Enemy on the Euphrates (56 page)

A little after dawn on 24 October 1920 a convoy of motor vehicles was setting off from Mosul, heading for Baghdad. There had been little fighting in the area since the insurrection began, partly because, after the abortive Arab raid on Tel ‘Afar, the British had made sure they retained a strong grip on the city. But it was also because many of the leading citizens remained loyal to the Turks and had come to believe that the legality of Britain’s control of the whole vilayet of Mosul was under question and therefore there was little point in fighting: Mustafa Kemal had let it be known that he considered Mosul to be Turkish territory and would use a combination of military threats and diplomatic activity to try to reintegrate the province into his independent Anatolian bastion on Mosul’s northern borders. In short, the idea of Mosul becoming part of an Iraqi ‘Arab State’ – whether British-controlled or independent – now appeared uncertain.

The convoy of motor vehicles contained mainly civilians – merchants, minor officials of the occupation and others simply making family visits to Baghdad: there was only a small guard of Arab police. But unbeknown to the travellers, the convoy was being shadowed by a strong band of raiders belonging to the Albu Badr section of the Albu Hamad
¹
– a tribe which had fled across the ill-defined Turkish border after the unsuccessful raid on Tel ‘Afar. Their headman was Agha Bulaybil, a man with strongly Negroid features whose appearance clearly denoted descent from one of the black female slaves of some Albu Hamad forebear. During the war he had been an officer in the
Hamadiyya, the notorious Ottoman militia cavalry: a fierce and brutal fighter, but also ‘a man of brains, character and wit’ according to Gertrude Bell’s intelligence sources.
²

As the convoy from Mosul continued its noisy advance, Bulaybil positioned his well-armed horsemen on some stony bluffs near Wadi Jahannam, roughly midway between Mosul and the town of Sharqat. There the raiders dismounted and awaited the approaching motor vehicles. Then, as the convoy came into view, the Albu Hamad opened up a deadly fire on the leading car, bringing the whole convoy to an abrupt halt. Most of the occupants leapt out of their vehicles, trying to seek shelter at the side of the road, but one car attempted to escape. It swerved off the road and raced across a patch of stony ground, apparently trying to rejoin the road further away, where there was some cover from the tribesmen’s rifle fire. But a group of Albu Hamad remounted and pursued the escaping car, continuing to fire on it from the saddle and aiming at its tyres. Suddenly the vehicle swerved violently and then tipped over in a great cloud of dust. Immediately the tribesmen were upon it, firing round after round from their Mauser rifles through the smashed windows of the stricken vehicle.

While the remaining survivors of the convoy were surrendering, handing over their goods and valuables, Bulaybil rode ahead to examine the contents of the foolhardy vehicle which had tried to escape. Inside he found the bodies of two men. One was apparently just an Arab driver, but the other appeared to be someone of greater importance – and maybe of greater wealth. Although this individual was wearing the Arab kufiyya, the remainder of his dress was European. Bulaybil removed the man’s wallet and extracted a disappointingly small wad of rupees. Then he noticed a tattered identity card of sorts. Curious, he gave it a closer look. Although barely literate, Agha Bulaybil was able to recognise it as some kind of military document. At any rate, the photograph clearly showed the dead man in a military uniform, albeit with the same kind of kufiyya headdress which now lay, bloodstained, beside him. And then he just managed to decipher the name underneath the photograph: ‘Mulazim Awwal Muhammad Sharif al-Faruqi’.
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An hour or so later, having thoroughly looted the remains of the convoy, the Albu Hamad remounted and sped off to their sanctuary on the Turkish border, leaving the corpses of Faruqi and a few other casualties of the attack to be discovered sometime later by a British cavalry patrol.

It seems that, after his short stay in Cairo sometime in mid-1920, Lieutenant Faruqi managed to return to Mosul, the city of his birth. It is difficult to know how he might have been received by his extended family in Mosul. After all, he had deserted from the Ottoman army – hardly honourable behaviour in a city which had largely remained loyal to the Turks throughout the war – and, in the end, he had little to show for it in either money or status. His reception was probably polite but frosty.

