Iraq

I have just completed a biography of Gertrude Bell, essentially the founder of Iraq. Gertrude was born in Middlesbrough in 1868. She was the granddaughter of Isaac Lowthian Bell, a polymath who studied physics and chemistry in Scotland, Denmark, Germany and France. Joining his father's iron works, Lowthian Bell developed new and better steel making processes and in 1844 established Bell Brothers which became the largest and most influential iron, steel and limestone enterprise in Yorkshire. He was also a noted scientist and served as a Liberal Party member in Parliament for five years as well as having been Mayor of Newcastle twice and Sheriff of Durham County.

His son, Thomas Hugh Bell, was equally bright and also educated in France and Germany with emphasis on Chemistry. He took over the family enterprise and enhanced its business. He was also a strong advocate of public education and spoke around the country pushing for education, health and military reform. Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell carried on the family tradition of being extremely bright and very energetic. While accepting of many of the Victorian strictures on behavior she never accepted that women couldn't do anything they wished and in this she was encouraged by her father. She was a voracious reader and got away from home to attend a girls' college in London. She then moved on the Oxford where in 1888 she was the first woman ever to receive a "first" in Modern History.


At 20 she was a snob, an aristocrat, very self assured and one who did not suffer fools glady. She had no suitors and had failed in her primary Victorian duty of finding a husband. The family shipped her off to Bucharest where a relative was the British Ambassador and she spent a social season there ending with a trip to Constantinople which she found fascinating.
Still unmarried at the age of 23 she was sent off to the relative's household now in Tehran where he was ambassador. She learned Persian and enjoyed the country. She met a man she wanted to marry but the family found him unsuitable. She returned to England, published a translation of the Persian poet, Hafiz, that is still considered one of the best. Her love interest had died of pneumonia. Gertrude had always been strong and she took up mountain climbing, mostly in the Alps, at which she became world class. She and her father took a trip around the world but without much else to do she decided in 1899 to travel to Jerusalem to study Arabic.

There with some German friends she began to travel in the desert. Among the places visited was Petra, the ancient cliff city. On one trip she went to the north to Druze-controlled territories. Despite their fearsome reputation she made friends with the tribal leaders. After returns to England, more world travel and more mountain climbing she returned early in 1905 to Palestine. This time she traveled for several weeks, accompanied by only a handful of locals, as far east as Palmyra, a former major capital. For Gertrude that was the beginning of many trips into the desert. By 1911 she had traveled through Baghdad and far to the south, becoming increasingly knowledgeable of both the people and the geography. By November 1913 she was back from England and anxious to travel even further. She undertook to leave from Damascus and with only a handful of locals to travel into what is now Saudi Arabia to meet with Ibn Saud, the head of a leading tribe of the Nejd. After two months on the road Gertrude and her party got as far as the Rashid capital in the northern part of the Arabian desert where she was held captive for some weeks and then found it expedient to return to Damascus.

In the course of her travels during which she compiled detailed accounts of archeological sites, terrain and especially the tribal makeup of the region, including detailed geneologies, she had developed enduring friendships and acceptance from a large number of the leading Arabs in the area in which over meals, coffee and cigarettes - usually in their tents - she was able to converse in fluent Arabic about a host of topics. So by the advent of World War I she was a leading if not the leading British human respository of knowledge about the Arab middle east.

From late 1914 until her death in 1927 she was connected sometimes officially and some times informally with the British Government's efforts in the Middle East. She started first with the "Arab Bureau" in Cairo but was posted to Basrah, the port at the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates to serve as liaison between Cairo and the Government of British India in Delhi. In 1916 she received a formal appointment as "Political Officer", the first woman ever to be so appointed. She had met T.E. Lawrence in 1911 and they were close friends although with different views on occasion. Her mentor and boss for many years was Percival Cox, a remarkable Middle East expert who was the High Commissioner for Mesopotamia for several years after 1918. Gertrude served as "Oriental Secretary" (head of intelligence) and acted as liaison between the High Commissioner's office and the Arab leadership. She was a very close advisor and confidant to Cox.

