1

Palestine/Israel Background to perpetual dispute

Imperial sentiment still haunts the land of Philistine and Zion

In the first two decades of the 20th century, Gaza's most famous resident was the Christian missionary Dr Stirling, who ran the local hospital and dispensed medical care to Arabs, Jews and Christians alike for a standard fee - listening to a short reading from the New Testament. Further to the south-west in the region of Tiberias, in what was then the Ottoman sanjaq of Jerusalem, a Scottish Christian Zionist, Dr Torrance, ran a meteorological laboratory and medical centre that attracted visitors of all religions and none from far and wide. He believed that the return of the Jews to Palestine would be the harbinger of the Second Coming. Both men were magnets for the spies of the region - agents of the great powers represented by the likes of the German Jewish archaeologist Max von Oppenheim and the Austrian Jew Alois Musil, the Englishwoman Gertrude Bell and her compatriots Newcombe, Lawrence and Woolley, the Frenchman Picot, the Palestinian Aaronsohns, and the representatives of many other nations. The Jewish Zionists, disciples of Theodor Herzl, proved supreme masters of espionage even in the infancy of their movement. These were the protagonists of a new order that was beginning to emerge from the chaos of the old and bankrupt Ottoman Empire, and they hovered over the religious zealots of the region like vultures over a decaying corpse.

We have to look much further back in time to trace the beginnings of the peoples of the region, the two great Semitic races, Arabs and Jews. The incursions of the Hapiru, the tribal people who came to be known as Hebrew and settled alongside the Philistines in the land of Canaan in the 2nd millennium BC, get us nowhere in terms of ownership or exact provenance. The pros and cons of the Israelite Exodus from Egypt into Palestine sometime in the 13th century BC under the leadership of Moses (a Jew or an Egyptian noble according to taste) are little more helpful. The stone of Merenptah, son of Ramasses the Great, tells us all we know for certain of the latter event. Its testament to an Egyptian victory over the Israelites was written five years after Merenptah ascended the throne in 1234.

Canaan is despoiled and all its evil with it. Askelon is taken captive, Gezer is conquered. Yanoam is blotted out. The people of Israel is desolate, it has no offspring. Palestine has become a widow for Egypt.

We know that the Israelite presence was revived. From the written records of Nimrud, Nineveh, Khorsabad and Assur in ancient Assyria (present day Iraq), as well as the Old Testament, we are told that there were powerful alliances between Israel and the Phoenicians in the reigns of King David and his successor Solomon which brought together the best sailors and the finest shipbuilders, bringing 'gold, silver, ivory, apes and peacocks' in the words of the Old Testament.

We know for certain that for some 2000 years (roughly from the time of the patriarch Abraham to the advent of Christ) these desert peoples occupied the empty spaces of a Mediterranean land that offered the hope of a settled and prosperous life, and if it had not been them it would quite likely have been marauding wayfarers who came in their stead. For Jews, the hope of continuing prosperity was dashed by the Chaldaean rulers of Babylon in the 6th century BC, with the destruction of Israel and the 60-year captivity of its people. But the enslaved Jews returned from exile to begin the rebuilding of the Temple in 536BC.

During the centuries of Greek and Roman rule these were simply provinces of empire with no great religious significance and little political weight. Byzantium and the Crusaders competed with Moslem armies and Arab rulers and tried unsuccessfully to keep them at bay. Jews lived contentedly alongside Arabs and Christians as a minority people. In fact, we have to jump to the end of the 19th century AD and Theodor Herzl's version of Zionism, when political power in the region had been in the hands of the Ottoman Caliphate for four centuries, in order to discover the cause of a final rift that would bring the world close to armed conflict.

§

In 1896 the Austrian Herzl, father figure of political Zionism, approached the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid. The Sultan's finances were in some disorder. Herzl, with the backing of governments and bankers, offered to regulate the entire finances of the Turkish empire in return for the gift of Palestine. The offer was made through an intermediary, de Newlinsky. The Sultan told him:

If Mr Herzl is as much your friend as you are mine, then advise him not to take another step in this matter. I cannot sell a foot of land, for it does not belong to me, but to my people. My people have won this Empire by fighting for it with their blood...Let the Jews have their billions. When my Empire is partitioned they may get Palestine for nothing. But only our corpse will be divided. I will not agree to vivisection...

It was a prophetic statement.

In 1906 a Zionist office was established at Jaffa, disguised as a bank. Herzl had been dead for two years but his followers had not given up the idea of a national home in Palestine. Joseph Chamberlain, Colonial Secretary in Balfour's Government, had tried in 1902 to help a cause that the new Prime Minister held close to his heart by seeking to find them a haven almost anywhere. Sinai and Cyprus were suggested, but the Zionist leader dismissed them out of hand. Mesopotamia was not much better received, which was just as well since Chamberlain's geography was not too good. He almost certainly confused Mesopotamia with Al Hasa, the coastal region of Najd (which became Saudi Arabia). He had no authority to give either to anyone. Kenya was better received. Herzl thought it might make a good training ground for Palestine but in the end decided that only the Promised Land would do.

§

When the First World War ended, the entire Middle East region was occupied by victorious British forces, with a nominal French presence. The defeated Ottoman Empire was dismembered. Wartime agreements made in haste, such as the Sykes-Picot pact which made Haifa an international port and the rest of the old Sanjaq of Jerusalem (al Quds to give its Arab name) a zone of British supremacy, came to torment their authors. The population of Palestine was approximately 700,000 of whom about 10 percent were Jews and 7 per cent Christian Arabs. The rest were Moslem Arabs. Britain, in the penultimate year of war, had issued the Balfour Declaration, a device aimed at bringing America, with its large Jewish lobby, into the war on the allied side. Somewhat earlier, the Germans through their Jewish Foreign Secretary Zimmerman, had tried a similar tactic in reverse. The most vehement opposition to the Balfour Declaration came from the only Jew in the British Cabinet, Edwin Montagu, Secretary of State for India, who warned that any attempt to create a Jewish national home would involve the dispossession of almost the entire population of Palestine and strain the loyalties of the Jewish diaspora to the limit. The paper he presented to the Cabinet, entitled Anti-Semitism in the British Government, observed: 'Zionism has always seemed to me to be a mischievous political creed, untenable by any patriotic citizen of the United Kingdom'. He insisted, 'my religion is Judaism, but as a citizen I am British and my loyalty is to Britain'. He was supported by rabbis, academics and writers of distinction. And he quoted in support the Lady of Arabia, Gertrude Bell, Oriental Secretary in Baghdad and the first British woman to work in the field for the Directorate of Military Intelligence. She had travelled more widely in the Arab lands than any other English person, man or woman, and she wrote dismissively of 'non-Arab people who look on Palestine as their prescriptive inheritance', of 'immigration artificially fostered by doles and subventions from millionaire co-religionists'. Finally, Mr Montagu quoted L L Cohen, Chairman of the Jewish Board of Guardians, using the words of the Balfour Declaration:

The establishment of a 'national home for the Jewish race' in Palestine presupposes that the Jews are a nation, which I deny, and that they are homeless, which implies that in countries where they enjoy religious liberty and the full rights of citizenship, they are separate entities, unidentified with the interests of the of the nations of which they form part, an implication which I repudiate.

Influential American Jews insisted that Britain had committed itself to Zionist ambitions for the future of the country. In the inter-war years British troops stood between Arab inhabitants and the incursions of millions of Jews who wanted to migrate to Eretz Israel. By 1945, Hitler had effectively won the war for the expectant Jews. With majestic irony, the terrible events of the holocaust came to haunt the Christian world and to underline the life-long campaign by Arthur Balfour, author of the Foundations of Belief and Foreign Secretary at a crucial time, to make amends for Christian persecution of its Judaean mentors by facilitating the return of the Chosen People to Palestine.

§

By 1947, illegal immigration had increased tenfold in twenty years and the Jewish population was in open revolt against the British occupation. The Arab League threatened action to deal with further Jewish incursion.

On 29 November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly voted by 33 votes to 13, with 10 abstentions, that Palestine should be partitioned into Arab and Israeli states. The partition plan divided the country into six parts. Three were deemed Jewish and three - the so-called Gaza Strip, a zone on the west bank of the river Jordan (the 'West Bank') and the 'enclave of Jaffa' - formed what was called the 'Arab state'; the use of the name 'Palestine' was avoided. In fact, the Jewish areas, the 'Jewish State', were almost entirely Jewish dominated but with sizeable Arab populations, whereas the 'Arab State' contained only negligible Jewish populations and businesses. Jerusalem, Al Quds, was declared an international zone under United Nations supervision. The entire Islamic world and some uncommitted nations protested that it was an iniquitous and dangerous decision. Britain renounced the mandate granted by the League of Nations and announced its intention to withdraw, though a year later it protested to the Security Council that it would remain responsible for law and order for the remainder of the mandate. The Jews, unwilling to wait, attacked the British as they prepared to leave, and Arabs seized the opportunity to attack Jews. British soldiers were killed while a large army still in the country looked on impotently. Arabs held Jerusalem under siege and ambushed a military convoy on its way to Mount Scopus, where Britain's police force had its HQ. The murders of two British sergeants following the hanging of a captured Jewish terrorist, marked the nadir of Britain's occupation.

In 1948, the great powers and the UN stood by as the Arab League and Israel fought a war of attrition from which Israel emerged with more territory than the UN had granted it. Arab villages from which the occupants had fled in war were blown up by the Israelis. Nearly a million Arabs who fled their homes had to find refuge in the Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, and the Gaza strip that had been placed under Egyptian control. The Arabs had demonstrated a hopeless belief that they could fight a war by committee, without a proper command structure or a unity of purpose. They never regained the initiative. A provisional government had been declared at Tel Aviv on 14 May 1948, under David Ben-Gurion. And the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, whose scientific work in World War I had given impetus to the Balfour Declaration, became the first President of the state. Few of the Jews of the Yishuv, the indigenous Jews who had co-existed with Arabs for generations, were included in government. They were and remain outsiders in the new Israel.

§

At the turn of the new Millennium, an arrangement made in the shadow of imperial decline and a very British show of sentiment has reached a dangerous stalemate that neither power is happy with. The world knows only too well that Israel will preside over nuclear catastrophe rather than give up the lands it occupies. As an Arab on the streets of Gaza observed 'These people come here from Russia, from Germany, Britain, France, America, anywhere, and take our homes and our land and insist that it is theirs. And we are regarded as criminals for telling them they are wrong and that we won't put up with it.'

The most recent UN debate took place on 4th October 2000 in the 55th year of the Security Council. Mr Baali of Algeria, spoke in French on behalf of the Islamic nations, some of whom had been given a special dispensation to attend as non-voting guests, though not members of the Council.

He said:

For several days now the populations of Al-Quds [Jerusalem] and the occupied Palestinian territories have been the objects of a repression the likes of which has rarely been seen since the intifada. Children and adolescents...are, in effect, facing an incredible deployment of force involving tanks, missiles and helicopter gunships... The result of this obviously unfair confrontation — can we really talk about a confrontation? — is that scores of innocent people, including very young children, including even today a 10-year-old child in the Gaza Strip — have been killed in cold blood by bullets.. . The acts that triggered the tragic developments that have been occurring in Al-Quds Al-Sharif and the occupied territories since last Friday are well known, as are those who are responsible... In this difficult time when Palestinian civilians are victims of the brutality of the occupying forces, it is important that the Security Council rise to its responsibilities and fulfil its role and its mandate with regard to the Palestinian people and international law. In this connection, the Council must see to it that, as soon as possible, a stop is put to the illegal actions that the Israeli occupying Power is engaging in. In particular, an end must be put to the use of real bullets against a defenceless civilian population... These are our expectations — the expectations of my country, Algeria... [And] I am sure, the expectations of the international community as a whole, and the Security Council has no right to disappoint it.

