2RHPZ
06-29-2004, 03:54 AM
June 27, 2004
Winston’s folly – how his Iraq fix fails us still
The current conflict in the Middle East has its roots in the botched carve-up of the region in 1921, writes Christopher Catherwood
Two men, one British, one French, met in London on December 1, 1918. “Well, what are we to discuss?” asked the Frenchman.
“Mesopotamia and Palestine,” the Briton replied.
“Tell me what you want,” replied the Frenchman.
“I want Mosul,” responded the Briton.
“You shall have it. Anything else?”
“Yes, I want Jerusalem too.”
“You shall have it, but Pichon (the foreign minister) will make difficulties about Mosul.”
This conversation, between David Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau, the British and French prime ministers, is at the heart of what is wrong with the Middle East today, more than 85 years later.
We live in the world created by a few statesmen in the aftermath of the first world war. In particular, we remain haunted by their failure to create an effective settlement to succeed the fallen Ottoman empire, which Britain defeated in 1918 and which finally vanished in 1922. Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson and Clemenceau played the major role, but so too did Winston Churchill, the creator of modern Iraq.
The wars in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s, in which hundreds of thousands of people died in Europe’s back yard, are one legacy that has lasted. So too is the intractable problem of the Israel-Palestine conflict. All these are former Ottoman territories.
But it is the problem of Iraq that has its roots in how Churchill tried in a few weeks in 1921 to solve the mess created by the allied victory in 1918.
What the allies attempted was to create new states where none had existed before, in the hope that the infant states would be strong enough to survive in the post-war world order. Of those created in 1918-21, only Iraq now exists.
Yugoslavia, the kingdom cobbled together from bits of the old Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, lasted until 1941, when it disintegrated into a vicious civil war. United under Tito’s strong rule, the reconstituted communist version lasted until the 1990s when it too collapsed, this time with a series of civil wars even more vicious than the last.
In other words, the mess we saw in the 1990s in the Balkans and the chaos we see today in Iraq are all part of the same problem. It is the legacy of a failed empire and the way in which the West tried to sort out its dissolution more than 80 years ago.
Empires, by definition, seldom consist of a single ethnic group or religion. This was true of the Ottoman empire, not all of whose majority Islamic population were from the Turkish ruling race — some were Bosnian Muslims and a large proportion were Arab or Kurd. Even within the Muslim majority there were differences. A significant proportion of the Arab Muslims were Shi’ite, with close links to fellow Shi’ites in Iran.
The Sunni/Shi’ite rift goes back to the origins of Islam and a battle fought as long ago as 680 at Karbala, in present-day Iraq. The Ottomans, like 85% of contemporary Muslims, were Sunni. But in what is now Iraq, more than 50% of the Arab population was Shi’ite (perhaps 60% today). Arcane though these differences seem to us, to Muslims they are at the heart of who they are and what they believe.
This was as little understood by Churchill, the British cabinet minister designated to find a solution, as it is to most of us today. As the baffled colonial secretary asked his officials: “The Wahhabi sect is at feud with the Sunni. Is it also at feud with the Shia? What are the principal doctrinal and ritualistic differences involved between the Shia, the Sunni and the Shabi Mohammedans? A very brief answer will suffice.”
Churchill also found all the names confusing: “I have succeeded in disentangling Saud Bin Rashid from Ibn Saud. It will simplify matters once and for all whether you call them Bin or Ibn.”
We have an excuse if we are confused. Since Churchill was about to determine the fate of the entire region, his uncertainty is perturbing.
The Middle Eastern part of the old Ottoman empire was divided into provinces, or vilayets. Each of these had their own identities. That of Basra, for example, was predominantly Shi’ite, with trading links to the south. The province of Mosul, so casually transferred to British from French control by Clemenceau, was overwhelmingly Kurdish. It looked to the other Kurdish areas to the north and east (in Iran), and was Sunni in its version of Islam. In between was the province of Baghdad, mainly Sunni Arab, but with large Jewish and other minorities. Allegiances, in so far as people had any, were to the local tribe and to the Islamic faith. Iraq, as a place, simply did not exist.
In 1914 the Ottomans decided to ally with Germany against Britain, France and Russia. Britain, based in Egypt, had several military options to pursue.
