22 August, 1920
A Report on Mesopotamia by T.E. Lawrence
Ex.-Lieut.-Col. T.E. Lawrence,
The Sunday Times, 22 August 1920
[Mr. Lawrence, whose organization and direction of the Hedjaz against the
Turks was one of the outstanding romances of the war, has written this article
at our request in order that the public may be fully informed of our
Mesopotamian commitments.]
The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it
will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it
by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated,
insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our
administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a
disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary
cure. We are to-day not far from a disaster.
The sins of commission are those of the British civil authorities in
Mesopotamia (especially of three 'colonels') who were given a free hand by
London. They are controlled from no Department of State, but from the empty
space which divides the Foreign Office from the India Office. They availed
themselves of the necessary discretion of war-time to carry over their dangerous
independence into times of peace. They contest every suggestion of real self-
government sent them from home. A recent proclamation about autonomy circulated
with unction from Baghdad was drafted and published out there in a hurry, to
forestall a more liberal statement in preparation in London, 'Self-determination
papers' favourable to England were extorted in Mesopotamia in 1919 by official
pressure, by aeroplane demonstrations, by deportations to India.
The Cabinet cannot disclaim all responsibility. They receive little more news
than the public: they should have insisted on more, and better. they have sent
draft after draft of reinforcements, without enquiry. When conditions became too
bad to endure longer, they decided to send out as High commissioner the original
author of the present system, with a conciliatory message to the Arabs that his
heart and policy have completely changed.*
Yet our published policy has not changed, and does not need changing. It is
that there has been a deplorable contrast between our profession and our
practice. We said we went to Mesopotamia to defeat Turkey. We said we stayed to
deliver the Arabs from the oppression of the Turkish Government, and to make
available for the world its resources of corn and oil. We spent nearly a million
men and nearly a thousand million of money to these ends. This year we are
spending ninety-two thousand men and fifty millions of money on the same
objects.
Our government is worse than the old Turkish system. They kept fourteen
thousand local conscripts embodied, and killed a yearly average of two hundred
Arabs in maintaining peace. We keep ninety thousand men, with aeroplanes,
armoured cars, gunboats, and armoured trains. We have killed about ten thousand
Arabs in this rising this summer. We cannot hope to maintain such an average: it
is a poor country, sparsely peopled; but Abd el Hamid would applaud his masters,
if he saw us working. We are told the object of the rising was political, we are
not told what the local people want. It may be what the Cabinet has promised
them. A Minister in the House of Lords said that we must have so many troops
because the local people will not enlist. On Friday the Government announce the
death of some local levies defending their British officers, and say that the
services of these men have not yet been sufficiently recognized because they are
too few (adding the characteristic Baghdad touch that they are men of bad
character). There are seven thousand of them, just half the old Turkish force of
occupation. Properly officered and distributed, they would relieve half our army
there. Cromer controlled Egypt's six million people with five thousand British
troops; Colonel Wilson fails to control Mesopotamia's three million people with
ninety thousand troops.
We have not reached the limit of our military commitments. Four weeks ago the
staff in Mesopotamia drew up a memorandum asking for four more divisions. I
believe it was forwarded to the War Office, which has now sent three brigades
from India. If the North-West Frontier cannot be further denuded, where is the
balance to come from? Meanwhile, our unfortunate troops, Indian and British,
under hard conditions of climate and supply, are policing an immense area,
paying dearly every day in lives for the willfully wrong policy of the civil
administration in Baghdad. General Dyer was relieved of his command in India for
a much smaller error, but the responsibility in this case is not on the Army,
which has acted only at the request of the civil authorities. The War Office has
made every effort to reduce our forces, but the decisions of the Cabinet have
been against them.
The Government in Baghdad have been hanging Arabs in that town for political
offences, which they call rebellion. The Arabs are not at war with us. Are these
illegal executions to provoke the Arabs to reprisals on the three hundred
British prisoners they hold? And, if so, is it that their punishment may be more
severe, or is it to persuade our other troops to fight to the last?
We say we are in Mesopotamia to develop it for the benefit of the world. all
experts say that the labour supply is the ruling factor in its development. How
far will the killing of ten thousand villagers and townspeople this summer
hinder the production of wheat, cotton, and oil? How long will we permit
millions of pounds, thousands of Imperial troops, and tens of thousands of Arabs
to be sacrificed on behalf of colonial administration which can benefit nobody
but its administrators?
