Lazghine Ya´qoubeLazghine Ya´qoube

The establishment in the Middle East of the new order following the territorial dismantlement and the political collapse of the decrepit Ottoman Empire at the close of World War I, in 1918, gerrymandered the Kurds into culturally disconnected and socially dismembered minorities. They became the world’s largest stateless people ever since.

However, whereas before the war the Kurds lived only in two countries- Ottoman and Persian empires- they found themselves now at the mercy of exclusionist regimes in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. The new whimsical order in the long obnoxious century ahead would put tens of thousands of Kurds to the sword.

This unfair partition of Kurdistan, added to the failure to recognize rights of “minorities” within the newly feathered nationalist states, gave rise to a number of revolts and uprisings against ruling regimes, which in response employed a heavy hand of brutality.

Initially, the Kurds were formally represented in the yearlong Paris Peace Conference, 1919-1920, and the Kurdish Question, among others, was given recognition in an international arena.

Consequently, the 1920 armistice agreement- best known as the Treaty of Sevres- imposed by the Allies on the defeated Turks, recognized the right of the Kurds to a state of their own. However, while presumably ought to settle the set of issues the war had left unresolved, Sevres, nevertheless, was never ratified and instead gave rise to new struggles, further mudding the water.

The Kurdish aspiration for independence was put into oblivion. The de facto haphazard partition of Kurdistan was formalized proper, and the idea of- at least a unified Kurdistan- was consigned to the grave.

The Kurds- though erroneously- have held a view that their right to a nation- state was buried by a stroke of pen in Lausanne, which could be partly true. Yet, events from 1919, up to 1921 has another version to tell. This is, though in brief, how the story developed.

In the decade preceding the war, and by an Anglo-Russian convention dated 1907, the latter was given a free hand in Eastern Kurdistan (Rojhilat). Owing to the war in Libya (1911-12), and the Balkans (1912-13), which created an Ottoman laxness in the east, Tsarist Russian propaganda penetrated deeper westward into (Bakur) and southward into (Bashur).

We understand this from the frequent contacts made by the Kurdish leader Sheikh Abdul Salam II of Barzan, along with the Assyrian religious and temporary leader Mar Shimun Benjamin, of Qudshanis, and Andranik Ozanian (an Armenian military leader who had jumped into fame in fighting the Turks in the Balkan War, 1912-13).

However, while the Kurdish sheikh was ensnared into betrayal in the village of Gangashin, in Gavar, and consequently hanged to death in Mosul on December 14, 1914, an occurrence that had the most deleterious effects on the Kurdish cause, Russia’s imperial policy in that turbulent region of the world would proceed obdurately.

Relatedly, the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, envisioned the region of Kurdistan to the south of Van and of Bitlis between Mush, Sirt, the course of Tigris, Jazir, the crest-line of the mountains which dominate Amadia, and the region of Mergawer, a Russian zone.

One of the most fundamental determinants that pushed Great Britain to war was the increasing influence of Germany in the lands of the Caliph- Sultan, which was best represented in the Berlin- Baghdad Railway project, potentially set to reach the Persian Gulf.

Great Britain had the firm conviction that safeguarding the Persian Gulf was corollary to either keep the Arabs neutral, at worst, or induce them to its side, at best. The image it had created and preserved in the region since 1616 was on the precipice.

On August 4, 1914, Great Britain declared war on Germany. The Ottoman Empire was still neutral though it had signed a secret alliance with the Kaiser two days ago, by which the “Sick Man of Europe” would be dragged into hostilities against the Allies (Russia, France, and Great Britain). On November 6, a British detachment disembarked at the port of Fao, in southern Iraq.

Shortly after this date, on November 23 to be exact, Mohamed Sharif Pasha, a former Kurdish officer and diplomat, addressed a letter to the British government. That very same day, Basra was captured by the British.

In the dispatch, Sharif indisputably pledges himself to the service of Great Britain, proposing to employ thousands of Kurdish fighters to the British cause in case the latter gives a guarantee for a future Kurdish state. There seems no reply to the proposition.