By its own intransigence, assisted by the folly of the Arab League, Israel has created its own Ireland in the land of the Philistine, or of Zion, whichever point in history we choose to start from. Since 1953 there have been 48 UN resolutions relating to Palestine/Israel and the Middle East situation. America has steadfastly supported Israel in ignoring all requests to hand back to the Arabs the territories assigned to them by the UN and taken in war. At the same time, the US government has just as consistently maintained that resolutions on Iraq and Iran must be upheld. It can be said with little fear of contradiction that if Britain adopted in Ireland measures remotely like those used by the Israelis in defence of territory it claims as its own, it would receive scant support from America.

§

The rest of the modern history of a seemingly insoluble dispute is told in newspaper cuttings and on a thousand web sites. Here it is enough to state a few bald facts:

In 1946, David Ben Gurion told an Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry: 'Our aim is not a majority. A majority will not solve our problem... You need it to establish the commonwealth. We still have to build a national home'.

Following the official ending of the British occupation and the Security Council Resolution of 29 November 1947, the occupying power maintained a Machiavellian presence, refusing to budge on the surprising ground that there could not be two supervising authorities. All the same, the UN appointed its own mediator to take charge by a resolution dated 14 May 1948. That mediator was the Swede Count Folke Bernadotte. The state of Israel was proclaimed the same day. Count Bernadotte was murdered by Jewish extremists soon after. The Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, was established in a divided Jerusalem. It first met in January 1949. Based on a proportional voting system, it seems to be condemned to a succession of fleeting governments and wild swings from right to left.

In 1956, Arab forces joined in an attack on Israel from Sinai. In what became known as the Sinai campaign, the Arab force was routed by General Moshe Dayan.

In 1960, Soviet Russia accused Zionism of being a 'mask for Israeli espionage', and of being a branch of the CIA.

In 1961, a census showed the country's population to be 2,260,700 of which about 270,000 were Moslems, Christians and Druses. Over half a million Arabs had vanished. More than 2 million Jews had arrived on the scene.

By 1962, Israel had demonstrated its most surprising characteristic, a cavalier approach to money. Successive devaluations resulted in the £I becoming worth one eighth of its original value by 1962.

In 1966, Syria openly supported increasing Arab incursions into Israel, led by al-Fatah, the body that from 1914 led the Arab Revolt against the Turks. Border conflicts intensified further in 1967 and there were devastating retaliatory raids by Israel.

In May 1967 there was a large Egyptian military build up in Sinai. Israel called up reserves. Jordan and Egypt signed a joint defence pact. In the early morning of 5th June, 1967, Israeli forces encountered an Egyptian force moving towards Israel. Israeli aircraft attacked Egyptian air bases and virtually destroyed its air force. On the fourth day of fighting the Jordanians were forced to accept a ceasefire proposed by the UN. Egypt followed suit. Syria made peace on the fifth day after bombarding Israeli positions from the Golan heights. On the sixth day the war was over and a famous victory was claimed by Israel. It was the end of one battle and the beginning of many more.

Following the ceasefire, a Soviet resolution to condemn Israel was defeated but a Pakistani resolution was passed without opposition calling for laws passed by the Knesset to incorporate Old Jerusalem into the state of Israel to be declared invalid. The occupied territories of the Gaza strip and the West Bank (originally intended by the UN as the Arab areas of a divided Palestine) became a running sore in the Middle East and a constant threat to world peace. And by its occupation of southern Lebanon and its policy of divide and rule in a country with almost equal populations of Christian and Moslem Arabs, Israel effectively destroyed the country that was regarded as the Queen of the Levant.

Personal Note: Zionism, once famously described as 'Bolshevism with heart', has always enjoyed a wide intellectual appeal. But even in Israel is has proved divisive. The present author once tried to write a biographical study of a most distinguished Jewish family in Palestine, the Aaronsohns of Zichron Yakov, who helped Britain's cause selflessly in the1914-18 war. The idea of a biography followed a very favourable response in the Israeli and Arab press to his book the Illicit Adventure. Here, thought the author, was an opportunity to look for alternative viewpoints that might go some way to placating Arab nationalists and Zionists. It was not to be. Attempts to investigate the death of the senior family member, Aaron, in an air accident over Boulogne harbour in 1919 - in which complicity of Zionists and British intelligence was suspected - were thwarted by both British and Israeli security authorities. Aaronsohn was seen as a threat to the Zionist establishment. Reports of the so-called accident (details of which were reported only in the local French press), were withdrawn from both British and Israeli files as soon as the idea of a biography, and inevitably detailed research, was mooted.

[Chief sources, The Illicit Adventure by HVF Winstone, Cape 1982 (University Publications USA, 1987). Notes to specific sources, including other authors, p387 ff. And Reports of meetings of General Assembly and Security Council, UN Nations. And see following articles on Syria and Iraq for further references and sources.]

Hvfw, November 2000

2

 IraqSaddam Husain

Background to the Gulf War and the Iraq-Kuwait frontier question

The latest editorial analysis from the FT (dated Aug 7, 2000) presents a powerful case for the reappraisal of international policy towards Iraq after a decade of sanctions. The journal's on-line editorial observes that the sanctions policy has 'run out of momentum and the pain it has inflicted on Iraq's 22m population has eroded support for it in the Arab world and beyond'. The FT makes the point that Saddam may have been contained but he is still 'firmly in control'. The opposition in exile is 'neither credible nor capable of toppling him'. And while it accepts that UN weapons inspectors have stripped the country of most of its deadly weapons, there is nonetheless a stalemate on the arms inspection question that must be addressed. US insistence that the oil embargo will be lifted 'only when the Iraqi strongman is removed from power' is getting the world nowhere. 'The Security Council should not be satisfied with this stalemate', the editorial declares. 'Mr Saddam must not be rewarded, but sanctions should target him rather than the Iraqi people'.

The world needs to understand the underlying history of the Iraq question as well as the current dilemma. Read on.

Ô

Iraq's past is for me a subject of intimate personal concern. We all share in a concern for its present.

It is a name that defines one of the earliest city states of the 4th millennium BC, Uruk in its ancient form, birthplace of the written word. It is a place that embraces Sumer and Accad of the Bible, Babylon and Assyria, Gilgamesh the divine king of legend, and the great Ark of the Deluge, Ziusudra of long life, Abraham the father figure of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. A subject that reflects in its clay inscribed legends the formative stirrings of civilisation, the conflicts and achievements of the world's most ancient communities, born of mighty rivers, rich pastures, arid deserts, primordial cities; a myriad towers of Babel sending bellicose messages to angry, impenitent, and proud people.

And most importantly, it is a matter of professional pride, since four of my biographical subjects were key figures in the country's lurch to modern statehood. Present day disputes owe as much to them as to Iraq's fiery and at times homicidal politicians.

Gertrude Bell, Al Khatun, 'the great lady' of the Arab lands before and during the First World War, was adviser to the British policy makers of the time, Churchill, Curzon, Percy Cox and AT Wilson. In the post World War I days of Lloyd George's coalition government, she sat with Arab tribal leaders to draw the frontiers between Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Kuwait, trying to ensure that the interests of both desert and the sown, as well as those of adjoining lands, were adequately represented in their deliberations. In December 1921 she wrote a letter home in which she said: 'I had a well spent morning at the office making out the Southern desert frontier of the Iraq with the help of a gentleman from Hail (capital of northern Nejd, now Saudi Arabia) and Fahd Bey the paramount chief of the Anezeh [tribe]'. A year later she wrote: 'Ibn Saud has captured Hail...Sir Percy has invited him to come into conference...and I've been laying out on the map what I think should be our desert boundaries'.

Captain WHI Shakespear, one of the finest of British consuls in the East, was sent to Kuwait at the instant of great power competition for hegemony in the Persian Gulf, as the bulwark of British authority. He became the close friend and political guide of Ibn Saud, the founding king of Saudi Arabia. He died fighting alongside his Saudi friend in 1915, in battle with the Sauds' traditional enemy, Ibn Rashid.

Colonel Gerard Leachman was the man the troops chose to call 'OC Desert' in wartime days when the place was known to the outside world as Mesopotamia, though it was officially a collection of districts or vilayets of the Ottoman Empire. He and Shakespear vied with each other to explore central Arabia on behalf of the London and Indian branches respectively of the General Staff. Leachman, bravest and most cavalier of soldiers, was desert companion of Gertrude Bell's friend Fahd Bey and fought with the mighty Anaiza tribal federation in war. He was the first military governor of Kurdistan immediately after. And he was murdered in a feud with another tribal leader at the moment of Iraq's rebirth.

Sir Leonard Woolley, the distinguished British archaeologist, worked with TE Lawrence at Carchemish before the 1914 war, and after the war at Tal al-Amarna (Akhetaten) in Egypt, birthplace of Tutankhamun. He served as a military intelligence officer in both world wars. He uncovered Ur of the Chaldees in southern Iraq, reputed birthplace of the patriarch Abraham, just as the country regained its independence under a British imposed monarch after the best part of a thousand years of foreign occupation.

The modern history of Iraq is coloured by the remarkable Britons who carried the flag, not always impartially or even legally, at the heart of Islam in the last three decades of the Ottoman power's six centuries of rule. It is coloured, too, by military coups and political scams, by invasion, war and politically inspired homicide on a truly Roman scale. And from the Thatcher years on, it has lived with the fundamental presumption that one man - President of the Council of Ministers Saddam Husain al Takriti - is responsible for the nation's obloquy. He alone, they insist, is culpable, standing between peace and prosperity and an isolated Iraq in a world that has exhausted its patience.

Dividing the Ottoman Turkey

In the bitter disputes that have accompanied the Gulf War and its aftermath, the facts of geography and history have led Iraq into an abyss of suffering, yet they have seldom been touched on in the media or in political debate. Even the academic world, with all the time, material and expertise that it is able to call on, continues to avoid the crucial questions and instead devotes its Middle East 'studies' almost exclusively to the sadly oversubscribed pursuit of antiquated Foreign and Colonial Office myths, setting its degree dissertations and post-graduate studies solidly on a 'Lawrence of Arabia' footing.

The real story of Iraq, as of all the Arab nations that were spawned by the dismemberment of the Ottoman power, is bound up with the turmoil of war [and conflicting wartime agreements that are dealt with in the following essay in this series 'Syria'], the religious divide of Islam, the advent of oil wealth, and the related question of the frontiers that Gertrude Bell and her Arab friends drew up at the insistence of Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill in 1921. That, one would think, would be substance enough for a few doctoral theses.

On the surface at least, some of the bloodiest internal battles of Iraq's last 80 years, giving rise to a succession of bitterly antagonistic regimes, have been fomented not by the wealth created by enormous oil reserves but by obtuse nationalistic arguments and esoteric power struggles within close-knit family and military cliques.

Modern times

Iraq's modern history of military and civil disruption began on 23 August 1921 when the Hashemite Faisal ibn Husain, son of the Sharif of Mecca and protégé of Lawrence and Gertrude Bell, was crowned king of the new Iraq, some three years before the first elected assembly sat in Baghdad in March 1924.

