Kurds, Arabs and Britons: The Memoir of Col. W.A. Lyon in Kurdistan, 1918-1945

257 Pages·2002·1.23 MB·English

by  David K. Fieldhouse

Kurds, Arabs and Britons

KURDS, ARABS and BRITONS
The Memoir of Lieutenant-Colonel
W. A. Lyon CBE in Iraq 1918–44
    
 . . 
I.B.Tauris Publishers
LONDON • NEW YORK
Acknowledgement of souces for maps and pictures, with thanks.
The maps were drawn from the following originals:
Maps 1 and 2: C. M. Andrew and A. S. Kanya-Forstner, France Overseas
(Thames and Hudson, London 1981;
Map 3: J. Marlowe, Late Victorian (Cresset Press, London, 1967);
Map 4: C. J. Edmonds, Kurds, Turks and Arabs (Oxford University Press,
London, 1957).
Illustrations:
Jacket Illustration is from A. M. Hamilton, Road Through Kurdistan (Faber and
Faber, London, 1937);
from the Middle East Centre archive, Oxford:
Illustrations 2, 7, 9, the Vyvyan Holt Collection
Illustrations 8, 11, 12, 15, the Edmonds Collection
Illustrations 14, 16 the Freya Stark Collection
from C. J. Edmonds, Kurds, Turks and Arabs, Illustration 6;
from J. Marlowe, Late Victorian, Illustrations 2, 5;
the other Illustrations are from the W. A. Lyon Papers.
Published in 2001 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd,
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Copyright © D.K.Fieldhouse, 2001
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
1 86064 613 1
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A full record for this book is available from the British Library
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Set in Monotype Garamond by Ewan Smith, London
Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin
Contents
List of Illustrations vi
Preface vii
Acknowledgements x
A Note on Spelling xi
Maps xiv–xviii
Introduction: The Background, Iraq 1918–44 1
1.Iraq as a British Dependency 1918–44/1 2.The Iraqi State 1918–44/22
3.The Kurds and British Over-rule/33 4.Wallace Lyon’s Career/48
‘Buyurun Bakinez’: A Memoir by Wallace Lyon 59
1 Mosul, Dohuk and the 1920 Rising, 1918–20 61
2 Arbil: The ‘Election’ of King Faisal, 1921 84
3 Arbil and Kirkuk: Tribal Risings and the Campaign against
the Turks, 1922 107
4 Sir Henry Dobbs, 1923–24 129
5 The Visit of King Faisal and the League of Nations Commission,
1924–25 141
6 Bringing Sulaimani under Iraqi Rule, 1925–26 154
7 Sulaimani: Shaikh Mahmud and Local Society, 1926–29 164
8 Kirkuk: People and Locusts, 1929–30 170
9 Mosul: The Frontier Commission and the End of the Mandate, 1930–32 178
10 Baghdad: Land Settlement in Kut and Kirkuk, 1932–33 194
11 Kirkuk: The Army Coup and Revolution, 1934–41 202
12 Political Adviser to the Indian Army in Iraq and the End of Service,
1941–44 219
Select Bibliography: Iraq 1914–44 229
Index 231
Illustrations
1. Lieut. Col. W. A. Lyon in uniform, c. 1939.
2. W. A. Lyon, Capt. C. E. Littledale and Sir Henry Dobbs, the High Commis-
sioner in a characteristically informal pose, mid-1920s.
3. Sir Arnold Wilson, 1921, from a portrait by Eric Kennington, after he had left
Baghdad.
4. Sir F. Humphreys, the High Commissioner, Vyvyan Holt, the Oriental Sec-
retary and others, in 1932, just before the end of the mandate.
5. The Cairo Conference, March,1921, which decided the future of Iraq. Front
row: Sir Herbert Samuel, Winston Churchill, Sir Percy Cox. Second row: Sir
Arnold Wilson, Gertrude Bell, Jafar al-Askari, T. E. Lawrence.
6. The Mosul Commission, 1925, which settled the future of Mosul.
7. The Mardin Frontier Conference, 1930, described by Lyon.
8. Miss Gertrude Bell and others, c. 1921. She was a dominant influence on Bagh-
dad policy 1918-21 as Oriental Secretary and eventually became an enthusiastic
proponent of Faisal as king.
9. Sir K. Cornwallis, the Ambassador, Lord Mountbatten, the Regent Abd al-Illah,
and Nuri as-Said, prime minister, in 1941, after the end of the Rashid Ali crisis.
10. King Faisal visiting the Patriarch at Khoun Khyat in 1926, as part of his strategy
of assuring non-Muslims of his favour.
