Britain and the HashemitesFor king and country

IT WAS once a whole lot easier. Eighty-five years ago, after the first world war, the great powers of the time split up most of the Middle Eastern provinces of the defeated Ottoman empire, turning them into mandates under British or French rule. Britain, which got the lion's share, plonked down a couple of Arab kings to reign over its territories in Mesopotamia and Transjordan, without bothering about trivialities like the wishes of the indigenous people. Local notables, with their affiliations and alliances, were ruled out. Better, it was thought, to appoint outsiders who knew nothing of their new kingdoms.

Winston Churchill, briefly but influentially colonial secretary, did suggest that it might be a good thing if the new king appeared to be chosen locally. Good, perhaps, but impractical. How, in Mesopotamia, for instance, to get agreement on this, or anything else, from northern Kurds, southern merchants and various tribes, none of whom particularly wanted to be part of an Arab state called Iraq?

The snag in those days, as Timothy Paris expounds, was not protest in the “liberated” lands, but the internecine quarrels of the British government. The Foreign Office, the Colonial Office and the all-powerful India Office (scared lest British meddling in Arab Muslim affairs inflame Indian Muslim agitation against the Raj) were at each other's throats. Direct rule of the territories was dismissed, partly because Britain, in the heat of battle, had rashly promised Arabs some form of independence, but also because of post-war finances. As Churchill laid down: “Everything that happens in the Middle East is secondary to the reduction in expenses.”

Churchill, who admitted that he had a virgin mind on the Middle East, relied on his creative, spin-doctoring adviser, T.E. Lawrence. Together, they promoted “the sherifian solution”, under which the Hashemite family—Hussein, the sherif of Mecca, and his sons—would rule over the region under Britain's eye.

The family, though pre-eminent in the Arab world, had its imperfections. The British thought Faisal, with his good war record, a fine upright fellow, but despised his brother Abdullah as an indolent aesthete too fond of practical jokes, and couldn't abide the father, described by Reader Bullard, a not-unprejudiced British diplomat, as a “cunning, lying, credulous, suspicious, obstinate, vain, conceited, greedy, cruel Arab sheikh”.

At first, Faisal was to be king of Syria. Unfortunately, the allies allotted Syria to France, and Faisal was brusquely ejected. As second best, the British packed him off to Mesopotamia in 1921. Eleven years later, as Iraq, it became the first mandated territory to obtain independence. This left Abdullah, who had had his eye on Mesopotamia, looking for a throne. He was given the job, temporary at first, of king of Transjordan, a land considered unimportant, except in its relation to Palestine. His lazy character, it was correctly assumed, might make him tolerant of the Zionism that was burgeoning next door.

Not so Hussein himself, who remained unamenable to British pressure. Treaty talks came to nothing, and the British withdrew their protection, opening the way for Ibn Saud, the king of the Nejd, to conquer Hussein's kingdom of Hijaz in 1924, and launch Wahhabi rule over Saudi Arabia.

Mr Paris's lengthy descriptions of British governmental squabbling are probably for aficionados alone. But he has an illuminating tale for today's neo-imperialists in Iraq. Britain does not emerge well: it sought to protect its interests with minimum cost and without thought to local aspirations. Yet, probably by luck rather than judgment, its sherifian solution proved remarkably durable. Hashemite rule survived in Iraq until 1958, and, in Jordan, continues strongly to this day.

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