Page 55 - Arabian Studies (V)

The British Government and the Khurmah Dispute 45
Arabs on the British side in the war by promising them the indepen­
dence of the Arab districts of the Ottoman Empire, in April 1915
Curzon had written: ‘What evidence have they shown of their capa­
city to organize or administer such a state? ... How futile it would
be to declare the formation of a new state, without territory, with­
out capital and without ruler! Apparently too we are to prejudge all
the issues of the war by at once promising to give up Busra, Lower
Mesopotamia and the places where we are spending much money
and life to a people (the Arabs) who are at this moment fighting
against us as hard as they can, and are known to be in the pay of the
Germans!’45 Curzon also shared the Indian view that the British
Government should retain a dominant position in Mesopotamia in
the postwar period. In September 1917 he had argued that ‘The
only civilised Power that is either equipped for the task [of properly
ruling Mesopotamia], or is interested in it, is Great Britain, and if
she were to throw it up, the result would not only be detrimental
and even dangerous to herself, but positively disastrous to the
native peoples.46 Again, like most Indian officials, Curzon opposed
the suggestion of the Egyptian authorities that the British Govern­
ment should elevate Husayn to a position of leadership and domi­
nance in the Arabian peninsula or in the greater Arab world. In
December 1918 he had warned that ‘if we do anything prematurely
to build up a great Arab state under a single head we may rue the
day, and in the future we might find there had been evolved a great
community ... based upon principles of a fanatical and very likely
an aggressive form of Islam, which might become a serious danger.
Thinking over this matter, I am inclined to feel that the solution of
these difficulties does not lie in encouraging King Hussein to the
kind of position to which he aspires, but rather the reverse’.47 Later
that month a resolution of the Eastern Committee of the War
Cabinet stated that ‘the question of his [Husayn’s] suzerainty
should not be settled by us. The attitude of Mesopotamia and of
the principal chieftains of the interior and the coast appears to
render it certain that his extreme claims will not be accepted by
them’.48 However, since the British Government had pursued a
consistently pro-Husayn policy since 1915, Curzon was obliged to
support him in the dispute over Khurmah. Still he tempered the
policy in Ibn Sa‘ud’s favour.
At a meeting of the Interdepartmental Conference on 14 January
1919*9 Curzon noted that ‘our general experience was that, if we
left these rival chieftains alone, nothing in particular happened’,
and he concluded that it was advisable to ignore them as much as
possible. Curzon, however, was concerned about possible damage
to the Muslim Holy Places in the event of hostilities and also about