'Only by the Sword': British Counter-Insurgency in Iraq, 1920
Introduction
Beginning in June 1920, British and Indian troops suppressed a nationwide revolt in Iraq. It was
the largest British-led military campaign of the entire interwar period, but it has escaped the
attention lavished upon many smaller scale episodes.1 Probably because the Royal Air Force
afterwards took over the policing of the Iraq mandate, observers wrote the experience off as an
anomaly. Approximately four divisions, two of them already in Iraq when the revolt began, took
six months of hard fighting to stamp it out. Although 90 percent of the troops involved were
Indian, their contribution drew less attention, largely because Indian politicians resented the use
of Indian troops in such roles, and the British rulers saw little use in reminding them of what had
Happened. Nor did colonial administrators wish to advertise what had happened and remind
other colonial people that rebellion had led to autonomy and then to independence. Thus, the
Arab revolt remains a bitter footnote to the star-crossed Mesopotamian campaign as a whole.
British administration of Iraq in 1919-1920 was an uneasy amalgam of military and civilian
responsibilities, which owed its genesis to the failure of the Mesopotamian Campaign. Although
Originally instigated and supplied by the Government of India and directed from Army
Headquarters in India, military operations in Mesopotamia were turned over to the War Office in
February 1916 even before the fall of Rut. Civil administration functioned under
The military commander, but British personnel who administered Iraq came overwhelmingly
from the Indian Political Service, just as the laborers who unloaded cargo and laid railways were
Indians. This anomalous arrangement survived the war because it remained unclear how Iraq
would be governed once a formal peace with Turkey was signed. In 1915, Sir Henry McMahon
had assured the Shari of Mecca in their famous correspondence of British intentions to reward
the Arab peoples with self-determination. General Sir Stanley Maude, on entering Baghdad in
March 1917, had issued an officially sanctioned proclamation promising self-determination for
Arabs. Then, too, both President Wilson (whose 12th point was often cited in this context) and
Lloyd George had spoken eloquently of national self-determination. On 18 November 1918, the
British and French had issued a joint declaration reaffirming their commitment to self-rule by the
indigenous populations of Mesopotamia and Syria. The politically minded Sunnis who formed
the governing class of Mesopotamia had reason to think that these fine words applied to
themselves as well as to inhabitants of odd bits of Europe.3
Pending a resolution of these issues, administration lay in the hands of Captain (Brevet
Lieutenant-Colonel) Arnold T. Wilson, the acting civil commissioner. Technically, Wilson, a
member of the Indian Political Service, was a staff officer to the General Officer Commanding
(GOC), but he reported not to the War Office but to the Government of India in Simla. Wilson,
'A.T. ' to many, had much of the authoritarian paternalism that characterized the Indian Civil
Service. He saw in the arid and unsystematically watered Euphrates basin a potential Punjab, an
imperial granary which proper administration (financed in turn by more efficiently collected
taxation) could transform and thereby revive.4
At the beginning of 1920, the GOC in Mesopotamia was Major-General sir George F.
MacMunn. He reported to Field- Marshal sir Henry Wilson, the Chief of the Imperial General
Staff (CIGS), and Winston Churchill, Secretary of state for War since 1918. Their counsels
reflected the confusions of purposes in the postwar British position. Henry Wilson, MacMunn
recalled, impressed on him the paramount importance of securing the Mosul frontier against
Turkish efforts to regain it. Churchill, who answered to Parliament and to the Treasury for the
costs of such measures, told MacMunn to 'organize levies and try and get the troops home as
soon as possible'.5
To support the nascent civil administration, A. T. Wilson had prevailed upon MacMunn's
predecessor, Lieutenant-General sir William Marshall, to establish a military presence in as
many towns as possible. These posts were not always readily supported or even supplied
reliably. These small garrisons were hostages to political fortune, since they lacked both animal
and motor transport. The outposts, too weak to defend themselves and too immobile to tour the
countryside or reinforce other sites, drew criticism from home. However, in the political climate
that obtained both in Iraq and in the region as a whole, withdrawal of forces anywhere suggested
that the British were about to evacuate the entire country.
The disarray of the entire region exacerbated the tactical problems of holding Iraq. The Britishsupported regime in Persia lacked stability, and a substantial garrison in Iraq offered support as
well as the ability to reinforce it if the Bolsheviks marched south. With the fall of Petrovsk in
Daghestan late in March 1920, remnants of Denikin's Volunteer Army found refuge at the
Persian Caspian Sea port of Enzeli, along with the White flotilla, whose 21 ships were turned
over to the British. The portion of MacMunn's forces responsible for Persia was the Northern
Persia Force (Norperforce), and its two Indian regiments and a mountain battery were all that
stood between Bolshevism and vital British interests.
The greatest uncertainty in the region in early 1920 was that caused by the failure to conclude a
peace treaty with Turkey, since upon its terms hinged the form that the League of Nations
mandate for Iraq would take. Formally, the Entente powers and Turkey remained at war until
June of 1920, when the Sultan's government signed the Treaty of Sevres with France and Britain
on the very eve of the revolt in Iraq. Increasing doubt that the Sultan’s government in
Constantinople actually controlled Turkey compounded this worry. Thus, the Allies faced the
prospect of treating with the Nationalist regime now at Ankara. Its growing strength throughout
1919 not only seemed to threaten British control of the northernmost vilayet (province) of Iraq,
Mosul. The Nationalist ascendancy also suggested to some Iraqis that their country might
potentially revert to Turkish rule.
To MacMunn, Wilson, and the Cabinet, these issues loomed much larger than Arab political
sentiment. Arab nationalists in Syria and Iraq interpreted wartime British promises to Sharif
Hussein of Mecca as binding Britain to create an Arab state or states--not British or French
colonies, veiled or not by League of Nations artifice. On 20 March a congress of Arab notables
met in Damascus and offered the crown of an Arab state comprising Syria and Palestine to one
of the Sharif's sons, Feisal. They offered his brother Abdullah the crown of Iraq. Some of the
Sharifians, as they were called, claimed for Feisal not only present day Syria but Lebanon,
Mesopotamia, and Palestine, points that no British government was likely to concede.
During the summer and autumn of 1919, the British in Iraq stamped out a succession of tribal
rebellions in Kurdistan.6
These events convinced MacMunn to deploy the bulk of his forces to the north of Baghdad,
which had the added and by no means insignificant benefit of being a healthier area for the
troops who lacked permanent cantonments. Besides covering Kurdistan, these dispositions
addressed the Turkish danger and the Bolshevik threat to Persia. And these, MacMunn was
convinced, were the real dangers. In March 1920, Lieutenant-General Sir Aylmer Haldane
relieved MacMunn. Although not an Indian Army officer, Haldane had abundant Indian
experience. He had also served in the Boer War, where he was captured with Winston Churchill
and imprisoned in Pretoria before escaping. Before Haldane left for Iraq early in 1920, the War
Office told him that Persia, not Iraq, caused the greatest anxiety. Britain had to hang on in Iraq
because it was the key to Persia, 'essential if the Bolshevik menace develops and we are to meet
it'. While at the War Office, Haldane also visited Churchill, who directed him to halve his
command by year's end and warned against appeals for reinforcements. Haldane's notes of that
encounter convey something of the torrent of ideas that gushed from Churchill: 'Garrison must
be reduced; have fort at Baghdad, flying columns, air force, river gunboats, defended
cantonments, native levies, steel pepper boxes round cantonments. ' Something like that, at any
rate. However, Churchill admitted that his demand to halve the garrison left out of account the
possibility of a Bolshevik coup against Persia.7 The Lloyd George Coalition was under mounting
pressure from 1919 onwards first to demobilize and second to reduce military spending, which
remained at levels stubbornly higher than pre-war.8 Civilian policy makers, MPs,
and newspaper leader writers credited Haldane with 80,000, and this number stuck. The
discrepancy between the perceived strength of the garrison and its actual strength sowed the
seeds of near catastrophe.
Nominally, Haldane had 60,200 men, 7,200 British and the remainder Indian. Subtracting troops
in transit or in hospital, he had only 2,400 British and 45,000 Indian effectives. Besides these
regulars, there were in 1920 some 5,000 Iraqi levies, British-officered but under the jurisdiction
of the local political officers. On paper this force exceeded the two divisions into which it was
organized, but its units were badly below strength. Because Indian units overseas had no
systematic way to obtain replacements, some Indian battalions had as few as 240 other ranks.
Many were veterans who had enlisted only for 'duration of war" and thus were owed a prompt
discharge once the Sultan's government signed the Treaty of Sevres. The Indian Army expected
its Indian other ranks (IOR) to appreciate this formality 18 months after the last shots had been
fired. Additionally, most regiments had only seven officers compared with the peacetime twelve,
since many had been detailed to civil administration.
There remained the British portion of the garrison, where the contrast between nominal strength
and actual hollowness was most marked. Artillery batteries had only two guns. The one British
cavalry regiment was a composite of two regiments that numbered only 200 sabres. Infantry
battalions consisted of ill- trained volunteers too young to have fought in the Great War, and they
averaged only 500 effectives. As late as April, 2,200 British soldiers, disproportionately officers
or non-commissioned officers, were still employed in civilian or extra-regimental duties.
Wireless had almost completely closed down due to the demobilization of skilled signals
personnel.9 Some who criticized the nominal size of the garrison set great stock in modern
methods, but the Mesopotamian garrison had few of these. Due to the disbandment of the
Machine Gun Corps and the return to civilian life of most of its members, machine guns were
equally poorly manned. Armoured cars were a similar story. Since few British recruits could
drive and fewer still repair them, only four cars saw regular use. Because armoured cars were
useless on any but the well maintained but unpaved roads near Baghdad, Haldane requested the
War Office to send out tanks but none were available for Iraq. But in 1920 there were no tanks
capable of operating in 'tropical' climates, let alone independently of railheads. Much was hoped
for from the RAF, but it could not guarantee more than six flyable aircraft at anyone time, since
its establishments in Iraq lacked both the spares and the skilled mechanics to keep more than a
token presence in the air.10 These two squadrons were No.6 with Bristol fighters and No.30 with
the DH-9A fighter-bomber. Although promised three squadrons by 15 April, three months later,
the RAF in Mesopotamia and Persia had only 16 planes.11 It had no transports with which to
move troops. Like the ground forces, its units were scattered around Haldane's vast command.
Four flights were concentrated at Baghdad, but the rest were dispersed to Mosul and to Bushire
and Kazvin in Persia.
Thus, Haldane's forces consisted of two under strength Indian Army divisions, the 16th (MajorGeneral G. A. J. Leslie) and the 17th (Major-General sir Theodore Fraser), about half a dozen
line of communications battalions along the Tigris and the Euphrates, and in North Persia a force
now increased to the equivalent of a brigade. Worrying as Sharifian, Turkish, Kurdish, and
Bolshevik activities might be, Haldane's most immediate worry was the Secretary of State for
War. Churchill cabled to Haldane in late April formally ordering him to cut the garrison by a full
50 percent by the start of the next financial year (1 April 1921). Churchill noted that
although British forces had been cut as directed far fewer Indian troops had been withdrawn.
These figures mattered because the Imperial exchequer bore this burden, too. The costs of Indian
units in Iraq fell on the War Office vote, since under the wartime financial agreement with the
Government of India, the Imperial exchequer assumed that portion of the cost of Indian units
stationed overseas that exceeded their normal peacetime cost. The latter figure represented what
the units would cost if they remained in India. This basic charge the Government of India paid.
Thus, both the Indian government and the government in Whitehall had strong reasons to want to
reduce the Iraq garrison. Indeed, more than 18,000 Indian other ranks remained above the level
already ordered home. Said Churchill, 'There can be no question of going back on this, and
military dispositions and political action must be made to conform’. He told Haldane to
concentrate his forces at the most important points on rivers and railways and 'to abandon the
present policy of scattering little packets of troops throughout the country'. 12 The difficulty with
this advice was that it presumed the country to be already pacified. Moreover, the removal of
troops from exposed locations, which sounded good in theory, necessarily confirmed widespread
rumours that the British were about to withdraw.