The first significant British attempt to attack Ottoman territory ended in complete military failure in Kut, near Baghdad. The Churchillian brainwave of trying to decapitate the Ottoman empire by launching an invasion of Constantinople by seizing the Dardanelles met with equally catastrophic failure at Gallipoli.
It was not until General Allenby launched an invasion from Egypt that the Ottoman empire was finally brought down. In becoming colonial secretary in 1921, Churchill was very conscious of the need to have a success to make up for his wartime failures.
The British and French had tried to carve up the Middle East earlier in the war, when Sir Mark Sykes MP and the diplomat Georges Picot drew up an agreement to partition the region. But soon the British were desperate to get more territory for themselves. All this happened without any consultation with the local inhabitants. There was a serious rebellion in the three vilayets of Basra, Mosul and Baghdad in 1920, which was only suppressed with much effort, loss of life, and enormous expense.
This was the situation facing Churchill in 1921, on becoming minister in charge of the new Middle Eastern Department.
Britain’s forces were, he realised, grossly overstretched. The Exchequer was empty. Major oil production did not begin until the late 1920s. Churchill, while an imperialist, did not want to “build up a costly and vainglorious Middle Eastern empire at the expense of the British taxpayer”. But he also knew that crushing the rebellion in 1920 had led to “ruinous waste”. British troop levels had to be “promptly and drastically reduced”.
One solution, which Churchill rejected, was to cut and run. The parallels with Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003 are striking: “We marched into Mesopotamia (now Iraq) during the war and uprooted the Turkish government which was the only stable form of government . . . We accepted before all the world a mandate for the country and undertook to introduce much better methods of government in the place of those we had overthrown.
“If, following upon this, we now ignominiously scuttle for the coast, leaving sheer anarchy behind us and historic cities to be plundered by the wild bedouin of the desert, an event will have occurred not at all in accordance with what has usually been the reputation of Britain.”
The other solution was to impose a single ruler on the region, who would run a puppet government under a British League of Nations mandate. Further, as Churchill realised, air power was a much more effective way of keeping the inhabitants in check than expensive garrisons of European troops. Finally, Emir Feisal had been unceremoniously expelled from Syria by the French, and as the British owed him a debt of honour, he began to emerge as a possible king for the three provinces. By installing Feisal as a stooge ruler, with the RAF keeping order, Britain could have the new state on the cheap. As Churchill wrote to a constituent:
“It is my hope . . . that by means of an Arab government supported by a moderate military force we may be able to discharge our duties without imposing unjustifi- able expense on the British Exchequer.”
This is exactly what Harvard professor Michael Ignatieff calls “empire lite” — empire on the cheap, precisely the goal of many in the US government today.
Churchill and his advisers met in 1921 in Cairo to solve the problem to the best advantage of the British taxpayer. This was his first folly — the settlement was made in British interests, not those of the local people. Palestine was divided into two areas: one in which Jews could settle; the other became Jordan. The Mosul vilayet, being under possible Turkish threat, was kept alongside those of Basra and Baghdad, even though Churchill was open to the idea of an independent Kurdish state.
Feisal became king of this new country in a rigged referendum. With a notionally independent Arab state under a compliant king, there was no longer any need for an expensive army, which was thus withdrawn, with the RAF left to look after things. Churchill’s plan had succeeded. A new state, Iraq, had been born.
But this, we could say, was his second folly: the creation of an entirely artificial state. From 1922 to 2003, the Shi’ites, more than 50% of the population, were ruled over by a narrow Sunni Arab elite — whether royal, until 1958, or Ba’athist under Saddam Hussein. The Kurds had never wanted to be part of the new state and still do not. Repression kept Iraq together.
Now that the dictatorship has been removed, in similar circumstances to the British destroying Ottoman rule in 1917, the centrifugal forces that were long suppressed are coming back, causing chaos.
We let down the peoples of the region in 1921. Might we be doing the same in 2004? Former American ambassador Peter Galbraith has recently advocated a three-state or federal solution for Iraq, allowing the three very different entities to go their own ways. This is problematic, though. Who will get the oil? Will Turkey and Iran allow a Kurdish state? The problems Churchill left unsolved in 1921 haunt us still.
