The First World War in the Middle East by Kristian Coates Ulrichsen

Author:Kristian Coates Ulrichsen
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2014-09-22T04:00:00+00:00

Local responses to the British advance

This opening phase of the campaign elicited a range of varying responses from local and regional actors, were mediated through an array of political, economic and socio-cultural factors. In addition, the fact that the Basra vilayet was the scene of fighting from the outset forced the local tribes (and larger tribal confederations) to adopt strategies of self-preservation and/or take sides in the nascent conflict. Thair Karim identifies three dominant criteria in shaping tribal decisions: their history of prior engagement with centralised political authority, the ‘politico-economic’ benefits they might expect to derive from alignment with either of the competing forces, and considerations of expediency relating to the existing balance of forces. He suggests that ‘maximum personal advantages sought by various sheikhs were the ultimate consideration that determined the actual positions taken by various tribes’. Importantly, these interests were neither static nor rigid. They shifted with the changing momentum of military operations, as several tribal sheikhs who had cooperated with British forces during the advances of 1915 switched back to the Ottoman fold following the Battle of Ctesiphon in November.51

A case in point was the very differing attitudes towards, and experiences of, the projection of Ottoman political authority. Contrary to British (and British–Indian) official thinking, the myriad tribal groupings and confederations in Mesopotamia certainly did not constitute a monolithic bloc. Quite the opposite, they exhibited wide variations in tribal structure and in their relationship to centralised government. These reflected the unevenness with which Ottoman control had been projected before 1914. The tribes along the Tigris were larger and more homogenous, with a longer history of exposure to centralised power by virtue of their location astride the trading artery of Ottoman Mesopotamia.52 Their condition differed sharply from the tribes of the middle and lower Euphrates region, which generally had a much looser organisation and were fragmented into multiple sub-tribal units. These tribes also had long records of rebellion against the projection of governmental authority. This reflected a fiercely protective attitude towards their agricultural land from a state whose neglect they blamed for the silting up of land and the blighting of agricultural productivity.53

An additional factor mediating local responses was the sectarian composition of the Ottoman polity. While not wishing to overplay this divide, and agreeing fully with Fanar Haddad’s observation that ‘sectarian relations defy formulaic generalisations’ and are linked to ‘wider socio-economic and political conditions’,54 it was nevertheless the case that Shiites had been outsiders in the Ottoman Empire and not treated equally with its Sunni majority.55 In the cities of Mesopotamia, the urban notables tended to be Sunni, and they held the levers of administrative power, supported by a merchant class that included many members of the Jewish and Christian communities. The British invasion made the latter group particularly vulnerable to Ottoman targeting. In April 1915, the American Consul in Baghdad described how ‘at the moment there is considerable excitement in Baghdad against the Christians’ after three were publicly hanged following accusations of espionage.

Hanna Batatu vividly described

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