Vital to the belief held at Westminster and Whitehall that the garrison could be reduced was
confidence that modern methods might replace costly manpower.13 Even before the Armistice,
A. T. Wilson himself had proposed a visionary scheme to police Iraq and the entire region with a
mechanized force based at Baghdad that included the Royal Air Force, and his plans took root.14
Subsequently, Churchill became the most enthusiastic proponent of giving the responsibility for
Iraq. In a lengthy memorandum to the Cabinet on 1 May, he pointed out the central departmental
problem involved: 'The War Office is not responsible for this distribution of troops. The Eastern
Committee of the Cabinet animates the political policy in Mesopotamia. The Foreign Office,
rather than the India Office or the War Office, gives the directing impulse. ' But it was
Churchill's department, the over- stretched War Office, that provided troops and paid for them on
the War Office vote. In his inimitable style, Churchill concluded:
The result of this vicious system is that a score of mud villages, sandwiched in
between a swampy river and a blistering desert,
inhabited by a few hundred half naked native families, usually starving, are now
occupied, have been occupied for many months, and are likely to remain so
occupied in the future unless the policy is changed, by Anglo-Indian garrisons on
a scale which in India would maintain order in wealthy provinces of millions of
people.
Churchill's administrative solution was to hand Mesopotamia over to a new department of state
entrusted with Middle Eastern affairs (headed by himself) and to entrust the policing of
Mesopotamia to the RAF.1S
The Mandate
All this talk about reducing the garrison unfortunately co- existed with an equal confidence that
Britain could readily administer Mesopotamia as a League of Nations mandate. On 3 May, the
same day that it was announced at the San Remo Conference that Britain would assume the
mandate for Iraq (and France, that for Syria), Haldane reported home that he could not return any
more of his garrison until the summer had passed. If there were no revolt, if the RAF were
increased to full establishment, if the Army received tanks and an extra company of armoured
cars, and if an efficient system of wireless communications were established, then reductions
during the autumn might be possible, he said. As things now stood, forces were adequate only to
maintain internal security, not to resist an invasion or to reinforce Persia.16 Even that carefully
hedged prediction was wide of the mark.
On 11 May, the French and British governments presented the Sultan's diplomats with the terms
of the Treaty of Sevres, by which the Turks were to be shorn of all Arabic-speaking provinces
and more. Mesopotamia and Palestine would be British mandates as Syria would be French.
Iraqis had little reason to believe that the mandate was anything more than a disguised British
protectorate. The principal organized opponent of British designs was the Ahd-al-Iraqi, formed
in the winter of 1917/1918 and consisting of Iraqi-born formerly Turkish Army officers and
dedicated to promoting Arab self-rule under the Amir Feisal, the son of the Sharif Hussein. The
Sharifian cause enjoyed British favour in Syria, favour that included subsidies, but few Britons
appreciated that its object extended to a 'Greater Syria' that comprised not only Syria but
Palestine and Mesopotamia. British rule and the Ahd-al-Iraq clashed for the first time in January
1920 at the desert oasis of Deir-ez-Zor, situated on the Upper Euphrates 400 miles north-west of
Baghdad. Because the border was not defined (and indeed the separate status of Syria and Iraq
remained uncertain), a British political officer was in residence. In October 1920, British forces
evacuated Syria, and the home government decided that Deir would be part of Syria.
This word reached the Sharifians but not the British in Baghdad. In December, Sharifian-led
tribesmen seized Deir, locking up the British agent, and declaring it a part of Feisal's Syria.
Uncertain as to whether the Sharifians were Turkish cat’s-paws or what, Wilson at last learned
what decisions had been taken and evacuated Dear. Unfortunately, other representatives of the
Abd- al-Iraqi strove to push the boundary of Syria further to the east and attempted to raise the
tribes. Raiding resulted, and not until May was the frontier stabilized along its present lines after
a series of British retreats.
On 2 June, A. T. Wilson met with a delegation of Arab leaders to discuss what the mandate
meant. The Arabs reminded Wilson of the Anglo-French declaration of November 1918. Ever
the dutiful administrator, Wilson could only say that political arrangements would be
implemented when the terms of the mandate were known. Privately, he doubted the capacity of
the Iraqi population to govern itself:
There are neither leaders nor class, nor opinion existing able to take an advanced
part; half the population, Arabs, Persians,
Kurds, Jews and Christians, Shiah and Sunni, all grouped and mutually
unsympathetic. Sheriffian Persians, pan-Kurd, pan-Arab, pan- Islam, and C.U.P.
[Committee of Union and Progress, or 'Young Turks'] intrigues are rife, added to
Russian Bolshevism and Indian sedition. This is the real centre of Jewry and weak
traders, as well as the ancient churches. Government by sympathetic political
officer [himself] has been very successful, and must continue for some time.17
Meeting such a brick wall, the Iraqi nationalists took matters into their own hands. What now
developed was a rapprochement between the Sunni and Shiite clergy, Islam politicized against
Western dominance. Accustomed as they were to treating tribesmen as simple brigands, the
British missed the extent to which the tribes could understand wider political
movements and, in their own fashion, participate in politics.
Ramadhan began on 19 May, and Shiite and Sunni mosques in turn began holding services,
Mauluds (celebrations of the Prophet's birth), that were open to members of the other
community. Although political meetings were proscribed, religious gatherings were not, and A.
T. Wilson refrained from interfering. Mauluds, were held alternatively in Sunni and Shiite
mosques, and provided the setting for political preaching, not only by the ulama but by members
of the Ahd-al-Iraqi. So the word went forth.18
Since early in the year, A. T. Wilson had opposed further reductions in the garrison, warning of
an increasing tempo of anti-British agitation in the Euphrates Valley, especially at the two Shiah
holy cities of Kerbala and Najaf, but also at Naisiriyah on the Lower Euphrates and Diwaniyah
on the Middle Euphrates. He strove to alert the home and Indian governments to what he saw as
an extremely dangerous situation. His efforts were not appreciated.19 Haldane, however, had
heard such alarms all too often and no longer took them seriously. He thought
Wilson unreliable and tried to curtail Wilson's habit of cabling the War Office to report troubles.
So did the War Office, which resented his freely expressed opinions on matters military. Writing
afterwards, Haldane commented:
The political officer, I have noticed on many occasions, and I refer to the soldier
qua-political, seems to lose all sense of military principles soon after he joins the
civil administration If permitted, he would like to scatter broadcast the forces,
often small in number, which are available for the maintenance of order. In fact he
sees no harm in being weak everywhere and strong nowhere. He seems to
overlook the fairly obvious fact that isolated troops generally require large forces
to rescue them if they become beleaguered, and relies on his political prestige and
acumen.20
Persian Troubles
Just as Sharifian feeling was rising in Iraq, matters came to a boil in north-west Persia. On 18
May, 15 Bolshevik ships shelled the ex-White ships at Enzeli. After hurried negotiations, the
British commander complied with the Bolshevik demands, disarmed the ships, and gave them
over. He evacuated his own missions from Enzeli and Kazian to Menjil, 50 miles inland. This
coup triggered alarms about the future of the British-backed government in Persia and about the
long feared Bolshevik invasion. On 9 June, A. T. Wilson once more warned that continued
Reductions in the occupation forces suggested to Iraqis that the British would not maintain the
mandate so lately assumed. Worse, the Army itself was 'alike in numbers, composition, and
fighting efficiency, incapable of defending the populations of [the] frontier divisions [provinces]
...against aggression, and of maintaining, or, in case of need, restoring internal order over any
considerable area. .21 Perhaps because such warnings and the source were wearisomely
familiar, Haldane remained optimistic and scotched Wilson's reports as alarmist:
The civil Commissioner still says that he is anxious regarding the situation. I am
not and have never been, but he has not been opposed to Germans for 41/2 years.
His underlings are mostly young and inexperienced people and seem to me to be
too ready to jump to conclusions and take counsel of their fears. The result is a
continued cry of 'wolf. '...the situation is no worse than when I arrived in March.
The Arab may be influenced by religious motives but is mainly out for loot and
does not want to get killed I have no fear of a general rising. Tribes have diverse
interests, and I do not think that the combating force, be it Sherifian or Turkish,
is capable of organising a general movement or a continuous series of raids on our
communications such as might paralyse the question of supply.22
It was not obvious that the Arab tribes posed any kind of threat comparable even to the Kurds, let
alone on the level of North-West Frontier Pathans. Early in the Mesopotamia Campaign,
British forces had fought pitched battles with tribesmen at Shaiba near Basra and at Nasiriyah on
the Lower Euphrates and had prevailed. Thereafter, Arabs had sporadically raided British lines
of communications and supply dumps, but their object was so plainly loot that their military
threat went unremarked. Thus, the principle governing Haldane's dispositions remained
concentration in the centre of Mesopotamia and organization of the garrison as a striking force to
deal with sporadic, localized outbreaks.
Thawah (Revolt)
Given the strategic situation he faced, Haldane sought to consolidate small posts so as to be able
to form mobile columns that could react to outbreaks of the restiveness that he saw as
Endemic in the postwar Near East. The only difficulty with this approach was that it required
mobile units, not cavalry or armoured cars so much as infantry with their own transport and
secure railways. As it was, only 500 British and between 2,500 and 3,000 Indian infantry could
be described as mobile, and railways were easily disrupted, so that Haldane went through the
revolt unable to respond promptly to developing threats even though his tactics throughout were
to form punitive columns. Haldane had expected trouble in the North, and events bore him ~
out. Beginning in April, the situation in Mosul began to deteriorate as uncertainty grew over
French and British intentions concerning Syria and Iraq. Hostile meetings were held, and antiBritish notices were posted on walls at night. Raids on lines of communication increased, and a
train was destroyed nearby on 24, May. There were rumours of a body of 'Iraqis' in the vicinity
of Mosul. The Sharifian leader, Jamil al-Madfai'i, announced from across the Syrian border that
Abdullah was at Deir-ez-Zor and would soon march over to declare the Amirate of Iraq. In the
meantime, Jamil said, the population could start by killing all the British they could flnd.
To head off such an eventuality, General Fraser arranged for armoured cars or aircraft daily to
visit Tel Afar, a large village on the edge of the desert 40 miles west of Mosul. Tel Afar
appeared to be a good place to meet an incursion because a force of British-officered gendarmes,
who could benefit from some stiffening, held the town. Unfortunately, on the night of 3/4 June,
the gendarmes themselves rebelled and murdered their British commanding officer. On the next
morning, a group from the powerful Shammar tribe led by Jamil entered Tel Afar and killed the
remainder of the British staff of the gendarmerie. After sacking the town, the tribesmen
ambushed two approaching armoured cars and killed their crews, too. Gathering some nearby
tribesmen, Jamil marched east to threaten Mosul. The sack of Tel Afar triggered a rising
throughout the Shammar and other nearby tribes. Telegraph lines were cut, and all roads from
Mosul were blocked. Tribesmen began to settle all kinds of old scores, raiding Christian villages
for starters. Fraser immediately (5 June) sent a column from Mosul, which encountered
Jamil at Albu Marid as he was assembling to attack Mosul. A brief fight ensued, and Jamil's
forces fled to Syria. On 9 June, the avenging column dispensed condign punishment to Tel Afar.
As A. T. Wilson had proposed, the hapless town was levelled. Fraser announced that it would not
be rebuilt and relocated the residents to settlements ii south of Mosul. The events at Tel Afar did
not shake Haldane. He departed for Teheran, where he appraised the Persian situation before
returning on 24 June to his summer HQ at Karind, to which hundreds of British women and
children were sent for the summer. In fairness, his lack of prescience was not unique. The Mosul
political officer was delighted by the success of the column, which had 'pricked the sharifian
bubble, and repaired our prestige by showing we had troops and were prepared to use them. ,23
Trouble on the Middle Euphrates
Hardly had Tel Afar blown up when trouble arose south of Baghdad. The great Shiite holy city
of Kerbala provided the forum and the direction for opponents of the British mandate. The Shiite
world itself was under siege and unsettled in 1920, partly due to the state of Persia and partly due
to the unsettled leadership of the Shiite community itself, the Muitahid, the clerics who exercised
a powerful legal and religious authority, never more than during periods when these Shiite tribes
were ruled successively by Turkish Sunnis then by the British. The aged Saiyid M. Kadhim
Yazdi had died in 1919, and Shiites looked to his contemporary, the Mui tahid Mirza
Muhammad Taqi of Kerbala for guidance. He was thought to have issued a fatwah in March
forbidding service under the British. After the Emir Abdullah was proclaimed King of Iraq in
Damascus on 9 March, letters bearing the Multahd's seal reached tribes and towns throughout
Iraq telling them that the time had come to rise up and restore Islamic government. In June,
placards appeared in Hillah and elsewhere south of Baghdad saying that the British were going
to leave Iraq after Ramadhan. On 12 June, the political officer at Kerbala telegraphed that a
rising was Hillah south of Baghdad. A. T. Wilson asked Haldane to send to
India for reinforcements, but Haldane demurred. He thought it sufficient to raise a force of
European volunteers to protect the railway and to deal with local unrest. Ramadhan ended on 18
June, and trouble soon followed that day. Tribesmen south of Baghdad attacked Persian pilgrims
to the Shiite shrines. The British identified the raiders, and the Hillah political officer sent out 50
mounted Iraqi levies to track them down. 24 The rebels entrenched themselves near
Mahmudiyah. The levies attacked and were repulsed on 30 June. Regulars from Hillah
had to be summoned. Forces under British command in the Middle and Lower Euphrates at that
time amounted to only two Indian cavalry regiments and one British and four Indian battalions.