On March 11, 1917, British forces, under the command of General Stanley Maude, entered Baghdad without hard-fought action, and on April 1, they gained touch with the Russian forces in Qizil Robat, close to Khanaqin.

Initially, the British proposal to take Baghdad was made on the day after Basra was taken, but it received imperial consent on April 9, 1915. However, the British were stuck at Kut al-Amara (an Ottoman epic) where 13.309 British officers surrendered to Khalil Pasha. The mission was abandoned temporarily.

In mid-February 1917, as Maude began his attack against Baghdad, Russian forces were expected to converge on Mosul and perhaps latter on Baghdad.

The British were ought to confine themselves to Baghdad and have the Russians established in Mosul, except for Khanaqin. Serving this end, many troops left Baghdad for India. Brigadier- General Fredrick James Moberly affirms “British military activity in Mesopotamia beyond the limits of the Baghdad vilayet was not contemplated.”

With the capture of Baghdad, the British military campaign in this part of the world seems to have come to an end. Likewise, in the victory speech delivered on March 19, it is obvious that the military mission in Iraq was over. No mention is made of any further operations.

However, elsewhere, at this critical period, in Russia, three days before the British capture of Baghdad (March 8), an event was developing in Petrograd that would change the course of history in the century ahead. Russia was in the hot throes of Bolshevism.

The Tsarist regime came to an end when on March 15, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated the throne. With the installation of the Provisional Government, new Foreign Affairs Minister, Pavel Miliukov, affirmed his government would keep faithful to the cause of the Allies.

At this time, Maude’s Russian ally, Lieutenant- Colonel Nikolai Baratoff, Commander- in- Chief of the Russian Armies in Persia, continued to pursue the Ottoman forces to carry out the advance from the Caucasus upon Mosul.

However, Maude was definitely informed (on April 23) that the Russian advance on Mosul would not take place, and that the limit of the Russian responsibility could only be the occupation of the line Rawanduz, Sulaimaniye, and Qizil Robat.

Up to this point, the British and the French dispatched missions and secret agents to convince all elements of the Russian government to stay in the war. However, on November 7, the final and yet most decisive phase of the Russian Revolution set off when the Bolsheviks took power. On the following day, they abrogated secret treaties.

On November 22, Maude’s successor, William Marshal, received orders from the War Office to remain on the defensive. On November 23, to embarrass the Allies, Bolshevik’s Pravda and Izvestia published the details of the secret agreement. That served as the last straw to the Allies cause. The whole front from the Baltic to Mesopotamia had collapsed.

Navigating the challenge, French Prime Minister, Georges Clemenceau, and Secretary of State for War, Lord Alfred Milner, signed in late December the Paris military pact with reference to their respective countries’ activities in southern Russia.

Accordingly, French activity was to be developed north of the Black Sea; English activity was to be directed southeast of the sea. That is, Britain was to take charge of operations against the Turks in Kurdistan, among others.

So being the case, the war conditions offered the British an ideal opportunity to extend their control to the French sphere in Southern Kurdistan (Mosul), which was now perceived to be strategically and economically important to the security of Mesopotamia.

Relatedly, in May 1918, oil was rationed for the very first time in England and as a result, the oil lobby in London began to make intensive efforts to ensure the occupation of Mosul’s oilfields, which in August of the same year became a purely imperialist war aim in Britain.

This, added to the Russian retreat which dispelled the previous British fears of coming into direct contact the Russians, gave Great Britain the impetus to occupy Kurdistan. Britain was to encounter for the first time the inchoate Kurdish Question.

To meet this end, the British army, on October 23, resumed its already halted military campaign in Mesopotamia, and by November 15, the whole of the vilayet of Mosul was under the full and direct British control.

While the British spent the rest of 1918 squeezing as much as possible the retreating Turkish forces into the mountainous north, the situation deteriorated exponentially Kurdistan in the spring and summer of 1919.

