Papers of the Interdepartmental Conference on Middle Eastern Affairs [‎122r] (243/290)

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I
3
Kurdistan and
Mesopotamia.
Captain Lane read a telegram which had been despatched on
the previous day to the Commander-in-Chief* East Indies Station,
instructing him to arrange for the internment and possibly for the
destruction of the vessels at Enzeli. They would not be destroyed
unless their capture by the Bolshevik Caspian fleet became imminent.
If the Bolshevik threat did not materialise, the vessels would remain
under the supervision of His Majesty’s Government and might form
the nucleus of a Persian fleet as originally proposed.
The Conference decided —
That the Foreign Office should telegraph to Mr. Wardrop at
Tiflis instructing him to enquire whether the Azerbaijan
Government would agree to repatriate the crews and
refugees via Baku to the Crimea.
O
'Ike Chairman said that the Conference had already held three
or four meetings to discuss the question of Kurdistan, at each of
which they had arrived at diametrically opposite conclusions. This
was not the fault of the Conference, but was due to the rapidly
changing situation.
The first proposal had been the formation of a fringe of
autonomous Kurdish States round the borders of the Mosul vilayet.
The next alternative was the French proposal that Kurdistan should
be divided into British and French spheres of influence.
At the last meeting, at which the Secretary of State for India
had not been present, the Conference had decided that His Majesty’s
Government should cut themselves loose altogether from Kurdistan
and confine themselves to the riverain districts. In pursuance of
this policy, to which he personally adhered, an attempt had been
made to obtain representatives of Kurdish opinion to advise on the
form of autonomous Government which they could set up or
guarantee in an independent Kurdistan. Enquiries in this - sense
had been directed to Constantinople and Baghdad. The replies had
not been encouraging. The High Commissioner at Constantinople
had confirmed the impression, which he had always held himself,
that Cherif Pasha An Ottoman title used after the names of certain provincial governors, high-ranking officials and military commanders. was a man of no authority and could not be
regarded as a representative of Kurdish opinion. In addition to
this he had reported that he was intriguing with the Turks, and it
now seemed clear that he was not a suitable person through whom
to arrange for Kurdish autonomy.
The Civil Commissioner, Baghdad, had reported that no Kurd
was competent to speak for the whole of Kurdistan, and that he
knew of no one man competent to speak for any area larger than a
single vallev or tribe. We were thus in a position where we desired
to cut off Kurdistan from Turkey, but were unable to find anyone to
set up an autonomous State in that country.
Colonel Wilson of Baghdad had indignantly protested against
our disassociating ourselves from Southern Kurdistan, and had stated
that if we did not maintain the existing divisions of Mosul, Sulei-
niciniyeh and Erhil, we should not only lose Kurdistan, but should
undermine our influence in Persia and even risk losing our position
in Mesopotamia. With these conclusions he was totally unable to
agtee. Colonel Wilson was a capable man of strong opinions who
was carried away by the views which he held.
Another new factor was introduced by the recent events at
Damascus. He would return to this later when discussing Mesopo
tamia, but the suggestion had been made by Nuri Pasha An Ottoman title used after the names of certain provincial governors, high-ranking officials and military commanders. , who was now
in'London, that the Kurds of Southern Kurdistan would be quite
willing to accept the suzerainty of Sherif Abdulla it the latter were
installed at the head of an Arab Government in Baghdad. He invited
the Conference to consider the possibility that the intervention of
Abdulla might extricate His Majesty’s Government from all their
in