Scattered about the more important towns in company-sized garrisons, they responded to the
unrest by marching through the countryside to show the flag. A. T. Wilson reflected, 'At the
present moment, we have a stage Army which is perpetually showing itself at different points.25
British control had been successful where there were established shaikhs with whom to deal. In
the Middle Euphrates, that is, south of Baghdad as far as Diwaniyah, the dominant tribal
grouping was the Bani Huchaim. It comprised numerous sections that were often at war with one
another but who resisted central control with the same passion as the tribes of the North-West
Frontier of India. In the past, they had defied Turkish rule and seldom if ever paid taxes. Under
British rule, they refused to permit their crops being measured (preliminary to a tax assessment)
and resisted efforts at disarmament. Resistance spread in early 1920 from section to section, so
much so that by the end of May the RAF was called in to re-assert British authority. After a few
days of bombing, which killed or wounded 20 Arabs and some 100 sheep, two rebellious
sections submitted.26 Nor was this an isolated episode. The War Office counted 25 occasions
during the first seven months of 1920 when the RAF had bombed villages.27
British authorities arrested nationalist leaders at Hillah and elsewhere, with no appreciable
consequences. Haldane approved the detention of the Mujtahid's son, Mirza Muhammad Ridha,
who was arrested on 22 June at Kerbala. No rising followed, and Wilson calmed down. By
month's end, he found the situation 'not so bad as it seems in the district~ things are remarkably
quiet; the further from Baghdad the quieter they are. We have re-established the equilibrium on
the Euphrates, and we have done all we wished to
do on the Tigris in the direction of Tel Afar. ...It is really Persia which gives me more anxiety
than Mesopotamia. ..,28
The successful arrests at Hillah encouraged other political officers also to take a tougher line. At
Rumaitha, a small town 120 miles south of Baghdad on the Hillah branch of the Euphrates, the el
political officer, Major C. K. Daly, attempted on 2 July to collect an overdue agricultural loan of
Rs 800 from a popular shaikh of the Bani Huchaim. The shaikh refused, and Daly locked him up.
Before he could be taken away from Rumaitha, his retainers and tenants
took up arms, rescued him, and killed the police. Daly called for reinforcements, but only 312
combatants arrived before the railway was cut north and south of the town. With rebellion in the
air, tribesmen swarmed to Rumaitha and awaited its fall.
The 17th Divisional commander, Major-General Leslie, on 6 July despatched a small relief
column from Diwaniyah. A train carrying water, food, and ammunition accompanied the
column, a necessity given the lack of motor and animal transport and the water needs of even a
small column in the Mesopotamian high summer. On 7 July, it reached a point six miles north of
the besieged town, where it was attacked and surrounded by a large tribal force of between three
and five thousand. Airplanes from the 6th RAF Squadron observed the column being surrounded
but could not communicate the danger. Repeated waves of attacks inflicted 200 casualties.
Beaten and bloodied, the column withdrew in confusion to its base at Imam Hamza, 18 miles
north of Rumaitha. That day Haldane cabled the War Office to ask that India hold a brigade in
readiness for Basra.29
The tribes understood how much the British depended on the railways. By 8 July, they had
captured or derailed six trains between Samawah and Diwaniyah, and, for practical purposes, had
cut the lines of communication between Basra and Baghdad. Meanwhile, the troops in Rumaitha
remained inside the town citadel.30
Beginning on 8 July, the RAF dropped boxes of ammunition to them, and they periodically
raided the town for provisions. But they could not break the siege. The fate of Townshend at Kut
did not bear mentioning. Siege at Samawah. The revolt spread rapidly through most of the Lower
Euphrates. At the least, it consisted of refusals to pay taxes. More often, tribesmen attacked river
craft, railways, and telegraph lines; looted; and attacked individuals and isolated government
forces, such as those at Samawah downstream from Rumaitha. On 3 July the British were able to
get a train from Basra through to Samawah with 100 rifles, but a following train was derailed 12
miles south of the town. On 7 July, patrols found the train and within it the bodies of 12 sepoys
and the engine driver. So began the siege of Samawah. Isolated and besieged by several
thousand Arabs, the Samawah garrison controlled enough ground for aircraft to land safely with
food and small arms ammunition. The last train to get through had carried a large stock of
bombs, and RAF planes bringing provisions took off loaded with bombs to drop on the nearby
tribal encampments. Haldane judged it safe to leave the Samawah garrison
while he deal with more pressing matters. 31 11
With troops hard to come by, Haldane turned increasingly to the RAF. Although only 16
machines were flyable throughout the whole of Iraq and Persia, they reconnoitred and patrolled
railways, in addition to bombing recalcitrant villages and hostile gatherings. For example, on 5
July, planes bombed and machine-gunned villages near a large break in the Rumaitha-Samawah
line Seven miles south-west of Samawah, a pilot spotted 250 black tents laid out in military
fashion (parallel lines and a fan-shaped line of outposts), which aircraft bombed and strafed.
Such exploits did little to arrest the growing tide of rebellion. On the night of 14/15 July, 45
levies guarding Ibnali in the Shimayah Division south of Baghdad deserted with their rifles. By
the third week of July, tribesmen had besieged another British garrison at Kufah, 37 miles southwest of Hillah. Reinforcements Haldane had repeatedly said that the garrison could not deal with
an internal rising, but he hesitated to request reinforcements since he had heard countless times
that none were available. On 8 July, he broke down and cabled to the War Office for an infantry
brigade to be held in readiness in India for despatch to Basra.
The War Office on its own had cabled the Government of India on 2 July to hold a division
ready for Mesopotamia.32 Under Henry Wilson's leadership, the War Office now increased
Haldane's belated request to a division (albeit one with only three brigades) .33
Haldane had already committed his reserves in the failed effort to relieve Rumaitha. He sent
another brigade and some field artillery to Diwaniyah. He also requested that the brigade held
for Basra be sent immediately and warned (15 July) that the entire division might well be
required. Haldane also weighed withdrawing from the entire Mosul vilayet. Previously as
confident as Wilson was alarmist, Haldane now had to admit that the rising along the Euphrates
had completely changed the picture. He still hoped to concentrate sufficient reserves at Baghdad
to preserve communications with both Basra and Persia and then to pacify the countryside in a
thoroughgoing fashion during 1921. But a year was a long time when rebellion is in full spate,
and Haldane could neither expect time from the rebels nor reinforcements from abroad. More
realistically, he proposed to hold the Lower Euphrates with the division in transit from India by
basing it at Nasiriyah, centre of the Muntafik confederation, and to use existing forces as a
strategic reserve. Not yet an active centre of rebellion, Nasiriyah had been an important British
base during the War and remained vital to keeping the Muntafiks in line and thus in maintaining
the Tigris as a secure line of communication. with the Baghdad to Basra railway disrupted, the
Tigris was the only other north-south line of communication in Iraq. The rebellion could not
spread east to the Tigris, no matter what34
Henry Wilson, although in Spa, recognized the danger that Haldane was in. As his diary (15
July) recorded: 'At midnight, just before going to bed, I wired to Winston that in view of
reports from Mesopotamia I urged the dispatch of a whole division from India and not only a
brigade, for it was essential to give these Arabs on the lower Euphrates a good lesson.35
Churchill informed the Cabinet on 17 July that 'The situation in Mesopotamia has come to a
head. ' Rumaitha was about to fall, he warned. Previously the scourge of over-garrisoned
outposts of Empire, Churchill reacted with characteristic pugnacity at Arab defiance: ‘The rising
on the Lower Euphrates should be stamped out with the utmost vigour, ' he told his colleagues.36
On 18 July, Haldane requested that the division he had requested be held in readiness in India
'under a commander who knows the Euphrates, for despatch at [the] shortest notice, should
circumstances demand, to Basrah, with full equipment and transport for operations towards
Samawah. ' The brigades at both Kirkuk and Mosul seemed too weak to serve as a general
reserve at Baghdad, and he feared to risk a premature offensive unless he had a sufficient
reserve to deal with the unexpected. For this reason, Haldane cancelled plans to relieve
Samawah. The rising, he reported to the War Office, 'threatens to be become general and may
spread [to] the Haj [the Muntafik country] .' Bolsheviks were to blame, he and A. T. Wilson
decided. He repeated his plea and asked that the rest of the Indian division--two of the three
brigades not already despatched--be readied. Most of the senior members of the Government
were at Spa for a conference with the Allies and the Germans. But Bonar Law and Churchill had
remained behind, and they approved Haldane's request for one brigade to be sent immediately
and the rest of a division to be held in readiness.
Word of the outbreak first reached the English public in mid-July. A Parliamentary question for
Churchill on 13 July asked 'whether an Indian garrison...in Mesopotamia has been surrounded
and cut off by rebel Arabs' and sought particulars of casualties, relief efforts, and the character of
the rebellion. Churchill dismissed the events at Rumaitha as 'purely local in
character...probably the outcome of religious agitation. ' On 15 July, Churchill faced more
questions, including a call for an investigating commission. He now admitted that rail
communications between Basra and Baghdad had been severed and that Iraq was in a bad way.
He acknowledged that Indian Army reinforcements were standing by but declined to release
casualty figures.
As Churchill penned these words, troops in Iraq were proceeding south to rescue the garrisons
trapped at Rumaitha and Kufah. General Leslie gave operational command for the relief of
Rumaitha to Brigadier Frank Coningham, commander of the 51st Brigade. A
career Indian Army soldier (Gurkhas) with a long record of frontier fighting, Coningham had
served in Mesopotamia since 1916. By 16 July, Coningham's relief column had concentrated at
Imam Hamza, 18 miles north of Rumaitha. He had six battalions and a few other 28! units, but
most were shells. The 2/Royal Irish Rifles and the "11/10th Gurkhas, to take two examples, were
at half strength. The 11 operations to relieve Rumaitha typified the logistical and tactical rl
difficulties encountered throughout this rebellion. The main problem that Coningham faced was
that his line of communication, the railway from Hillah to Diwaniyah, was not secure. Even the
64 miles south from Baghdad to Hillah were not completely safe until General Leslie arranged
for the line to be held by 'blockhouses, sandbagged double-platoon posts spaced between two
and four miles apart. Holding this line consumed two battalions, and even so could not prevent
telegraph wires from being cut and the railway itself being tampered with. As clumsy and as
time-consuming as blockhousing was, Leslie had little choice, since only trains could carry the
equipment, provisions, fodder, water, and materials for rebuilding the railway that the column
needed. As a result, Coningham's column slowly proceeded south along the railway in a
'diamond' or modified square formation, in which animal transport carts and the train were
surrounded on all sides by troops.37 Frequently, it halted to repair the tracks. The country was
cut by frequent gullies, and the only way to get supplies across was by railway bridges, which
imposed great delays, as the transport carts had to be first unloaded and their contents carried by
pack down and then up the precipitous little inclines. By 19 July, Coningham's relief column had
reached the site where the earlier column had come to grief. There they found some 5,000
insurgents holding a meticulously prepared position across the railway line. 29
Iraqi officers had adapted dried up canals into a trench system, n whose full extent was
concealed by abundant vegetation. The sophisticated defences embraced several abandoned
villages from which enfilading fire could be poured into any frontal advance. Even so,
Coningham deployed his forces and attacked immediately. Firing from mutually supporting
positions, the Ii tribesmen easily repulsed three successive British assaults. :Coningham,
definitely a risk-taker, renewed the attack at dawn the next morning. First, however, elements of
the 1/10th Gurkhas, wading through water up to their armpits, carried Lewis guns across
the Euphrates. At 0615, they began to enfilade the Arabs..Surprised, the insurgents fled their
fortress-like position, and Coningham's column relieved Rumaitha that afternoon.38 l
Haldane was sufficiently encouraged by Coningham's rapid progress that on 18 July he cabled
the War Office to ask that the second division merely be held in readiness and not sent to Iraq
until demanded. At this time, Haldane also decided that he could deal with the revolt by
withdrawing troops from the Upper Euphrates ' (i.e., north-west of Baghdad}, Kirkuk, and the
Lower Euphrates alike, and concentrating them at Baghdad. A. T. Wilson agreed with
his appreciation that just one brigade from India would suffice. On 21 July, Haldane reiterated
that only one brigade would be needed, provided, he prudently added, that another division was
kept at the ready in India. Sir Henry Wilson, whatever his reluctance to hold Persia, had no such
qualms concerning Iraq. He rejected Haldane's plans, ordering him not to abandon Mosul and
instead to draw upon the British troops still summering at Karind. Churchill agreed, as did Edwin
Montagu at the India Office. On account of Ireland and Iraq, Churchill asked the Finance
Committee on 22 July for a supplementary estimate of £11,000,000. Iraq's share was £6,000,000.
