A History of the Middle East (36 page)

A major oilfield was discovered near Kirkuk in 1927, and by 1934 production was contributing substantially to Iraq’s revenues.

Throughout the 1920s the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which continued to dominate the Middle East oil scene, showed little interest in the oil potential of the territories on the western shores of the Gulf – that is in Kuwait, Bahrain or the Eastern Province of the future kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This was partly because the company’s geologists were convinced that, despite the seepages of bitumen in Kuwait, only the eastern side of the Gulf would yield oil in commercial quantities. The western shores of the Gulf lacked the Oligocene–Miocene rock formations found in Persia and Iraq. However, this did not mean that either the British government or APOC was happy to see a concession granted to a non-British company on the western shore. On APOC’s behalf the British government resisted US pressure to allow the emirs of Kuwait and Bahrain to grant concessions to non-British companies. In 1931 the
emir of Bahrain granted a concession to Standard Oil of California, which organized the Bahrain Petroleum Company (Bapco) as a Canadian-incorporated subsidiary to maintain the fiction that it was British.

When Bapco found oil in commercial quantities in May 1932, after only six months’ drilling, the situation was transformed. The potential of the western shores of the Gulf was apparent. Standard Oil approached King Ibn Saud for a concession and the king, in desperate need of funds, responded. Anglo-Persian sent a representative to make a counter-bid but, since the company already had more than enough oil on its hands and its primary concern was only to exclude competitors from the region, he was authorized to offer an advance payment of only £5,000, whereas Standard Oil, after some hard bargaining, offered £50,000. On 29 May 1933 Standard Oil of California’s concession was signed, covering all the eastern parts of the kingdom.

In this way the foundations were laid for the close relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States which has profoundly influenced the modern history of the Middle East. The king, although far from being anti-British, was probably inclined to favour the US company, apart from its more generous offer, because the United States had no imperialist record in the Middle East. As the ruler of an entirely independent state, he was fortunate in being able to make a free choice.

Standard Oil of California later sold shares in its concession to the Texas Company, and in 1944 the company operating the concession took the name Arabian-American Oil Company (Aramco). The fact that American oil companies developed Saudi Arabia’s major natural resource had an important influence on the kingdom. Aramco was never a simple instrument of US foreign policy – in fact it was often at loggerheads with Washington – but the company helped to train young Saudis and a trend began which led to the great majority of a new Saudi élite receiving at least part of their education at American universities. It was natural that US companies, among which Bechtel Corporation was outstanding, should play
the major role in the development of the kingdom’s new infrastructure. As it came to be realized that Saudi Arabia possessed about one quarter of the world’s proved oil reserves, the Saudi–US connection became even more significant.

Kuwait’s shrewd ruler, Emir Ahmad, had been conducting prolonged negotiations over an oil concession with both APOC and the American Gulf Oil company. But the bargaining had become desultory because the oil companies were cutting back on their investments during the world depression. Britain’s insistence on excluding non-British companies was also a stumbling-block. However, in 1932, following the precedent set in Bahrain, Britain finally succumbed to intensive US pressure to an ‘open-door’ policy for US oil companies in Kuwait. With the discovery of oil in Bahrain and the conclusion of the Saudi agreement with Standard Oil in the following year, the pace quickened. After lengthy negotiations behind the scenes, APOC and Gulf Oil agreed to bury their differences and form an alliance to negotiate jointly as equal partners for a concession. For this purpose they formed the Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) on a fifty–fifty basis. After further negotiations, in which Emir Ahmad fought successfully to limit the amount of political control which Britain insisted on maintaining over KOC through a separate agreement it reached with the company, a concession agreement for seventy-five years covering all Kuwaiti territory was signed in December 1934.

