British "Queen of Iraq" rests in Baghdad cemetery (She drew the lines)

[Up2Late]

(If you ever wondered who the idiot was who decided how the borders of Iraq were drawn, here's your answer.)

FEATURE-British "Queen of Iraq" rests in Baghdad cemetery

11 May 2006 01:03:12 GMT
Source: Reuters

By Ibon Villelabeitia

BAGHDAD, May 11 (Reuters) - The cemetery gate groans and the gaunt grave keeper leads the visitor along rows of broken tombs. "There she is," Ali Mansur says pointing to a sandstone gravestone. "I take care of her. But nobody visits." Gertrude Bell, a British traveller, writer and linguist, was one of the most powerful women of the 1920s, an adviser to empire builders and confidante to kings.

An "oriental secretary" to British governments, she is credited with drawing the boundaries of modern Iraq out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War One. Now, as her colonial creation stands on the verge of breakdown because of sectarian violence, the woman dubbed the "Queen of Iraq" lies in a forgotten cemetery in Baghdad....

(clip)

...OTTOMAN PROVINCES

Bell and her fellow colonialists settled Iraq's borders by merging the old Ottoman provinces of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra, seeking to secure British interests and with scant regard for tribal and ethnic boundaries. "I had a well spent morning at the office making out the southern desert frontier of the Iraq," Bell, who specialised in Arabic and Persian languages, wrote to her father in 1921.

What emerged was a centralised state with three peoples with differing aims, ideals and beliefs: non-Arab Kurds in the mountainous north, Shi'ite Muslims in the south and Sunni Arabs in Baghdad and in the rest of the heartland. In 1958, a group of nationalist military officers ousted the puppet monarchy Bell had helped install in a bogus referendum in 1921 that passed with 96 percent of the vote....

(more at link)

<http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IBO957042.htm>

[Missy M]

1. Didn't they also lop off part of Iraq at that time and .....

establish Kuwait? I believe they established Kuwait to their own advantage.

[Up2Late]

3. You might be right, that was always Saddam's claim...

...if you look a a map of the area that includes Iraq Kuwait, Jordan, etc., they are all very straight, very deliberately drawn lines.

Another point this article makes, that most don't talk about is below:

<http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IBO957042.htm>

...Bell, who had an aristocratic upbringing, lived in a more genteel Baghdad than today's city of sandbags, armoured vehicles and the bombed-out hulks of Saddam-era government buildings. She wore long muslin dresses and feathered hats and rode side-saddle along the banks of the Tigris. In her letters, she describes a Baghdad of tea parties, regattas, swimming excursions and luncheons on the verandas of colonial buildings.

But as revolt spread and Britain used bombs and poison gas against those opposed to its presence, she faded from public life. "We have underestimated the fact that this country is really an inchoate mass of tribes which can't as yet be reduced to any system," she once said.

Five years before her death from an overdose of sleeping pills aged 57 in 1926, she wrote: "You may rely upon one thing -- I'll never engage in creating kings again; it's too great a strain...."

(more at link above)

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. No, Kuwait was completely independent of the Ottoman Empire in 1899

when the ruler signed a treaty with Britain: http://www.arab.de/arabinfo/kuwaithis.htm . Under the treaty, Kuwait was a protectorate, with Britain responsible for its foreign policy.

[liberalpragmatist]

12. Yes, although it was established with the sponsorship of Great Britain

In order to deny the Ottomans easy access to the Persian Gulf. The Germans and the Ottoman Empire were in alliance and were constructing a Berlin-to-Baghdad railroad that was to then be extended to the Gulf, allowing the Germans to bypass the Suez Canal and have easy access to the Indian Ocean. The British didn't want that and managed to form an alliance with the local Kuwaiti leader and because of the weakness of the Ottoman Empire, they were able to lop off part of Basra province to create Kuwait.

[rfkrfk]

10. what/where is Iraq, before the creation of Iraq?

Kuwait has been a monarchy, since 1750 or so.

[elfin]

2. Read "Queen of the Desert"

Can't remember the author's name. Written a few years ago and a fascinating book including many of her letters home during her stay in the Iraq.

Her letters describing the tribes and clans whe met and who hated whom sounded like they were written just yesterday. One of the best biographies I have ever read.

[eppur_se_muova]

8. Actually, "Desert Queen", by Janet Wallach.

Read this several years ago--recall it as fascinating history and biography, but not too much of the details remain in my memory.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0385495757.01._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_AA240_SH20_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0385495757/ref=sib_dp_pt/002-5130992-0400007#reader-link

[IndianaGreen]

5. She was right about a theocratic state

She ensured that a Sunni elite, previously favoured by the Sunni Turks running the Ottoman territories, dominated the new Iraqi government and the army, and that the majority Shi'ites, whom she regarded as religious zealots, remained oppressed.

Kurds were denied self-rule so that London could control Kurdistan's oil fields and build a buffer against the Russians.

"I don't for a moment doubt that the final authority must be in the hands of the Sunnis, in spite of their numerical inferiority; otherwise you will have a ... theocratic state, which is the very devil," Bell wrote in another letter.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IBO957042.htm

[bobbieinok]

6. weren't borders in Africa drawn with no attention to tribal territories???

didn't that also happen in the Balkans after WWI??????

[eppur_se_muova]

9. Absolutely. Colonial powers imposed borders which suited European ...

plans re exploitability and defensibility. Much of the map of modern Africa was created in a congress of European powers in Berlin in the 1860's, convened by Bismarck. Well described in a book by Thomas Pakenham (I read the 1st ed):

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0582368812/ref=sib_dp_pt/002-5130992-0400007#reader-link

A good followup to this book is Adam Hochschild's "King Leopold's Ghost", which is a sort of grisly coda to Pakenham's work:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0618001905/qid=1147829737/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-5130992-0400007?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

[liberalpragmatist]

11. The Balkans actually were somewhat logical

I suppose you're talking about the former Yugoslavia. Despite everything that later went wrong in Yugoslavia, it was actually established due to the wishes of most of the inhabitants; when Austria-Hungary collapsed, Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia declared themselves the "State of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes" and voted to merge with the Kingdom of Serbia and the Kingdom of Montenegro.

[Lisa]

7. she trailed a stick behind her in the sand ...

I'm actually talking about this tomorrow, in a political geography course I'm teaching.



"Somewhere in the letters-home of Gertrude Bell, the doughty English archaeologist and colonial administrator, there is a description of a pleasant afternoon spent riding in the Mesopotamian desert in 1918 or 1919. Bell trails a walking stick in the sand. Behind her, Arab boys erect cairns to mark the future boundary between what will eventually become the states of Iraq and Saudi Arabia."


http://www.doublestandards.org/raban1.html