On 23 July, the Times published a letter from T. E. Lawrence decrying British attempts to
impose an Anglo-Indian administration on the Arabs of Iraq. If it were true that British policy
sought to establish an Arab state, he asked, why were British and Indian troops quashing an Arab
revolt? The views of 'Lawrence of Arabia' received great play in the press. Both the Times and
the Manchester Guardian repeatedly ran leaders attacking the occupation of Iraq. The right flank
of Lloyd George's government attacked as well. Some of the strongest criticism came from the
high Tory Morning Post. Its military correspondent, Colonel Repington, denounced (29 July) the
occupation of both Mesopotamia and Palestine as unwieldy outgrowths of Lloyd George's
'strategy of the side-show. ' He estimated the cost of the Iraq garrison as between L30 and L40
million and repeated the fiction that the garrison totalled 80,000. In spite of such numbers, 'We
are rapidly reverting to a worse military situation than in 1914'.
Disasters and Disappointments in the Middle Euphrates
So it proved. Another relief effort fared less well. Since 20 July, a small body of British civilians,
troops, and levies had been besieged at the town of Kufah on the Hindiyah branch of the
Euphrates near the great Shiite shrine of Najaf. After l f I concentrating scattered outposts,
Haldane ordered his remaining mobile reserve, the 53rd Brigade (Brig. G. A. F. Sanders) at
Tekrit, to proceed south to Hillah and to prepare to relieve Kufah. By 20 July, most of the
brigade had arrived at Hillah or pushed on to Diwaniyah, 52 miles north of Rumaitha. since
Rumaitha had been relieved, the political officer assigned to the 17th Division urged that a small
force be sent out to reassure the countryside near Kufah. Although Haldane had told General
Leslie not to send any columns farther than three miles from Hillah, Leslie bowed to the [1
request. So, late in the afternoon of 23 July a small mixed column Ii of four infantry companies
and two squadrons of Indian cavalry Ii under Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel R. N. Hardcastle of the
Manchester Regiment marched six miles south to Imam Bakr. Slight as this force was, it
amounted to virtually all the mobile troops in Hillah. General Leslie had ordered no advance
beyond Imam Bakr, and the medical officer of the column also advised against proceeding
further. But Colonel Pulley at Hillah had asked Hardcastle to march another day because he
thought that the II advantages of showing the flag outweighed any possible risks. The column
then did so in the full heat of mid-summer Iraq (1200) and without adequate supplies of water. In
1920, the British Army believed that troops should refrain from drinking; water in the heat of the
day while marching, so 'water discipline’ was rigidly enforced. By the time the column halted for
the night on 24 July at Birs Nimrud, it was in sorry shape. Towards evening, reconnaissance
revealed several thousand Arabs advancing on the camp from the north. Arabs had got between
the camp and their base at Hillah, 15 miles distant. The politicals advised Hardcastle to return to
Hillah even if it meant a night march. Hardcastle also had standing orders to avoid engagements
with superior forces, and this assembly far outnumbered his column. Weighing the risks of a
night march under attack against the prospect of losing Hillah, Hardcastle elected to withdraw.
As the withdrawal began, the transport animals bolted through the Manchesters. The Arabs,
mounted as well as on foot, broke into the camp. The tribesmen had little trouble in capturing
many of the exhausted Manchesters, stripping them on the spot but killing few. Only the tenacity
of the Indian cavalry (the Scinde Horse) saved the column. They drew their sabres and charged
the marauders. Despite losing heavily in horses, they finally cleared the camp by fixing bayonets
and charging on foot. The tribesmen fell back, being more interested in looting the camp and
rounding up baggage animals than in butchering the enemy. What remained of the column
reached Hillah in the small hours of 25 July. 39
Losses had been heavy (20 confirmed dead and 360 wounded or missing). What Hardcastle and
his political advisors had not known was that reinforcements had been en route to Hillah from
Diwaniyah and that, consequently, the night retirement to save Hillah had been unnecessary.
This shocking episode exposed both the extent of the rebellion and the feebleness of even the
most reliable British units. Haldane immediately decided to evacuate Diwaniyah and to
concentrate at Hillah, while abandoning further efforts to relieve Kufah, In the wake of this
disaster a barrage of criticism, the Cabinet had to weigh Haldane's requests for additional troops.
On 25 July, he cabled for additional troops, asking that another brigade be embarked
immediately even without transport. The next day, he warned the War Office that another
division of reinforcements might be needed. The Cabinet met on 26 July but reached no decision,
postponing the issue for further consideration on 30 July. On the 30th, Haldane cabled to the War
Office to say that the 'Rebellion has spread almost to Baghdad, where my position is by no
means secure. 1 He asked the War Office to mobilize the second division standing by in India,
the one that had been unnecessary a week earlier. On the same day, Henry Wilson persuaded
Churchill to send it. But Wilson--and Churchill--were less successful at swaying the entire
Cabinet. After this meeting, Churchill cabled Haldane not to expect the second division. So I
shrunken was the Army, he explained, that the Empire was 'at the end of our resources. ,40
The Manchester disaster ignited the smouldering powder keg of the tribes west of the Hillah
Channel, who rose as one at this news. Haldane returned to Baghdad with his headquarters
having been ordered back by Churchill himself. All Haldane's mobile troops were sequestered at
Hillah, so he could scarcely prevent isolated units and posts from being cut off. So troubling had
the situation on the Middle Euphrates become that Haldane also now ordered troops on the
Upper Euphrates to be ready to withdraw immediately to Fallujah. He also ordered that the
massive Hindiyah Barrage be abandoned. Even before the disaster to the Manchesters, the
immobility of British forces ~ad narrowed Haldane's options and forced him to husband his
moblle forces. On 21 July, he ordered Coningham to evacuate Rumaitha and return to
Diwaniyah. Before Coningham could abandon Diwaniyah, however, he first had to evacuate or
dispose of sizeable quantities of stores, which could not be allowed to fall into rebel hands. To
remove his troops, civil personnel, and stores, Coningham collected six locomotives and 250
wagons and put them into a single train that stretched a mile. Because most of the rails and
sleepers north had been torn up, Coningham's troops had to relay the line as it went north, first
taking up rails behind them and then relaying them in front so they could proceed another half
mile. With a pair of RAF planes overhead, they proceeded in this way, half a mile at a time.
Around them, a swarm of tribesmen estimated between 6,000 and 7,000, watched and
waited. 41 Meanwhile, scattered British detachments endeavoured to hold vulnerable positions
along his line of retreat, such as Jarbiuyah. Thirty miles north of Diwaniyah, this town had the
only water en route north.42 On 5 August, Coningham's train found a body of Arabs south of
Jarbuiyah, upon which the Gurkhas inflicted about 200 casualties. His men burned villages
within a five-mile radius in which sleepers or rails taken up from the railways were discovered.
They regained Hillah without further incident. By this stage, the Hillah garrison itself, only 60
miles south of Baghdad, was virtually isolated. The Mujtahid Sayid Hadi-al-Muqutar from Najaf
established a government at Khidr a few days after the disaster to the Manchesters. On 6 August,
divines at Karbela declared the revolt to be a jehad.
A crumb of comfort came from the ability of a select few of Wilson's political officers to
propitiate tribesmen with whom they dealt. During the last week of July, the political officer in
the Hai River area negotiated an agreement with the Muntafik Confederation. For their part, the
Muntafiks agreed to secure the Tigris and to keep two adjacent tribes in line. Captain Bertram II
Thomas, the assistant political officer with the Shattrah tribe in the critical border between the
Diwaniyah Division and the Muntafiks, came to a similar understanding with the most powerful
local shaikh.43 A similar local arrangement was reached on the Upper Euphrates in which two
shaikhs agreed to hold Hit for the British until such time as they decided to reoccupy it and not to
molest British garrisons immobilized at Fallujah and Ramadi. In the Middle Euphrates, more
basic persuasion helped. Political officers secured the neutrality of two tribes by agreeing to
return lands that the Turks had transferred to their tribal rivals (and now rebels) .In the case of
another tribe, the British matched a payment of two thousand Pounds offered by rebellious tribes.
These agreements demonstrated what conciliation might accomplish, so long as political officers
had some credit left. Where they had spent their credit, as in the Middle Euphrates, the British
had to fall back on brute military power.
Because Haldane lacked mobility, either from his units having adequate transport or from having
a functioning railway system, he I could not easily redeploy to meet threats as they developed. At
the beginning of August, there were still five Indian and four British battalions in Persia, and
another five in Kurdistan. Six battalions remained at Mosul, and another five formed the garrison
of Baghdad. The heart of the rebellion, the mid-Euphrates, engaged 13 understrength Indian and
two British battalions, as well as two Indian cavalry regiments.45 On top of these difficulties,
reinforcements from India reaching Basra were disappointing. Wilson learned that most fresh
battalions were well below strength, If and, he told the India Office in mid-July, .I am credibly
informed that half of the regiment which recently arrived at Basrah had not finished their first
musketry course and there were insufficiency of trained men in regiment to man its Lewis guns.
.46 To take another example, the 3/7th Rajputs, who arrived on 6 August, had
Little of their equipment with them and indeed carried only20 rounds of ammunition apiece.
On 7 August, rumours reached Haldane that the Zoba tribe southwest of Fallujah was about to
rise. A day later, he heard that the Muntafik tribes near Nasiriyah were about to revolt as well as
those near Mahmudiyah, much closer to Baghdad. Believing that Baghdad itself was now
endangered, Haldane ordered them brought up the Tigris immediately. Hard-pressed to decide
where the danger was greatest, Haldane realized that by taking control of the irrigation canals
that watered the lands of these tribes, he had a powerful weapon at hand. He reflected in his
diary:
All these places, had I thought of it, should have been seized at beginning of
rising, and had I known more of the curiosities of this
country I would have had a defence scheme prepared which would have been
very advantageous. No person here gave me the idea
of getting control of the canals on which Arab tribes depend although I enquired
how best I could put a spoke in the Arab wheels. The civil people put one off
anything that might
remotely affect the payment of revenue.47
But this tactic offered a long term hope at best. In the short run, Haldane had to maintain control
of his only reliable means of moving troops--the railways, he had to safeguard the women and
children at Karind, and he had to relieve besieged posts in the mid-Euphrates. In attempting to
counter Arab attacks on the railways, Haldane in early August fell back on the method that had
succeeded in the Boer War and which Leslie had already begun-- building blockhouses. In Iraq,
blockhouses were sandbagged picket posts along railways sited within rifle range of one ii
another. Their disadvantage was the time and labour involved in building them and the drain on
troops thereafter. Initially, shortage of barbed wire prevented troops from occupying the posts
after dark, since groups of two to six men were sitting ducks for raiders. Haldane sent a column
south from Baghdad by train, while Leslie sent a similar rail column north from Hillah. Carrying
sandbags, water, small arms ammunition, and other supplies, the trains paused every half-mile to
erect a circular blockhouse with sandbags and to repair the railway and telegraph lines. On 19
August, the two trains met, and the line was re-opened, guarded by 120 blockhouses, each with
five soldiers at all times. The Upper Euphrates. The rebellion in the mid-Euphrates also
inevitably affected the tribes on the Upper Euphrates north-west of Baghdad. The powerful Zoba
tribe, 4,000 rifles strong, had for several weeks threatened to rise. On 12 August, a Zoba
murdered the celebrated British political officer, Colonel Gerard Leachman.48 Haldane heard
that day that Zobas would make a stand at the Hindiyah Barrage, a prospect that he welcomed.