In Zakho, in particular, the Turkish propaganda was making itself felt. Prompted by religious divisions, Kurds and Assyrians found themselves on opposing yet warring sides. In result, several British political officers were killed. Not necessarily in action.

Further east, in May 1919, Sheikh Mahmud Barzanji- who had on December 1, 1918, been appointed governor of Sulaymaniyah- astounded by the Residency in Baghdad when he suddenly imprisoned the British officers and advisors, proclaiming himself King of Kurdistan.

By the end of 1919, and coming to the realization that it was impossible to cope with the uncontrollable unrest by conventional warfare, Britain resorted to the Royal Air Force (RAF), whose employment produced the desired results on the ground.

Mahmoud’s ill-judged and astronomically reckless maneuver had the catastrophic effects within the British circles, already on the prowl against the Kurds.

Politically elsewhere in Paris, by this time, the Kurds have had their voice emphatically heard at the Peace Conference. Kurdistan was among the regions to be severed from Turkey.

It was at the suggestion of the British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, an anti- Turk to the bone, that Kurdistan be included in the territories to be detached completely from the former empire of Othman.

From the start of the conference, Lloyd George made it clear that Great Britain had no designs on the Asiatic Turkey. This includes Northern Kurdistan. It is mainly for this reason that the British statesman wanted an American mandate in Turkey.

Owing to the rising voices at home, and the no longer bearable expenditure abroad, the British statesman had only one obsession, bring home the British armies and demobilize them.

The U.S. President, Woodrow Wilson, however, thought it unwise to embark on a partition of Turkey at this moment, nor to send troops to Turkish territories since America was not in war against Turkey. The mandate system he had developed was yet to materialize.

However, in light of the Anglo- French agreement on Syria, Lloyd George, unsparingly exerted valiant efforts to convince Wilson that his country could undertake a mandate over Armenian, and potentially later over Kurdistan.

The agreement stipulated, among other things, the withdrawal of British Forces from the vicinity of Rumeilan (the farthest point of the boundary of the Mosul Vilayet) taking a westward direction up to Ras al-Ain (Sere Kaniye), Jarablus, Afrin, up to Payas on the Mediterranean.

The handing over to France the vast Kurdish areas the British had conquered and held for 13 months, indicates that Great Britain had no policy in the Kurdish north. The Syrian Agreement of September 15, gives an undeniable substance to this narrative.

Owing to opposing Kurdish and Armenian claims, Sharif Pasha, the Kurdish representative, and Bughos Nubar, the Armenian chief negotiator in the conference, to bridge the gap and mend historical fences, were made to sign though a stopgap agreement on November 20, 1919.

The Kurdo-Armenian agreement stipulated that a united Armenia and an independent Kurdistan be established under the same mandatory power; that the drawing of the Kurdistan- Armenia border was left to the decision of the peace conference; that both states would respect minority rights.

In the United States, Wilson who had left Paris prematurely in June, 1919, owing to illness, among other things, suffered a severe stroke on October 2, while touring the country to convince the nation that the Treaty of Versailles should be ratified by the Senate. The tour ended abruptly for the stroke would leave him bedridden until retirement, in 1921.

However, while Wilson seems to have induced people to his cause, the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, and majority leader, Henri Cabot Lodge, and like- minded senators lobbied against the treaty, which in consequence was rejected on November 19, 1919.

The issue took a more personal dimension when Lodge, harboring festering grudges (dating to 1916) against the president, made numerous reservations and proposed amendments to the treaty. His concerns about open- ended commitments to an international body were sound.

Wilson who disliked Lodge, and had decided against inviting him to the peace conference, refused to introduce any changes. No compromise was reached and consequently, the treaty was rejected for the second and final time in March 1920.

Admittedly, not only personal differences prompted Lodge to exert valiant efforts to throw his weight around. The political situation at home precluded the U.S. to furnish troops abroad.

The ill- judged Russian adventure of Archangel- which had futilely claimed some 222 American lives, had tarnished irreparably Wilson’s image and casted thick shadows over the Wilsonian foreign policy.

