British Woman Formed Modern Iraq
Gertrude Bell Knew Britain’s Oil Needs and Lethal Sunni-Shiite Mix
Jul 1, 2008
If anyone could authoritatively confront George Bush, saying “I could have told you so,” it would be Gertrude Bell, but she died in 1926.
What Gertrude knew about Iraq might have saved the Bush administration and its allies bundles of bucks, thousands of casualties and the toll taken trying to democratize Iraq.
"Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators," said Lt. Gen. Stanley Maude in 1917 as his British army approached Baghdad to overthrow Ottoman rule.
Iraq Oil a 1917 Issue
The need for oil was a culprit then too. Ottoman support of Germany in World War I threatened British survival. Britain needed Persian oil because Winston Churchill had switched from coal to oil so battleships could travel faster, cover more territory and refuel at sea.
Gertrude arrived in Iraq on the heels of British victory, after a decade of on location Mideast studies, to help the British High Commissioner. Carving Iraqi territory out of three Ottoman provinces and creating modern Iraq, she sketched Iraq’s boundaries after consulting tribal leaders and considering Britain’s needs. Her advice: Deny Kurds independence and keep northern oil fields under British control.
The Sunni-Shia Clash
"The truth is I'm becoming a Sunni myself,” she wrote home. “You know where you are with them, they are staunch and they are guided...by reason. The Shi'ahs, however well intentioned they may be, (will let) at any moment some ignorant fanatic of an alim tell them that by the order of God and himself they are to think differently."
Gertrude warned Churchill of the lethal mix of Shia and Sunni cultures. She recommended giving minority Sunnis a monarchy, withholding from majority Shiites the democracy she thought them incapable of maintaining. America and its allies more recently thought they were opening doors to democracy when they turned Iraq over to Shiites.
Chalabi, Sadr and Jafar
Sound familiar? There’s more. Gertrude’s Baghdad lodgings belonged to the Chalabi family and a young Shiite cleric named Sadr was a thorn in Britain’s side. The key minister in the Iraq government was Jafar. (This decade’s Jafar headed Iraq’s nuclear weapons program.)
"I hate Iraq. I wish we had never gone to the place," Churchill said in 1926. But Bell and other officials paved the way for Britain to manage Iraq’s government and oil for decades. When they placed foreign sheik King Faisal on the throne it was Gertrude who oversaw everything from the daily round of his appointments to furnishings of his Baghdad palace.
Lawrence of Arabia's Friend
This friend of Lawrence of Arabia had more than one leg up on Bush, his advisers and their failed Iraq policy. She knew Arab chieftains and their ways. A redheaded Oxford graduate, she rode the desert by horseback and camel for nearly a decade, supped with chieftains in tents and knew their languages before taking her Baghdad post.
Gertrude knew when she was a welcome guest and when not, and, say some historians and scholars, accomplished more in Iraq than any outsider before or since.
Bell’s major biographer, journalist Janet Wallach, has written magazine cover stories on many Mid East leaders. Her 1996 book is titled Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell, Adventurer, Adviser to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia.
Other sources include Ellen Knickmeyer’s March 5, 2006 Washington Post article, “The Woman Who Put Iraq on the Map”, and Gertrude Bell’s 1911 book, Amurath to Amurath, from which the pictures were taken.
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