The remaining Arab shaikhdoms on the western side of the Gulf all had exclusive treaty agreements with Britain. But the British government was still alarmed at the possibility that the precedent of King Ibn Saud granting a concession to a purely American company might be followed by one of the fiercely independent rulers. A company called Petroleum Concessions Ltd, in which Anglo-Dutch, US and French companies held shares in the same proportion as in the Iraq Petroleum Company, was therefore formed to negotiate. The ruler of Qatar granted it a concession in 1935, but the rulers of the six Trucial States (so called since the 1853 truce with Britain under which they undertook to abjure sea warfare) proved
more difficult. They bargained and prevaricated for better terms, and various forms of pressure – including threats to confiscate their pearling fleets, on the grounds that they were still engaging in the slave trade – had to be used until they gave in. The last to succumb – in 1939 – was the eccentric but wily ruler of Abu Dhabi, Shaikh Shakhbut, who had become something of a legend in the Gulf since, after his succession in 1928, he succeeded in restoring stability to Abu Dhabi following twenty years of fierce family strife. He was convinced that there was oil in his territory – bubbles of oil had been seen around some of Abu Dhabi’s two hundred islands – and the oil men agreed that it was the most promising of the Trucial States. He therefore drove a hard bargain for the concession. He had to wait twenty years before he was proved right, but oil was then found in enormous quantities.

In Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar, oil on a commercial scale was discovered shortly before the Second World War but its development had to be postponed until after the war. However, in 1939 it was already apparent that the territories surrounding the Persian Gulf would become of enormous strategic and economic importance. In fact by the second half of the century their reserves of oil and natural gas amounted to some two-thirds of all those that had been discovered.

The Middle East was as heavily involved in the 1939–45 conflict – the culmination of what has been aptly described as Europe’s thirty-year civil war – as in that of 1914–18. The Turkish Republic was neutral. The new semi-independent nation-states which had been formed from the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire were non-belligerent, but they were under British or French occupation and therefore lay within the zone of war. Political life was largely frozen for the duration of hostilities.

As in the First World War, the retention of India was of supreme strategic and political importance to Britain. The protection of oil supplies from Iran was also a considerable secondary concern. Once again Egypt became Britain’s great Mediterranean base. With a neutral Turkey and Iran, the Middle East region seemed fairly secure. The British realized with relief that, as a result of the 1939 White Paper on Palestine, the Palestinian Arabs were not going to embarrass them while they were at war with Germany.

The situation was transformed by Italy’s entry into the war on Germany’s side in June 1940. British forces in Egypt were engaged against the Italians in Libya, and British forces in the Sudan fought the Italian garrisons in Eritrea. Italian aircraft raided Egypt, and the country expected a full-scale Italian invasion. As in 1915, reinforcements were brought in from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Britain’s determination to keep the Axis powers out of the eastern Mediterranean caused it to divert tanks from the home front to Egypt even when the danger that Hitler would invade Britain was at its height.

The battle in Egypt’s Western Desert rolled backwards and forwards. In September 1940 the Italians entered Egypt and reached as far as Sidi Barrani; by the end of the year some spectacular British
victories had driven them back into Libya. But, with German reinforcements, the Axis forces, now commanded by General Rommel, re-entered Egypt in April 1941. In the following month the Germans captured Crete, and the British hold on the eastern Mediterranean became perilous.

The danger for Britain was compounded by the situation in Syria and Iraq. Although Iraq broke off relations with Germany in September 1939, an Anglophobe nationalist group of civilians and military became increasingly dominant, encouraged by Germany’s victories over France. In March 1941 they seized power in a putsch, and Rashid Ali al-Gailani became prime minister in a government with pro-Axis leanings. The regent, Nuri al-Said and other leading politicians had to flee the country. The government’s refusal of a British request to move troops across Iraq under the terms of the Anglo-Iraqi treaty led to open, if subdued, hostilities. Iraqi troops surrounded the British base at Habbaniyah. But Iraqi opinion was divided and uncertain, and promised Axis help for the rebels was too little and too late.

A small Indian force was landed at Basra, to be joined by Arab troops from Transjordan under Glubb Pasha. The revolt collapsed after a few weeks; the Rashid Ali government fled and the regent returned. Successive Iraqi governments co-operated with the Allies for the rest of the war.