11. Mahmud Pasha, chief of the Jaf, and Babakr-i Selim Agha, chief of the Pizhdar,
who supported the government loyally throughout the critical period before
1925.
12. The Lady Adila Khan of Halabja, widow of Usman Pasha Jaf, brother of Mah-
mud Pasha, and another strong supporter of the government.
13. Shaikh ‘Mulla’ Mustafa Barzani, 1923: a leading Kurdish nationalist and rival
of Mahmud Bazanji, who features in Lyon’s account as a great warrior.
14. Kurds drinking coffee in a typical Kurdish tent.
15. An RAF plane over the Gara Sind, 1924: typifying the dangers pilots faced
when ‘pacifying’ Kurdish rebels in the early 1920s as part of Churchill’s scheme
to police Iraq from the air.
16. Shaikh Mahmud Barzinja in exile in 1942, taken by Freya Stark, who sympath-
ized with him.
Preface
Wallace Lyon was an administrator in Iraq from the end of the war with
the Ottoman empire in 1918 until near the end of the Second World War.
After service in France he had been an officer with the 52nd Sikh Frontier
Force which was sent to Iraq in 1917 as part of the British and Indian force
that was to complete the conquest of Mesopotamia in 1918. Thus he
happened to be in Mesopotamia late in 1918 when the Civil Administration
was urgently looking for civil administrators. He was sent to Kurdistan
where he spent most of the next twenty-six years. In this he was excep-
tional. The great majority of British non-technical officials were gradually
replaced by Iraqis after 1921, when the Iraqi state and monarchy were set
up, culminating in 1932, when Iraq became a sovereign state. Lyon survived
this second cut by being appointed Land Settlement Officer. After the
attempted revolution of 1941 he rejoined the Indian Army and was ap-
pointed a Political Adviser with the British Army, ‘Paiforce’, remaining
until the end of 1944. He then resigned from the Indian Army and entered
the Consular Service, serving until 1949 and his final retirement as Consul
in Harar.
After retirement he wrote his memoirs. This, as is explained in ‘A Note
on Spelling’, was done secretively and was completed in 1964. It was not
intended for immediate publication, mainly because many of those
mentioned in it were still alive; though he told his daughter, Sheila Lyon,
for whom it was written, that he hoped that I, as her husband, would
eventually edit and publish it. He did not give it a title, simply putting
‘Buyurun Bakinez’ (roughly translated as ‘take a look inside’) on the cover.
Hence the title of this book is mine, a deliberate echo of the title of
C.J.Edmonds’s Kurds, Turks and Arabs. Lyon died in 1977; and by the end
of the century it is unlikely that many if any of those mentioned in the
memoir are still alive. The time therefore seems ripe for publishing an
edited version.
The case for doing so is that, although there is a very large literature on
what may be called the high politics of the creation and organization of
Iraq during this first quarter-century, and a good deal on the Kurds as an
viii ·Kurds, Arabs and Britons
ethnic group and political problem, there is very little on how the British
actually ran or manipulated the Kurdish region of northern Iraq during
the period of the Mandate to 1932, or thereafter while Britain had extensive
treaty rights there. There are only three comparable personal memoirs on
Kurdistan in this period of which I am aware: W. R. Hay’s Two Years in
Kurdistan. Experiences of a Political Officer 1918–1920 (London, 1921); Ed-
monds’s Kurds, Turks and Arabs (London, 1957); and A. M. Hamilton’s Road
through Kurdistan: The Narrative of an Engineer in Iraq (London, 1937). Hay
left Iraq in October 1920 to work in the Indian Political Department, so his
account covers only the critical first two years after the end of the First
World War. Lyon is not mentioned in his account, though they must have
known each other. Edmonds was a close colleague and friend of Lyon
from 1922 and there is much synergy between their accounts. But Edmonds