Consequently, Major General, William Graves, commander of the American Expeditionary Force- Siberia, issued orders on Saint Sylvester’s Day for the troops to concentrate at their ROs. On January 5, 1920, he finally received the official orders to withdraw.

The Chief- of- Staff, Peyton March, described the mission as little more than “a military crime”. The American failure in Siberia, which was basically recommended by the president himself, shifted the foreign policy.

This, added to the failure of the American Expeditionary Force, North Russia, known otherwise as the Polar Bear Campaign, with its tragic end still alive in the American collective memory, all diminished any prospects of an American military mission beyond the border.

The animosity was further fueled by ideological differences; Wilson was a progressive Democrat and Lodge a conservative Republican. On June 1, 1920, the Senate rejected by 52 to 23 votes the request made by Wilson (in May 1920) for the establishment over Armenian (and potentially later over Kurdistan) of a mandate.

While the vote nipped the prospects of an Armenian state in the mud proper, it gave a death blow to the conditional future Kurdish state disingenuously included in the provisions of the Treaty of Sevres. Articles 62 and 64 would make the Kurdish state a probability of the future. To no avail, however.

Much worse, already engaged with the Greek invading forces, the Senate rejection of the proposal Wilson had entrusted to the Congress in May 1920, prompted a Turkish military advance on Armenia in the next September 1920.

While the fate of Northern Kurdistan was similar to that of Armenia, the Cairo Conference (March 12- 30, 1921) discussed the Kurdish Question (which was reduced merely to the vilayet of Mosul), once and for all.

To the Kurd disadvantage, there was a luck of a unified position within the British government regarding its policy towards the Kurds. While Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for the Colonies, is said to have vigorously advocated an independent Kurdistan, Major Edward Noel went a step further when he tacitly observed that the goal of an independent Kurdistan can now be easily attained. Lawrence of Arabia, Special Advisor to the Colonial Office, gave his full support to Churchill.

On the other side, while Lord Curzon, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, chairing the conference, announced the British withdrawal from Kurdistan, Gertrude Bell, the only woman in the conference in her capacity as Oriental Secretary for the High Commissioner of Iraq, floated the idea that the Kurds would be happy to join the Arab government under Faisal of Mecca.

In Turkey, under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Pasha, with victories attained against the invading Greek forces and the fledging Armenia, the Turkish War of Independence came to a close with the signing of the Armistice of Mudanya on October 11, 1922.

In Downing Street, the downfall of Lloyd George’s coalition, on October 19, and the accession of the Conservative politician, Andrew Bonar Law, to power four days later, eroded the remaining glimmer of Kurdish hopes.

It could be argued that in Kurdistan, there was a luck of cohesion among the Kurdish politicians and elites as some wanted a certain kind of autonomy within the broader Turkish state, others sought radically an independent Kurdish state. At the end, neither secessionists and autonomists could prevail.

Based on historical material, and research, it emerges that Great Britain had no policy proper towards Kurdistan, prior to, during, and after WWI, and that the conquest of the Kurdish localities by the British forces was merely necessitated by the imperative developing circumstances on the ground as the war on the western front was nearing to a close.

Initially, Kurdistan was assigned a Russian zone of influence. In that sense, had Bolshevists not risen into power in that fateful November of 1917, and had the Senate given consent to the Wilsonian proposal in June 1920, Assyrians, Armenians, and Kurds could have had their own nation states established.

It is true that Lausanne consigned the idea of a Kurdish state to the grave- a saying the Kurds attribute to an anti-Kurd British diplomat- the same idea was buried in Cairo proper, and when mentioned afterwards it was merely mentioned to maintain illusion.

This applies to the joint Anglo-Iraqi proclamation of December 24, 1922, which acknowledged “conditionally” the right of the Kurds to form a government within Iraq, should they demarcate the boundaries of such a government.

Three days after Bonar Law’s inauguration, invitations to the Lausanne Conference were issued. The treaty would be signed on July 24, 1923. Politically, it was a foregone conclusion. The rest is history. [1]