He knew too that if he II could regain control of its waters, he would enjoy potent leverage over
the tribes to the South, including those tribes near Kerbala. On 12 August, a column commanded
by Brigadier H. A. Walker (55th Infantry Brigade) re-occupied Musaiyib. A day later, Walker's
column reached the Barrage and drove off a small party of Arabs. It would take time for the
screws to turn in the North-East
More alarming, evidence accumulated throughout the first week of August that the revolt had
spread beyond the Euphrates and that trouble was brewing fast on the Diyalah River, a tributary
of the Tigris that formed the main route to Persia. This development, along with the Zoba rising,
meant that the II uprising was no localized rebellion by the Shiite tribes of the II Middle
Euphrates but something approaching a national revolt against British rule. The revolt in the
north-east took the same form as elsewhere: raids on revenue offices and attacks on the
railways and telegraphs--the most visible tokens of the British presence. On 12 August, rebels
captured the town of Diltawa. Kifri and Qizil Robat were also besieged. In response, Haldane
cobbled together his last mobile reserves at Baghdad, the two skeletal British cavalry regiments,
and sent them east to Baqubah. With less than two companies of the 1/94 Indian (Russell's
Infantry) Regiment, Under Brigadier H. G. Young, they were to carry out punitive operations
against villages implicated in the trouble. After one such punitive operation on 12 August at
night, Young's column ran into serious trouble. Russell's Infantry collapsed when attacked in the
dark by a small Arab party, and the animal transport of the column stampeded. Young and his
demoralized men were lucky to make it back to Baqubah, in the process losing three Lewis guns
and some carts. They evacuated Baqubah and headed back to Baghdad. Punitive operations were
supposed to deter unrest, but this defeat triggered widespread and spontaneous revolt. Nearby
detachments at Qara Tepi and Quraghan on the Baghdad-Karind road were surrounded, and the
bridges they were to have guarded were burned. More seriously, they sacked the town of
Shahraban and starting on 15 August besieged the handful of British officials
and Iraqi Levies in the old Turkish barracks. After a three-day siege, during which the Levies
deserted, the rebels stormed the barracks and killed all the British, save one woman, the wife of
the political officer who was slain before her eyes. Raiders from one small tribe attacked the
refugee camp at Baqubah and I sacked the town itself. Although the tribesmen did not try to I
hold Baqubah, they showed up the frailty of British lines of communications with Persia, whose
safety was their reason for rema1n1ng, 1n Mesopotam1a and where the women and ch1ldren of
the garrison remained. As Haldane told the War Office, to open and keep open our line of
communication with Persia is our first duty. 149 In these circumstances, he had no choice but
finally to draw upon the British and Indian troops that had remained in Persia and to form them
into punitive columns to march back west into Iraq and dispense condign punishment. Haldane
organized another punitive column, the 34th, at Baghdad under Brigadier Coningham, drawn
from troops that were to have relieved Kufah in the mid-Euphrates. Finally assembled on 5
September, it proceeded east, while the forces from Persia moved into Iraq. After pushing aside
minor attacks, Coningham retook Sharaban on 9 and 10 September, collecting fines in rifles, and
announcing terms. The main purpose of his column was to repair the railway and safeguard it
with blockhouses, while taking control of canal regulators and blockhousing them. By the third
week of September, another column had re-occupied Deltawa. In late September, by which time
most tribes in the north-east had submitted, Haldane was able to evacuate British families from
Karind.50
Whitehall Reacts
Haldane hesitated to demand reinforcements because he had knew with whom he was dealing
and held under no illusions. The Cabinet's Finance committee, meeting on 3 August, considered
and rejected his requests for reinforcements. The General Staff disagreed vehemently. For Henry
Wilson, the events in Iraq confirmed what he had been saying for a long time.51 On 5 August, he
reminded the full Cabinet of his views.
Once again, I cannot too strongly press on the Government the danger, the
extreme danger, of His Majesty's Army being spread allover the world, strong
nowhere, weak everywhere, and
With no reserve to save a dangerous situation or avert a coming danger I would
also add a word of warning against calling on India for any further troops -beyond
the Division now under orders -since I am convinced that such action may entail
consequences to our position in India out of all proportion to the value of the
reinforcements which she can provide.
He insisted the Cabinet withdraw 'Norperforce' to a railhead. In a supporting paper, Wilson
warned that Britain could not abandon Mosul, which would otherwise fall into the hands of the
Kurds and Turks as well as encourage rebels throughout the country. If the division from India
did not suffice, Wilson advised withdrawing 11 Indian battalions from Constantinople and
warned that the Cabinet might well consider evacuating Palestine. Withdrawal of Norperforce,
however, was out of the question due to a Cabinet revolt in which Lords Curzon and Milner
threatened resignation, so the Army in India had to be drawn upon.
As Henry Wilson well knew, India was a weak reed. Having fought a brief war against
Afghanistan in May 1919, the Indian Army found itself ensnared thereafter in Waziristan.
Internally, the outlook for India was clouded, especially by the Hijrat (emigration to
Afghanistan) movement, as pious Muslims heeded their teachers' advice that they could not live
justly under British tyranny. On top of this, the swollen wartime Indian Army was in the midst of
a major reorganization in which battalions were consolidated, regrouped, or abolished outright.
The Government of Nepal, too, had demanded that Gurkha battalions be disbanded, lest its
manhood be decimated. The demands from Iraq for reinforcements not only delayed scheduled
disbandments but also scheduled reliefs of units overseas, many of whose personnel had spent
more than five years away from India. Such delays threatened morale and perhaps even the
effectiveness and loyalty of units whose men had enlisted on 'hostilities only' terms.53
By late summer, the Government of India consented to supply three British and 17 Indian
battalions. A. T. Wilson noted (17 August) that the Indian division due at Basra had no British
battalions. 54 By early September, the Army Council worried about whether India was
sufficiently calm to send even Indian troops to Mesopotamia on the scale necessary.55 The
British garrison in India was 9,000 under strength, and comprised young, ill-trained drafts. The
major danger (apart from the effectiveness of such green troops in action) was the effect on
Indian opinion, which might only too readily conclude that 'black peppers' were being used to
spare the lives of 'red peppers' (British troops) in doing the dirty work of the Empire. The Irish
rebellion had consumed nearly all available British troops at home, and only a few could be
shifted from Constantinople and elsewhere in the East. Indian political opinion, shaped by the
high tide of Hindu-Muslim comity dating from the Lucknow Pact of 1915, spoke with almost
one voice to denounce British policy in Mesopotamia in general and the use of Indian troops in
particular.56 The War Office floated the idea of asking New Zealand, Canada, and Australia for
troops, either directly for Mesopotamia or to replace British troops in Singapore or the West
Indies.
Evidence mounted that British rule was living on borrowed time, and not much at that. On 14
August, the rebels succeeded in cutting all telephone and telegraph cables out of Baghdad, but
Haldane was able to communicate by wireless with London and Simla. Outposts, however,
seldom had wireless or the personnel needed to operate such sets as were at hand. For this
reason, Haldane and Wilson had a poor idea of what was going on in the field. I' On 11 August,
Indian units that had reached Basra began to move upriver to Kut on the Tigris and to Nasiriyah
on the Euphrates to ensure that the tribes of the Muntafik confederation remained quiet. The
Muntafik were thought to have 43,000 rifles, vastly more than any other tribe. Nearly 31,000 of
them were modern. The danger posed by any rebellion from them was that such a revolt might
well spread east to the Tigris and sever the only secure line of communication that the British
had. Hence, although only sections revolted, the Muntafiks figured prominently in Haldane's and
Wilson's calculations. At month's end, the insurrection spread into South Kurdistan. At Kifri,
tribal raiders killed the political officer on 26 August. Detachments in south Kurdistan at Kifri
and Kirkuk were cut off and could not be evacuated by rail. Worrying as these developments
were, they involved only a handful of small tribes totalling some 2,000 rifles. The key to the
Kurdish situation remained the Hamawand tribe of Shaikh Mahmud that the British had beaten in
1919. A. T. Wilson warned again that it would soon be necessary to evacuate the entire Mosul
vilayet. Haldane disagreed sharply. The main tribes in the Kirkuk and Arbil divisions were still
quiet, so Mosul was safe.58 More to the point, Mosul could not be readily evacuated, since the
18th Division there depended on hired transport, an uncertain commodity in times of internal
strife. In the event of a retirement from Mosul, drivers and their animals would melt away. Such
a retreat would be like General Elphinstone's withdrawal from Kabul in 1840. Doing so would be
perilous and certain to be costly in stores, animals, and lives. A less drastic choice was to
withdraw from Kirkuk, probably a cure worse than the disease, since in that case 'the whole of
Kurdistan will of course relapse into anarchy'. 59 On 18 August, he cabled home to ask
permission to use gas against the insurgents.60 He had gas artillery shells.61 On 21 August,
Haldane cabled to the War Office to
report that 'We are confronted with a military situation of the utmost
gravity. ' The British controlled only eight of Iraq's 15 divisions:
Detachments in the Dulamin division are isolated both from Baghdad and
from each other. The Hillah, Diwaniyah and Shamiyah Divisions [midEuphrates] are still in active revolt as also is the Diyalah Division with
which we have not yet dealt. The Kirkuk Division is disturbed. The
Muntafiq Division, though not yet in revolt, is unsettled, and we are not in
full political control. Sunni as well as Shiah tribes are involved. There is
something approximating to a general rising in the Baghdad wilayet.62
On 28 August, Haldane cabled to the War Office that he might require substantially more troops
than previously spoken of, indeed, two complete divisions. These forces, organized into two
corps, would, he admitted, equal the numbers employed to defeat the Turks in 1917-18. But, the
Turks 'were very much smaller and more concentrated than those...now arrayed against us and at
a time when communications did not require as much protection as now. ' 63
A Failure of Insight
Throughout these nervous days, British generals and politicals in Iraq never doubted that the
source of the troubles lay outside Iraq.64 What motivated the rebels in Mesopotamia
remained a puzzle to those who had to fight it. No one accepted that nationalism might be a
genuine factor. By late summer, both Wilson and Haldane thought that what had begun as a
'political' movement directed by Mu;tahids and leading Baghdadis now had no shape or
direction.65 Haldane opined, 'I am convinced that the rising is anarchical and religious though
initiated on political basis, and peace can come only by the sword,’6 To him, this meant burning
villages, relieving besieged garrisons, facing down uncertain tribes, and in general hoping that
the rebellion would run out of steam before the British Empire ran out of troops. In a paper
thought highly enough of to be circulated to the Cabinet, Major H. H. F. Macdonald Tyler,
political officer at Hillah, reflected in early August that:
[T]he political outlook of at least 90 percent of the tribesmen of the
Euphrates is bounded by the territorial limits of the tribe The
tribesman's outlook is strictly parochial: his neighbour is regarded
far more as an actual or potential enemy than as a fellow member
of a single race. A spirit of nationality may probably be relegated
to a very low seat among the factors which have led to the
rising.67
Haldane and Wilson did agree on what had precipitated the revolt: the San Remo declaration,
which had raised expectations; the too- rapid reduction in the garrison, which had suggested an
imminent British evacuation; and the refractory nature of the Iraqis themselves. Gertrude Bell
noted how rebellion had united many groups: The end in view was an Islamic Government, but
apart from the wave of nationalist feeling, which was a world-wide consequence of the war and
should not be discounted, it made a different appeal to different sections of the community. To
the Shiah majtahids it meant a theocratic state under Shariah law, and to this end they did not
hesitate to preach Jihad; to the Sunnis and free-thinkers of
Baghdad it was an independent Arab State under the Amir Abdullah; to the tribes it meant no
government at all.68
The War Office in September reported that the outbreak in Iraq grew from 'a general strategic
plan directed, ostensibly from Moscow, against France and England, more particularly the latter'.
Its conclusion was blunt: 'As long as the Moscow Direction survives to absorb into the
organization, thrive on and exploit agencies of local discontent, Nationalism will be the
instrument of [Bolshevik] Internationalism, and until the International Monster has been starved,
or severed at the neck, its various heads will have to be dealt with in detail when and where they
rise. ,69 Montagu concluded helplessly, 'we are fighting against an unknown enemy. ' That the
revolt enjoyed central direction and external control went unquestioned. He questioned whether
'this centre is in Rome or America [a reference to Standard Oil]. Moscow and Berlin have suboffices; but probably neither of these is the centre. ' If this were true, Montagu argued:
Instead of the War Office looking to Mesopotamia, Mesopotamia should be looking to
the War Office for assistance; and the Foreign Office, India Office and War Office
Intelligence Branches should combine to seek the focus of this conspiracy. We must
recognise that we are fighting in Mesopotamia not a constitutional question as to the future
government...but for the very existence of civilisation in the Middle East. If we are driven out,
only anarchy can supervene.70 Even so level-headed an observer as Gertrude Bell agreed that:
There is no lack of evidence to show that a league of conspiracy, organised by the Bolsheviks in
co-operation with the Turkish Nationalists, had been long in touch with extremist Arab political
societies, with the object of exploiting the common ground of religion--the only unifying bond
between these various elements--in order to undermine the British position in the Middle East.71
The tactical inferences to be drawn from this diagnosis were unfortunate. Nothing done within
Iraq itself could succeed until the conspiracy was attacked at its source. Therefore, this
interpretation of the revolt suggested no course of action for the military, no offensives, but only
defensive measures to safeguard communications and to relieve besieged posts. From these
conclusions, Montagu reasoned that Britain had first to restore order in Mesopotamia and then to
ally itself with the more moderate, 'pro-British' Arab nationalists. And this meant dealing with
the Emir Faisal, who, unlike his brother Abdullah, had no overt link with the revolt.
recriminations
On 26 August, Churchill informed Haldane that an additional 19 battalions would be sent from
India, as well as two more air squadrons. 72 Whatever his own responsibilities, direct as well as
indirect, for the state of affairs in Iraq, Churchill did not hesitate before offering Haldane the
benefits of his advice. Haldane had described the small-scale encounters in which troops had
bested the rebels, and Churchill seized upon this point: Although reports are made by you that
you have a large Army at your disposal you undertake very little fighting and no serious fighting
apart from disaster to Manchester Regiment. Is this because aggressive movement is impossible
owing to great heat or elusive and non-aggressive enemy tactics? Man for man, who is stronger?