The crowning of Faisal in recognition of the so-called Sharifian wartime agreement of 1916-17 was not quite the sign of the independence that most Iraqis had set their hearts on. Britain as the mandatory power still had authority in essential matters of defence and foreign affairs, and to a large extent it held the purse strings. At the time of the king's accession, Sir Percy Cox the High Commissioner summoned Arab chiefs from every part of the region to a conference at Ujair in the Saudi region of al-Hasa to define their frontiers. A true Harrovian, he addressed them as though they were errant schoolboys and brushed aside most of their complaints. At that desert meeting - tents were hurriedly erected to house the several delegations - the frontiers of Nejd (Saudi Arabia), Iraq, Syria, Transjordan and Kuwait were pronounced. The Saudi/Iraq frontier was confirmed in the Treaty of Mohammarah (Khoramshah) of May 1922. Ibn Saud complained bitterly about the loss of grazing rights in the borderland with Kuwait, however, and a codicil established a Neutral Zone at the western extremity of Kuwait, in which no permanent structures of any kind were to be built and in which the Badu were to be allowed to roam freely. Asked what was the real reason for this addition to the treaty, Cox murmured to colleagues something about oil.

'Legitimate but insubstantial'

Kuwait, the richest territory in the world acre for acre, once claimed by the Turks as part of the vilayet of Basra, became an established British protectorate in 1913. A Foreign Office précis writer in a memo for the guidance of Liberal Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey summarised the position with wonderfully contrived ambivalence: 'Turkey's claim to Kuwait', he wrote 'is legitimate but insubstantial'. The claim, whatever its merits, was to prove the crux of repeated conflicts between Iraq and its Gulf neighbour, leading eventually to war with Britain, America and the United Nations. When Saddam Husain al Takriti came to power in 1979 at the head of a government composed of family retainers, army officers and a few respected academics, his first act was to announce that Kuwait, snatched from its parent's arms in 1913 by Britain, must be returned to the mother country. It was a somewhat unpolished version of the actual event but it remains a central and dangerous ingredient of Iraqi policy and deserves close scrutiny.

Gunboat diplomacy and Kuwait

At the turn of the century the Royal Navy maintained control of the Persian Gulf with three patrol ships, only one of which - HMS Lapwing - was on permanent duty. Kuwait, whose ruler Shaikh Mubarak as-Sabah was politically powerful and devious, sought British protection in the face of increasing pressure to make land concessions to Germany, Russia and other powers.

In January 1902 the sole imperial power with a legitimate presence in the region, Turkey, pressured by European, particularly German interests intent on using Kuwait as the terminus for the Berlin-Baghdad railway, sent an invasion force from Basra to occupy the Kuwaiti territories of Safwan, Um Qasr and Bubiyan island. A small RN contingent was landed and the invaders fled. In September of the same year an attempt to take Kuwait by coup de main was led by two of Mubarak's disaffected nephews who were exiled in Basra, Adhfi bin Muhammad and Hamud bin Jarrah. Invading boums carrying 150 well armed tribesmen were intercepted by HMS Lapwing whose captain, Commander Armstrong, returned them uncomfortably to Basra and burnt their boats at sea. But a British sailor was killed in the engagement. Retribution was swift and punishment was visited by the navy on all the Gulf towns and villages that were suspected of complicity in the invasion.

In October 1902 French and Russian warships appeared in the Gulf and stood off Kuwait. The then Foreign Secretary, Lord Lansdowne, described the position as 'unsatisfactory'. Mubarak took fright and Britain, concerned that he might abdicate and leave a vacuum in a strategically vital spot, guaranteed Kuwait's security on condition that he remained in office. His sons and nephews, mostly living in Iraq, were not to be trusted. Thus was established Britain's unofficial protectorate of Kuwait at the time of 'Mubarak the Great', at the start of Arthur Balfour's four-year tenancy of 10 Downing Street.

Kuwait's divided loyalty

Kuwait's divided loyalty remained in a state of near equilibrium for the next decade, though the subject became increasingly sensitive as Germany began to seek American, French and Russian support for the Berlin-Baghdad rail scheme. But there was another cause for concern. 1904 was the year of the massive Persian oil strike by the D'arcy consortium in neighbouring Abadan, the Royal Navy's lifeline and the precursor of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (BP today).

Campbell-Bannerman's Liberal ministry took office in 1906 and at the end of the previous year Curzon, Kitchener and members of the Indian Council, anticipating the abdication of the Conservatives, wrote to the Government to stress the importance of Ibn Saud in any discussions affecting the future of the Ottoman dominions. Ibn Saud of Riyadh and his hereditary enemy Ibn Rashid of Hail began to seek the backing of European powers in their struggle for ascendancy in Nejd (Central Arabia). The latter made several attempts to occupy Kuwait. Large quantities of contraband arms found their way to the Gulf and central Arabia from Europe (20,000 rifles were smuggled into Muscat alone in 1904-5). In the confusion of internal and great power conflict, Britain decided that it had better put its own house in order in the Gulf and the Arabian heartland.

In 1907 Britain signed a secret agreement with Shaikh Mubarak, known as the Bandar Shuwaikh Lease. The Shaikh was paid the desultory sum of £100 for rights in perpetuity over the piece of land that the European powers wanted to use as the Berlin-Baghdad terminus. And in 1909, the Indian Government appointed the brightest and most formidable of its younger political officers, Captain William Henry Irvine Shakespear, to the Kuwait Political Agency. The man he replaced, a quiet, efficient and pleasant lawyer officer, Colonel SG Knox, had told the Resident in the Gulf, Major Percy Cox, 'I am afraid the Shaikh is intriguing in all directions'. Rather than sympathising with his subordinate, Cox sent his deputy Shakespear to replace the worried Knox. Within five years Shakespear made his Agency the most respected of all the outposts of the Indian Government and he was ready to make one of the great exploratory crossings of Arabia Deserta, from Kuwait to Riyadh and thence northward to Hail and on to Egypt, to learn from that other imperious Resident, Kitchener, of Britain's war plans.

Decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire

As we have seen, 1913 marked the beginning of Britain's premeditated plan to control access to Kuwait whatever the rights or wrongs of Turkish claims to suzerainty. The need for such a plan was underlined by events both distant and immediate. Europe openly prepared for war. Turkey, faced with the hostility of the major European powers, had lost the Balkan War and thus the last of the European possessions of the Ottoman Empire. But the Sultan of Turkey remained the steward of the Islamic Caliphate and Kuwait joined other Arab countries and the rest of the Moslem world in an appeal for funds to aid the wounded. Loss of European dominions, however, weakened the remnants of the old guard at Constantinople. A coup brought the Young Turks to power, though the old guard clung to a few vital offices. German engineers directed by the master rail builder Meissner Pasha had completed the hajj or pilgrim railroad from Damascus to the Prophet's city of Madina. Now Meissner hurried to complete the Berlin-Baghdad rail link.

Oil in Kuwait?

In October 1913 a deputation of oil experts, sent from India, was met at Muhammerah by Rear-Admiral Sir Edmund Slade, ex director of the Naval Staff College, a man widely mistrusted in senior naval circles, aboard HMS Sphinx. Delegates were taken to Kuwait where Captain Shakespear showed its members the place of bitumen, Burgan. The delegation's leader, HH Hayden, thought the chance of an oil strike 'favourable'. Whitehall prepared to nationalise the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. And at the end of the year Captain Shakespear was given permission by the Foreign Office to make his epic journey across the Arabia Peninsula and to hold discussions with the 'Desert Prince' Ibn Saud on the way. Before his departure there were a few minor matters to be settled: the arrival of a Turkish mission and an attempt to persuade the Shaikh to 'recognise Turkish authority'. To further delay the traveller's itinerary a second oil delegation turned up from India, and not for the first time the Political Agent had to settle a dispute between the two power brokers of the region, Shaikhs Mubarak and Khazal.

Secret agreements

It was against this background, that discussions began in Constantinople and London between the Foreign Office and the Turkish prime minister elect, Hakki Pasha, in order to formulate an Anglo-Turkish Convention.

It was a time of widespread exploratory discussions that anticipated the First World War. As Shakespear made his way across the desert to Riyadh and thence to Hail, the northern Arabian capital of Ibn Rashid, the Sharif of Mecca's second son Abdullah arrived in Cairo to talk with Kitchener. There were other remarkably coincident events. Percy Cox was called from the Gulf Residency to India to take over the Simla Foreign Office from Sir Henry McMahon, while Britain's most experienced and respected senior diplomat in the east, JG Lorimer, took Cox's place at Bushire. Lorimer died mysteriously in his office just after arriving in the Gulf, allegedly from a self-inflicted gun wound. Gertrude Bell left England after a private dinner with Prime Minister Asquith, on her way to Hail, and Hakki Pasha visited London for talks with Sir Edward Grey. Each event marked a piece of the jigsaw that would decide who supported whom in a war now seen as inevitable. Sir Edward Grey told Parliament that Britain had 'nothing to fear from Turkey'. In March 1914 the Anglo-Turkish Convention was signed in London, delivering part of southern Arabia and Kuwait to Britain while acknowledging Turkish authority over Ibn Saud's territory of Najd. The three chief administrative districts of Mesopotamia - Mosul, Baghdad and Basra - remained integral parts of Turkey in Asia.

Desert politics

Colonel Grey, Shakespear's successor in Kuwait, was sent into the desert to meet with Ibn Saud and tell him that in the light of negotiations taking place in London he could 'expect no help from Britain' and that he must sign a Turco-Saudi treaty that formed part of the Anglo-Turkish pact. Observers recorded that the desert negotiators almost came to blows.

Mubarak as-Sabah of Kuwait, described as the 'Richelieu of Arabia', was aware of what was going on; he had already signed an agreement with the TurkishWali of Basra while protesting to Grey that he remained loyal to Britain.

The Anglo-Turkish Convention drove a wedge between Kuwait and its Saudi neighbour and alienated Ibn Saud who, according to Shakespear, sought alliance with Britain above all else, but it achieved its main purpose of delivering the strategically vital territory at the head of the Persian Gulf to Britain and protected the Royal Navy's oil supply. When Shakespear returned at the end of 1914 as Britain's 'Political Officer on Special Duty in Arabia' he discovered that the British force which took Basra in November had uncovered a copy of the treaty Britain had compelled Ibn Saud to sign with Turkey. By then Britain had reversed its policy and Shakespear was sent to seek the Saudis' goodwill. He wrote of the FO's 'disastrous policy' but assured Whitehall 'Bin Saud is with us'. A few days later, on 24 January, he was killed in a desert battle, fighting alongside Ibn Saud, the man he believed would inherit Arabia, against the pro-Turk Ibn Rashid.

Thus was unravelled the question of who ruled over whom in the Arabian Peninsula. In truth, the position that Iraq inherited from Ottoman Turkey, setting aside the matter of victory or defeat in war, was this: in 1914, at the outbreak of the First World War, Central Arabia, a region about the size of India, was part of the vilayet of Basra as recognised in the Anglo-Turkish Convention. Kuwait, about the size of Yorkshire, was an independent Moslem state protected by Britain.

Whichever way it is viewed, the Turks signed away their 'legitimate' right to Kuwait. And they joined the wrong side in war. Such are not exactly persuasive arguments for Iraq's persistent assertion that Kuwait belongs to her, by default of Turkish ownership as it were. But some of the coastal areas closest to Iraq such as Safwan and Um Qasr which they invaded in 1902 and briefly occupied, were pencilled into Gertrude's map as 'Iraqi territory' when the time came for Britain to hand over.

