Townshend, Charles, Desert Hell, The British Invasion of Mesopotamia, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011
Charles Townshend’s Desert Hell is one of the better books about the British campaign in Mesopotamia during World War I. It not only covers the military side but the politics as well up to the creation of the British Mandate in Iraq after the war. His main thesis is that the war and the formation of Iraq were dysfunctional from the start because there was no political or military strategy behind them.
Townshend writes that the Mesopotamia campaign was political from the start yet it was directionless. The British believed that they had to show their power in the Middle East otherwise the Ottomans or the Arabs or both would declare a jihad against England leading millions of Muslims in India to rise up against the empire. This became a mantra amongst British officers and officials that the army had to continually advance to win over the Arabs despite the author finding no evidence that was happening. More importantly Mesopotamia was under control of both England and India who did not cooperate. Neither came up with any kind of goals or policy for the fighting leaving it up to the ground commanders to do as they wished. They wanted to continuously attack the Turks because that’s what armies did. The author believed this was the fatal flaw of the campaign and continued into the creation of Iraq after the war.
The book spends most of its time detailing the day to day events of the fighting. Originally British troops were sent from India to simply occupy the town of Basra and protect the oil fields in Persia. The generals however were not satisfied with that and continuously claimed they had to advance to protect Basra and win over the Arabs. Going on the offensive became an end in itself.
Townshend documents how badly India managed the war. It was unwilling to commit reinforcements for an ever expanding campaign nor send money or supplies to sustain it. Basra port for example lacked facilities to handle the number of men and ships arriving and supplies became stuck there as a result. India was especially cheap refusing to do things like fund a railroad that would help deliver men and material to the front because it thought it would cost too much. The result was the 1916 defeat at Kut where over 10,000 British surrendered to the Ottomans in one of the worst defeats for England in its history.
Desert Hell is notable because it does just as well covering the politics of Mesopotamia as the military history. With no real direction from London or Delhi the political officers in Iraq such as Sir Percy Cox and Sir Arnold Wilson came up with their own policies. They believed the Arabs were incapable of self-rule, that England was a civilizing force and that Mesopotamia should be annexed by India and become part of the empire. They largely rejected any role for the Arabs in the administration and opposed any attempts to organize Arabs to fight the Turks. These ideas were shared with most of the military leadership. Townshend believes this was another fatal flaw in the campaign because many Arabs turned against the British and fought for the Ottomans. It also undermined the idea that the English were there to win over the Arabs. Military power alone was supposed to achieve this without any kind of interaction with the people.
The lack of a grand strategy continued after the war into the creation of Iraq. It wasn’t until 1921 at the Cairo Conference called by Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill that England came up with an Iraq policy. That was three years after World War I ended and seven years after British troops were sent to Mesopotamia. It was decided to make Faisal of the Najd which is in today’s northern Saudi Arabia the king and eventually give Iraq independence. A separate Kurdistan was also to be created. The problem was that Churchill never took any concrete steps to assure that happened so local officials like Cox and Wilson were again able to forge their own path and include the Kurds in Iraq largely because they were seen as lacking any nationalist sentiment and were not considered capable of governing themselves just like the Arabs.
Another issue that Townshend brings up is that the British wanted to run Iraq on the cheap. After World War I London realized it was in financial trouble and did not want to spend any money on Iraq. It wanted to bring home almost all its troops as quickly as possible as a result. It also believed that the Arabs and Kurds wanted British rule so it could do as it pleased. This was proven wrong in 1920 when tribes throughout central and southern Iraq rose up against the British. This still did not change the overall view that there was no Iraqi or Kurdish nationalism and these were just local troubles that could be stamped out by force and London could continue to do what it wanted. This came in for great scorn by Townshend who believed England created a flawed state as a result.
Desert Hell is a very good history of the Mesopotamian campaign and the creation of Iraq because it deals with the politics involved not just the military side of things. Townshend shows great depth in his history and his analysis. His belief that the war and the formation of Iraq were dysfunctional from the start is hard to disagree with given the fact that no one in power could agree upon a strategy and even when they did it was still lacking any kind of understanding of the people in Iraq they were affecting. Iraq was just able to drift for years with local officers and officials being able to shape events even if it contradicted what London or Delhi wanted. It should be no surprise that the Iraqis rose up against the British several times as a result and that the English were able to dismiss these rebellions at the same time. This book should be read by anyone interested in the World War I campaign and how that led Iraq to come into being.
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