Last exit from Mesopotamia

EducationGuardian.co.uk, UK
Nov 27 2004

Christopher Catherwood reveals the incompetence, arrogance and
ignorance that Churchill brought to bear on the Iraq question in
Winston’s Folly. If only Tony Blair read a bit more history, says
John Charmley

Winston’s Folly: Imperialism and the Creation of Modern Iraq
by Christopher Catherwood
267pp, Constable, £12.99

The Eastern Question that haunted the chancelleries of 19th-century
Europe has returned to haunt George Bush and Tony Blair; or rather,
the consequences of the failure to find a satisfactory answer to it
have blighted all attempts to create a new international order in the
aftermath of the cold war. This book is required reading for anyone
wanting to have an informed opinion on recent events in Iraq; the
fact that its author worked for Blair’s “Strategic Futures Unit”
makes one wonder why the prime minister did not spend more time
reading history and less commissioning dodgy dossiers.

There are few places where the ingrained assumption of western
superiority survives better than in commentaries on the Ottoman
empire. Despite being the greatest Islamic empire the world has
known, and in spite of enduring for the better part of a millennium,
it has come down to us through its reputation as the “sick man of
Europe” and its treatment of the Armenians during the first world
war; this is the equivalent of judging the British empire by its
treatment of Ireland and the Boer War – something, of course, some
commentators would be more than happy to do. The fact that the
modern, secular Turkish republic had every interest in traducing its
predecessor has meant that, outside the work of Ottoman scholarship,
the Ottoman empire remains little understood. Yet for half a
millennium, it governed those places that now stand out as some of
the main trouble spots of the past decade: Bosnia, Kosovo, Palestine
and Iraq. It has been easy to imply that somehow the Ottomans were
responsible for what has happened in the successor-states, but the
fact remains that they provided better governance than has succeeded
them.

Even as well informed a writer as Christopher Catherwood casually
assumes the inevitability of the demise of the Ottoman empire,
although his own narrative makes it plain that it was the mistaken
choices made by the regime during the first world war that brought
about its downfall. The mistakes made by those charged with replacing
it are the central theme of Winston’s Folly.

The title is far from a catchpenny attempt to sell books by dragging
Churchill’s name into things. As colonial secretary in 1921,
Churchill was directly responsible for the decisions that led to the
creation of modern Iraq, and the process as described here raises yet
more doubts about his ultimate legacy; much can be forgiven the man
of 1940 – but perhaps much can also be laid on the other account.

Catherwood is an excellent guide at cutting through the mythology
that surrounds this subject, although he does not always appreciate
the implications of some of his arguments. For example, he correctly
points out that most Arabs were loyal to the Ottoman empire during
the first world war, and yet still writes as though it was in some
way doomed; no empire that commands the loyalty of most of its
subjects can be said to be in terminal trouble. Catherwood has little
patience with the Lawrence of Arabia-inspired line that there was a
“great betrayal” of the Arab cause. Far from Feisal and Hussein (the
sons of the Sherif of Mecca) being betrayed, it was they who betrayed
the Ottomans, and it was because they had so little support that they
needed the backing of the British. Without the efforts of Lawrence
and company, who convinced Churchill that the Hashemite dynasty
enjoyed great support in Mesopotamia, it would never have come to
power in Jordan and Iraq; indeed, without the Hashemites and
Churchill’s decision to back them, there would have been no modern
Iraq at all. The three Ottoman vilayets (provinces) that form modern
Iraq were brought together because Churchill decided they should be,
and this book explores why that decision was taken.

Much of the story is depressingly familiar to those following more
recent events in this part of the world. The early 20th-century
liberal equivalent of the Bush-Blair belief in the universal
applicability of the western model of democracy was the Wilsonian
attachment to the sanctity of the nation state as the best way of
organising polities; whether in the Balkan lands of the former
Ottoman empire or its Middle Eastern territories, one size could fit
all. When it did not quite seem to work, it was necessary to have
recourse to force. However, there were two problems with this: in the
first place, as Napoleon once remarked, you can do anything with a
bayonet – except sit on it; what do you do when the people upon whom
you are trying to confer the great boon of a nation state or
democracy do not appear to want it? Second, occupation of another
country is expensive, financially and morally. Democratic electorates
hold their rulers to a higher standard than that expected of
autocracies, but it is difficult to run an occupation without
deviating from these standards; this exacts a moral price which
governments with elections to win are rarely willing to pay. Then
there is the financial cost. It is difficult to justify spending a
fortune on what looks like an exercise in suppression.

Thus did Churchill, as colonial secretary, inherit the problem of
what to do with Mesopotamia. The British had insisted on acquiring
the strategically important area under a League of Nations mandate,
only to find the natives were extremely restless. Churchill-inspired
attempts to bomb the “rebels” into submission having failed, and the
moral and financial costs escalating, it was necessary to find a way
out of Mesopotamia – at which point the Hashemites became extremely
useful. Entirely dependent upon the British, the Hashemite dynasty
provided a useful client regime. The fact that this meant placing a
predominantly Shia population under minority Sunni rule, and placing
the ethnically separate Kurds under Arab rule, mattered little
compared to the needs of the British. Catherwood is unsparing in his
portrayal of the mixture of incompetence, arrogance and ignorance
that Churchill brought to bear on the Iraq question, and is unafraid
to imply that things might not have changed all that much.

Judging by recent events in Iraq, it would seem as though there are
good grounds for thinking that Blair has indeed refused to learn from
history. Those who do this are, it is often said, doomed to repeat
the mistakes of their predecessors. With the Americans busy appeasing
the Saudis as Churchill did, and Bush and Blair as committed to the
continuation of the artificial creation of Iraq, it is difficult to
see what Catherwood’s time in the “Strategic Futures Team” achieved.
It looks as though Marx was wrong when he wrote that history repeats
itself as farce; tragedy would be nearer the mark, as “Winston’s
folly” is compounded by that of George W and Tony.

· John Charmley is professor of modern history at the University of
East Anglia.

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