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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group
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To: skinowski who wrote (129213)4/14/2004 11:15:15 AM
From: redfish  Read Replies (1) of 281500
 
This is from the latest Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria column.
Considering that the letter that is referenced was written in 1920, it has a familiar ring to it.

"In early June 1920, Gertrude Bell, the extraordinary woman who helped run Iraq for Britain, wrote a letter to her father on some "violent agitation" against British rule: "[The extremists] have adopted a line difficult in itself to combat, the union of the Shi'ah and Sunni, the unity of Islam. And they are running it for all it's worth ... There's a lot of semi-religious semi-political preaching ... and the underlying thought is out with the infidel. My belief is that the weightier people are against it ... I know some of them are bitterly disgusted ... but it's very difficult to stand out against the Islamic cry and the longer it goes on the more difficult it gets."

In fact, the "agitation" quickly turned into a mass (mostly Shia) revolt. British forces were able to crush it over three long months, but only after killing almost 10,000 Iraqis, suffering about 500 deaths themselves and spending the then exorbitant sum of 50 million pounds. After the 1920 revolt, the British fundamentally reoriented their strategy in Iraq. They abandoned plans for ambitious nation-building and instead sought a way to transfer power quickly to trustworthy elites."
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