 Independent Iraq

As for the sequel, Iraq was admitted as an independent state to the League of Nations in 1932, two years after a treaty of alliance had been signed with Britain. The old vilayet of Mosul, though claimed by a resurgent Turkey, had become part of the new Iraq as the result of a League edict of 1925. Nevertheless, the northern city of Mosul at the heart of the Kurdish region had never willingly been associated with Iraq. Even as far back as the second millennium BC its precursor Nineveh was one of the chief cities of Assyria, always at loggerheads with Babylon in the south. And in the long centuries of Ottoman rule it was an integral vilayet of Turkey, though as the political centre of Kurdistan, with which the Turks were seldom on the best of terms, it was effectively the capital city of an outcast region. The Turkey of Ataturk protested loudly when it was made part of Iraq, and if now Saddam Husain seeks the status quo ante in the old vilayet of Basra (though he doesn't it seems lay claim to Saudi Arabia which Britain insisted was part of the Basra vilayet), he should accept in reason and logic that, by the same token, the Mosul region must be returned to Turkey.

So too, in the aftermath of Britain's mandate, Sunni and Shi'a Moslems were at loggerheads with each other and with Christian minorities. A massacre of Assyrians (Christians) was committed by Iraqi troops in 1933. Tribal revolts followed in 1935/6, in which year General Bakr Sidqi achieved power by coup d'etat. The usurper was himself murdered in the following year. Two pipelines, laid down in the 1930s for taking oil to Tripoli and Haifa from recently discovered deposits at Kirkuk and Basra, created the ideal conditions for international interference and internal dissent. But it was British policy in Palestine, regarded throughout the Arab world as transparently pro-Zionist, that caused momentous shifts in Iraq's external relations. The arrangements made by Britain in the aftermath of war were increasingly held up to scrutiny. The power of the Hashemite royal family diminished and politically the country came ever closer to Germany.

At the start of World War 2 Iraq decided to renounce its German connections but another military coup in 1941 led to the accession of a government headed by Rashid Ali al-Gaylani whose pro-German sympathies were well known. A few months later British troops occupied Baghdad and Basra for the second time in less than 30 years.

The pro-British regime declared war on Germany and its allies in 1943. At the end of the war the country signed the United Nations Charter. In 1948 a new treaty was agreed with Britain, known as the 'Portsmouth' treaty, taking the place of the 1930 accord.

Israel, oil wealth and strife

The Arab-Israeli war of the same year, 1948, marked a watershed which still permeates life and thought throughout the Arab world. Iraq had always been home to a sizeable and influential Jewish population, some serving in government, and a good number occupying positions of financial and economic strength. From then on began a wholesale Jewish exodus to Israel. Riots and general disaffection seemed to go hand in hand with economic well being after oil came on stream from Mosul and new pipelines were laid. However there were constructive uses. Flood barriers were built on the Tigris and Euphrates to the economic benefit of the country. The Baghdad Pact of 1955, soon extended to include Pakistan and Iran, was seen as a defensive barrier against Soviet incursion, and American approval was unqualified. Britain and America sent delegates to the Council meetings. Suez, however, proved to be another breaking point in a stop-go story. Iraq told its Arab neighbours that it would take no further part in Council meetings while British delegates were present.

The United Arab Republic of Egypt and Syria soon came face to face with the Arab Federation of Iraq and Jordan, formed in 1958. A federal constitution of the latter states was agreed, though the Hashemite kings, Faisal II of Iraq and Hussain of Jordan, would retain their thrones independently. The overthrow of the monarchy so lovingly installed by Britain in 1921, followed. Faisal II was murdered along with the Crown Prince and Nuri as-Sa'id, the man who had led the Arab revolt and won immortality in the pages of 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom'. The bodies of princes and war hero were dragged through the streets of Baghdad to the cheers of the populace. Iraq became a republic.

The Baath Party and dictatorship

Events that followed are well recorded and bloody. In succession came Abdal Kassem and the Abadan oil crisis of 1957, the memory etched on the public mind of a single tanker trying in vain to discharge its cargo at one port after another in defiance of the United Nations. Then came the first attack on Kuwait in 1961 and the Kurdish rebellion in the same year, the overthrow and murder of Kassem in 1963, the rise of a new dictatorship formed of the Iraq arm of the Baath Party (founded in Syria in 1941) and army officers led by Colonel Aref (the new President) and Ahmad Bakr who became First Minister. In 1964 Iraq became a one-party state known by decree as The Arab Socialist Union. Banks and large commercial conglomerates were nationalised. And in the next two years a new prime minister with a military provenance, Brigadier Aref Abdal Razzaq vied with President Aref for ultimate power. Against a backcloth of Kurdish rebellion and a bitter oil dispute with neighbour Syria, there was yet another coup in 1968 with ex-prime minister General Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr taking over the Presidency from Aref who, unusually, was allowed to choose exile rather than death. For the first time Kurds were brought into a reformed, anti-corruption government.

In fact, hope of political stability was short lived. Exactly thirteen days after the new government was sworn in it was dismissed by the President who promptly took on the roles of prime minister and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Another army general, Hardan Takriti, became al-Bakr's chief lieutenant. Within weeks, western residents were expelled from the country, a former Foreign Minister, Nasser al-Hani was murdered, and other ex-ministers were imprisoned. In January 1969, 14 men were sentenced to death for spying for Israel, mostly Jews but some Moslems among them.

The Baathist al-Bakr government survived until 1979, when the President announced his retirement. It had adopted a provisional constitution in 1968 that read:

The Iraq Republic is a popular democratic state. Islam is the state religion and the basis of its laws and constitution. The political economy of the state is founded in socialism...

President Saddam

Following al-Bakr's resignation the reins of power were seized by his 42 year-old deputy Saddam Husein al-Takriti, most enduring and ruthless of modern dictators. The consequences for Iraq itself and for the Kurdish people in particular have been harsh. But it cannot be argued that Saddam's intransigence and suspicion of the people around him are altogether without cause. He has won respect among Arab leaders for one cause if no other, his unwillingness to bow down before Israeli and American presumption. And the tempest of that one-sided alliance has been visited on Iraq in consequence. It is hard to say what effect a more equitable and far-seeing approach by the West might have had on the psychology of Iraq's leadership and on the country's external relationships.

For the present Al-Iraq remains a pariah state, its people paying endlessly a debt that accrued from the time of the Moghul invasion of the 13th century onward, from the indiscriminate destruction of all the glorious achievements of the Abbassid caliphs to the Gulf war and seemingly beyond. For the future, there is only conjecture. Internal and external injustices live on, the basic ingredients of suspicion, internal dissent, murder and power mania remain, tragically, as prevalent as ever. The Anglo-American pursuit of Iraq's oil and Israel's military objectives, flagrantly disguised as the export of democracy, continues unabated.

©HVF Winstone

Sources:

Antonius, George, The Arab Awakening (1938)

Birdwood, Lord, Nuri as-Said, A Study in Arab Leadership (1959)

Dickson, HRP, Kuwait and Her Neighbours (1956)

Freeth, Zahra, and Winstone HVF, Kuwait Prospect and Reality (1974)

Lewis, Bernard, Notes and documents from the Turkish Archives, Israel Oriental Society (1952); The Emergence of Modern Turkey (1961)

Longrigg, SH, Four Centuries of Modern Iraq (1925); Iraq,1900-1950

Lorimer, JG, Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf (official publication of Government of India)

Winstone, HVF, Biographies of Captain Shakespear (1976), Gertrude Bell (1978/92), Leachman (1982) Woolley of Ur (1990); The Illicit Adventure (1982), Uncovering the Ancient World (1985)

Offcial documentary references are shown after the following article Syria/Asad

3

SyriaAsad

Background to a dictatorship

History has a habit of repeating itself in the Middle East. A century ago, the Roman concept of Greater Syria was revived by bright-eyed Arab nationalists, a concept that brought together all the disparate races and ideologies of an area that stretched from Alexandretta to Sinai, from the Mediterranean to the central deserts of the peninsula. The modern world must hope that old ambitions are not revived in the present.

The crux of political power in present-day Syria, as in Iraq, is the Baath Party.

With the death of President Hafez Asad, claims to the earlier glories of the Arab caliphate begin to surface once more. They may not be spelled out aloud by contestants for his seat in Damascus, but they are never far from the surface of debate..

A brief summary of the modern historical background may not be out of place:

Syria, like its British-created neighbour Iraq, emerged from WW1 as a province of the defeated Ottoman Empire, the former tied by historical links and secret wartime agreements to France, the latter to Britain.

Before that war started both had sharpened their clandestine skills through Committees set up in Damascus and Baghdad with the aim of throwing off the Turkish yoke. As the Young Turks met in Paris to plot the overthrow of the Sultan Abdul Hamid, young Arab officers and intellectuals, members of Al Ahad and Al Fattah, military and civil wings of the islamic Covenant, met in the Arab capitals and even set up offices in Paris and London, with the object of creating a revolutionary movement that would be led by Arab officers serving in the Turkish army.

When the war ended and the Turkish empire was carved up by the victorious powers, it transpired that Britain and France had entered into three separate and conflicting agreements with the peoples of those lands.

1 In 1915-16 Britain and France entered into the secret Sykes-Picot agreement. Britain was recognised as the dominant power in the regions (vilayets) of Basra and Baghdad (ancient Iraq), Mosul (Kurdistan), a proposed buffer state called Transjordan, and Palestine. France was to control the old vilayets of Damascus and Haleb (Aleppo). The agreement was signed also by the other Entente power, imperial Russia, which was given Constantinople (Istanbul). The Russian revolution intervened, however, Lenin divulging the details before the war ended.

2 In 1916, Britain and France concluded discussions with the Sherif of Mecca, with whose family Lord Kitchener had begun discussions early in 1914, aimed at bringing the steward of Islam's holy cities of Mecca and Madina over to Britain's side should Turkey, the keeper of the Caliphate, take Germany's side in a war against Britain. Those discussions led to the so-called Sharifian agreement by which all the territories in and around the Arabian peninsula were to be governed by the Sharif and his sons with the exception of 'the districts of Mersina and Alexandretta and portions of Syria lying to the west of the districts of Damascus, Hama, Homs and Aleppo'. Thus, the Lebanon and the coastal strip of Palestine were specifically excluded. Those districts could not be said to be 'purely Arab'.

3 The Balfour Declaration of 1917 promising Palestine to the Jews as a national home (a territory defined by Lloyd George as the biblical region from Dan to Beersheba), a measure that was intended initially to gain the support of Russian and American Jewry in bringing the USA into the war.

In 1919 Britain invited Abdullah, the Sharif's second son, to become king in Baghdad while Faisal, the third son, would occupy the throne of Syria. In the event, Faisal enjoyed only a brief reign in Damascus where Arab nationalist proclaimed an independent kingdom of Greater Syria. But the San Remo Conference confirmed a French mandate (1920) and Lebanon was included in the area of French control. The Amir Faisal was ousted and French troops occupied Damascus. In 1921, Winston Churchill became Colonial Secretary in the dying months of the Lloyd George coalition, established a Middle East Department and set out to achieve some kind of resolution of the contradictory wartime promises his department inherited. At the Cairo Conference which he convened in January 1921, the frontiers and rulers of the Arab states were determined. France, whose administration was essentially colonial, would have nothing to do with Sharifian sovereignty. Britain, largely at the instigation of Gertrude Bell, made Faisal king of the newly created state of Iraq (March 1921). Abdullah was offered the Amirship of the new state of Transjordan.