Winston’s folly – how his Iraq fix fails us still
The current conflict in the Middle East has its roots in the botched carve-up of the region in 1921, writes Christopher Catherwood
Two men, one British, one French, met in London on December 1, 1918. “Well, what are we to discuss?” asked the Frenchman.
“Mesopotamia and Palestine,” the Briton replied.
“Tell me what you want,” replied the Frenchman.
“I want Mosul,” responded the Briton.
“You shall have it. Anything else?”
“Yes, I want Jerusalem too.”
“You shall have it, but Pichon (the foreign minister) will make difficulties about Mosul.”
This conversation, between David Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau, the British and French prime ministers, is at the heart of what is wrong with the Middle East today, more than 85 years later.
We live in the world created by a few statesmen in the aftermath of the first world war. In particular, we remain haunted by their failure to create an effective settlement to succeed the fallen Ottoman empire, which Britain defeated in 1918 and which finally vanished in 1922. Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson and Clemenceau played the major role, but so too did Winston Churchill, the creator of modern Iraq.
The wars in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s, in which hundreds of thousands of people died in Europe’s back yard, are one legacy that has lasted. So too is the intractable problem of the Israel-Palestine conflict. All these are former Ottoman territories.
But it is the problem of Iraq that has its roots in how Churchill tried in a few weeks in 1921 to solve the mess created by the allied victory in 1918.
What the allies attempted was to create new states where none had existed before, in the hope that the infant states would be strong enough to survive in the post-war world order. Of those created in 1918-21, only Iraq now exists.
Yugoslavia, the kingdom cobbled together from bits of the old Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, lasted until 1941, when it disintegrated into a vicious civil war. United under Tito’s strong rule, the reconstituted communist version lasted until the 1990s when it too collapsed, this time with a series of civil wars even more vicious than the last.
In other words, the mess we saw in the 1990s in the Balkans and the chaos we see today in Iraq are all part of the same problem. It is the legacy of a failed empire and the way in which the West tried to sort out its dissolution more than 80 years ago.
Empires, by definition, seldom consist of a single ethnic group or religion. This was true of the Ottoman empire, not all of whose majority Islamic population were from the Turkish ruling race — some were Bosnian Muslims and a large proportion were Arab or Kurd. Even within the Muslim majority there were differences. A significant proportion of the Arab Muslims were Shi’ite, with close links to fellow Shi’ites in Iran.
The Sunni/Shi’ite rift goes back to the origins of Islam and a battle fought as long ago as 680 at Karbala, in present-day Iraq. The Ottomans, like 85% of contemporary Muslims, were Sunni. But in what is now Iraq, more than 50% of the Arab population was Shi’ite (perhaps 60% today). Arcane though these differences seem to us, to Muslims they are at the heart of who they are and what they believe.
This was as little understood by Churchill, the British cabinet minister designated to find a solution, as it is to most of us today. As the baffled colonial secretary asked his officials: “The Wahhabi sect is at feud with the Sunni. Is it also at feud with the Shia? What are the principal doctrinal and ritualistic differences involved between the Shia, the Sunni and the Shabi Mohammedans? A very brief answer will suffice.”
Churchill also found all the names confusing: “I have succeeded in disentangling Saud Bin Rashid from Ibn Saud. It will simplify matters once and for all whether you call them Bin or Ibn.”
We have an excuse if we are confused. Since Churchill was about to determine the fate of the entire region, his uncertainty is perturbing.
The Middle Eastern part of the old Ottoman empire was divided into provinces, or vilayets. Each of these had their own identities. That of Basra, for example, was predominantly Shi’ite, with trading links to the south. The province of Mosul, so casually transferred to British from French control by Clemenceau, was overwhelmingly Kurdish. It looked to the other Kurdish areas to the north and east (in Iran), and was Sunni in its version of Islam. In between was the province of Baghdad, mainly Sunni Arab, but with large Jewish and other minorities. Allegiances, in so far as people had any, were to the local tribe and to the Islamic faith. Iraq, as a place, simply did not exist.
In 1914 the Ottomans decided to ally with Germany against Britain, France and Russia. Britain, based in Egypt, had several military options to pursue.
