Thomas Edward (T.E.) Lawrence, a.k.a. "Lawrence
of Arabia" (1888-1935), British soldier and author, whose
works include The
Seven Pillars of Wisdom, achieved world renown for his
exploits as Britain's military liaison to the Arabs during the
rebellion against the Ottomans. Sent to Mecca on a fact-finding
mission when the Arabs rose in revolt, in 1916, he soon became
a friend of the Arab people and their struggle for independence
is chronicled in his book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom
, as
well as Revolt
in the Desert.
The sellout of the Arabs at Versailles, and the subsequent
carving up of the Ottoman Empire by the victorious European powers,
disgusted him, and he returned to England disheartened. In protest,
Lawrence refused to accept medals from the King, and wrote numerous
letters to the newspapers in favor of Arab independence. When
British attempts to impose colonial rule on Iraq failed – in a
way that, by the account below, seems awfully familiar – Winston
Churchill asked Lawrence to help him draft a settlement.
In conjunction with this
recent article by Niall Ferguson on the historical parallels
between Britain's futile crusade in Iraq and our own, Lawrence's
piece should be required reading for U.S. policymakers, whose
sense of history seems to stretch only as far back as last week.
Sunday
Times
August 2nd, 1920
[Mr. Lawrence, whose organization and direction of the Hedjaz
against the Turks was one of the outstanding romances of the war,
has written this article at our request in order that the public
may be fully informed of our Mesopotamian commitments.]
The people of England have been
led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape
with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady
withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated,
insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have
been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than
the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and
may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are to-day
not far from a disaster.
The sins of commission are those of the British civil authorities
in Mesopotamia (especially of three 'colonels') who were given
a free hand by London. They are controlled from no Department
of State, but from the empty space which divides the Foreign Office
from the India Office. They availed themselves of the necessary
discretion of war-time to carry over their dangerous independence
into times of peace. They contest every suggestion of real self-government
sent them from home. A recent proclamation about autonomy circulated
with unction from Baghdad was drafted and published out there
in a hurry, to forestall a more liberal statement in preparation
in London, 'Self-determination papers' favourable to England were
extorted in Mesopotamia in 1919 by official pressure, by aeroplane
demonstrations, by deportations to India.
The Cabinet cannot disclaim all responsibility. They receive
little more news than the public: they should have insisted on
more, and better. They have sent draft after draft of reinforcements,
without enquiry. When conditions became too bad to endure longer,
they decided to send out as High commissioner the original author
of the present system, with a conciliatory message to the Arabs
that his heart and policy have completely changed.*
Yet our published policy has not changed, and does not need changing.
It is that there has been a deplorable contrast between our profession
and our practice. We said we went to Mesopotamia to defeat Turkey.
We said we stayed to deliver the Arabs from the oppression of
the Turkish Government, and to make available for the world its
resources of corn and oil. We spent nearly a million men and nearly
a thousand million of money to these ends. This year we are spending
ninety-two thousand men and fifty millions of money on the same
objects.
Our government is worse than the old Turkish system. They kept
fourteen thousand local conscripts embodied, and killed a yearly
average of two hundred Arabs in maintaining peace. We keep ninety
thousand men, with aeroplanes, armoured cars, gunboats, and armoured
trains. We have killed about ten thousand Arabs in this rising
this summer. We cannot hope to maintain such an average: it is
a poor country, sparsely peopled; but Abd el Hamid would applaud
his masters, if he saw us working. We are told the object of the
rising was political, we are not told what the local people want.
It may be what the Cabinet has promised them. A Minister in the
House of Lords said that we must have so many troops because the
local people will not enlist. On Friday the Government announce
the death of some local levies defending their British officers,
and say that the services of these men have not yet been sufficiently
recognized because they are too few (adding the characteristic
Baghdad touch that they are men of bad character). There are seven
thousand of them, just half the old Turkish force of occupation.
Properly officered and distributed, they would relieve half our
army there. Cromer controlled Egypt's six million people with
five thousand British troops; Colonel Wilson fails to control
Mesopotamia's three million people with ninety thousand troops.
We have not reached the limit of our military commitments. Four
weeks ago the staff in Mesopotamia drew up a memorandum asking
for four more divisions. I believe it was forwarded to the War
Office, which has now sent three brigades from India. If the North-West
Frontier cannot be further denuded, where is the balance to come
from? Meanwhile, our unfortunate troops, Indian and British, under
hard conditions of climate and supply, are policing an immense
area, paying dearly every day in lives for the wilfully wrong
policy of the civil administration in Baghdad. General Dyer was
relieved of his command in India for a much smaller error, but
the responsibility in this case is not on the Army, which has
acted only at the request of the civil authorities. The War Office
has made every effort to reduce our forces, but the decisions
of the Cabinet have been against them.
The Government in Baghdad have been hanging Arabs in that town
for political offences, which they call rebellion. The Arabs are
not at war with us. Are these illegal executions to provoke the
Arabs to reprisals on the three hundred British prisoners they
hold? And, if so, is it that their punishment may be more severe,
or is it to persuade our other troops to fight to the last?
We say we are in Mesopotamia to develop it for the benefit of
the world. All experts say that the labour supply is the ruling
factor in its development. How far will the killing of ten thousand
villagers and townspeople this summer hinder the production of
wheat, cotton, and oil? How long will we permit millions of pounds,
thousands of Imperial troops, and tens of thousands of Arabs to
be sacrificed on behalf of colonial administration which can benefit
nobody but its administrators?
*Sir Percy Cox was to return as High Commissioner
in October, 1920 to form a provisional Government.