It is against that background of imposed order that the modern politics of Syria and its neighbours evolved.

Divide and rule was the basis of French policy and there was plenty of scope for Machiavellian schemes in a country that was not only divided into Christian and Moslem faiths, but into innumerable factions within those faiths. Differences in attitude between the mandatory powers in Syria and the Lebanon on the one hand and Iraq and Palestine on the other were best exemplified by language. The French acted as colonisers first and foremost, making little effort to understand local custom or language, until parts of the intelligensia in those countries often spoke French more readily than Arabic, and in some cases neglected their own language. The British on the other hand made prodigious efforts to learn Arabic and sometimes tried to adopt the customs of their hosts to the point of absurdity, of being more Arab than the Arabs; not a few apostasised to Islam, an act that the ruler of central Arabia, Ibn Saud, regarded as culturally inappropriate, if not suspect.

French mandated Syria was divided into four main districts. The Syrian Republic, Latakia, Jabal Druse, and Lebanon which, in Turkish times, had been composed of the vilayet of Beirut and the Sanjak of Lebanon. (The old Sanjak of Alexandretta was included in the mandated territory in 1921 on the condition that it was governed separately from the rest of Syria). These territories were combined and enlarged to include Tripoli, giving the country a virtually equal split between Moslem and Christian populations, with the former divided into Sunni and Shi'a factions, the latter into an uneasy alliance of Maronites, and followers of Orthodox and Catholic schisms. From the outset, the French rulers were indifferent to Moslem culture and tradition and favoured the Christians of the north. Equally, Arab nationalists despised the mandatory power and there was open revolt in 1925. At that time and in the following year Damascus was bombarded by the French.

In 1928 there were elections for a Constituent Assembly but the French were not willing to accept some of its aims, the most important of which was the concept of an indivisible unity of the old Turkish vilayets, thus making Syria, Lebanon, the Druse region and Latakia one. The embattled French tried to conclude a treaty with the leaders of the Moslem Arab population. The Assembly was dissolved in 1930 and a new Constitution imposed by France.

There were new elections in 1932 but attempts to negotiate a new treaty with the nationalists failed again. The Chamber of Deputies was suspended sine die in 1934. Disorders in the next two years by which time a left wing government, the Popular Front had succeeded in France. In 1936 a Franco-Syrian treaty was signed recognising Syria's right to independence but introducing a three-year period of status quo in which the apparatus of independent government would be created. Complications set in immediately. The Sanjak of Alexandretta was granted autonomy by the League of Nations (1937) except for foreign policy and budget which would come under Syrian control. But France with a change of government now refused to ratify the Franco-Syrian treaty. In 1939, with the German threat to France looming large, Alexandretta was returned to its old imperial ruler Turkey, an act seen by Arab nationalists as a betrayal of all the agreements that had gone before. The war was regarded by nationalists as a favourable opportunity to resist the rule of Vichy France, however, and in 1941 Syrian self rule was formally acknowledged by France, though the European administration clung to the vestigial power and British armed forces entered the country. Elections were held in August 1943 and a Syrian President of a Syrian Republic was elected - Shuqri Kuwatly. In 1945 there were more nationalist disturbances, this time put down by French troops. But shortly afterwards British and French forces withdrew. That act marked the end of imperial domination of Syria after the best part of a thousand years; since, in fact, the glories of the Umayyad caliphate and the brief dominion of Saladin during the Crusades.

The early days of independence were devoted to opposing the Hashemite (or Sharifian) rulers of Iraq and Jordan and to new attempts to dominate Lebanon economically and politically. The country was still financially dependent on France. Alliances were forged with Saudi Arabia and Egypt against Iraq, Jordan and Israel.

The 1948 war with Israel, soon after the foundation of that state, following the ending of the British mandate, left the Arab League bitterly divided and all the old regimes established by the imperial powers began to disintegrate. Several military coups occurred in quick succession in Syria:

March 1949 - led by Col. Husni Za'im

August 1949 - Col. Sami Hinnawi

December 1949 - Col. Shishaqli

Civil opposition to the military dictatorship of Shishaqli gave rise to the dissolution of the Chamber in 1951.

In 1952 all political parties were banned. New elections were held but the Nationalist opposition refused to accept the verdict. Demonstrations led to Shishaqli seeking refuge in France. Fresh elections in 1954 brought a new and broader Chamber into being and in the following year Shuqri al-Kuwatli was returned to power as President. In consequence, Syria and Egypt formed a joint military command. The Baghdad Pact increased the dependence of the region on Russia while American and Western loyalties generally rested with Israel and the wealthiest oil states, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The influence of the Cold War became paramount. In 1956, Syria and Egypt began to accept arms from the Soviet Union.

1956 marked a watershed in the modern history of the region. The Israeli campaign in Sinai was followed by the ill-fated intervention of Britain and France at Suez. A famous Syrian act, the blowing up of the oil pipeline from the Iraqi fields to the Mediterranean earned Syria a severe rap on the knuckles by Saudi Arabia and Iraq. But its refusal to allow repairs to the pipe until Israel withdrew its troops from key areas succeeded in its aim. To a large extent, that episode exposed America's obsession with the security of oil supplies as the chief reason for its alliance with Israel and its subsequently turning a blind eye to Israeli development of a nuclear capability. In 1957 came the short lived union with Nasser's Egypt. In 1961 a new coup in Damascus brought the union to an end. New elections and a new Assembly came about in December 1961 under the Presidency of Dr Nazim Kudski.

During the 1950s a new political force in the Arab world came into prominence. Known as Baathism, it was the creation of a number of Syrian religious minorities and of members of the armed forces who opposed the earlier reactionary policies of old-guard officer. Socialist in broad principle it had some distinct similarities to English Fabianism and European social democracy, but it shared with some of the revolutionary bodies of Ottoman days such as Al Ahad and al Fattah a Pan-Arab agenda. Its founder was a Syrian Christian, Michel Aflaq, and several of its founder members were from the Shi'a sect known as Alawi. It was opposed by the Ulema, the learned men of Islam, and by the Islamic Brotherhood. All the same, the Baath Party gained force in both Syria and Iraq during the 1960s. At the international Baath Conference of 1963, the principle of workers control of industry and agriculture became an official plank of policy. Class warfare of a kind unseen in the Islamic world developed and there were severe outbreaks of rioting, especially in Aleppo, Homs and Hama, resulting in a massacre of dissidents by government forces at the latter town in 1964. Overriding everything in 1963 was the setting up of a revolutionary military council which seized control of Damascus and promptly engaged in an internal dispute that gave rise to the suppression of the pro-Egypt element of the Baath Party. A National Guard was formed. The pro-Egypt faction staged a counter attack but was put down with considerable loss of life.

Those events were followed by an attempt to bring the two great administrative arms of Baath-ism in Baghdad and Damascus together, an alliance between brothers, Iraq and Syria. There were discussions aimed at a union of the two countries and a Supreme Defence Council was set up under General Ammash. An Iraqi coup at the end of 1963 which resulted in the bombing of the presidential palace by dissident elements of the Iraq air force, ended any hope of unity of the two countries.

Nevertheless, a new constitution was adopted defining Syria as a 'democratic socialist republic'. General Hafiz was nominated President. Oil and large parts of the nation's industry were nationalised. A military court was established and Syria became effectively a one-party state with the Baathists in control.

In 1966 the almost inevitable military coup occurred led by radical army elements and the leadership of al-Baath was arrested. Aflaq the founder of the party, the President General Hafiz and the PM, Saleh al-Din Bitar, were all dismissed. A deal with Russia soon after and a loan for building a dam on the Euphrates suggested that Moscow may have played a somewhat equivocal part in the government's downfall.

At the end of 1966 another Egypto-Syrian agreement was entered into, each country guaranteeing the other support in the event of an attack.In October, Israel complained to the Security Council about constant frontier incursions. In June 1967 war broke out between Israel and the combined Arab forces of Syria, Egypt and Jordan. Famously the conflict lasted for 6 days. Most importantly, Syria lost the strategically vital Golan Heights to Israel. A UN peacekeeping force at Quneitra kept the two armies apart.The Baath Party enjoyed a revival of support in the aftermath of defeat. One of its leading lights was Hafez Asad, a graduate of the military academy in Damascus and of the Soviet Military Academy where he had trained as a pilot. He was born in 1930 at Latakia, the centre of the small but politically powerful Alawi sect and thus he was closely connected to the Baathist movement from its inception in his student days. Asad had been Air Force Commander and in 1966 was appointed Minister of Defence. In 1969 he ordered the arrest of Communist leaders and the leader of the party was exiled to Moscow.

While the struggle for power in Syria was tempered by the experiences of war, Iraq was experiencing its own internal disputes. By 1970, following the assassination of virtually the entire family of the Hashemite king Faisal and the country's ministers over some three generations, the Baathist General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr had become President.

He was succeeded by Saddam Husain al Takriti. The latter and Asad were to lead their nations across the next thirty years as Baathist dictatorships, pursuing nationalist and vehemently opposed agendas under the guise of socialism, at times seeking help and guidance from Soviet Russia but always fending off the accusation of the mullahs and the ulema that they were embracing 'Godless Communism', united only in their determination to contain Israel and to win back lost territory.

©HVF Winstone

Sources:

General

The Struggle for Syria by Patrick Seale

The Middle East and North Africa, Europa Publications

The Reign of Mubarak al-Sabahby Salwa AlGhanin

Ottoman Empire

The Emergernce of Modern Turkey by Bernard Lewis

World War 1 and Sharifian affair

The Illicit Adventure by HVF Winstone

Source notes from above:

FO882 a full account of the documents exchanged between Britain and the Sharif Husain ibn Ali compiled in anticipation of dispute by Sir Henry McMahon, High Commissioner in Cairo 1915 -1918

FO371 series and L/P&S/18/B292 (India Office/British Library)

Lloyd George Papers, House of Lords Library

THE FOLLOWING SPECIFIC DOCUMENTARY REFERENCES ARE GIVEN AS GENERAL BACKGROUND POINTERS TO TURKISH/BRITISH/SAUDI/KUWAIT RELATIONS PRIOR TO WORLD WAR I, AND TO ARRANGEMENTS AFFECTING SYRIA AND IRAQ FOLLOWING THE PEACE TREATIES. MORE DETAILED REFERENCES WILL BE FOUND IN APPENDIX AND NOTES TO AUTHOR'S THE ILLICIT ADVENTURE pages 365-487.

