A Peace to End all Peace (64 page)

Several important objections to Churchill’s Transjordan scheme were voiced at the Cairo Conference. Sir Herbert Samuel, the High Commissioner for Palestine, and his Chief Secretary, Wyndham Deedes, pointed out that since Transjordan had been included by the League of Nations in the territory of Palestine (for which the League was offering Britain a Mandate), it was not open to Britain unilaterally to separate it from the rest of Palestine. What Samuel feared was that a separate Arab Transjordan could serve as a base for anti-Zionist agitation aimed at western Palestine.
³⁶
A parallel fear was expressed by Lloyd George, who worried that the French—to whom Feisal was
persona non grata
—would regard British patronage of two Hashemite brothers—one in Mesopotamia, and the other in Transjordan, both on their Syrian doorstep—as a provocation. On 22 March the Prime Minister sent a telegram to Churchill, in which he remarked: “Cabinet…discussed your proposals for Transjordania, as to which considerable misgivings were entertained. It was felt that almost simultaneous installation of the two brothers in regions contiguous to French sphere of influence would be regarded with great suspicion by them and would be interpreted as a menace to their position in Syria, deliberately plotted by ourselves.”
³⁷

The Prime Minister appreciated the reasons that had led Churchill to propose “an Arab rather than a Palestinian solution” to the problem of Transjordan,
³⁸
but feared that any attempt to establish a separate Arab entity east of the Jordan might involve Britain in costly new engagements and entanglements.

Churchill succeeded in persuading the Cabinet that without sending at least a small British military force into Transjordan, no government could be established there at all. He indicated that Abdullah would not be expected to stay in the country for more than a few months, but that on a trial basis Abdullah could help establish order and then help choose a local person to serve as governor. Churchill agreed to accept Lloyd George’s compromise concept of Transjordan: “while preserving Arab character of area and administration to treat it as Arab province or adjunct of Palestine.”
³⁹

In Churchill’s view, Abdullah would help to restrain both the anti-French and the anti-Zionist movements that otherwise might establish their headquarters east of the Jordan. The Hashemite solution, in his view, would help to solve these problems rather than (as critics had suggested) to create them. According to T. E. Lawrence, Abdullah made an ideal British agent in the area, because he was “a person who was not too powerful, and who was not an inhabitant of Trans-Jordania, but who relied upon His Majesty’s Government for the retention of his office.”
⁴⁰

A final problem was the reaction of the rival House of Saud to the proposed elevation of the House of Hashem to new honors. Churchill’s proposed solution was to raise Ibn Saud’s subsidy to 100,000 pounds a year.
⁴¹

On 22 March the Cairo Conference came to an end and, at midnight on 23 March, Churchill left Cairo by train for Palestine. Once arrived, he met four times in Jerusalem with Abdullah and arrived at an agreement with him. Abdullah’s “attitude was moderate, friendly, and statesmanlike,” wrote Churchill in a memorandum to the Cabinet. To Arab anti-Zionist demonstrators, Abdullah “maintained an absolutely correct attitude, reproved the demonstrators, stated that the British were his friends, and that the British Government would keep their promises to Jews and Arabs alike.”
⁴²
Abdullah agreed to govern Transjordan for six months, with the advice of a British chief political officer and with a British financial subsidy, but without British troops. He agreed also to help establish the air bases upon which, in Churchill’s plan, British control would ultimately be centered.

Britain’s immediate hopes of pacifying Transjordan rested as heavily upon Abdullah as her hopes of pacifying Iraq depended upon Feisal. From Cap d’Ail on the French Riviera, where he stopped on the way home, Churchill wrote to Lord Curzon that “Abdullah turned around completely under our treatment of the Arab problem. I hope he won’t get his throat cut by his own followers. He is a most polished & agreeable person.”
⁴³

Upon his return to London, Churchill secured the support both of the Cabinet and of the Commons for his Middle East policy. Since at Cairo he had secured the support of Britain’s officers in the field, the Colonial Secretary had his own country’s leadership behind him—at least temporarily—as he attempted to impose his new design on the Middle East. But
The Times
, observing on 15 June 1921 that there was “a disconcerting air of topsy-turvydom about his structure,” presciently pointed out that his ingenious attempt to reconcile rival claims and to validate claims without having the resources to do so had led him to assume contingent liabilities on Britain’s behalf that could not be redeemed if they were ever presented for payment.