And then, suddenly, a new and exciting opportunity materialised. It was reported that Ja‘far al-‘Askari, a fellow member of al-‘Ahd and, coincidentally, the officer who had trained Faruqi in marksmanship before the outbreak of war, had recently returned to Baghdad, apparently in the expectation of playing an important role in a new provisional Arab government which the British were trying to set up. Indeed, on the very day that Faruqi was killed, Ja‘far al-‘Askari’s recent return to Iraq was being recounted to her father by Gertrude Bell:

Saturday began with a notable visit from Ja‘far Pasha. He is a Major General of distinguished service first with the Turks and then with Faisal … He came to me hot foot from seeing Sir Percy in order to ask me – what do you think? whether it would ruin his reputation as a Nationalist to take a place in the provisional government! on the ground that it would be looked upon as a British subterfuge … I told him it was his duty as an individual and a Nationalist to assist in establishing Arab institutions in whatever form and that if he and others went boldly forward, relying on our support, they would silence criticism.
⁴

In the event, it seems Ja‘far al-‘Askari needed little further persuasion. As for Faruqi, stuck in an unwelcoming Mosul, without employment, status or money, and after all those unrewarding years trying to find an outlet
for his talents, the news that his old commanding officer and colleague in al-‘Ahd had returned to Iraq with such outstanding prospects must have seemed an answer to all Faruqi’s prayers. He would not only seek out al-‘Askari and remind him of their old association but he would also present himself to those who were really running the country. And so he had set off for Baghdad on that chilly autumn morning, full of hope and expectation that, at last, his services to the British would be finally recognised and those largely unrewarding years of wasted wandering now lay behind him.

With the capitulation of the holy cities the Baghdad nationalists and the majority of the rebel sheikhs realised that they had little option but to leave the country; moreover, the only safe haven seemed to be at the court of King Husayn in the Hejaz. In theory there were three possible escape routes to Husayn’s capital: through Najd, the emirate of ‘Abd al-‘Aziz ibn Sa‘ud; further north through the emirate of Ha’il, the citadel of ‘Abd al-‘Aziz’s bitter enemy, the al-Rashid; or through French-occupied Syria. Najd was really too risky: there was a strong possibility that they might be captured and the Shi‘is among them killed by Wahhabi tribesmen (only a year later, Wahhabi raiders would launch a major attack on Karbela’ and the surrounding area). In the event, Sayyid Muhammad al-Sadr, Yusuf Suwaydi and ‘Ali Bazirgan chose the route through Syria – as yet the French authorities hadn’t completed the full occupation of the country and the borderlands remained relatively free and fluid.
¹
Meanwhile, Ja‘far Abu al-Timman and some of the leading rebel Sheikhs including Sayyid ‘Alwan al-Yasari and Sayyid Hadi al-Mgutar decided to risk the desert crossing to Ha’il, from where they eventually arrived at Medina on 6 March 1921.

Bound by Arab laws of hospitality, King Husayn gave the refugee nationalists sanctuary but the wily old monarch cannot have been too pleased by the arrival of his guests. Although the huge subsidies he had received from the British during the war had now ended, he was still trying to persuade his former paymasters to support his efforts to become caliph with some kind of temporal authority over
the remainder of the Arab world and harbouring rebel fugitives from British-occupied Iraq can hardly have been calculated to assist him in that objective. For the time being, however, Abu Timman and his comrades were safe.

Meanwhile, with Abu Sukhair in flames and Abu Tabikh’s property in the town destroyed, he and his small band of followers decided to separate and head for their homes. Although Abu Tabikh had a house and warehouses in Abu Sukhair his home village was Ghamas, and it was there that he now sought refuge.

I set off towards Ghamas with some of my men, taking a route which at times took us through palm gardens and at other times made us plunge into waterways, arriving at Ghamas a little before dawn and avoiding entering the village by the main road because of our fear that the eyes of the British might be upon us. I went further south and then to the palm gardens and from there to my house where my brother Ja‘far and my son Kamil took me in, shattered as I was by thirst and exhaustion. I told my brother and son about our situation and that the revolutionaries were scattered and the rebellion had collapsed and I warned them that my open presence among them could put us all into danger of British reprisals since I was a wanted man …
²

In the event, Abu Tabikh hid in Ghamas in his son’s rice-processing factory, for a while contemplating fleeing to Persia, but in the end he, too, decided to escape to King Husayn’s realm in the Hejaz. Abu Tabikh also decided to travel via the Emirate of Ha’il where he arrived with his family and some of his men on 1 January 1921.

