’s formation, as seen from the perspective of its chief architect. Wallach convincingly demonstrates the extent to which Bell became the guiding intelligence behind Faisal’s Iraq, while officially acting as Britain’s number two person-- first under the fascistic Arnold Wilson, then under the quietly supportive Sir Percy Cox. The biography has its own dramatic curve, building towards a special moment of validation for Bell. In October 1920, with the anti-British uprising in its sixth month, Cox replaced Wilson in running Mesopotamia. It meant a repudiation of the hard-line policies Bell saw as responsible for the revolt. It also meant that Bell would have a green light, under Cox, to reshape policy in terms developed by the Arab Bureau in Cairo. From early 1919 on, her closest political allies had been the organizers of the wartime Arab Revolt-- Gilbert Clayton, T.E. Lawrence, and Faisal of the Hijaz, who alone appeared capable of running a government that unified the three former vilayets of Mesopotamia.
Lawrence and Faisal had worked with Bell daily at the Paris Peace talks in Jan. 1919. As Wallach puts it, the seed planted then ”took root” in September 1919, when General Gilbert Clayton, head of the Arab Bureau, brought her into contact with Arab nationalist leaders in Egypt, Palestine and Syria. Wallach suggests that Bell underwent a complete reversal of attitude in 1919. This may be overstating it, since she had always resented Arnold Wilson’s effort to impose the harsh colonialist policies of the British Government in India upon Mesopotamia. Bell’s shift of viewpoint was about the Arabs’ capacity for self-government. Before Lawrence and Faisal got through to her, she had doubted it. But after working with them in Paris, she believed in Faisal. She saw his Syrian government at work in Damascus, and interviewed Clayton’s key Arab Nationalist contacts. On returning to Mesopotamia in late 1919, it all fell together in her controversial Syrian Report, which recommended an Arab government for the new state of Iraq. The British had to back an Arab state, she argued, not only because of tis wartime promises to the Arabs, but because it was a strategic necessity. In October 1920, Bell suddenly found that she had an opportunity to implement that vision. It is arguable, of course, that a Faisal-led Iraq was the only practical solution available then, amid the still ongoing anti-British uprising with the British unwilling to commit more resources to the region.
As Fromkin emphasizes, Bell’s view in 1918 was that talk of self-determination in Iraq was dangerous, since it excited “the less stable and more fanatical elements.” Sharing this basic colonialist viewpoint with Wilson enabled Bell to work with him, even though it was a “nightmare” for her, as she reiterates in her letters. Looking back on this period, Bell recalls Wilson’s insistence on “running things his own way” instead of “establishing sympathy and confidence,” which was her own way of working. The “turning point,” from Bell’s perspective, came in May 1919. Wilson, visiting Damascus, told Faisal’s military leaders (including Nuri al-Said and Yasin al-Hashimi—both future PMs in Iraq) to forget their dreams of an Arab state. They had to learn the basics on “municipal councils,” Wilson argued, under British supervision. In a letter written in early 1921, Bell recalls the helplessness and exasperation she redirected into oppositional resolve, grounded in her sympathetic understanding of the Arab nationalist movement.
Fromkin notes that Arnold Wilson predicted the 1920 revolt and that Gertrude Bell “discounted the possibility” of it. From letters like this one, we learn that Bell actually blamed Wilson for causing the revolt. His policy of preventive repression struck her as a self-fulfilling prophecy. (Cf. Bush’s claim to be “fighting terrorism” by invading and occupying Iraq.) Significantly, Wilson refused to allow any of Faisal’s Sharifian officers from Iraq to return home, fearing their subversive potential. This simply invited them to make trouble. They had abandoned their Ottoman ties and fought with Faisal and the British solely because they were promised an independent Arab state. Feeling bitter and betrayed, many Sharifian officers joined the 1920 revolt at the outset, led by Yasin al-Hashimi.
From the standpoint of British policy, the 1920 revolt showed the need to end the three-sided rivalry between Wilson and the India Office, Clayton and the pro-Arab Cairo office, and the Foreign Office in London. Accordingly, at the same time Percy Cox was replacing Wilson, in October 1920, Winston Churchill was appointed to replace Lord Curzon as head of the Colonial Office. Its historic March 1921 meeting in Cairo brought Bell, Cox, T.E. Lawrence, and the other pro-Arab “experts” together to set Faisal up in Iraq and his elder brother Abdullah in the newly created state of Transjordan.
For Gertrude Bell, an important consequence of the new concord under Churchill was the return to Mesopotamia of Faisal’s Sharifian military officers. By November 1921, the politically shrewd Nuri al-Said, whom Bell regarded as a “moderate” ally, had taken control of the anti-British faction, which had ruined itself in trying to lead the 1920 revolt. And Percy Cox was on board with the Sharifians, as Bell happily observed at the time..
