http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/history/2004/0617iraq1917.htm Our story begins in March 1917 as 22-year-old Private 11072 Charles Dickens of the Cheshire Regiment peels a poster off a wall in the newly captured city of Baghdad. It is a turning point in his life. He has survived the hopeless Gallipoli campaign, attacking the Ottoman empire only 150 miles from its capital, Constantinople. He has then marched the length of Mesopotamia, fighting the Turks yet again for possession of the ancient caliphate, and enduring the grim battle for Baghdad. The British invasion army of 600,000 soldiers was led by Lieutenant-General Sir Stanley Maude, and the sheet of paper that caught Private Dickens's attention was Maude's official "Proclamation" to the people of Baghdad, printed in English and Arabic.
That same 11in by 18in poster, now framed in black and gold, hangs on the wall a few feet from my desk as I write this story of empire and dark prophecy. Long ago, the paper was stained with damp - "foxed", as booksellers say - which may have been Private Dickens's perspiration in the long hot Iraqi summer of 1917. It has been folded many times; witness, as his daughter Hilda would recall 86 years later, to its presence in his army knapsack over many months.
In a letter to me, she called this "his precious document", and I can see why. It is filled with noble aspirations and presentiments of future tragedy; with the false promises of the world's greatest empire, commitments and good intentions; and with words of honour that were to be repeated in the same city of Baghdad by the next great empire more than two decades after Dickens's death. It reads now like a funeral dirge:
"Proclamation... Our military operations have as their object, the defeat of the enemy and the driving of him from these territories. In order to complete this task I am charged with absolute and supreme control of all regions in which British troops operate; but our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators... Your citizens have been subject to the tyranny of strangers... and your fathers and yourselves have groaned in bondage. Your sons have been carried off to wars not of your seeking, your wealth has been stripped from you by unjust men and squandered in different places. It is the wish not only of my King and his peoples, but it is also the wish of the great Nations with whom he is in alliance, that you should prosper even as in the past when your lands were fertile... But you, people of Baghdad... are not to understand that it is the wish of the British Government to impose upon you alien institutions. It is the hope of the British Government that the aspirations of your philosophers and writers shall be realised once again, that the people of Baghdad shall flourish, and shall enjoy their wealth and substance under institutions which are in consonance with their sacred laws and with their racial ideals... It is the hope and desire of the British people... that the Arab race may rise once more to greatness and renown amongst the peoples of the Earth... Therefore I am commanded to invite you, through your Nobles and Elders and Representatives, to participate in the management of your civil affairs in collaboration with the Political Representative of Great Britain... so that you may unite with your kinsmen in the North, East, South and West, in realising the aspirations of your Race.
(signed) F.S. Maude, Lieutenant-General, Commanding the British Forces in Iraq."
British Use of Chemical Weapons in Iraq
http://www.iraqwar.org/chemical.htmWinston Churchill, as colonial secretary, was sensitive to the cost of policing the Empire; and was in consequence keen to exploit the potential of modern technology. This strategy had particular relevance to operations in Iraq. On 19 February, 1920, before the start of the Arab uprising, Churchill (then Secretary for War and Air) wrote to Sir Hugh Trenchard, the pioneer of air warfare. Would it be possible for Trenchard to take control of Iraq? This would entail *the provision of some kind of asphyxiating bombs calculated to cause disablement of some kind but not death...for use in preliminary operations against turbulent tribes.*
Churchill was in no doubt that gas could be profitably employed against the Kurds and Iraqis (as well as against other peoples in the Empire): *I do not understand this sqeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes.* Henry Wilson shared Churchills enthusiasm for gas as an instrument of colonial control but the British cabinet was reluctant to sanction the use of a weapon that had caused such misery and revulsion in the First World War. Churchill himself was keen to argue that gas, fired from ground-based guns or dropped from aircraft, would cause *only discomfort or illness, but not death* to dissident tribespeople; but his optimistic view of the effects of gas were mistaken. It was likely that the suggested gas would permanently damage eyesight and *kill children and sickly persons, more especially as the people against whom we intend to use it have no medical knowledge with which to supply antidotes.*
Churchill remained unimpressed by such considerations, arguing that the use of gas, a *scientific expedient,* should not be prevented *by the prejudices of those who do not think clearly*. In the event, gas was used against the Iraqi rebels with excellent moral effect* though gas shells were not dropped from aircraft because of practical difficulties <.....>
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Wing-Commander Sir Arthur Harris (later Bomber Harris, head of wartime Bomber Command) was happy to emphasise that *The Arab and Kurd now know what real bombing means in casualties and damage. Within forty-five minutes a full-size village can be practically wiped out and a third of its inhabitants killed or injured.* It was an easy matter to bomb and machine-gun the tribespeople, because they had no means of defence or retaliation. Iraq and Kurdistan were also useful laboratories for new weapons; devices specifically developed by the Air Ministry for use against tribal villages. The ministry drew up a list of possible weapons, some of them the forerunners of napalm and air-to-ground missiles:
Phosphorus bombs, war rockets, metal crowsfeet man-killing shrapnel, liquid fire, delay-action bombs. Many of these weapons were first used in Kurdistan.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
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