A Peace to End all Peace

by David Fromkin

  To Sir Percy Cox, British High Commissioner in Mesopotamia, Churchill cabled on 7 February 1921 that “The questions at issue cannot be settled by interchange of telegrams. I cannot…find time to visit Mesopotamia. I propose therefore a conference in Egypt beginning during first or second week of March…Conference would take a week…I shall be accompanied by principal officers of new Middle Eastern Department of Colonial Office.”28

  Churchill then summoned his field officers from Palestine and the Persian Gulf to attend him at the conference. On 18 February 1921 he sent his own notes on Mesopotamia to John Shuckburgh, and entrusted him with the pivotal responsibility for establishing a conference agenda for Mesopotamia and for Palestine.

  V

  Egypt, which Churchill chose as the meeting place, was geographically convenient but inconvenient politically: the Egyptians knew that Churchill felt that Egypt should not be granted independence. On 21 February 1921 he wrote to his wife that “The people in Egypt are getting rather excited at my coming, as they seem to think it has something to do with them. This is, of course, all wrong. I have no mission to Egypt and have no authority to deal with any Egyptian question. I shall have to make this quite clear or we shall be pestered with demonstrations and delegations.”29

  Allenby, now British High Commissioner in Egypt, issued an official denial that Churchill was coming to consult about Egyptian affairs. The Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon, wrote Churchill a confidential letter on 24 February urging him to transfer the venue of the conference to Jerusalem. Curzon claimed that Churchill’s presence in Cairo might compromise the efforts of Allenby and the Egyptian government to reach agreement at a critical moment.30 Churchill, however, declined to alter his arrangements.

  Thus the Cairo Conference went forward as planned, but its location brought into sharp contrast the policies pursued by Churchill and those advocated by Allenby: Churchill was planning to hold the line against Arab nationalism and Allenby was not. Against the weight of Cabinet opinion, against the wishes of the Prime Minister and of Churchill, Allenby—in line with the recommendations made earlier by Lord Milner—persisted in his efforts to give Egypt a measure of independence by bringing the British protectorate in Egypt to an end.

  By the threat of resignation he eventually prevailed and, on 28 February 1922, the British government unilaterally issued the so-called Allenby Declaration conceding formal independence to Egypt (subject to far-reaching reservations which, among other things, enabled Britain to supervise Egyptian foreign policy and to make unrestricted use of Egyptian territory for military movements). Allenby would have preferred a treaty to a unilateral declaration, but no Egyptian government would agree to sign a document that reserved so many powers to Britain.

  Churchill apparently feared that Allenby’s concession of even nominal Egyptian independence would undercut his own policy, in other Arabic-speaking countries, of continuing to withhold it. By an accident of geography, in 1921, both Allenby’s and Churchill’s contrary policies were elaborated in the city of Cairo; and in fact there was a substantive similarity between them, for both represented unilateral British decisions about how the Arab world should be run—and Arab leaders did not agree to either one of them.

  VI

  The Cairo Conference formally convened at the Semiramis Hotel on the morning of Saturday, 12 March 1921. During the following days some forty or fifty sessions were held. According to one count there were forty officials in attendance; “Everybody Middle East is here…,” wrote T. E. Lawrence to his oldest brother.31

  The initial—and principal—conference topic was how to cut the costs of occupying Mesopotamia. Two committees, one political and one military, were established to consider the matter. Both committees worked on the basis of agendas that Churchill and his staff had drafted on board ship on their way over. The committees devoted their first four days to arriving at a plan for Mesopotamia.

  Churchill and his staff had skillfully anticipated the advice that might be tendered by officers in the field. Gertrude Bell, who came in from Baghdad with her chief, Sir Percy Cox, wrote afterward that “Mr. Churchill was admirable, most ready to meet everyone half-way and masterly alike in guiding a big political meeting and in conducting the small committees in which we broke up. Not the least favourable circumstance was that Sir Percy and I, coming out with a definite programme, found when we came to open our packet that it coincided exactly” with what Churchill proposed.32

  On the evening of 15 March Churchill dispatched a telegram, which arrived in London the following day, reporting to the Prime Minister that “All authorities…have reached agreement on all the points, both political and military.”33 In itself this was a considerable achievement.

  Essentially there were four elements in the Cairo Conference plan. Feisal was to be offered the throne of Mesopotamia, but every effort would be made to make it appear that the offer came from the indigenous population rather than from Britain. In maintaining a British presence in the country, the military would shift to Churchill’s airforce-based strategy; but—as the head of the Royal Air Force, Sir Hugh Trenchard, estimated that the strategy would require about a year to implement—Britain would have to rely all the more heavily on Feisal to keep the country quiet in the interim. Although British experts disagreed intensely among themselves as to whether the Kurdish* areas in the northwest should be absorbed into the new state of Iraq, or instead should become an independent Kurdistan, it was agreed that for the time being they should continue to form a separate entity within the jurisdiction of the British High Commissioner in Mesopotamia. In addition to the Kurds, there were other groups whose identity was distinct and whose needs posed problems. In the northwest particularly there were small groups with no place to go, among them the Assyrian (or Nestorian) Christian refugees, driven from their homes in Turkey during the war because of their pro-Allied sympathies; and about these homeless groups, struggling for survival, the Cairo conferees felt that there was little that could be done.

  Having opted for a Hashemite solution in Iraq, the conference did the same—though on a temporary basis—for Transjordan. Disorder was endemic in that territory, and the Chief of the Imperial General Staff was of the view that Britain could not hold onto it without sending in two more battalions “which of course we have not got.”34 Even as the conference was taking place in Cairo, alarming news was received that Feisal’s brother Abdullah, accompanied by 30 officers and 200 Bedouins, had arrived in the Transjordan city of Amman, apparently en route to Syria to attack Damascus. Abdullah claimed that he had come to Amman for a change of air in order to regain his health after an attack of jaundice. Nobody believed his explanation.

  Churchill’s solution was, in effect, to buy off Abdullah: to offer him a position in Transjordan if he would refrain from attacking French Syria. (It will be recalled that Britain feared that if Arabs from the territory of British Palestine were to attack the French in Syria, France would retaliate by invading British Palestine.) The position Churchill thought of offering Abdullah was temporary governor, charged with restoring order. In proposing to make use of Abdullah to restore order east of the Jordan, Churchill hoped to accomplish other objectives too. Churchill brought with him to the Cairo Conference a memorandum that his staff had prepared at the end of February that dealt with the claims of Arabs and Jews to Palestine. The memorandum, prepared by Shuckburgh, Young, and Lawrence, construed the geographical terms employed in the McMahon—Hussein correspondence of 1915 as meaning that the area of Arab independence was to stretch no further west than the Jordan river. Since the Balfour Declaration contained no geographical definition, Churchill’s advisers concluded that Britain could fully reconcile and fulfill her wartime pledges* by establishing a Jewish National Home in Palestine west of the Jordan and a separate Arab entity in Palestine east of the Jordan.35 Abdullah, if installed in authority in Transjordan, could preside over the creation of such an Arab entity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  VII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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