The first significant British attempt to attack Ottoman territory ended in complete military failure in Kut, near Baghdad. The Churchillian brainwave of trying to decapitate the Ottoman empire by launching an invasion of Constantinople by seizing the Dardanelles met with equally catastrophic failure at Gallipoli.
It was not until General Allenby launched an invasion from Egypt that the Ottoman empire was finally brought down. In becoming colonial secretary in 1921, Churchill was very conscious of the need to have a success to make up for his wartime failures.
The British and French had tried to carve up the Middle East earlier in the war, when Sir Mark Sykes MP and the diplomat Georges Picot drew up an agreement to partition the region. But soon the British were desperate to get more territory for themselves. All this happened without any consultation with the local inhabitants. There was a serious rebellion in the three vilayets of Basra, Mosul and Baghdad in 1920, which was only suppressed with much effort, loss of life, and enormous expense.
This was the situation facing Churchill in 1921, on becoming minister in charge of the new Middle Eastern Department.
Britain’s forces were, he realised, grossly overstretched. The Exchequer was empty. Major oil production did not begin until the late 1920s. Churchill, while an imperialist, did not want to “build up a costly and vainglorious Middle Eastern empire at the expense of the British taxpayer”. But he also knew that crushing the rebellion in 1920 had led to “ruinous waste”. British troop levels had to be “promptly and drastically reduced”.
One solution, which Churchill rejected, was to cut and run. The parallels with Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003 are striking: “We marched into Mesopotamia (now Iraq) during the war and uprooted the Turkish government which was the only stable form of government . . . We accepted before all the world a mandate for the country and undertook to introduce much better methods of government in the place of those we had overthrown.
“If, following upon this, we now ignominiously scuttle for the coast, leaving sheer anarchy behind us and historic cities to be plundered by the wild bedouin of the desert, an event will have occurred not at all in accordance with what has usually been the reputation of Britain.”
The other solution was to impose a single ruler on the region, who would run a puppet government under a British League of Nations mandate. Further, as Churchill realised, air power was a much more effective way of keeping the inhabitants in check than expensive garrisons of European troops. Finally, Emir Feisal had been unceremoniously expelled from Syria by the French, and as the British owed him a debt of honour, he began to emerge as a possible king for the three provinces. By installing Feisal as a stooge ruler, with the RAF keeping order, Britain could have the new state on the cheap. As Churchill wrote to a constituent:
“It is my hope . . . that by means of an Arab government supported by a moderate military force we may be able to discharge our duties without imposing unjustifi- able expense on the British Exchequer.”
This is exactly what Harvard professor Michael Ignatieff calls “empire lite” — empire on the cheap, precisely the goal of many in the US government today.
Churchill and his advisers met in 1921 in Cairo to solve the problem to the best advantage of the British taxpayer. This was his first folly — the settlement was made in British interests, not those of the local people. Palestine was divided into two areas: one in which Jews could settle; the other became Jordan. The Mosul vilayet, being under possible Turkish threat, was kept alongside those of Basra and Baghdad, even though Churchill was open to the idea of an independent Kurdish state.
Feisal became king of this new country in a rigged referendum. With a notionally independent Arab state under a compliant king, there was no longer any need for an expensive army, which was thus withdrawn, with the RAF left to look after things. Churchill’s plan had succeeded. A new state, Iraq, had been born.
But this, we could say, was his second folly: the creation of an entirely artificial state. From 1922 to 2003, the Shi’ites, more than 50% of the population, were ruled over by a narrow Sunni Arab elite — whether royal, until 1958, or Ba’athist under Saddam Hussein. The Kurds had never wanted to be part of the new state and still do not. Repression kept Iraq together.
Now that the dictatorship has been removed, in similar circumstances to the British destroying Ottoman rule in 1917, the centrifugal forces that were long suppressed are coming back, causing chaos.
We let down the peoples of the region in 1921. Might we be doing the same in 2004? Former American ambassador Peter Galbraith has recently advocated a three-state or federal solution for Iraq, allowing the three very different entities to go their own ways. This is problematic, though. Who will get the oil? Will Turkey and Iran allow a Kurdish state? The problems Churchill left unsolved in 1921 haunt us still.