Would it be possible for a mixed force of three or four thousand men with adequate transport to
make their way through the country, or would enemy concentrations [able to]...immobilize and
destroy a British independent force of such dimensions be met with?...I note also that the enemy
have never successfully assaulted a fortified post...73
Of course, heavily defended posts ruled out forming powerful, highly mobile columns, not unless
Haldane received far larger reinforcements. Haldane discreetly refrained from making this point
in his response and replied that such a force as Churchill envisaged could proceed safely along
only a few lines of advance. For practical purposes, the acute shortage of potable water and
firewood throughout Iraq meant that no large force could hope to operate more than a few miles
away from riverain or rail lines of communication. The prospect of operations northeast of
Baghdad on the road to Persia was troubling, but Haldane could never forget that Persia, not
Iraq, mattered most to Whitehall. When trouble first brewed up in the north-east, Haldane
thought that an entire division, transport and divisional troops alike, would eventually be
required to re- establish British control of the road to Kasvin.74 Once again, he was wrong.
Air Power in Action
During the revolt, the RAF received reinforcements pretty quickly. On 1 August, the 84th
Squadron was formed at Baghdad with DH-9As. By the end of September, the 55th Squadron
had been moved to Baghdad from Constantinople. RAF ground crews assembled 92 aircraft in
Iraq between July and December. Thus, toward the end of August, the RAF began to playa
larger part in operations. Much of its work consisted of simple demonstration flights, showing
the flag aerially wherever needed. On other occasions, the Air Force dispensed rough justice. On
20 August, for example, it bombed Baqubah twice, and two days later it mustered 12 aircraft to
strike the town again. Throughout the revolt, the RAF logged 4,000 hours of flying time and
dropped 100 tons of bombs. It lost 11 aircraft, and another 57 were badly enough damaged to
require repair. 5 The recipients of its attentions certainly did not appreciate them. Two pilots
forced down near Samawah in September were killed, their ears cut off as trophies, and their
teeth knocked out and sold as tokens in the bazaars. After further mutilation, their bodies were
left unburied in a signal token of disrespect.76 Two companies of armoured cars, the other
modern weapon of which so much was expected, arrived in Mesopotamia just as the revolt broke
out in June. Neither the officers nor the men who accompanied the two companies had much
experience at all, and the t outbreak of the revolt prevented them from undergoing formal
instruction Officers and NCOs were untrained even in machine guns, and there were few capable
instructors available in Iraq in 1920. The enlisted men who were designated as drivers 'generally
had very little experience in driving, and no mechanical knowledge whatsoever and show very
little aptitude for the work'. All told, the Light Armoured Brigade in Iraq comprised five batteries
at the end of the revolt, four of them with Rolls-Royces (eight per battery) and the fifth with
Austins, which proved too heavy for the roads and bridges of Iraq. During the revolt, they saw
duty primarily as f they were cavalry, that is, in reconnaissance and patrol work, often in
conjunction with horse cavalry. They escorted motor convoys and political officers travelling
into hostile areas to parley with tribal leaders. They saw comparatively little combat, but on
occasion were used to get round the line of retreat of tribesmen the way that cavalry might. In
several instances on the Upper Euphrates, an armoured car moved quickly across country and
rescued a convoy that was under attack.77
The End of the Revolt
At the end of August, evidence mounted that the Muntafiks were finally going to rise. The
position of Captain Thomas at Shattrah became untenable, and he was evacuated by air on 27
August. Haldane cabled home despairingly that the 'situation is still deteriorating. Inability of our
armed forces...to obtain a striking military success at any point is encouraging our enemies and
discouraging our friends. ' He concluded, 'The best we can hope is that when the season for
sowing comes round in about six weeks time, tribesmen who have now no special preoccupation will voluntarily return to their fields, and their chiefs will be thus forced to come
round to some sort of settlement with us, but I do not consider it at all likely any military efforts
we are likely to make will suffice. 178 Wilson sent a similar message on 30 August to Montagu,
telling him that Kurds in the Arbil Division of northern Kurdistan were about to rise and that
others near Kirkuk were restive. The success of the Bolsheviks in north-west Persia, he
predicted, was bound to unsettle the region. In the Lower Euphrates, the Muntafiq Division was
'disquieting'.79
Even as Wilson and Haldane cabled thus, things took a turn for the better in the Middle
Euphrates. Late in August, Arab tribesmen besieged Jarbuiyah (between Diwaniyah and Hillah) ,
but I a relief column from Hillah succeeded in relieving them on 27 August. The column levelled
the small town of Imam Hamza, which c had been identified as a focal point of rebellion. Before
returning to Hillah, it punished several towns en route, killing about 100 Arabs who tried to
break through troop cordons.80 Even so, on 2 September, Wilson cabled home that Haldane
would have to evacuate Nasiriyah within the coming month. For the moment, the only sure line
of communication was the Tigris, which was falling. A. T. Wilson told Montagu that Haldane
would 'concentrate all his forces on the Tigris as we cannot risk having any more detachments,
whether large or small, cut off'.81 But they were wrong about matters at this stage, just as they
had misjudged matters earlier. Early in September, several sections of the Zobas indicated r
[ their willingness to settle, but declined to submit formally until British forces were available to
protect them.82 Their neighbours, the Dulaim, remained neutral and left British garrisons at
Ramadi and Fallujah in peace. By 26 September, columns had restored the Baghdad-Fallujah
line, and the Zobas began to come in. In the mid-Euphrates, the 55th Brigade Column seized the
mouth of the Husainiyah Canal on 12 September. This seemingly insignificant stroke gave the
British control of the l water supply to Karbela, something the tribesmen recognized
immediately. They attacked the outpost situated there on the night of 12/13 and were beaten off
with heavy losses. They continued to attack intermittently thereafter but were never able
to regain it.83 Elsewhere, rebellious tribesmen continued to contest the country quite close to
Hillah itself. Throughout August, reinforcements from India reached Basra, where they were
formed into a new division, the 6th (Major-General G. N. Cory) .By mid-September, sufficient
stores and tropical kit had been found that Haldane was able to think of rescuing the 600 Indian
troops at Samawah with a column advancing from Nasiriyah. To lead it, Haldane unhesitatingly
chose the man who had time and time again saved the British position throughout Iraq--Brigadier
Coningham. Haldane and Wilson now permitted themselves a bit of cautious optimism that the
tilde had at length been turned or soon would be as the arrival of fresh troops in Basra coincided
with the onset of the ploughing season. Although garrisons were still beleaguered at Samawah
and Kufah, the rising price of ammunition and rifles in the bazaars suggested that the rebels'
ammunition supply was drying up.84
Accordingly, Haldane planned a converging attack on the middle Euphrates to relieve Samawah
and Kufah. For the northern advance from Hillah, Haldane formed two brigade columns (Brig.
Walker, 55th Brigade, and Brlg. Saunders, 53rd) to relieve Kufah
37 miles south-west of Hillah and to seize the pontoon-bridge across the Euphrates at Tuwairij.
The advance of the columns would be mutually supporting in the event they encountered a large
mass of tribesmen. The two columns marched down both sides of the Euphrates, which ensured
they met their water needs. They despatched punitive columns and patrols, while reassembling
for joint operations as necessary. Marching south, the Kufah column commander (Brigadier
Walker) made good use of the RAF, relying on aircraft rather than cavalry as flank guards. The
aircraft succeeded in giving between five and six hours' notice of tribesmen's movements. During
preliminary operations to secure a canal south of Hillah, whose water would supply the column,
Walker's men defeated some 3,500 tribesmen. Thereafter, opposition was slight. As it marched
south, Walker assigned to the cavalry the task of clearing the flanks to the advance by burning
villages. On 12 October, Sanders' brigade column succeeded in taking the bridge of boats over
the Euphrates at Tuwairij that Arabs had tried to burn. On this occasion, two armoured cars
pushed forward to the bridge, preventing it from being burned. Their machine guns proved
devastating, resulting in some 200 Arab casualties. The taking of this bridge made Karbela, 10
miles to the west, indefensible. On 14 October, Walker's column re-occupied Kifl without a
fight.
When the combined columns reached the outskirts of Kufah early on 17 October, it found
tribesmen entrenched in a palm grove athwart the road. Rather than try to root them out with
infantry, Walker directed the RAF to attack first. As an accompanying RAF officer later wrote:
I have seldom known such close co-operation take place as on this occasion. Low flying
aeroplanes, by means of signals, kept our advanced infantry in view, and bombed and
machine-gunned the gardens ahead. One hour of this was more than enough to put to flight a
force of Arabs, estimated at over 2,000 strong’. 85
Meanwhile, Walker had posted his cavalry to work round Kufah and cut off the enemy's retreat.
Heavy palm groves concealed their maneouvre, which started before dawn. When the main
attack by aircraft broke, followed by the infantry advance, the fleeing tribesmen encountered
previously positioned Hotchkiss guns of the cavalry as well as squadrons of horse with sabre and
lance.86
Following the relief of Kufah, representatives of the insurgents from Karbela surrendered on 17
October. They proceeded to Baghdad to parley with Wilson. His terms included paying fines of
2,000 modern rifles and 100 rounds per rifle (alternatively, a rupee per round) .87
Although the operations south from Hillah decapitated the revolt, Haldane had always thought it
more important to be strong in the Lower Euphrates. He awarded top priority to relieving
Samawah, whose fall would signal the Muntafik tribes throughout the Lower Euphrates to rise. If
the Muntafik rose and the Tigris line of communications were severed, all would be lost in Iraq.
Because many of the Muntafik tribes lived in the marshes, completely inaccessible by either
water or road, Haldane toyed with the idea of more drastic measures. He cabled the War Office
at the end of September to ask for a supply of non-lethal gas bombs for the RAF to use on the
marsh Arabs but learned that no such ordnance existed.88
By late September, Brigadier Coningham had collected a column at Nasiriyah, 60 miles south of
Samawah. Despite repeated alarms, Nasiriyah had remained a secure railhead--100 miles north
of Basra by rail. Coningham's force, 'Samcol', comprised one British and four Indian battalions,
plus various artillery, cavalry, and engineers to relay the railway north from Nasiriyah.
Coningham arranged his soldiers in a diamond four miles long and three miles wide that
accommodated four trains carrying laborers and engineers and two other trains, each carrying
30,000 gallons of drinking water.89 Tribesmen shadowed the force, occasionally sniping it but
never stopping it. Because tribesmen had dismantled the railway and removed rails and sleepers.
The column spent most of its time rebuilding the railway as it crept north. Not until 6 October
did the Arabs give battle near Khidr. Despite a long and noisy day of fighting (interrupted by a
siesta), British casualties totalled only two dead and seven wounded. The column pitched camp
at Khidr, and the KOYLI and Gurkhas destroyed any village in which sleepers were found.90
By 12 October, the railway was intact and secured to within five miles from Samawah. Reports
reaching Coningham told of 3,000 Arabs, all armed with modern rifles, entrenched in a line
directly athwart the railway on the south edge of town. As at Rumaitha and elsewhere, the
tribesmen had chosen and improved a naturally strong position based on enclosed fields and
gardens. Mindful of the importance of seizing the moral advantage, Coningham attacked at first
light. At 0800/13 October, four RAF planes began the attack by bombing and strafing the Arab
positions. An artillery barrage followed, and the infantry advanced. The strafing and bombing
caused some Arabs to flee, but most stuck to their posts. The two main attacking battalions got
within 400 and 800 yards respectively of the main Arab position before the attack sputtered in
the face of heavy fire. The Arabs defended these positions tenaciously, but by 1700 the 8th
Gurkhas and the Yorkshiremen were able to join hands in a single line and advanced at short
range. An army would have mown them down, but the Arabs were not regulars. They broke and
ran. Two squadrons of Hodson's Horse charged and cut down many. The rest of the rebels
abandoned Samawah during the night, so that Samcol entered a deserted town on the morning of
14 October.
Here at last was the 'striking success' that had proved so elusive but which now turned out to be
decisive. within four days, on 18 October, the provisional Arab government at Najaf submitted.