For Faisal, the most difficult challenge was to control the “old Sharifian” extremists, as he had not been able to do in 1919 and 1920, when he felt compelled to promote the impossible demands of the al Ahd leaders in Syria. Once in power in Iraq, Faisal’s first move was to mollify his potential critics by demanding that the Mandate (declaring British control) be replaced by a treaty (implying Iraq’s power to make agreements). Despite the predictable British opposition to Faisal’s demand, Gertrude Bell backed him on pragmatic grounds: “There is no point claiming an authority we cannot enforce” (Burgoyne, Gertrude Bell, 238).
From Wallach’s biography and Burgoyne’s selection of Bell’s letters, it is clear that Bell and Faisal both recognized the flaw in their program—that a long-term Sunni hegemony in Iraq would require armed force to maintain its control of the majority Shiites. The Shiite perspective is largely absent in Gertrude Bell’s narrative, due to her personal and strategic identification with Faisal’s Arab nationalist elite and her recognition that backing it provided the best hope for maintaining British control in Iraq. As Liora Lukitz shows (62-63), when the Shiites realized they would be permanently marginalized by Pan-Arabism (despite being Arabs themselves), they tried to develop a separate alliance with the British. “A return to direct British administration was considered preferable to full Sunni hegemony”(63). But the British were bound to refuse them. For the alliance that British Intelligence in Cairo had been developing with the Arab nationalists since 1914 had become the basis of Gertrude Bell’s start-up program for Iraq. The rest, as they say, is history. Sunni military control of the Shiite majority became the constant of Iraqi stability, and control of the Shiite clerics was the key to that policy. This is the general background behind the Shiites’ current determination to use every means available, including the American occupation, to maximize its political power.
---------------------
References:
Elizabeth Burgoyne, Gertrude Bell From Her Personal Papers, 1914-1926 (London, 1961).
David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace (N.Y. 1989).
Liora Lukitz, Iraq: The Search for National Identity (London, 1995).
Janet Wallach, Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell (N.Y., 1996).
Grand Lake Neighborhood Center
July 1, 2006
GERTRUDE BELL & BRITISH COLONIALIST POLICY IN IRAQ
Desert Queen, Janet Wallach’s excellent biography of Gertrude Bell, also provides us with an immensely readable history of the crucial period of Iraq’s formation, as seen from the perspective of its chief architect. Wallach convincingly demonstrates the extent to which Bell became the guiding intelligence behind Faisal’s Iraq, while officially acting as Britain’s number two person-- first under the fascistic Arnold Wilson, then under the quietly supportive Sir Percy Cox. The biography has its own dramatic curve, building towards a special moment of validation for Bell. In October 1920, with the anti-British uprising in its sixth month, Cox replaced Wilson in running Mesopotamia. It meant a repudiation of the hard-line policies Bell saw as responsible for the revolt. It also meant that Bell would have a green light, under Cox, to reshape policy in terms developed by the Arab Bureau in Cairo. From early 1919 on, her closest political allies had been the organizers of the wartime Arab Revolt-- Gilbert Clayton, T.E. Lawrence, and Faisal of the Hijaz, who alone appeared capable of running a government that unified the three former vilayets of Mesopotamia.
Lawrence and Faisal had worked with Bell daily at the Paris Peace talks in Jan. 1919. As Wallach puts it, the seed planted then ”took root” in September 1919, when General Gilbert Clayton, head of the Arab Bureau, brought her into contact with Arab nationalist leaders in Egypt, Palestine and Syria. Wallach suggests that Bell underwent a complete reversal of attitude in 1919. This may be overstating it, since she had always resented Arnold Wilson’s effort to impose the harsh colonialist policies of the British Government in India upon Mesopotamia. Bell’s shift of viewpoint was about the Arabs’ capacity for self-government. Before Lawrence and Faisal got through to her, she had doubted it. But after working with them in Paris, she believed in Faisal. She saw his Syrian government at work in Damascus, and interviewed Clayton’s key Arab Nationalist contacts. On returning to Mesopotamia in late 1919, it all fell together in her controversial Syrian Report, which recommended an Arab government for the new state of Iraq. The British had to back an Arab state, she argued, not only because of tis wartime promises to the Arabs, but because it was a strategic necessity. In October 1920, Bell suddenly found that she had an opportunity to implement that vision. It is arguable, of course, that a Faisal-led Iraq was the only practical solution available then, amid the still ongoing anti-British uprising with the British unwilling to commit more resources to the region.
As Fromkin emphasizes, Bell’s view in 1918 was that talk of self-determination in Iraq was dangerous, since it excited “the less stable and more fanatical elements.” Sharing this basic colonialist viewpoint with Wilson enabled Bell to work with him, even though it was a “nightmare” for her, as she reiterates in her letters. Looking back on this period, Bell recalls Wilson’s insistence on “running things his own way” instead of “establishing sympathy and confidence,” which was her own way of working. The “turning point,” from Bell’s perspective, came in May 1919. Wilson, visiting Damascus, told Faisal’s military leaders (including Nuri al-Said and Yasin al-Hashimi—both future PMs in Iraq) to forget their dreams of an Arab state. They had to learn the basics on “municipal councils,” Wilson argued, under British supervision. In a letter written in early 1921, Bell recalls the helplessness and exasperation she redirected into oppositional resolve, grounded in her sympathetic understanding of the Arab nationalist movement.
