Papers of the Interdepartmental Conference on Middle Eastern Affairs [‎94v] (188/290)

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When the Acting Civil Commissioner of Mesopotamia had
visited London in the spring, the Conference had arrived at tie
conclusion that he should be authorised to set up a fring< o
autonomous Kurdish states round the border of the Aiab \i <i)v 0
Mosul, and he had returned to Mesopotamia to carry this decision
into effect. Since that time the position had been complicated by
the appearance of various individuals who represented themselves as
marked out by their own abilities or by the earnest desire 01 the
Kurds themselves for the leadership of an independent Kurdish
nation. He was inclined to think that matters had not been ma< e
easier by our relations with certain of these elements.
The position had been further complicated by the lamenta > is
repetition of the murder of British political officers. I here was no
reason to suppose that these murders had been prompted by any
general hostility on the part of the Kurds, but the fact must >e
faced that this was the price we had had to pay for our efforts to
solve the local Kurdish problem on the spot. Captain Pearson had
been ambushed and murdered at a village called Karoar on the
4th April, 1919 ; Captain Macdonald and Mr. \\ yllie were murdered
at Amadia on the 14th July, 1919 ; and, just recently, news had
been received of the murder of Mr. J. H. Bill and Captain K. K.
Scott in the Zab Valley, near Aqrah, on the ord November.. This
series of murders was a distressing and disturbing fact, following on
the relations we had entered into with the Kurds, and must
necessarily affect any discussion of the Kurdish question.
Another complication had been introduced by the fact that
some of the officers who had been advising us on the Kurdish
question had regarded it as inevitable that the Kurdish question
should be tied up with the Armenian question, from which it could
not, of course, be altogether disconnected. Having entered the
field of Kurdish politics with the best intentions, and without any
deep political design, we had thus gradually been drawn into
discussions on the fate of Trebizond, Hiarbekir and Van, and on the
possibility of a final settlement of that part of the country in which
Kurds and Armenians were inextricably mixed.
He wished to take this opportunity of saying a word of warning
to the Conference. Many of the suggestions which had been put
forward at various times had been clearly based on the assumption
that His Majesty’s Government were prepared to take a mandate or
mandates for this part of the world ; he felt that he could not lay
too much emphasis on the fact that His Majesty s Government had
no intention of doing anything of the kind. Ihis being so, it was
exceedingly doubtful whether anyone else would. V/ e had hoped at
one time that the United States of America might be induced by
humanitarian considerations, by their own great wealth, and by their
historic association with the Christian populations of Kurdistan and
Armenia to undertake this responsibility. This hope must, he
thought, be definitely abandoned. There was no likelihood of the
Senate, in its present frame of mind, considering for one moment the
assumption by the American people of the duty of maintaining
order in any part of the late Ottoman Empire.
As to the French, it was quite clear that they had no intention
.of taking up the role of protectors of the Christian populations. It
was true that a few weeks ago they had announced their readiness
to despatch 12,000 troops for\he protection of the Armenians, but,
as he had himself foreseen at the time—and the Chief of the Imperial
General Staff had agreed with him—the intention of the French
had undoubtedly been merely to establish themselves in the fat
places of Cilicia and Syria, and there was, in his opinion, no
prospect of their undertaking the wider responsibility involved in a
mandate for Armenia or Kurdistan. There would probably, in that
case, be no mandate for this part of the world. If he were asked
what would become of it, he confessed himself quite unable to answer.
The question must solve itself, but the Conference must accept the