Papers of the Interdepartmental Conference on Middle Eastern Affairs [‎95v] (190/290)

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position of His Majesty’s Government in Mesopotamia was that,
while they must necessarily retain complete responsibility for the
whole country, they would exercise a gradually decreasing hold o\er
the administration, starting from Basrah and working northward.
The Chairman said that this reminded him of another point.
Colonel Gribbon had stated at the last meeting that the garrison m
Mesopotamia would still stand in the following spring at what
seemed to him the very large figure of 156,000 ; when he had been
asked whether there was any possibility of reducing this figure, he
had replied, with some force, that the size of the garrison depended
on the policy which it was intended to pursue. Ibis was, in his
opinion, a further argument for restricting our occupation and
responsibilities to the narrowest possible limits. dhe smaller the
area for which we accepted responsibility became, the smaller would
be our military commitments in that area.
Major Noel said that it was impossible to discuss a future
boundary for Mesopotamia apart from the vital consideration of the
extent to which Turkish influence was to be allowed to return in the
areas on the other side of the frontier. . There were two main
currents of political feeling which had to be reckoned with ; the
Pan-Islamic movement and the movement towards Kurdish
nationality. He was inclined to the view that it would be best for
His Majesty’s Government to clear out altogether. Hie ellect of
this, at any rate in South Kurdistan, would be that Kurdish national
feeling would of itself keep out the Turks. If we were to retain a
part of Southern Kurdistan, extremists would say that a policy of
outrages had been successfully making us withdraw from the Northern
areas, and that it was only necessary to continue this policy for us
to be driven out of the Southern.
Replying to questions by the Chairman, he said that the
frontier of Mesopotamia should, in his opinion, include Kifri and
Kirkuk, but not Erbil: Kifri and Kirkuk were Turcoman towns
which had no political connection with Kurdistan, while the Erbil
district was purely Kurdish. He would certainly leave Suleimaniyeh
to Kurdistan for the reasons he had already given. Kurdish
nationality was as yet very inchoate. A national consciousness
certainly existed, but it so lacked cohesion as to lend some
justification to the statement that an organised Kurdish nationality,
in the western sense of the term, was almost non-existent. The
Central Kurds were divided from the Southern Kurds by a line
passing roughly through Rowanduz. Jeziret-ibn-Omar should
certainly be left to Kurdistan ; it was the centre of the independent
Kurdish principality of Bhotan, which had been in existence up to
1846. He did not think that our withdrawal from Suleimaniyeh
would have a bad effect from the political point of view on the
communications between Mesopotamia and Persia. The Kurds of
Kermanshah were Shiahs and Persians, and were, in his opinion,
unlikely to combine with the Sunni Kurds of Suleimaniyeh. He
thought that the Kurds would welcome our withdrawal if it was
made clear that our object was to leave Kurdistan free to develop
into a nation on its wn lines. Some of the intelligentsia would
certainly be disappointed, but the answer to them was that it would
be out of the question for His Majesty’s Government to undertake
the responsibility for the whole of Kurdistan, and that, rather than
divide the Kurds into two blocks artificially, they preferred to
withdraw altogether. He thought that if the Turks were kept out
by the terms of the peace settlement —and it was essential that
this should be done if the policy were to succeed—it would be
possible to set up independent States composed of the mixed
non-Turkish elements in that part of the world. Taking the
Bhotan as an example, he remarked that the feudal spirit was verv
much in evidence in the principality. He had noticed among the