Viewing Mesopotamia (the land between the rivers) at the beginning of the 20th century and today's Iraq reveals tremendous differences but some underlying legacies. Baghdad had been the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, at its peak 11 centuries ago, but which in some form or other had survived until 1258 when a Mongol invasion destroyed the city and brought an end to Arab self-rule. By the 14th century political authority had passed to the Turks who administered much of the known world from Constantinople. During Gertrude Bell's travels the area was lightly administered by the Ottoman Government and as long as taxes were paid and Turkish security not threatened, the locals lived in autonomy. There was no sense of nationality, people belonged to tribes, or clans or were tied to a locality. Outside of these ties there was no sense of identity. Most of the Arabs were illiterate and knew very little about anything outside their locale. Essentially the residents of Basrah and the agricultural communities of the south were Shiite, Baghdad and the central areas were Sunni while in the north around Mosul the people were mostly Kurds. There was no boundary between the settled areas and central Arabia. In the areas beyond the coast or the river valleys nomads from central Arabia wandered at will.

The navy's of the world shifted at the end of the 19th century from coal to petroluem as fuel. Ironically, none of the western European powers had oil. Britain and Germany had lots of coal but were dependent on foreign sources for oil. Britain had established the Anglo-Persian Oil Company and its refinery at Abadan was a major source of fuel. In 1914 the British Indian Army seized Basrah to protect its nearby refinery and to control the Persian Gulf. Its Army moved north to take Baghdad but with poor leadership, bad logistics and no knowledge of the terrain the effort ended badly. Mid-way between Basrah and Baghdad, at Kut, the British Army surrended to the Turks and 13,000 troops were marched off to captivity.

What the British needed and eventually got was an Arab revolt against the Turks. With Ms. Bell's knowledge, Lawrence's audacity and thousands of pounds sterling, the British and Arab forces eventually got to Damascus. The Ottoman Empire surrended in the summer of 1918 leaving the British and French to squabble over dividing the spoils. The French staked out Syria despite its independent Arab Government established in 1919, leaving the British to organize Mesopotamia. Gertrude actually drew the map for the new country, to be called Iraq, and it was her decision to combine three Turkish provinces, Mosul, Baghdad and Basrah into one political unit. In retrospect her decision appears sound. There were known oil sources in the north and inclusion of Mosul secured Iraq's northern border from the Turks and the Kurds, being Sunni, helped balance the majority of Iraqis who were Shiite. Baghdad was the only major city and its Sunni leadership and urban population were needed to form a center for the country.

Getting Iraq up and running was not easy. Many if not most of the Arab tribes were opposed to the British occupation and there were a number of insurrections. The British used aircraft and machine guns but still found it difficult to bring the country under control. The British Government complained that it had cost 50 million pounds in one year to operate in Iraq. Winston Churchill called a conference in Cairo in 1921 where 40 of those involved were gathered to work out a solution. Gertrude was the only woman among the 40.

Finally the British set up a League of Nations Mandate that was somewhat disguised by organizing a local government and bringing in a King, Feisal from the Hashemite family of the Hejaz (Mecca, Jiddah and Medina). Feisal had been bounced out of his kingship in Syria by the French. He was inaugurated in Baghdad in 1921 despite less than enthusiastic support from the Iraqis. His closest advisor for a couple of years was Gertrude Bell. But by 1925 Cox had left Iraq, the new High Commisioner was polite but did not utilize Bell's services and she ended her career in Iraq as the Director of Antiquities and founder of the Museum of Antiquities in Baghdad. She had personnally collected many of the artifacts displayed.

By 1927 she was severely depressed, her family's fortune had disappeared, and she had no friends or confidants. She was also in frail health. So one night she took extra sleeping pills and did not awake.

Looking at the range of her accomplishments she has to be considered one of the world's most important women of the 20th century. She probably was the single most important person in the creation of Iraq as a country. Her handiwork became independent in 1932 and has had a pretty rocky history. But through it all is has developed a fair degree of national identity, a significant degree of modernization and, it appears, may even have a future.