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Gertrude Bell: settler of Iraq's borders
16.5.2006
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Gertrude Bell, a British traveler,
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.
Nearly 80 years after Bell's death and more than
three years after U.S. invasion, many fear Iraq's
unity is threatened by killings, roving militias and
the fear that is uprooting families. Some believe
the country could split into three sectarian and
ethnic regions.
Prime Minister-designate Nuri al-Maliki has pledged
to put together a coalition government that would
unite Iraq's long competing communities of Shi'ite
Muslims, Sunni Arabs and Kurds and avert a slide
into all-out sectarian and ethnic conflict.
But as history shows, modern Iraq, the land of
ancient Mesopotamia, has been a divided nation since
its creation. |
Gertrude Bell, a British traveler, writer and
linguist, was one of the most powerful women of the
1920s. 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. |
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
specialized in Arabic and Persian languages, wrote
to her father in 1921.
What emerged was a centralized 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.
She ensured that a Sunni elite, previously favored
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.
Ethnic lines
In December parliamentary elections, Iraqis cast
their ballots along religious and ethnic lines,
turning their backs on the centralized state first
imposed by Bell and the British authorities.
When asked by a reporter recently why Iraqi
politicians argued so much over a new government,
President Jalal Talabani quipped: "This is the Iraq
our British friends created."
Juan Cole, professor of Middle East history at the
University of Michigan, agreed.
"British policies unbalanced Iraq and Gertrude Bell
played a significant role in that."
Tea by the Tigris
Bell, who had an aristocratic upbringing, lived in a
more genteel Baghdad than today's city of sandbags,
armored 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."
When she was buried, thousands thronged the streets
to watch her casket pass as it headed toward the
British cemetery in Baghdad's Bab al-Sharji
district.
Alarabonline org
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