The Sharifians there freed 79 British and 81 Indian prisoners. Coningham's column then paused
and proceeded upon a round of punitive operations. Columns marched to villages known to have
been in rebellion or whose inhabitants had killed British or Iraqi employees of the civil
administration. Usually, the villages were deserted, and the British burned them without
sentiment.
To stamp out the embers of the dying insurrection and establish the authority of the successor
Arab government, Haldane wanted a thoroughgoing disarmament of the tribes. But he had
neither the men nor the time.91 sir Percy Cox, who replaced A. T. Wilson in October as civil
Commissioner, decided that full tribal disarmament would have to wait until an Arab
government was in power. Cox convinced Haldane that disarmament should be limited to those
tribes that had been in rebellion, pointedly excluding most of the Muntafik and Kurdish tribes.
For those tribes that had revolted, however, fines payable in rifles and ammunition amounted for
practical purposes to disarmament. From October onwards, as many as 12 simultaneous separate
columns were despatched throughout Iraq to collect these fines. Although some rebellious tribes
fled their villages to avoid the British, they necessarily had to return eventually to plant their
crops, and they could never entirely evade the reckoning. Where tribes resisted, columns
impounded their flocks and herds as hostages. One regimental history's account of a punitive
sweep north of Hillah in late October counts 800 prisoners and 7,000 head of cattle, sheep, and
horses as the take.92
The RAF, now reinforced, saw more service in this stage of the revolt than during its earlier,
more violent phase. It repeatedly bombed tribal camps and villages of reputed rebels. Its planes
flew over restive areas that troops were unable to visit. Squadron Leader Pirie has left this
account of 'spectacular' combined Army-RAF operations near Diwaniyah during December.
The [punitive] column would leave Diwaniyah at about 0200 hours. Aeroplanes, leaving their
base so they would arrive over the column when its outposts were 1/4 mile from the village to be
attacked, would swoop down on it, drop 30 or 40 25-lb. bombs and pour hundreds of rounds
Of S. A. A. into it. Panic-stricken, the inhabitants fled, and in a few minutes the column would
enter the village without a shot being fired. The soldiers would then drive all the flocks and
herds back towards their base and set fire to the village. As Squadron Leader Pirie writes, 'this
has a most salutary effect on the tribes north of Diwaniyah. South of Diwaniyah, the tribes were
even less disposed to surrender and pay fines. Here the RAF resorted to at times to night
bombing during periods of full moon. Night flying was a novelty for nearly every pilot in
Mesopotamia, but they learned. Again Squadron Leader Pirie, '[O]ne evening six machines flew
after dinner, and then for 60 hours the villages belonging to the refractory tribes were bombed
incessantly. ' And then they submitted. During January, Haldane formed two substantial mixed
columns at Kut and at Nasiriyah (each of five battalions with cavalry and artillery) to tour the
Muntafik lands. A few sections that had been implicated in attacks on British outposts were
assessed fines in rifles and paid them. Through the end of February, tribesmen in all sectors of
Iraq paid a grand total of 63,046 rifles. Modern rifles, defined as breech loading, small bore
magazine rifles, however, amounted to only a third.94
British losses reached 426 with 1,228 wounded and another 615 missing. The British estimated
that they had killed 8,450 insurgents. What proved decisive was the influx, steady and ever
increasing, of troops into Iraq. By the time that normality had returned to the land between the
Euphrates and the Tigris, 4,883 British and 24,508 Indian troops had reached Iraq.95
Haldane reflected in late September that had the Arabs been centrally directed sufficiently to
block all five railways running into Baghdad, then 'I should not have been able to move troops
from outside the points held by them, in sufficient strength, to break down the resistance.' Even
though the revolt showed signs of winding down, Haldane was unable to predict when it would
be over.96 He proposed that in the future Iraq be policed by 'superior armoured trains, armoured
railway trollies and armoured cars' as an alternative to blockhousing and scattered detachments,
which he recognized were out of the question for financial reasons. Yet in the short term, he and
the General Staff thought that three divisions would remain necessary. 97 It was not an idea that
commended itself to the Cabinet. Into this financial breach stepped the RAF with its offer to
garrison Iraq from the air.
Lessons Learned
At its most fundamental, the Arab revolt taught that Iraq could not be held as a
dependent state. For financial as well as strategic reasons, there was no alternative to
the mandate and to hoping that rule by 'moderates' would succeed. The revolt of 1920,
as well as the Kurdish rebellions of 1919, paradoxically facilitated the transfer of power
to Feisal and the Sharifians, weakening the power of the two most intractable elements
of the Iraqi body politic at a time of political transition. In entrusting Iraq to Feisal, the
British were for practical purpose reverting to the Turkish practice of letting the Sunni
Arab minority of Iraq rule the rest of the population, a practice that has continued until
the present. The core of the Abd-al-Iraqi, too, was the Army, and its involvement in Iraqi
politics, far from being an aberration, dates from the inception of Iraq itself.
In terms of counter-insurgency doctrine, British conduct of operations looked backwards to the
Boer War and to Indian frontier wars. General Callwell's Small Wars, the summa of 19th
Century British counter-insurgency, illuminates Haldane's conduct of operations at every turn.
Haldane's caution, particularly his determination to avoid defeats that might spread the rebellion,
stemmed directly from Callwell's admonitions. Likewise, Coningham's tactics, with their
emphasis on seizing the moral initiative in fighting non-Europeans, were those advised by
Callwell. Through reading Callwell, one understands both 64
Specifically, the lessons of the Arab revolt were several. The successes of cavalry, a weapon of
the past in European conflicts, were genuine. Given that the responsibilities of the
British Empire and its armed forces for policing tribal societies had increased, the effectiveness
of cavalry in 1920 demonstrated anew that cavalry was a weapon with a future as well as a past.
Armed with machine guns, Hotchkiss light automatics in this case, cavalry combined speed and
fire power as never before. This was a lesson that neither the Indian nor the British Army lost
sight of in the years to come. Armoured cars also offered promise. Both in combat and in
more mundane chores as escorting convoys, armoured cars performed well. Although it was not
thought prudent to employ them alone, on numerous occasions circumstances required that they
did so, and they frequently achieved impressive local tactical successes. They were indeed
mobile, armoured machine-gun posts, able to carry more ammunition than a cavalry unit could
hope to. Their drawbacks, liability to break down or to be ambushed, were not forgotten, and
their promise was heavily qualified. The successes of the RAF were modest, consisting mostly of
reconnaissance, presence, and something resembling close air support, none of which
demonstrated that air power could substitute for ground forces in holding restive natives at bay.
The victory by the RAF was political and financial, and it took place in Whitehall, not in the
mid-Euphrates. More convincingly than the Army, the RAF could argue that it could police Iraq
far more cheaply than the garrison thought necessary for Iraq. But it was never asked to replace
an Army garrison, since after the Cairo Conference of 1921, a successor Arab administration
under King Feisal was erected. The subsequent role of the RAF, it should never be forgotten, lay
in its being an auxiliary to a native government, whose own armed forces and police took over
the functions of internal security that British armed forces had maintained. Most importantly of
all, I think, the Arab revolt pointed out the limited use to which the Indian Army could be put.
Visionary imperialists, such as Lord Esher, whose famous Army in India Committee also
reported in 1920, envisaged that the postwar Indian Army could play the same role in peacetime
that it had during the Great War, that of an imperial reserve. Many things put paid to this notion,
the Third Afghan War and the deterioration of the North-West Frontier after 1919, the advent of
Dyarchy, and something like fiscal self-determination in India, but the revolt in Iraq drew the
line unequivocally as to what might reasonably be asked of the Indian Army. It might provide a
brigade here or there, or a division or two in an imperial emergency, but no permanent cheap
garrison force, least of all in Muslim lands.
Endnotes:
1. For example, Major-Gen. Charles Gwynn's classic Imperial
Policing (London: Macmillan, 1934) has nothing whatsoever to say about the Arab revolt, but
then Iraq was not part of the Empire in 1934.
2. Published accounts include that by Philip Ireland, Modern Iraq (New York: Macmillan, 1938),
pp. 239-76; Howard Sachar, Emergence of the Middle East (New York, 1969) , pp. 366-82;
David Fromkin The Peace to End All Peace (New York: Holt, 1989), pp. 449-53, Phebe Marr,
The Modern History of Iraq (Boulder: Westview Press, 1985), pp. 32-4; Charles Tripp,
(Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992), and Yitzhak Nakash, The Shi’is of Iraq (Princeton:
Princeton Univ. Press, 1994), pp. 66-74. . Two accounts in English that draw upon Arabic
language sources are those by Ghassan Atiyah, Iraq 1908-1921 (Beirut, 1973), pp. 307-54, and
the unpublished thesis by Dr. W. J. 0. Nadhmi, 'The Political, Intellectual, and Social Roots of
the Iraqi Independence Movement, 1920', (Durham, 1974).
3. Briton Cooper Busch ably recounts British policy in Britain. India. and the Arabs. 1914-1921
(Berkeley: Univ. of Calif. Press, 1971).
4. Sir Ronald Wingate, who served under him in these years, said, 'He had a huge head, burning
eyes, and a personality so overpowering that in conference it was difficult to realize that there
was anyone else in the room'. Not in the Limelight (London: Hutchinson, 1959), p. 44. For
Wilson there is John Marlowe's Late Victorian (London: Cresset, 1967) and his own memoir,
Mesopotamia: A Clash of Loyalties (Oxford: OUP, 1930).
5. George F. MacMunn, Behind the Scenes in Many Wars (London: John Murray, 1930), p. 274.
6. Published primary accounts of the South Kurdistan rebellion include those by Gen. MacMunn,
whose despatch of 12 Nov 1919 appears as the fourth supplement to the London Gazette, 5 Mar.
1920; Wilson, Mesopotamia, pp. 122-55; and MacMunn, pp. 272-306. A fine account is that by
Rev. J. C. Jones, 'The Campaign in South Kurdistan, 1919', Army Quarterly (Oct. 1925), pp. 8696.
7. Haldane Diary, 6 Feb. 1920, Haldane Papers, Mss 20251, National Library of Scotland (NLS)
8. For pressures on the Government in London to demobilize and reduce military spending see
John Darwin, Britain. Egypt. and the Middle East (London: Macmillan, 1981) , pp. 26-36 and
Keith Jeffery, The British Army and the crisis of Empire. 1918-1922 (Manchester: Manchester
Univ. Press, 1984), pp. 11-30.
9. Haldane teleg. to WO, 17 Apr. 1920, Haldane Papers, NLS.
10. MacMunn, 'Note on Military Organization in Mesopotamia and North Pers1a', 1 Nov. 1919,
WO 106/55.
11. Figures on the RAF come from Wilson teleg. to SSI, 10 July! 1920, L/P&S/II/175 P5451.
The best general account of the RAF's I role by a participant is Sqdn. Leader G. C. Pirie, 'Some r
Experiences of No.6 Squadron in the Iraq Insurrection, 1920', AP c 1152, Staff College Lectures,
RAF Museum, Hendon.
12. Church1ll teleg. to Haldane, 21 Apr. 1920, FO 371/5073, E4043.
13. For this debate, see John Robert Farrell, Men, Money, and Diplomacy (Ithaca: Cornell Univ.
Press, 1989), pp 63-75.
14. 'Note on Demobilisation by Civil Commissioner, Baghdad' enclosed in letter to the India
Office, 28 Sept. 1918, L/P&S/11/155, P.7214, India Office Records, London.
15. Churchill memo, 'Mesopotamian Expenditure', 1 May 1920, CP
1320, CAB 24/106. Enclosed was Air Marshal Sir Hugh Trenchard's 'A Preliminary Scheme for
the Military Control of Mesopotamia by the RAF', March 1920.
16. Haldane teleg. to War Office, 3 May 1920, Apdx. D to 'A
Preliminary Scheme for the Military Control of Mesopotamia by the RAF’, Trenchard memo., 12
Mar. 1920, enclosure to Churchill memo, 'Mesopotamian Expenditure', 20 May 1920, CP 1320,
CAB 24/106.