Their reception by the current young ruler of the al-Rashid dynasty, ‘Abdallah, was far from the generous Arab hospitality they might have expected. It wasn’t long before the emir started demanding ‘presents’ from them and by the fortieth day of their residence at Ha’il, the situation had deteriorated to such an extent that Abu Tabikh decided that they would leave for Mecca and Medina as soon as possible. So on 10 March 1921 they left Ha’il and set off for the Hejaz, reaching Medina on 6 April 1921.

In a number of the brief British accounts of the Arab insurrection of 1920, it is stated that the rebellion ended with the submission of the holy cities in mid-October.
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This is not correct. Although some tribes submitted, many did not and the fighting – which had previously been characterised by quite large-scale actions of a semi-regular nature – now turned into what Major General Leslie was already describing – in early October – as ‘guerrilla warfare’. It would continue until February 1921.

Meanwhile, the arrival of Sir Percy Cox in Baghdad as ‘high commissioner’ on 11 October, with an official remit to establish what was euphemistically called an ‘Arab Government’, had been welcomed by Gertrude Bell with gushing enthusiasm. Writing to her father on 17 October she tells him, ‘When it comes to the difficult point of dealing with the tribal insurgents on the Euphrates, he will drop all the silly ideas of revenge and punishment which have been current outside my political circle and be guided only by consideration for the future peace of the country under an Arab Govt.’
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However, by the end of November Bell had subtly changed her views on this matter. The continuing resistance of many of the insurgents had now convinced her (and Sir Percy Cox) that ‘silly ideas of revenge and punishment’ would only be dropped once the insurrection had finally been crushed by force. With passing references to their plans for the formation of a puppet Arab government, on 29 November she informs her father:

We are greatly hampered by the tribal rising which has delayed the work of handing over to the Arab Govt. Sir Percy, I think rightly, decided that the tribes must be made to submit to force. In no other way was it possible to make them surrender their arms or teach them that you mustn’t lightly engage in revolution, even when your holy men tell you to do so.

So, in spite of his earlier reservations, Haldane must now have realised that his anxieties that Cox might attempt to make a generous peace with the insurgents were unfounded. The task was now one of ‘punishment’:
the end of the uprising would indeed, be ‘only by the sword’. For an elderly general of the British Empire in 1920 – one who regarded his opponents in Iraq as ‘savages’ or ‘semi-savages’ – there would be no feeble concessions to humanity. In Haldane’s words, written after his return to England, ‘There could be no security for the future peace of Mesopotamia unless the punishment awarded were such as would discourage a repetition of this foolish outbreak.’
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And a few pages later he adds, ‘it should be remembered that we were amongst a people of whom it might be said with truth …Use ’em kindly, they rebel; / But be rough as nutmeg-graters / And the rogues obey you well.’ In short, ‘the time for mercy had not yet come and the pound of flesh must be exacted.’
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Early in the campaign Haldane had issued a proclamation stating that rebels who were captured in the course of any fighting were to be treated as prisoners of war; however, a different fate would await any rebels who behaved ‘treacherously’. Problematically, Haldane had come to his own conclusion in that respect:

The Arab is most treacherous. He will overpower a small detachment and when a larger force appears he will out up white flags and be found working peacefully in his fields – incidentally with a rifle in easy reach … [therefore] the white flags and peaceful cultivator’s role must not prevent the enemy from being punished later at our convenience.
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The implications of this judgement were clear: (1) the assumption that an Arab who was ‘working peacefully in his fields’ was necessarily a non-combatant should be disregarded and (2) since ‘the Arab’ was
intrinsically
‘most treacherous’, the stipulation that captured Arab combatants should be treated as prisoners of war would apply only in very exceptional circumstances – if at all. In short, it was an open invitation to carry out what Colonel Leachman had advocated before his death – a ‘general slaughter’ of the Arabs in the insurgent areas.