A História repete-se

“We are hampered by the tribal uprising which has delayed the work of handing over to the Arab Govt.

Sir Percy, I think rightly, decided that the tribes must be made to submit to force. In no other way was it possible to make them surrender their arms, or teach them that you mustn’t engage lightly in revolution, even when your holy men tell you to do so…without the lesson and without drawing their teeth by fines of arms (impossible to obtain except by force) we should have left an impossible task to the Arab Govt. ~

Nevertheless, it’s difficult to be burning villages at one end of the country by means of a British Army, and assuring people at the other end that we really have handed over responsibility to native ministers….”

-- Gertrude Bell on the British dilemma in Mesopotamia in 1921, quoted in Amal Vinogradov, “The 1920 Revolt in Iraq Reconsidered: The Role of Tribes in National Politics,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 3, 2 (April 1972), pp. 138-139.

Via LRCBlog