Holy Skirmish

With a terrible, pregnant symbolism, World War II jumped last week from the birthplace of democracy to the birthplace of mankind. Five days after Athens fell, fighting broke out in Iraq, traditional site of the Garden of Eden. In its beginning the new conflict was a minor embarrassment to Britain; in its potentialities it was a threat as serious as any the British Empire had yet suffered.

A few days before Germany's Balkan campaign, a pro-German Arab nationalist, Seyid Rashid Ali El-Gailani, overthrew five-year-old Monarch Feisal II's pro-British Regent. Because of the threat implicit in this coup, the British sent 1,200 troops to Basra, Iraq's main port, at the head of the Persian Gulf. El-Gailani acquiesced in the landing and publicly subscribed to the 1930 Anglo-Iraq Treaty of Alliance which justified it ("The aid of . . . Iraq in the event of war or the imminent menace of war will consist in . . . use of railways, rivers, ports, aerodromes and means of communication").

But when the British last week notified Iraq of their intention to land reinforcements, Rashid El-Gailani objected on the grounds that it would be contrary to the treaty until the first 1,200 had passed through and out of Iraq. The British disagreed, charged that El-Gailani himself had violated the treaty by not granting full use of communications and airfields. The British were confined to two fields where they had been established under the treaty for years: Habbania, on the west bank of the Euphrates, 65 miles from Bagdad, a huge airdrome with cantonments for about 5,000 men, but equipped only with small guns and some 50 antique biplanes; and Shaibah, near Basra, basing a bomber squadron and an armored-car section.

El-Gailani's answer to the British was to send a concentration of Iraqi troops to the heights threatening Habbania airport, with an ultimatum to the British to cease all operations there. British Ambassador Sir Kinahan Cornwallis, a six-foot-four, big-boned, two-fisted runner, boxer and marksman who has had 35 years' experience in the Near East, replied that the continued presence of the Iraqi concentration at Habbania "might lead to an unfortunate incident."

Sir Kinahan and other British diplomats had no idea what an understatement "unfortunate incident" was. El-Gailani's reply to Sir Kinahan's warning was to send more troops to the heights, where they dug trenches, placed artillery and opened fire point-blank on the Habbania field. The British, though badly outnumbered, replied. The Iraqi claimed destroying 26 planes on the ground, but other planes took off and bombed the Iraqi guns. The same day the British in Basra warned the Iraqi troops there to withdraw. They agreed to, but did not. The British seized the Basra airport, dock area and power station. This week the British began a systematic bombing of Iraqi airports, claimed to have destroyed most of the Iraq Air Force.

Adolf in Paradise. The timing of the Iraqi affair had a Germanic neatness. Axis business in the Balkans was newly finished. The technique of provocation was a haunting echo of similar German undertakings elsewhere--the appeal to justice, the air of outrage, the nationalistic frenzy. And there were familiar sounds to be heard, phrases repeated as if by rote. Proclaimed El-Gailani: "The Iraq nation will not submit to humiliations inflicted by a foreign power. We have not sought the struggle, but now an appeal of country goes out to everyone. . . . We are waging a sacred struggle. ..."

The German press and radio talked as if Germany owned this sacred struggle. Berlin began yammering about a jihad--holy war. Even if the Germans were not able to land troops on the flank of the British Near Eastern Front, it would sit well with them if the British had to start shooting Moslems.

Germany has been long active in this zone. It was common gossip in Turkey last week that although the British had persuaded Iraq to break off relations with Germany, several German intrigants had recently sneaked into Iraq to negotiate with Iraqi sheiks. Outstanding among these was said to be the former Middle East Chief of Germany's Foreign Office, smooth, Arab-speaking, businesslike Georg Werner Otto von Hentig, a fabulous character who was supposed to have presented Mercedes-Benz automobiles to the biggest sheiks, bicycles to the smallest. Britain has no Lawrence of Arabia in this war (one of Lawrence's rivals, Ibn Saud's good friend Harry St. John Bridger Philby, it was learned last week, was released after three months' detention by the British under the Emergency Powers Defense Act).

Fuel and Ships. Although Iraq has supplied Britain with only 4% of her oil, she fuels the British Mediterranean Fleet. In spite of her sizable synthetic-oil plants, Germany needs oil, particularly since the yield of U.S. wells has been largely poured into the British pan of the scales of war. The U.S. controls 63% of world production, while the Axis (counting Rumania and synthetics but not Russia) controls only 4.4%. The fields of the Near East, including Iraq, give 5.7%--which, from the point of view of Eastern Mediterranean strategy, Britain can ill afford to lose, but which will more than double Germany's supply if the Axis can control them.

Iraq's yield is refined partly in Iraq, partly at the terminus of the 640-mile pipeline to Haifa on the Mediterranean. (The British closed the branch pipeline to Syria after France's fall.) The British Fleet has been oiling at Haifa. Though London claimed last week that the Fleet has built up substantial stores, the week's worst news in the Mediterranean theater grew out of the incident in Iraq: the Iraqi seized the Mosul wells and shut off the pipeline to Haifa.

Fuel for Sheiks. That Britain's first test in the East should have come in Iraq was ironic. Britain created Iraq. As a reward for Arab assistance against Turkey in World War I, the British amalgamated the Turkish vilayets of Mosul, Bagdad and Basra into the mandate of Iraq, which by successive negotiations was gradually given independence. Britain trained Iraq's soldiers, equipped its Army, nursed its Government through perilous times, bought its oil.

The Arabs resented Britain's splitting them up into small States. The Arabs in Palestine resented Zionism and were sniping at British troops there last week. The Arabs in Iraq's neighbor, Syria, resented being kept a French mandate. Moslems everywhere, even in India, had longstanding grudges. If the Germans could warm over these resentments and arouse the entire Moslem and Arab worlds against Britain, the geographic guts would be knocked out of the Empire. Berlin, with its talk of jihad, did its best to kindle the Arab sheiks to flame. Newspapers and radio announced loudly that Syrian Arabs were individually telegraphing support and encouragement to Iraq, that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was urging Palestine Arabs to open battle, that Ibn Saud, tough, single-minded leader of Saudi Arabia, was mobilizing his desert legions.

There is probably nothing Adolf Hitler would like so much as to be called in to be the savior of Islam. Last week he got his first bid. According to Rome reports, Seyid Rashid Ali El-Gailani asked him, through the mediation of Italian Minister Luigi Gabbrielli, to come and save Iraq. In a desperate effort to stave off the Near East crisis, Turkey offered to mediate the undeclared war, but Turkey was fast being pulled out of its pro-British orientation, and the British, mistrusting Moslem mediation of a Moslem vexation, turned the offer down. If the Iraq Incident was not the beginning of the Holy War, at least it was a Holy Skirmish.

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