left Kurdistan in 1925 to become Assistant Adviser to the Ministry of
Interior until 1933, then briefly Adviser to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs,
and finally, from 1935 to 1945, Adviser to the Ministry of Interior. Edmonds
thus moved from the Kurdish area to the central government in Baghdad
in the mid-1920s and never wrote in detail about his later experiences,
though there is a great deal in his unpublished papers about the problems
of Kurdistan after 1925. Finally Hamilton, a New Zealander, was a road
engineer in the Ruwandiz region from 1928 to 1932. His book is mainly
about building the road through the Ruwandiz gorge, but also contains
much material on people and events in Kurdistan which intermesh with
Lyon’s narrative for those four years.
By contrast with these men, Lyon stayed almost continuously in Kurd-
istan until 1944, and this gives his memoir its special value. It provides a
detailed and lively account of the life and work of a Briton who had to deal
with the problems of a mixed Arab, Turkish and Kurdish population, and
in particular with the feuds of the Kurdish shaikhs in the mountains. In the
early years, until 1926, these were complicated by Turkish irredentism and
perpetually by the existence of a largely open Persian frontier. His account
plays down the dangers and emphasizes the excitement and the interest of
the job. It therefore fills a substantial gap in the history of the evolution of
modern Iraq and, in particular, of Kurdistan and throws much light on the
origins of later and contemporary Kurdish problems. Lyon became a
devoted supporter of the interests of the Kurds and in the end decided to
retire largely because of the continuing refusal of Arab politicians to fulfil
promises made to the Kurds or to give them a fair share in the increasing
wealth generated by petroleum. After retirement he remained in contact
with Kurdish leaders and strongly supported their claims for greater
autonomy.
In editing the memoir I have cut out virtually all the material relating
Preface·ix
to Lyon’s private life and family, both before and after 1918, indicating
briefly in parenthesis when he went on leave, married and so on, but
summarizing his earlier and later life at the end of the Introduction. I have
also, regretfully, had to shorten the rest of the text very substantially to
make it possible to publish at reasonable length. In particular I have excised
much interesting material on sporting activities and many anecdotes. Other
adjustments to the text are indicated in the ‘Note on Spelling’. In the
Introduction I have attempted to do two things: to put Lyon’s regional
narrative into the broader context of Iraqi history, and so to make his text
largely self-explanatory; and at the same time to provide my own in-
terpretation of that very controversial subject from the standpoint of a
general imperial historian rather than that of a specialist or expert in Iraqi
or Middle Eastern history, which I am not. To do this rigorously I would
have needed to spend a long period of basic research in the archives,
including the Public Record Office and various other MS collections of
Lyon’s contemporaries. I have not done so, partly because I was not
prepared to devote several more years to the project, and partly because I
am not writing my own account and would have used such information
mainly to footnote Lyon’s text. I did, however, work through some of the
more relevant material in the Edmonds Papers in the Middle East Archive
at St Antony’s College, Oxford, which provided collaborative evidence on
the period before and after 1925 and which, as mentioned in the ‘Note on
Spelling’, enabled me to standardize Lyon’s somewhat variable spelling of
names, places and titles. For the rest I have relied on the wide range of
published material and on the advice of friends and colleagues.
D. K. Fieldhouse
Jesus College, Cambridge
March 2000