17. Wilson teleg. to WO, 19 July 1920, annex to Churchill memo, 'situation in Mesopotamia', 2
Sept. 1920, CP 1829, CAB 24/111.
18. Atiyah, pp. 307-54
19. See, for example, the file that developed out of Wilson's cable home of 9 June warning of
impending troubles and the dangerously weak garrison of Mesopotamia, L/P&S/II/175 P. 5451,
India Office Records, London.
20. Haldane, The Insurrection in Mesopotamia (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1922), p. 92.
21. Wilson teleg. to Edwin S. Montagu, India Secretary (SSI), 9 June 1920, annexed to CP 1475,
'Mesopotamia: Political and Military Situation', 15 June 1920, CAB 24/107.
22. Haldane to CIGS, 20 June 1920, in Keith Jeffery, ed., The Military Correspondence of Field
Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, (London: The Bodley Head for the Army Records Society, 1985), p.
178.
23. Despatch of Col. L. F. Nalder, political officer Mosul, 25 June 1920, FO 406/44, E
989795/44.
24. The role of the levies in the revolt, including this episode, is briefly covered by Brlg. J.
Gilbert Browne, The Iraq Levies (London: RUSI, 1932), pp. 9-13. Unfortunately, Brig. Browne,
a conscientious regimental historian, failed to treat desertion, a subject of more than ordinary
interest in the circumstances.
25. A. T. Wilson to Haldane, 2 July 1920, Wilson Mss., Add. Mss. 52459A.
26. Gertrude Bell, 'Review of the Civil Administration of Mesopotamia', Cmd. 1061 (1920), p.
145.
27. Herbert J. Creedy, Undersecretary of State, War Office, to Foreign Office, 22 July 1920,
reproduced as CP 1696, 24 July 1920, CAB 24/109.
28. Wilson to Secretary of State for India (SSI), 28 June 1920, FO 371/5227 E7725. Also,
Wilson to Sir John Ramsay, Foreign Dept., India, 29 June 1920, Wilson Papers, Add. Mss.
52459A. Wilson's r memoirs convey the impression that he alone had the foresight to warn of
impending trouble, e.g., Clash of Loyalties, pp. 275-6. !
29. Haldane to War Office, 8 July 1920, FO 371/5227 E.8071. !
30. This account of the siege and relief of Rumaitha follows Haldane, pp. 73-89.
31. This account of the siege of Samawah follows Lt-Col. Walter Hingston, Never Give Up: the
History of the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (p.p., 1950), pp. 4-9; Haldane, Insurrection,
pp. " 172, 193, 198-202; and Anon., 'The Story of the Siege of Samawah', Blackwood's, v. 211
(Jan. 1922), pp. 100-18.
32. WO cable to AHQ, Simla, 2 July 1920, L/P&S/11/175.
33. 'Summary of the situation in Mesopotamia', CP 1646, 17 July 1920, CAB 24/109.
34. Haldane to WO, 15 July 1920, Wilson Papers.
35. Major-Gen. sir C. E. Callwell, ed. Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, ii (London: Cassell and
Co., 1927), p. 254.
36. Churchill, 'Summary of the situation in Mesopotamia', 17 July 1920, CP 1646, CAB 24/109.
37. Charles E. Callwell, Small Wars (London: HMSO, 1903, repr. ed. 1976), pp. 270-6, discusses
the advantages of this formation.
38. This account of the relief of Rumaitha is drawn from Geoffrey Betham and H. V. R. Geary,
The Golden Galley (Oxford, pp., 1956), pp. 83-7 and Col. Brian Mullaly, Bugle and Kukri: the
10th Princess Mary’s Own Gurkha Rifles (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1957), pp. 136-9. This
account follows those by H. C. Wylly, History of the Manchester Regiment, ii (1883-1922),
(London, 192~), pp. 215-221; Lt.-Col. E. B. Maunsell, 'The Arab Rebellion: A Disaster and a
Cavalry Rear-Guard Action', Cavalry Journal, xiv (Apr., 1924), pp.
280-93; and Haldane, Insurrection, pp. 91-103. I
40. Churchill teleg. to Haldane, 28 July 1920, reproduced as CP I 1710, 30 July, CAB 24/110.
41. For the retreat from Diwaniyah, see Mullaly, Bugle and Kukri, r
pp. 140-4.
42. Capt. C. M. P. Durnford, 'The Arab Insurrection of 1920-21', Journal of the United Service
Institution of India (Apr., 1924), v. I 54, pp. 181-93.
43. Capt. Bertram Thomas, Alarms and Excursions in Arabia, (Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill
Co., 1931), pp. 63-112.
44. Wilson, p. 296. I
45. Haldane to War Office, 2 Aug. 1920, L/MIL/5/799.
46. Wilson teleg. to SSI, 10 July 1920, L/P&S/11/175 P5451. t r 47. Haldane Diary (13 August
1920), NLS. I ,
48. H. F. V. Winstone, Leachman 'OC Desert' (London: Quartet, 1982), pp. 213- 20.
49. Haldane to War Office, 21 Aug. 1921, L/MIL/5/799. He added 'For this a division between
Baghdad and Kermanshah [Persia] is necessary. '
50. Haldane, 152-69.
51. Keith Jeffery, The British Army and the Crisis of Empire (Manchester, 1984), passim, but
especially pp. 133-54 for the impact of the revolt in Mesopotamia.
f 52. ' Note by the CIGS on the Necessity of Reducing our Commitments in the Black Sea and
Persia', 5 Aug. 1920, circulated to the Finance Committee by Churchill as FC 49, CAB 27/72.
I 53. Viceroy, Army Dept., to SSI, 2 Aug. 1920, reproduced as CP 1745, CAB 2 3/ 110.
54. Wilson to SSI, 5 Aug. 1920, annexed to Montagu memo, 'Telegrams relating to
Mesopotamia', n.d. (c. 20 Aug.), CP 1796 CAB 24/110.
55. WO letter to India Office, Political Dept., 4 Sept. 1920, FO 371/5229 E.10912. At the end of
August, Churchill received warnings from the Government of India that it could supply no more
English or Gurkha troops, so uncertain was the domestic situation. Martin Gilbert, Churchill, iv,
p. 495.
56. See the summary of Indian opinion reprinted as CP 1871, 16 Sept. 1920, CAB 24/111.
57. Wilson to SSI, 16 Aug. 1920, Wilson Papers, Add. Mss. 52459A, British Library.
58. Haldane to WO, 21 Aug., L/MIL/5/799 and 28 Aug. 1920, annexed to Churchill memo,
Situation in Mesopotamia', 2 Sept. 1920, CP 1829, CAB 24/111.
59. Haldane to WO, 3 Sept. 1920, Wilson Papers, Add. Mss. 52459B, vol. 10.
60. Haldane teleg. 9836 of 18 Aug. cited but not quoted in FO 371/5229 E. 10109. Martin
Gilbert quotes Churchill's enthusiastic support for gas, p. 494, but across Whitehall the India
Office stood firmly against its use.
61. As the official history tells us, '...General Maude had a reserve of gas shells, [but] he only
kept them for use in retaliation. ' Brig. F. J. Moberly, The Campaign in Mesopotamia,
iv (London: HMSO, 1927), p. 49. In his memoirs, "Gas!" The Story of the Special Brigade
(Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1934), Major-Gen. Charles H. Foulkes gives 1918 for when gas shells
were first sent to Mesopotamia, p. 95.
62. Haldane to WO, 21 Aug. 1920, FO 371/5229. E10458. Wilson drafted this cable.
63. Haldane to WO, 28 Aug. 1920, annexed to 'Situation in Mesopotamia', CP 1829, CAB
24/111.
64. Farrell briefly, p. 42, alludes to the popularity of conspiracy explanations of British troubles,
but a substantial monograph could be written on the subject.
65. Wilson teleg. to SSI, 5 Aug. 1920, circulated to the Cabinet as CP 1796, 'Telegrams relating
to Mesopotamia', CAB 24/110 and reprinted in A Clash of Loyalties, pp. 310-2, along with
another analysis of 12 August. See also his teleg. to Montagu of 16 Aug.
1920, FO 371/5229.
66. Haldane to War Office, 30 Aug. 1920, circulated to the Cabinet as CP 1815, 31 Aug. 1920,
CAB 24/111.
67. H. H. Macdonald Tyler, 'Notes on the Causes of the Present Unrest on the Euphrates', 3 Aug.
1920, circulated as CP 1754, CAB 24/110.
68. G. Bell, 'Review of the Civil Administration of Mesopotamia', Cmd. 1061, p. 143. She wrote
this paper with A. T. Wilson in August 1920.
69. War Office, General Staff, 'An Examination of the Cause of 1 the Outbreak in Mesopotamia',
Oct. 1920, pp. 11-12, WO 33/969.
70. Montagu memo. ‘Notes on the Causes of the Outbreak in ii Mesopotamia', c. 20 Aug. 1920,
circulated as CP 1790, CAB 24/110.
71. Bell, 'Review of the civil Administration', pp. 143-4.
72. Reproduced as 'Military Policy in Mesopotamia', CP 1814, CP 1814, CAB 24/111.
73. The rest of Churchill's cable consisted of similar questions, concerning Haldane's earlier talk
of evacuating Mosul, his plans for NORPERFORCE, the status of dependents, and the possibility
of a fighting withdrawal from Baghdad to Basra. Churchill to Haldane, 31 Aug. 1920, Wilson
Papers, Add. Mss. 52459B, vol. 10. It is excerpted in Gilbert, pp. 494-5.
74. Wilson to 8SI, 23 Aug. 1920, FO 371/5229, E10330. ,
75. Flight-Lieutenant M. Thomas, 'The RAF in Iraq since 1918', Staff College Lecture (1923-4),
AP 1097, RAF Museum, Hendon.
76. A. T. Wilson to SS1, 4 Oct. 1920, L/M1L/5/800.
77. These details are from Gen. Haldane's paper for the War
Office, 'System of Employment, Organisation and Experience gained with Armoured Cars in
Mesopotamia and North West Persia', 9 Dec. 1920, Lindsay Manuscript, AC1, Tank Museum,
Bovington Camp, Dorset.
78. Haldane to War Office, 27 Aug. 1920, FO 371/5229, E10625. l 79. Wilson to 881, 30 Aug.
1920, FO 371/5229, E10743. 1 80. Mullaly, Bugle and Kukri, pp. 143-4.
81. Wilson to SSI, 2 Sept. 1920, FO 371/5229, E10870. 82. Haldane to War Office, 5 Sept. 1920,
L/MIL/5/800.
83. Haldane to War Office, 13 Sept. 1920, L/MIL/5/800.
84. Wilson to SSI, 11 Sept. 1920, reproduced in CP 1861, CAB 24/111.
85. Pirie, 'Some Experiences’, p. 79. I, 86. For the cavalry's role in the relief of Kufah, see Col.
E. B. Maunsell , Prince of Wales's Own: The Scinde Horse. 1839-1922 (p.p. 1926), pp. 289-95.
Maunsell writes that 'The relief of Kufah...was in this instance more important than a heavy
tribal r casualty list', but one would not guess this from his relish in describing lancing, sabring,
and machine-gunning of Arabs in flight and his accompanying tabulations.
87. Haldane to War Office, 28 Oct. 1920, L/MIL/5/801.
88. Haldane to War Office, 28 Sept., and reply 5 Oct. 1920, L/MIl/5/800.
89. Coningham explained his methods in an appendix to Haldane's Insurrection in Mesopotamia,
pp. 332-42.
90. For the relief of Samawah, see Hingston, pp. 2-9.
91. Haldane to War Office, 28 Nov. 1920, Apdx. A to 'The
Situation in Mesopotamia', 10 Dec. 1920, CP 2275, CAB 24/116.
92. Mullaly, Bugle and Kukri, p. 145. ,
93. Pirie, p. 80. I, I
94. These figures come from Haldane's despatch of 8 Feb. 1921, Third Supplement to the
London Gazette, 1 July 1921. !
95. Haldane despatch.
96. Haldane to V1S. Peel, Under Secretary of State for War, 25
Sept. 1920 reproduced as CP 2217, 'Situation in Mesopotamia', CAB 24/116.
97. Gen. Percy Radcliffe, Director of Military Operations, 'Memo. on the situation in
Mesopotamia', 7 Dec. 1920, enclosing Haldane's teleg. to War Office, 28 Nov., circulated to the
Cabinet as CP 2275, CAB 24/116.