Following the fall of France in 1940, Syria and Lebanon came under the control of the Vichy government. Britain promptly declared that it would not allow a German occupation of the two Levant states, but the Vichy government – anxious to secure as many concessions as possible from Germany – instructed the high commission in Beirut to collaborate fully with the Axis. The climax came in June 1941 when German aircraft
en route
to help Rashid Ali in Iraq were allowed to use Syrian airfields. On 8 June 1941 a mixed force of General de Gaulle’s Free French and British troops launched a three-pronged invasion from Palestine. Despite some stiff resistance by the Vichy forces, the fighting lasted only six weeks, at the end of which an armistice agreement was signed. Vichy troops were
given the choice of joining the Free French or of repatriation to France.

The Soviet Union’s entry into the war in July 1941, followed by that of the United States in December, provided reassurance that the Allies would prevail in the end. In the winter of 1941–2 the Axis forces were again pushed back into Libya. But the darkest hour for the British in the Middle East was still to come. With Japanese victories in the Far East threatening Malaya and India, it became the turn of the British forces in the Western Desert to be deprived of tanks, which were diverted eastwards. In January 1942 Rommel again began to advance towards Egypt.

Among the Egyptian people, attitudes towards the war were mixed. The great majority of the politicians were against declaring war on Germany, either because they felt it was not Egypt’s war or because they were far from certain that the Allies would win. On the other hand, Egypt more than fulfilled its obligations under the terms of the Anglo-Egyptian treaty. German nationals were interned and German property was placed under sequestration.

King Farouk had no special affection for Germany, but many of his closest circle were Italian, and Ali Maher, his favoured prime minister, was known to have pro-Axis sympathies. When Maher failed to take action against Italian nationals, Britain’s ambassador Sir Miles Lampson pressed the king to dismiss him. Farouk reluctantly complied and replaced Maher with two successive prime ministers who were much more sympathetic to the Allied cause. In August 1941 Egyptian troops took over guard duties in the Suez Canal area.

However, there were many in Egypt, apart from the king, who remained so doubtful about the outcome of the war that they felt Egypt should have a more neutral government as an insurance against an Axis victory. Others went further, believing that Egypt should entirely assist such a victory – these included General Aziz al-Masri, the Egyptian chief of staff, and a young captain, Anwar al-Sadat. Sadat was caught working for the pro-German underground by British Intelligence and was interned.

The British prime minister, Churchill, had never had much patience with Egyptian nationalist feelings and had none in time of war. He complained continually that the Egyptians were taking insufficient action against enemy agents who ‘infested’ the Canal zone. As soon as Churchill became aware of the doubtful loyalty of the Egyptian army to the Allied cause, he insisted that Egyptian troops be sent back from the Western Desert to the Delta and that General Aziz al-Masri should be dismissed. Any possibility of allowing King Farouk to bring Ali Maher back to power was ruled out.

The crisis between Britain and the king reached its climax early in 1942. Under Allied pressure the government decided to break off relations with Vichy France. The king, who was absent from Cairo and not consulted, was furious and forced the prime minister to resign. To have replaced him with Ali Maher would have been too provocative, but he showed his intention of having Maher as a member of a cabinet in which he would hold the real power. Lampson, on the other hand, wanted to see a Wafdist government installed. Rommel was advancing in Cyrenaica, and the cry of ‘Long Live Rommel’ was heard in the streets of Cairo. Lampson knew that, while it still enjoyed widespread popularity, the Wafd would provide the most effective support for the Allies. He also knew that Farouk would resist the return of the Wafd he detested.

Lampson secured the support of the British government and military chiefs for the use of force. He delivered the king an ultimatum that if he refused to ask Nahas Pasha to form a government by 6 p.m. the following evening (2 February) he would have to ‘face the consequences’. When the ultimatum expired with no reply, Lampson had the Abdin Palace surrounded by British troops and armoured cars and forced his way in to see the king, bearing an instrument of abdication. After hesitation, the king capitulated at the thirteenth hour and agreed to call Nahas. Lampson was dismayed because he had hoped to be permanently rid of Farouk.