The Kurds: My Friends in the North by John Cookson;

Author:John Cookson;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: memoir;travel;John Cookson book;the Kurds’ history;visiting the Kurds;meeting the Kurds;befriending the Kurds
Publisher: Mint Associates Ltd
Published: 2021-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

21. The Kurdish question

In an effort to find out what happened at the Cairo Conference and how the ‘Kurdish question’ was handled I delved further into The National Archives in Kew, West London where an assistant handed me a bundle of faded, tissue-thin documents, bound with pink ribbon.

Although the front cover was stamped ‘Secret,’ the dossier had been declassified and was made public in 1972.

From this file I learned promises to the Kurds under the Treaty of Sèvres about independence were debated at Cairo Conference on the morning of March 15th 1921.

Churchill was in the chair. There were seven others present: Britain’s High Commissioner in Baghdad, Sir Percy Cox, Gertrude Bell, Colonel T. E. Lawrence, Major Edward Noel, a British political officer from Sulaimaniyah, and Major H. W. Young. Major R. D. Badock took notes.

Paging through the flimsy papers I learned there was an acknowledgement that the Kurds had been promised autonomy however that proposal sit well with London’s plans for a new country called Iraq ruled by an Arab king which included, for economic reasons, fertile and oil rich Kurdish territory near Mosul and Kirkuk.

Churchill asked Colonel Lawrence for his opinion. Lawrence was adamant the Kurds would never accept rule from Baghdad by an Arab king, the implication being Lawrence thought the Kurds should be allowed to run their own autonomous region themselves.

Bell suggested fudging the issue. She proposed pushing the question of Kurdish independence to the back burner for six months, by which time Faisal would be enthroned, and according to Bell: the Kurds would accept his rule - once they’d got used to the idea.

The minutes showed Churchill reminded the meeting Kurdish autonomy shouldn’t be overlooked and made it clear he backed a proposal from Major Young.

His suggestion was to include the Kurds in a new country called Iraq, but under the oversight of the British High Commissioner in Baghdad Sir Percy Cox, in the same way the British Governor General of South Africa administered Rhodesia at the time.

Churchill went on to indicate his support for a separate Kurdish army, under the command of British officers, to relieve British troops in Mosul and Kirkuk in October that year.

And that seems to have been it. The fate of the so-called ‘southern Kurds’ had been sealed.

Gertrude Bell was detailed to draw the map of the new Iraq merging the former Ottoman provinces of Basrah in the south, the central region of Baghdad and also Mosul in the north - the latter including the Kurdish areas up to the Persian border.

As the Cairo conference wound down Churchill telegraphed his Prime Minister, David Lloyd George tell him ‘mission accomplished,’ and he and his ‘forty thieves’ moved on to Jerusalem.

You can see why Churchill was satisfied.

The pledge of a separate country for the Arabs ruled by an Arab king had been honoured, Britain’s military budget for the region would be slashed, British interests on the ground would be protected on the cheap by local armies under British control and the religious makeup

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