Legend

Cabinet records Public Record Office (CAB)

India Office documents British Library (L/P&S Political & Secret; R Gulf Residency)

Foreign and Colonial Office Records Public Record Office (FO; CO)

The Middle East and North Africa (Year Book)

Arab Bulletin, (AB, journal of the Arab Bureau, Cairo in India Office and PRO)

War Office Intelligence files (WO33, Public Record Office)

Lorimer, Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Govt of India

Historische Zeitshrift Official records, Berlin

1896

Mubarak succeeds brother Muhammad as Shaikh of Kuwait, Lorimer. HMS Sphinx calls at Kuwait from Red Sea patrol: Captain, Comdr Baker, wrote: 'has fallen greatly under Turkish influence, especially since accession of Mubarak'. Lorimer

1900

Mubarak joins Ibn Saud in attacking Ibn Rashid, Lorimer; Jan 19, German rail commission led by Consul-Gen Jerusalem, von Steinrich, visits Kuwait. Mubarak uncooperative. British agent Basra, Wratislaw, matters 'for Porte to decide'. Lorimer; April 15, Sir Nicholas O'Conor, British amb. Constantinople, statement to German ambassador re.Kuwait after seeing Sultan, Lorimer; May 24, British agreement with Shaikh of Kuwait, no arms imports or exports, R/15/5/59;

1901

Baghdad rail scheme, Britain interested in participation, Lorimer; Consul Basra reports arrival of Turkish 6th army corps, orders to attack Kuwait, Wali of Baghdad advises caution, Lorimer; March 17, Mubarak and Ibn Saud tribal force defeated by pro-Turk Shammar, Ibn Rashid advances on Kuwait, Mubnarakn seeks Britihs protection, Lorimer & R/15/1/471; August, Turk troop movements, Basra, Turk ship Zuhaff sails into Kuwait bay, HMS Perseus prevents docking. Turk and German protests to FO, Lorimer; Sept 9, Anglo-Turkish agreement to maintain status quo in Kuwait, Lorimer; Sept 28, Rashid force leaves Kuwait territory, Lorimer; Nov, Turk ultimatum to Mubarak, Lorimer;

1902

Jan, Turks and Ibn Rashid threaten Kuwait, RN flotilla sent, Lorimer; Jan, Turks occupy Kuwaiti territory, Safwan, Um Qasr, Bubiyan island. Lorimer; Jan, Railways, German group granted further rights from Konia to Gulf, 1500 miles, Lorimer; March, Ibn Rashid Asks Wali of Basra to help subdue Ibn Saud, 'Britain trying to gain foothold via BS', Lorimer; April, Lord Newton, biographer of Morley, told by Lansdowne 'Britain acceded to German claims to build Berlin-Baghdad rail in order to undermine Russian plan to build line from Erivan [Armenia] to Baghdad and on to Gulf terminal', FO, IO, War Office concurred, 'the worst contingency a Russian rail link' (words spoken at Albanian Conference, London, 1913); July, Ibn Saud recaptures Riyadh (from pro-Turk Rashid governor) L/P&S/20/C239; Sept, attempt to take Kuwait by coup de main, led by Yusef Abdullah and Shaikh's nephews... HMS Lapwing intercepts...Yusuf's boats burnt at sea by RN, expelled to Nejd to join Ibn Rashid Amir of Nejd, L/P&S/18/B164; October, Mubarak given unconditional promise of protection if he remains Shaikh of Kuwait. Russian and French warships appear, Lorimer ibid; Nov 18, Mubarak receives message from Ibn Saud, 'Rashid defeated', M sends arms to Ibn Saud's brother, Muhammad bin Abdurrahman, to aid attack on pro-Turk Shammar. Resdent Kemball warns M 'to desist', L/P&S/10/437; Nov (21), telegraph intercepts Cmdr MG Cartwright HMS Cossak to CinC Indies, Rear Adm Drury, details of Mubarak's messages, ibid; Dec 30, new Rashid threat to Kuwait, O'Conor to Lansdowne, told Grand Vizier, 'grave business', L/P&S/18/B164.

1903

Jan, Rashid force advances on Kuwait, L/P&S/10/437; O'Conor (amb. Constantinople) to Lansdowne, 'Porte claims Ibn Saud defeated but not so', ibid; April, Baghdad Rail CAB37/64; May, Lansdowne statement on Persian Gulf, House of Lords, L/P&S/18/B166; Aug, Curzon, viceroy, makes plans for cermonial visit to Gulf, accompanied by ships of Indies station, Lorimer; Nov, Curzon leaves for Gulf aboard RIMS Hardinge, (28-29 Kuwait), Lorimer; Nov 28, viceroy presents M with ceremonial sword, M: 'Now I am a military officer of the British Empire', Lorimer.

1904

Jan 11O'Conor, C'ple to FO, Porte fears for Kuwait under Mubarak, R/15/5/59; Jan 27, FO to IO, recent warnings not being heeded in Kuwait, suggest Resident renews warning to Mubarak, ibid; Jan n/d, Rifle imports into Muscat - at least 20,000 in year, R/15/5/8; Feb28, Mubarak agrees not to permit any Political Agency but Britain's, R/15/5/59; Feb n/d, Sadun Pasha, hereditaty leader of Muntafiq tribes, seeks refuge in Kuwait, Wali iof Basra demands Mubarak hand him over, ibid; Feb n/d, General Staff formed at War office in London, Dept of Military Intelligence become Directorate of Military Operations under Maj-Gen Grierson MO2 responsible for ME, WO records and CAB37/69/70; March 31, Kuwaiti dhows seized by Persia, Mubarak asks Britain for protection, L/P&S/10/437; April, Maj Percy Cox appointed Resident in Persian Gulf, stationed at Bushire, Lorimer; May n/d, first British Political Agent - Colonel Knox - appointed to Kuwait, 'to counter possible aggression...to take up appointment 3 August', R/15/5/59; May 4, O'Conor, Constple to FO, letter from Ibn Saud to Mubarak ref.Turkish invasion, R/15/5/24; May 28, Turkish expedition to Qasim launched from Samawah on Euphrates, 2000 infantry, 6 light field guns, ibid and FO406/20-21; Sept 27, Ibn Saud defeats Ibn Rashid and Turks at Bukairiya and Kasr Aqazil, 550 Turk soldiers and 330 men of Hail killed, R/15/5/24; Oct 17, Knox to Resident, Bin Saud asks Mubarak to ask Knox 'What to tell Turks, if anything?' ibid; Dec 30, S/S India (Mr Brodrick to Viceroy), HMG agree Knox should express no opinion as to advice to be given to Ibn Saud, except to repeat earlier warning, HMG wish it to be clearly understood that their influence and interests are to be strictly confined to the coastline of eastern Arabia, and that nothing be said or done to connect them in any way with the fighting going on in the interior', L/P&S/18/B200.

1905

January 30, British interests in Arabia. Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, CAB37/74; Feb n/d, Ibn Saud's father, Abdurrahman bin Faisal, vists Basra to meet Wali. Ibn Saud recognised as kaimakam, local governor, R/15/5/24 and FO406/21; May 16, temporary tactical withdrawal of Knox from British Agency, assist. Surgeon in charge, Lorimer

1906

N/D War Office intelligence document Report on Arabia superseded by Report on Syria, WO records; 26 August, First Hamburg-America passenger liner, Candia, in Shatt al Arab to inaugurated German Gulf service, Lorimer; Sept n/d, Cox to Foreign Simla, 'advisable to enter into relationship with Ibn Saud..authoritative reply necessary to protect our own reputation'. Home Correspondence (Gov of India) vol 250; Nov 9, S/S for India, Morley responds to Cox with Brodrick's statement of December 30, 1904, ibid

1907

Feb 13, Chief of Staff, India, to Director Military Ops London, New opportunities to explore inner Arabia 'unofficially', R/15/5/55; April 9, IO to DMO, S/S 'not in favour of proposal to undertake exploration of Najd interior at present, R/15/5/55; May n/d, Morley to Resident, conveys ambassador O'Conor's dictum, 'No entanglement with Wahabees', adds 'No reply to Bin Saud can be expected', Home Corr vol 250; June 26, Intelligence, Simla, to Resident, Mr Guay, English traveller in Kuwait, wishes to explore Najd. Cox seeks approval, R/15/5/55; July n/d, Political Agent Muhammerah to Resident (Cox), rumour that Shaikh Mubarak wants to be rid of Kuwait Political Agent Knox, proposes 'to introduce woman to his room to compromise him' R/15/5/59; 31 August, Anglo-Russian Convention divides Persia into 3 zones, British, Russian and Neutral (latter area of oild discovery), CAB 37/89

1908

Jan n/d, FO report on Wahabees (Saudis), L/P&S/18/B168; Jan 11. Shakespear, deputy Resident, ordered to visit Kuwait to take over from Knox 'all secret documents'. Foreign Department Simla later same day tells Knox 'may be retained but under lock and key', R/15/5/8; June 24, Knox to Resident, Bushire: 'Mubarak must I think be brought to his bearings and taught his place, and I have no fear that he will not learn it readily enough...We can't take all Mubarak's bluffing lying down.' R/15/5/59; July 10, Knox to Resident: 'Mubarak is, I am afraid, intriguing in all directions...Impossible to place the smallest reliance on his statements.' Ibid; Anglo-Russian Policies in Persia, CAB37/94; August, new Residency steam launch from India, Lewis Pelly, L/P&S/10/69; to collect mail from Fao in Iraq and stop all mail boats entering Kuwait R/15/5/59. Aug n/d, Knox to Resident, 'We have got Shaikh Mubarak alarmed and in yielding mood', ibid; Sept Knox to Resident (Cox) 'Mischief of Shaikhs Mubarak and Khazal'; Cox in reply: 'Mubarak is suffering from mud in the head...you on the other hand are much inclined to be affected by the atmosphere of your surroundings...' R/15/5/59; Oct, Turkey - Armenian and Kurdish questions, also Young Turks and Balkans, CAB37/95.

1909

(note: all Kuwait Agency diaries for period of Shakespear's office inexplicably lost between Simla, and IO London. Only Residency records available); Feb n/d, Lowther, amb Constple, to FS, Press reports on Baghdad Rail, R/15/5/59; Feb 19, Anglo-Russian Agreement, Persia, CAB37/98; April n/d, Capt Shakespear appointed PA Kuwait; May 3, Turkey, Egypt, German suggestions, CAB37/99; June 26, Lowther to Hardinge, U/SS, Freemasons and Jews in Turkish politics, Talaat Bey, Min of Interior ibn new Young Turk govt, Grand Master of Grand Orient de la Turquie Lodge, FO800/193A; July 22, Cdr Lichfield, HMS Sphinx, to Shakespear, Naval intelligence book on Gulf defences - 'Mubarak doesn't think it's worth a tuppeny halfpenny damn.' R/15/5/55; August 12, Shakespear confidential memo, 'Possible to establish closer relations with Mubarak without raising awkward questions in Constantinople. Shaikh prepared to fly Union Jack from palace', R/15/5/59; Sept 16 Secret maps to Shakespear 'for correction', R/15/5/55; Sept 30, Gov of India to Residents, Communications between Political Officers and Intelligence Branch, ibid; Oct 24, Gibbon to Shakespear, 'bluprints of degree sheets. Sign and return immediately on receipt of accompanyiong docs, without covering letter', ibid; Nov 21, reports of Danish expedition (Raunliaer) to Arabia, L/P&S/10/259; Dec 4, FO to IO, re.Danish visit, 'We have eye on proceedings', ibid;

1910

February 28 Shakespear entertains Ibn Saud and Mubarak to dinner at Political Agency, reort on Ibn Saud, R/15/5/25; further meeting with Ibn Saud, R/15/5/55; May 10, CinC India to Intelligence Jaskh, 'army officers may no longer visit Turkish Arabia', L/P&S/10/259; May 29, influence of Freemasons and Jews in Turkish affairs, Ambassador Lowther, Constantinople to FO, FO800/193A. December, instruction from Gen Staff, Fort William to all governors of districts under Government of India, 'precautions in entertaining and talking to foreigners' R/15/5/55.