From that day they despaired of ever getting native institutions in Mesopotamia, and Yasin, being the violent, active creature that he is, urged on the Mesopotamian League, of which he was the leading spirit, to the intensified anti-British propaganda it from that date adopted. This propaganda was the chief cause of the stirring up of revolt here, It is because he outraged nationalist feeling, underestimated the strength of it and wholly misunderstood it… that A.T. [Wilson] stands convicted of one of the greatest errors of policy which we have committed in Asia—an error so great that it now lies on the toss of a halfpenny whether we can retrieve it (Burgoyne, Gertrude Bell, 203).
Fromkin notes that Arnold Wilson predicted the 1920 revolt and that Gertrude Bell “discounted the possibility” of it. From letters like this one, we learn that Bell actually blamed Wilson for causing the revolt. His policy of preventive repression struck her as a self-fulfilling prophecy. (Cf. Bush’s claim to be “fighting terrorism” by invading and occupying Iraq.) Significantly, Wilson refused to allow any of Faisal’s Sharifian officers from Iraq to return home, fearing their subversive potential. This simply invited them to make trouble. They had abandoned their Ottoman ties and fought with Faisal and the British solely because they were promised an independent Arab state. Feeling bitter and betrayed, many Sharifian officers joined the 1920 revolt at the outset, led by Yasin al-Hashimi.
From the standpoint of British policy, the 1920 revolt showed the need to end the three-sided rivalry between Wilson and the India Office, Clayton and the pro-Arab Cairo office, and the Foreign Office in London. Accordingly, at the same time Percy Cox was replacing Wilson, in October 1920, Winston Churchill was appointed to replace Lord Curzon as head of the Colonial Office. Its historic March 1921 meeting in Cairo brought Bell, Cox, T.E. Lawrence, and the other pro-Arab “experts” together to set Faisal up in Iraq and his elder brother Abdullah in the newly created state of Transjordan.
For Gertrude Bell, an important consequence of the new concord under Churchill was the return to Mesopotamia of Faisal’s Sharifian military officers. By November 1921, the politically shrewd Nuri al-Said, whom Bell regarded as a “moderate” ally, had taken control of the anti-British faction, which had ruined itself in trying to lead the 1920 revolt. And Percy Cox was on board with the Sharifians, as Bell happily observed at the time..
Sir Percy and Faisal make a new Sharifian party composed of all the solid, moderate people, and the old Sharifian party which raised the revolt is sinking into an obscurity not even deserved, for it will be submerged under the dislike and suspicion of everyone (Burgoyne, Gertrude Bell, 226).
For Faisal, the most difficult challenge was to control the “old Sharifian” extremists, as he had not been able to do in 1919 and 1920, when he felt compelled to promote the impossible demands of the al Ahd leaders in Syria. Once in power in Iraq, Faisal’s first move was to mollify his potential critics by demanding that the Mandate (declaring British control) be replaced by a treaty (implying Iraq’s power to make agreements). Despite the predictable British opposition to Faisal’s demand, Gertrude Bell backed him on pragmatic grounds: “There is no point claiming an authority we cannot enforce” (Burgoyne, Gertrude Bell, 238).
From Wallach’s biography and Burgoyne’s selection of Bell’s letters, it is clear that Bell and Faisal both recognized the flaw in their program—that a long-term Sunni hegemony in Iraq would require armed force to maintain its control of the majority Shiites. The Shiite perspective is largely absent in Gertrude Bell’s narrative, due to her personal and strategic identification with Faisal’s Arab nationalist elite and her recognition that backing it provided the best hope for maintaining British control in Iraq. As Liora Lukitz shows (62-63), when the Shiites realized they would be permanently marginalized by Pan-Arabism (despite being Arabs themselves), they tried to develop a separate alliance with the British. “A return to direct British administration was considered preferable to full Sunni hegemony”(63). But the British were bound to refuse them. For the alliance that British Intelligence in Cairo had been developing with the Arab nationalists since 1914 had become the basis of Gertrude Bell’s start-up program for Iraq. The rest, as they say, is history. Sunni military control of the Shiite majority became the constant of Iraqi stability, and control of the Shiite clerics was the key to that policy. This is the general background behind the Shiites’ current determination to use every means available, including the American occupation, to maximize its political power.
---------------------
References:
Elizabeth Burgoyne, Gertrude Bell From Her Personal Papers, 1914-1926 (London, 1961).
David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace (N.Y. 1989).
Liora Lukitz, Iraq: The Search for National Identity (London, 1995).
Janet Wallach, Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell (N.Y., 1996).