Meanwhile, as the Cairo Conference drew to a close, British officials prepared to stage-manage the selection of Feisal as monarch of the about-to-be-created state of Iraq, planning to remain behind the scenes and make it appear that Feisal had been freely and spontaneously chosen by the peoples of Iraq. They had received assurances that Feisal was prepared to be cooperative.

VII

Before he took office as Colonial Secretary, Churchill had taken advantage of the close relationship between T. E. Lawrence and Feisal to sound out Feisal’s views. Lawrence had reported to Churchill’s Private Secretary in mid-January that Feisal was prepared to enter into discussions with Britain without any reference to French-occupied Syria; and that Feisal also agreed to abandon all his father’s claims to Palestine. Lawrence wrote that “The advantage of his taking this new ground of discussion is that all questions of pledges & promises, fulfilled or broken, are set aside. You begin a new discussion on the actual positions today & the best way of doing something constructive with them.”
⁴⁴

At the Cairo Conference, Lawrence, Cox, Gertrude Bell, and others in the Political Committee had established a timetable for Feisal’s candidacy for the throne of Iraq. Their plan was for Feisal to travel to Mecca, and from there to send telegrams to leading personalities in Iraq. In his cable Feisal was to say he had been urged by friends to come to Iraq and that, after discussing the matter with his father and brothers, he had decided to offer his services to the people of Iraq.

When the Cairo Conference disbanded, Lawrence sent an urgent message to Feisal, who was in London. “Things have gone exactly as hoped. Please start for Mecca at once by quickest possible route…I will meet you on the way and explain the details. Say only you are going to see your father, and on no account put anything in press.”
⁴⁵

At about the same time, Sir Percy Cox received a disquieting message from the officer he had left in charge of Baghdad. “Since your departure the situation has changed considerably,” ran the message. Sayyid Talib, the dominant local political leader of Basra, had reached an agreement with the Naqib, the elderly leading notable of Baghdad, by the terms of which the former would support the candidacy of the latter in return for a chance at the succession. The two “put forward the claims of an Iraqi ruler for Iraq. There are indications that this claim receives a considerable measure of support, and there is I think no question but that Feisal’s candidature will be strongly resisted…”
⁴⁶
Cox hurried back to Baghdad to persuade rival candidates to withdraw from the contest—among them, Ibn Saud, who objected to a Hashemite candidacy, but was mollified by cash and other British favors.

Meanwhile Sayyid Talib toured the country, meeting with tribal leaders and speaking in public, affirming the need for cooperation with Britain but proclaiming as his slogan, “Iraq for the Iraqis!”
⁴⁷
British intelligence officers reported with alarm that Talib was meeting with “a magnificent reception everywhere.”
⁴⁸

Sayyid Talib had a long-standing invitation to take tea with Sir Percy Cox at the Residency in Baghdad in mid-April. When he arrived, he found that Cox had excused himself, leaving Lady Cox to entertain the guests. As he left the Residency after the tea party, Talib was arrested by one of his fellow guests, by order of Sir Percy Cox, his absent host. Talib was then deported to the island of Ceylon in the Indian Ocean. The day following Talib’s arrest, Sir Percy Cox announced in a communiqué that he had ordered the deportation to preserve law and order in the face of Talib’s threat to incite violence.
^*

Nonetheless resistance to Feisal’s candidacy persisted, though it took other forms. Proposals were made in favor of a republic, in favor of a Turkish ruler, in favor of leaving the province of Basra separate from the province of Baghdad, and in favor of leaving matters as they were, under the administration of Sir Percy Cox as High Commissioner.