1911

April 10, tribal conflict, Muntafiq and Ibn Sadun, JG Lorimer, Resident Baghdad, FO371/1249; April 17, Turco-German agreement re.Baghdad rail, 'Britain had admitted suzerainty of Turkey over Kuwait', R/15/5/59; April 19, Shakespear to Cox, France anxious to build rail link from Kadhima to Kuwait, ibid; May, Ibn Rashid's Shammar tribesmen attack Fahd Bey's Anaiza 120 miles SW of Baghdad, Leachman with latter. Ibn Saud attacks Ajman tribe. Shakespear's report FO371/107; June, Kurdish rebellion, FO371/1249; June, German commercial activity in Gulf, Shakespear to Cox, R/15/5/64; July, Turk army commander leaves Basra for Nasiriyah to arrest leader of Muntafiq tribe, Sadun Pasha, FO371/1249; Oct 24, Grey to Tewfiq Pasha, to show Turks all treaties with Kuwait, but Bandar Shuwaikh Lease withheld, R/15/5/59; Oct 26, Baghdad Rail, CAB37/108; Nov, Persian crisis, Russians killed, Russian policy, CAB37/108; Sadun Pasha dies in captivity at Aleppo, 'heart attack' say Turks. Poison suspected. L/P&S/10/E17; Dec, Cossacks in Persia hang suspects for Russian deaths, CAB37/108, Dec 11, Coronation Durbar for King George V aboard HM ships at Muhammerah. Shaikhs Khazal and Mubarak toast 'Their Imperial Majesties', L/P&S/10/827. Dec, Cox to Mubarak [Shakespear in Delhi for Coronation Durbar], 'tell Mubarak HMG intends to divulge treaties to the Porte [Constantinople].' R/15/5/59

1912

Feb, Baghdad Rail. Turks ask Britain to discuss with Germany. Grey and Metternich, CAB37/109; Raunkiaer, Danish explorer, visits Kuwait despite FO suspicion. Shakespear told not to help, L/P&S/10/827; April 16, CinC Indies, Admiral Sir Alexander Bethell, visits Kuwait to invest Mubarak with KCIE. Ibid. Shakespear revising desert routes to and from Kuwait for Simla Intelligence, R/15/5/55; Aug, Shakespear to Cox, Kuwait boundary, Baghdad Rail, Baghdadi Christian working for suspect German firm, R/15/5/64; Trans Persian railway, Danger to India, CAB37/111; Shatt al Arab, ibid; Sept, Persia, Afghanistan, Sir Edward Grey and Russian Foreign Minister Sazanov at Balmoral, CAB37/112; Oct 16, two of Shakespear's agents, a Bahraini and Persian, badly beaten up in Kuwait suq, Shakespear demands punishment of culprits, Mubarak's son Jabir refuses but Mubarak orders flogging and compensation, L/P&S/10/437; Nov 15, Leachman makes lone journey from Damascus to Riyadh for Militari Intelligence (MO2) London, to interview Ibn Saud, to fury of Shakespear and Cox, L/P&S/10/259; Shakespear to AT Wilson, deputy Resident, Bushire, 'My objection to Leachmnan's journey both personal and otherwise', ibid. Dec 23, Shakespear to Cox, Leachman at Riyadh, L/P&S/10/259;

1913

January 13, Oil supplies, Admiralty memo, CAB37/114; February, Oil deputation arrives Kuwait from India, led by HH Hayden, L/P&S/18/C176; May 3, negotiations in London with Hakki Pasha on Gulf and Baghdad Rail, CAB37/115; May 9, FO to Hakki Pasha, 'desiderata re. Ibn Saud' R/15/5/27; May 22, Shakespear in desert with Ibn Saud, Capt Shakespear reprimanded by FO, L/P&S/10/384; May 31, Viceroy of India to London, 'Should we not have friendly relations with Bin Saud?' ,ibid; May, agreement reached between Britain and Turkey re.Baghdad rail. 'Kuwait merchants buying up land on foreshore', L/P&S/10/415; George V's birthday, all Gulf VIPs invited to Kuwait Agency but Mubarak absent on holiday island, Failaka, ibid; June 24, FO's comment on Shaklespear's report re. Ibn Saud, 'Nonsense', FO371/1820; July 1, Foreign Office memo: British Policy 'to uphold integrity of Turkish dominions in Asia', FO371/820; July 3, FO memo, 'Non-interference in Nejd', L/P&S/18/B200; July 4, proposed agreement with Anglo Persian Oil Company, CAB37/116; July 10, Anglo-Turkish Convention, report of meetings with Shaikhs of Kuwait and Muhammerah, Resident Cox to Foreign Secretary, India, Sir Henry McMahon, R/15/5/59; July 29, Mesopotamia: Anglo-Turkish Convention signed in London, ratification to await outcome of Baghdad Rail negotiations, FO Handbook no.63; August, FO suggests Indian Govt asks Mubarak for Kuwait oil concession, GoI 'APOC willing', L/P&S/18/C176. Sept, Hakki Pasha urged to press Govt for irrigation contracts for Britain in returning for not pressing for share in Baghdad rail scheme, ibid; Aug 13, Viceroy of India, 'need for strong Ottoman power in Asia', R/15/5/27; Aug 17, Kuwait Oil, HH Hayden, director Geological Survey of India, 'chance not unfavourable', L/P&S/18/C176; Sept, Shakespear report, Zamil Subhan, Regent of Hail, and Ibn Saud on good terms, Sharif of Mecca and Ibn Saud opening negotiations, L/P&S/10/437; Nov 11, Russian policy in Middle East, CAB37/116; Nov 8-12 HMS Sphinx at Muhammerah and Kuwait, Shakespear accompanies oil delegation and Admiral Slade to Burgan and to meet Mubarak, L/P&S/10/437; Dec 7, Cox to Foreign, Simla, Lorimer on way from Baghdad to succeed him as Resident, (Cox to succeed Sir Henry McMahon as Foreign Secretary, India) R/15/5/59; 15 Dec, German General Liman von Sanders arrives Constantinople, British, Russian, French ambassadors ask for wexplanation, The Times; Viceroy to SofS India, Captain Shakespear's proposed journey across Arabia, L/P&S/10/259; Shakespear urgent amendments to Intelligence maps, roads capable of carrying horses, guns etc. R/15/5/55; Resident Lorimer to Foreign Simla re.Shakespear's journey R/15/5/59; Dec 30, FO discussiomns with Turkey, Azimi Bey to London, L/P&S/20/132; Dec, Shakespear to Bahrain and Basra on Lewis Pelly, meeting with Ibn Saud, L/P&S/10/437.

1914

Jan, Shakespear leaves on trans Arab journey at same time as Gertrude Bell leaves for Hail, and TE Lawrence and CL Woolley leave Aleppo on survey of Sinai, L/P&S/10/259 and biographies; Jan 4, Shakespear returns from Basra, L/P&S/10/437; Jan 7, Foreign Sec approves Shakespear's trans-Arabian journey, L/P&S/10/259; 8 Jan, Abdullah ibn Husain, son of Sharif, visits Kitchener at Cairo, L/P&S/18/B222; 19 Jan Shakespear hands over to Col Grey, R/15/5/27; Feb 10, death of Lorimer in Bushire, The Times; 19 Feb, Lorimer family, condolences of Sir Edward Grey, questions date of death, Lorimer; Feb 25, Gertrude Bell at Hail, ambassador Mallet to Sir Edward Grey, Durham University Library B303/1/2; Feb, Turks trying to arrange meeting with ibn Saud through Mubarak, L/P&S/10/347; March 10, Anglo Persian Oil Co. CAB37/119; March 23, Admiralty to India Office, Oil Commission on way from India to Gulf, Mubarak and EH Pascoe to join in Kuwait, L/P&S/11/23; March 24, Gertrude Bell in Baghdad, Durham 303/1/2; April 20, Crow, Consul Basra to Mallet, Constantinople, Turkish mission to Bin Saud, R/15/5/27; April 29, Unrest in Arabia, The Times; April, Zamil Subhan, Regent of Hail, killed by member of royal family, Shakespear nearby, L/P&S/10/437; May 5, Turco-Saudi treaty signed at Kuwait, L/P&S/10/385; May 10, Viceroy to SofS India Office, Ibn Saud and Turks nearly came to free fight in Kuwait, L/P&S/10/384; May 11, proposed agreement with APOC, CAB37/119; May 25, Shakespear arrives Egypt, visits Kitchener and Wingate at Cairo Residency next day, Shakespear's diary; June 8, Shakespear's Trans Arabian journey, The Times; 9 June, Leachman's Journey Across Arabia, The Times; June 13, Gertrude Bell's Arabian Journey, The Times; June 15, Anglo-German agreement re. Baghdad Rail initialled in London, FO Handbook 63; June 20, Reader Bullard, Consul Basra, to FO, 'Basra in state of great excitement', L/P&S/10/462; June 28, Death of Archduke Ferdinand at Sarajevo, Austrian ultimatum to Serbia, The Times; July 2, Wali of Basra recalled by CUP (Young Turks), Sayyid Talib (Son of Naqib) likely to replace him, L/P&S/11/79; July 8, Sir Henry McMahon leaves India for London (to replace Kitchener in Cairo), L/P&S/11/85; July 25, Admiralty to India Office, Expeditionary Force at Karachi and Bombay, ready to move up Gulf at shortest notice, L/P&S/10/462; Sept 3, Viceroy sends reassuring message to Shaikh of Kuwait, L/P&S/10/462; Sept 6, Intelligence report, attitude of Sharif, L/P&S/18/B222; October 4, SoS India to Kuwait, 'Your friend Captain Shakespear on way', HM Political Officer on Special Duty, Arabia, L/P&S/10/387; Oct 10, Capt Shakespear sails for Gulf on ss Arabia, L/P&S/10/462; Nov 3, possible outbreak of war in Gulf, CAB37/121; Nov 4, encouragement of Arab action against Turks, CAB37/122; Britain and France declare war on Turkey, ibid; Nov 13, Aziz Ali al Masri, Egyptian officer in Turkish army sentenced to death by Porte but released on intervention of Kitchener, now proposes plan for revolution in Mesopotamia, Foreign Secty, 'Arab movement should be encouraged', L/P&S/10/523; Nov 16, Cheetham, Acting Res Cairo, interviews Al Masri, 'We must find Nuri Sa'id believed to be at Muhammerah', L/P&S/10/523; Nove 17, Hirzel, India Office, 'this Al Masri scheme seems dangerous to me', ibid; Nov 18, Shakespear arrives Kuwait, L/P&S/10/387; Nov 20, Shakespear to Resident and Bin Saud, re. Sayyid Talib, ibid; Dec 12, Zimmermann, German Foreign Secretary orders all telegrams re. Middle East to be shown to Freiherr Max von Oppenheim, archaeologist and head of Oriental Sectn, German Secret Service, Hist.Zeitung, 209/63; Dec, 'Mesopotamia', paper by Viceroy, Lord Hardinge, CAB37/16; Dec 3, France proposes discussions on Arabia, L/P&S/11/85; Dec 4, Proclamation by Britain to people of Arabia re. sanctity of holy places, FO141/710; Dec 6, Philip Graves (Arab Bureau), Cairo, re. Al Masri and 'Mesopotamian scheme', messenger to Sharif, L/P&S/10/523; Dec 7, ambassador Bertie, Paris, to FO, 'French FM want to know are we doing anything to stir up Arabs against Turks?', ibid; Dec 8, Viceroy to London, 'Sayyid Talib gone to Bin Saud, utterly untrustworthy', ibid; Dec 8, Young Arabs' propaganda, 'much depends on Bin Saud', ibid; Hirtzel, India Office, 'I was always suspicious of this scheme', ibid; Dec 10, second messenger returns from Sharif, ibid; Amir of Nejd and Turks, L/P&S/10/384; Dec 12, Shakespear leaves Kuwait to join Ibn Saud, L/P&S/10/523; Dec 12, FO on Sharifian correspondence, 'dangerous', ibid; Dec 13, report from Sir Ronald Storrs on Kitchener/Abdullah conversations, ibid; Dec 15, Sharif in communication with Bin Saud, ibid; Dec 17, Gov of India approves McMahon participation in talks with Sharif, L/P&S/11/85;Dec, Lord Crewe, SofS for India, asks national newspapers to 'mind words on Islamic matters, Caliphate', L/P&S/10/523.

