Enemy on the Euphrates by Ian Rutledge Read Free Book Online Page B

much to allay that criticism, but how certain was heof success? If the English really did help him – with guns and gold – that would be a different matter, but the
Ingliz
were cunning and duplicitous.
    So, when war commenced between Britain and the Ottoman Empire, Husayn equivocated. He conferred with his four sons. ‘Abdallah was the most enthusiastic for rebellion; Faysal, his third son, was reluctant to break with the Turks; ‘Ali, the eldest, and Zayd, the youngest, were indifferent. So the Sharif waited, and in March 1915 he sent Faysal to Damascus to talk with a group of anti-Turkish Syrians known as Jam‘iyya al-‘Arabiyya al-Fatat (The Young Arab Society) who had recently approached him, and also to seek out the leaders of a secret organisation of Arab officers in the Ottoman army called al-‘Ahd (The Pledge), of which he had recently learned and whose exact intentions – once they were fully clarified – might help him decide whether to respond positively to what he believed to be Kitchener’s offer of a vast, independent Arab state.

    IRAQ, WITHIN ITS POSTWAR MANDATE BORDERS, AND NEIGHBOURING REGIONS OF SYRIA, TURKEY AND PERSIA

6
Pacifying Arabistan
    If General Nixon was going to protect not only the 138-mile pipeline to Abadan but the Persian oilfield itself, he was also going to have to send more troops up the Karun river into south-west Persia. This was fast becoming a matter of some urgency. Telegrams from the India Office had informed Nixon that the Admiralty were getting worried. Rapid repair of the pipeline was essential. ‘The oil question is becoming serious,’ they complained. 1
    After the victory at Shu’ayba, General Nixon was able to detach a division-sized force under the command of Major General George Gorringe to cross into Persian Arabistan to avenge the defeat of their earlier incursion, conduct a large-scale pacification campaign against the tribes and ensure the permanent safety of Britain’s Persian oilfield. Lieutenant Wilson was attached to the force as a political officer (PO).
    Let us picture Lieutenant Wilson as he presents himself for duty. He is now thirty-one years old, of above average height, broad shouldered and still sunburned even after some weeks in cloudy England. His moustache is thick but neatly trimmed, his eyes dark and commanding; above them, beetling black eyebrows and close-cropped hair. He wears the old-fashioned Indian Army tunic with a high collar buttoned to the neck, eschewing the new-fangled collar and tie which even his superior, Sir Percy Cox, has now adopted. Equally and characteristically conservative is his sidearm belt with two parallel shoulder straps instead of the now more customary Sam Browne, and holstered on his left hip is his service revolver. Round the brim of his cap is a white band and on his collar the two white chevrons indicating unmistakably that he is an officer of the Indian Political Service.

    Captain Arnold Wilson in the uniform of a Political Officer of the Imperial Indian Army, 1916
    Over the past few years Wilson’s social and political views have become more aligned with his sartorial conservatism. As he has matured in age, his opinions have narrowed and hardened. In a letter to his parents he states, ‘The more I see of eastern races and western races in the East the more I feel that racial differences are deep and ineradicable … Education makes the points of difference sharper and harder to conceal.’ 2 He disagrees profoundly with the views of those he refers to as ‘Liberals’, like the orientalist Professor E.G. Browne, who believe that democratic constitutional self-government should be the objective of British policy in the East. Indeed, he is equally antipathetic to the progress of democracy and social justice in Britain, attacking the extension of the suffrage to women, co-education, redistributive taxation, state old age pensions and trade unions. ‘Radicalism’, he pronounces, ‘is the creed of the