Guided (at his own request) by British advisers, Feisal meanwhile journeyed from London to the Hejaz, where he settled matters with his father, and thence onward at British expense to Basra, where he disembarked on 24 June. While aboard ship he received the welcome news that the official native leadership—the Council of Ministers in Baghdad, presided over by the Naqib—had invited him to be a guest of the nation.

In public the British government continued to maintain the official fiction that it was neutral and impartial; privately, Cox told Feisal to go out and campaign for popular support so that Britain could claim to have accepted the people’s verdict.
⁴⁹

On 11 July the Council of Ministers unanimously adopted a resolution declaring Feisal to be the constitutional monarch of Iraq. On 16 July the Council authorized a plebiscite to ratify its choice. On 18 August the Ministry of the Interior announced that Feisal had won an overwhelming victory in the yes-or-no plebiscite. On 23 August Feisal’s coronation was celebrated; and in official usage Iraq (“well-rooted country”) replaced Mesopotamia as the name of his new kingdom.

Even before his coronation, however, Feisal began to trouble the British by insisting on formal independence and objecting to the League of Nations Mandate, which was a trusteeship; he proposed that relations between Iraq and Britain should instead be defined by a treaty between the two countries. The British claimed that they had no legal right to alter the status of Iraq without authorization from the League of Nations; but consented to negotiate a treaty so long as it referred to the Mandate. Feisal objected to including any such reference in the treaty. Negotiations that often caused anger and anguish in London went on for more than a year.

In the late summer of 1922, Churchill wrote to Lloyd George that “Feisal is playing a very low & treacherous game with us.”
⁵⁰
Churchill told the Prime Minister that he and his Cabinet colleagues ought to meet to discuss whether to depose Feisal or whether to evacuate Iraq. A few days later, at a conference of Cabinet ministers, Churchill reported that

Shortly afterward Churchill wrote to the Prime Minister that “I am deeply concerned about Iraq. The task you have given me is becoming really impossible.” He wrote that there was “scarcely a single newspaper—Tory, Liberal, or Labour”—that was not “consistently hostile” to Britain’s remaining in Iraq. He added that “in my own heart I do not see what we are getting out of it.”
⁵²
He proposed to send Feisal an ultimatum; if it were not accepted, “I would actually clear out.”
⁵³

The Prime Minister replied that “On general principles, I am against a policy of scuttle, in Iraq as elsewhere…”
⁵⁴
He referred, too, to the widely held belief that large reserves of oil might be discovered in the area: “If we leave we may find a year or two after we departed that we have handed over to the French and Americans some of the richest oilfields in the world…”
⁵⁵

Sir Percy Cox therefore persevered in his negotiations. After several dramatic political crises had run their course he succeeded in concluding a treaty, on 10 October 1922, that incorporated many of the substantive terms of the Mandate. The treaty was to last for twenty years but, as a result of opposition in Iraq, a half year later it was amended so as to reduce its term from twenty years to four years. Even so, Iraqi agitation for fuller independence continued, while in London
The Times
complained that the treaty was unfair to Britain because it imposed too heavy a burden of obligations.

Indeed, Britain was called upon immediately to shield Iraq from the growing power of Ibn Saud. The Arabian monarch, a dynastic enemy of the Hashemites, threatened Feisal as well as his brother Abdullah; and the British government felt obliged to protect them both. At the end of 1922, in a meeting at a port called ’Uqair, Sir Percy Cox imposed upon Ibn Saud an agreement defining the Saudi kingdom’s frontiers with Kuwait and Iraq.

Despite their need for British protection, Iraqi politicians moved to assert themselves. The Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1922, like the Allenby Declaration of formal independence for Egypt the same year, marked a change in the political atmosphere of the Arab East.
^*
Neither Iraq nor Egypt was granted more than limited autonomy, yet both had been recognized as entities possessing the attributes of statehood. In both countries, political leaders agitated for independence, while British-appointed monarchs could only maintain their position by doing the same.