1915

Jan 2, Shakespear's assurance re.Bin Saud, CAB37/123, and 'Satisfactory attitude', L/P&S/10/387; Jan 5, Sayyid Talib, memo by FE Crow, Consul Basra, L/P&S/10/532-5; Jan 7, PZ Cox's negotiations with Sayyid Talib, ibid; Jan 17, Shakespear to Acting Resident, AB25; 20 Jan, Situation in Basra, CAB37/123; Jan 24, death of Shakespear in battle at Jarrab, R/15/5/88, also L/P&S/10/387 and AB45/60; Jan 29, Sayyid Talib arrested, sent to Bombay as state guest, L/P&S/10/387; Jan 29, proposed treaty with Ibn Saud, reservations of Grey and Crewe, ibid; Feb 23, Hirtzel, IO, Talib's explanation of his mission to Bin Saud, 'almost Chinese in its naive ingenuity', ibid; March 16, Lord Crewe, 'I fully agree as to loss of Capt Shakespear. Not for first time, FO put its money on wrong horse', ibid; Leachman recommended to succeed Shakespear, L/P&S/10586; March 14, future settlement Turkey in Asia and Arabia, CAB42/2; March 19, Partition of Turkey in Asia, CAB42/2; April 30, Report of de Bunsen Cttee on Asiatic Turkey, CAB42/3; July 13, note by Gertrude Bell on tribal Sayyids and Shi'a. Position in Iraq (southern Mesopotamia), L/P&S/10/617; July 13, Negotiations with Sharif, Operations in Mesopotamia, CAB37/131; July 14, Abdullah bin Husain to Cairo, 'England to acknowledge independence of Arab state', WO33-969; July 19, Sharif of Mecca, Wingate's report to India Office, L/P&S/18/B211; Aug 15, Sharif's solemn undertaking, AB25; Aug 22, Sharif's overtures, L/P&S/10/523; Sept 9, Sharif negotiations, WO33/969; Sept 14, Cox to Simla, Mubarak anxious for Britain to control Kuwait finances in case of family feud or his death, R/15/5/59; Sept 16, Status of Basra, report, L/P&S/10/532; Sept, Russia suggests gift of Najaf and Karbala to Persia to secure neutrality, L/P&S/10/478; Nov 23, Mesopotamia, CAB37/138; Nov 25, Grey (Kuwait) to Resident, 'Shaikh Mubarak died at 8.15pm', R/15/5/59; Nov 28, Jabir succeeds Mubarak at Kuwait, seeks Ibn Saud's approval, L/P&S/20/C131; Nov 29, Mesopotamia, CAB37/138; Nov 29, Turk re-occupation of Syria, ibid

4

'Ought we to tell C?'

(not exactly Middle East but a relevant aside)

According to the Observer newspaper's John Naughton we have just about three months of relative privacy before the Intelligence services take unto themselves the unchallenged right to read our internet communications and thus make government privy to the overwhelming burden of our contacts, our thoughts and, if need be, our peccadilloes.

In fact, we have no such freedom, relative or otherwise. The intelligence services in Britain have operated outside and above the law for centuries. Whether or not Parliament passes the current legislation, the so-called security services will go on tapping our telephones, opening our correspondence, intercepting our e-mail, and building up personal files on any of us who step out of line in ways as trivial as writing a letter to our local paper complaining about pensions or opposing hunting. No one is exempt from the anonymous, covert 'protectors' of our freedom. From the meanest citizen to the royal family we are watched, listened to and reported on. Only the men and women who govern us from behind the scenes, from outside Parliament, are above intrusion, though perhaps they spy on each other. The Sultans of the old Ottoman Empire are said to have employed 30,000 spies. Britain, through its world wide embassies and its domestic police and intelligence services employs many more. The burden on the tax payer is enormous. New Labour is as sold on its necessity as any Conservative administration of the past. If you don't believe me, ask Mr Shayler (he's on line: www.shayler.com).

Parliament is largely unaware of the dangers to our freedoms that lurk in this latest Home Office wheeze. MPs dismiss the dangers in the naive belief that Jack Straw and the right-wing civil servants who surround him know what they are doing. That they certainly do. If an MP asks a question about abuses of the system he or she will be told that ministers do not answer questions about the security services. There is no avenue of appeal, except of course Europe. That might just give Mr Straw cause to think again.

John Naughton writes incisively. But I think he is over optimistic and a trifle late in his call for vigilance.

The die was cast centuries ago. The security services so-called have always had the power to invade our privacy, at any rate since Henry VIII took such powers from a Rome-dominated priesthood that had its own spies and data collecting agencies, and vested them in the state. Queen Elizabeth and her ministers saw to it that such powers were put to good use. An establishment that has never lacked a sense of self preservation and that is as well represented at court and in government today as it ever was in the days of the Tudors, can be relied on to ensure that the citizen's freedoms are well lauded and entirely notional. To this day, the intelligence (or security) forces are entrenched in our everyday lives and they ride roughshod over any pretence of legal restraint. They are and have been for centuries a law unto themselves.

Naughton takes the view that the Regulation of Investigatory Powers bill (RIP) now before the Lords is partly a manifestation of the famous 'cock-up' theory of history, partly a reflection of the work of more sinister forces. That sounds about right. He should know. If it is any comfort, he and his editor can be sure that like any writer or publisher of note, both have their phones tapped and both have MI5 or MI6 files. Mine, as far as I know, is the property of MI6. But then they write about home and oversea matters. I write books and articles chiefly about the Arab territories, and as an Arab friend in exile points out 'you can't expect them to ignore you if you scrutinise their conduct in the richest and most volatile region of the world; a region that contains Israel and the world's most sophisticated intelligence organisation'. In my case the crime is writing about the history that underlies that conduct rather than the events themselves. That, to the powers that be, is as bad as it can get.

Actually, the term 'cock-up' is not really adequate to describe the unique British approach to history which is essentially one of substituting myth and legend for fact, thereby making any rational investigation of political reality impossible. (Sorry, I should say 'English'. The Celtic races do not seem to suffer from the same need to cover up misdeeds with hero-legend). Robin Hood is perhaps the best domestic example, but there are plenty of others from Dick Turpin to Lawrence of Arabia.

Take the former. That 'woodland elf of infinite antiquity' as Trevelyan called him, was a synonym for masked gangs of thieves and robbers wandering the country with impunity in the Middle Ages. That is not the popular image conveyed by film and television. As for the latter, it is impossible to address any subject to do with the desert lands in and around the Arabian peninsula, in any of the media, without coming up against the pervasive Lawrence myth that has served Whitehall so well in dealing with the conflicting agreements and promises of the 1914-18 war in the eighty years since the Liberal Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill invented it. Even the most astute political commentators are disarmed by it.

To counter that image by giving due prominence to the real king-makers of the Middle East - Shakespear, JG Lorimer, Percy Cox, Gertrude Bell, AT Wilson, Leachman, Allenby - would be to undo almost a century of careful and effective orchestration, to say nothing of requiring universities to invest in new textbooks and rewrite course and examination papers. 'Lawrence of Arabia' is still the favoured subject by far of 'Middle East' dissertations and PhD theses. I tried in my book The Illicit Adventure to state the simple historical facts underlined by the thousands of political documents of the period; documents that revealed a story of bitter conflict between the Foreign, Colonial and India Offices. Favourable reviews in the press soon brought down the wrath of MI6. In fact, my publisher, Cape, took fright before the book was published and tried to get out of the contract. That's why I have the distinction of a personal file (copy to Special Branch). It accuses me of homosexuality and of fabricating and abusing my sources among other things; largely the inventions of an idiot operative who ran into me at a seminar I was conducting at Cambridge and at the funeral of my co-author Gerald de Gaury, who made no secret of his preference between the sheets. When I was asked to visit Saudi Arabia in 1987, the then Foreign Office Minister Tim Renton was so enraptured by my file that he delayed the dispatch of my visa to London airport. The dispatch rider arrived 15 minutes after the plane departed, to the chagrin of the pilot and my host, His Highness the Amir Abdurrahman as-Sudairi, whose son waited for me in vain at the other end.

But enough of me. I am too old to worry about the inventions of seedy ex-Consuls who hang about 'learned' societies in search of scandal. What does concern me are the threats to the liberties of citizens and businesses revealed by the Observer and its sister paper the Guardian in recent months.

France, Germany, the USA and Ireland have all banned or resisted the latest snooping measures proposed by Britain. There has, as John Naughton observes, been no public debate or discussion about the proposed measures.

He also observes that ministers driving the bill through Parliament insist that 'they can be trusted' to apply the regulations 'reasonably'. After all, the internet is a conduit for criminal conversation and porn. But so, as he says, is the telephone and the Royal Mail. As it happens, they too are routinely scrutinised. And if 30 years hence the Observer or Guardian decides to conducts a similar investigation and attempts to research the Public Record files as I have done over the past half century, it will find that the Government Search Office has been there before it to try to make sure that there are no incriminating inferences ('Ought we to tell C?' or 'Z has been told to keep it under his hat') in the political documentation.

As for the immediate future, we could all band together to put a spanner in the works, as the hackers have done successfully in other contexts. I shall be offering my e-mail identity details and passwords to the 'Government Office' responsible and sending them e-mail copies of everything. I might even invent a few contacts and improper suggestions (as a septuagenarian Oldie I will have to rely on memory) just to make his task more interesting. If everyone does the same, the traffic will overwhelm the system.

It won't make any difference of course. I recall that during the last war a young mathematician at Cambridge was recruited for the atomic bomb project in America. 'But I'm a member of the Communist Party', he protested. He even pasted notification of cell meetings on the College notice board. MI decided it was an elaborate hoax; no one in his right mind would make such a claim to the security forces. The young man went to America, only to be sent back to England at great expense a year later after he continued to express support for the Soviet ally. Intelligence knows exactly where its corporate loyalty lies, even if individual servants lose their way. The spying and intrusion will go on. But we'll all have fun.

For details of bill: www.fipr.org/rip/

5

Intelligencefootnote

The hunt for Cold War spies goes on unabated. Tom King MP and the House of Commons Select Committee on intelligence and espionage are still on the warpath, regretting that Great Grandma Melita Norwood was not summoned by MI5 and punished in the courts for giving secrets to Britain's wartime ally the Soviet Union. It is tempting to wonder what the courts would consider the going rate for sentencing an octogenarian woman for helping a nation that gave 20 millions of its citizens in a common cause. Life? Hanging? Perhaps Mr King could make a stab at it. Or Dr Andrews, the Cambridge academic who raised the matter, might give us a scale of culpability, just in case any more defectors or dissidents are found giving secrets to allies. Our familiar predators might even give us a scale of national values. Suppose, for example, any of these devious people had given secrets to the actual enemies, Germany, Italy or Japan? What would be appropriate there by way of retribution, one wonders? A knighthood perhaps, or Dameship of the British Empire?

Updated 1 January 2005