-Caveat Lector- British "Queen of Iraq" rests in Baghdad cemetery 11 May 2006 01:03:12 GMT Source: Reuters
By Ibon Villelabeitia BAGHDAD, May 11 (Reuters) - The cemetery gate groans and the gaunt grave keeper leads the visitor along rows of broken tombs. "There she is," Ali Mansur says pointing to a sandstone gravestone. "I take care of her. But nobody visits." Gertrude Bell, a British traveller, writer and linguist, was one of the most powerful women of the 1920s, an adviser to empire builders and confidante to kings. An "oriental secretary" to British governments, she is credited with drawing the boundaries of modern Iraq out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War One. Now, as her colonial creation stands on the verge of breakdown because of sectarian violence, the woman dubbed the "Queen of Iraq" lies in a forgotten cemetery in Baghdad. Nearly 80 years after Bell's death and more than three years after U.S. forces invaded to oust Saddam Hussein, many fear Iraq's unity is threatened by killings, roving militias and the fear that is uprooting families. Some believe the country could split into three sectarian and ethnic regions. Prime Minister-designate Nuri al-Maliki has pledged to put together a coalition government that would unite Iraq's long competing communities of Shi'ite Muslims, Sunni Arabs and Kurds and avert a slide into all-out sectarian and ethnic conflict. But as history shows, modern Iraq, the land of ancient Mesopotamia, has been a divided nation since its creation. OTTOMAN PROVINCES Bell and her fellow colonialists settled Iraq's borders by merging the old Ottoman provinces of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra, seeking to secure British interests and with scant regard for tribal and ethnic boundaries. "I had a well spent morning at the office making out the southern desert frontier of the Iraq," Bell, who specialised in Arabic and Persian languages, wrote to her father in 1921. What emerged was a centralised state with three peoples with differing aims, ideals and beliefs: non-Arab Kurds in the mountainous north, Shi'ite Muslims in the south and Sunni Arabs in Baghdad and in the rest of the heartland. In 1958, a group of nationalist military officers ousted the puppet monarchy Bell had helped install in a bogus referendum in 1921 that passed with 96 percent of the vote. She had also helped draw up many of the policies that were later taken up by Saddam's Baath Party and which exacerbated the centuries-old tensions between Shi'ites and Sunnis. She ensured that a Sunni elite, previously favoured by the Sunni Turks running the Ottoman territories, dominated the new Iraqi government and the army, and that the majority Shi'ites, whom she regarded as religious zealots, remained oppressed. Kurds were denied self-rule so that London could control Kurdistan's oil fields and build a buffer against the Russians. "I don't for a moment doubt that the final authority must be in the hands of the Sunnis, in spite of their numerical inferiority; otherwise you will have a ... theocratic state, which is the very devil," Bell wrote in another letter. Years later, Saddam, a Sunni, imposed his brand of Sunni pan-Arabism by force, executing tens of thousands of Shi'ites and building a regime around tribal and family patronage. His policies toward Shi'ites and Kurds further accentuated Iraq's three-way split. The Shi'ite community gained political power after the Americans ousted Saddam. In December parliamentary elections, Iraqis cast their ballots along religious and ethnic lines, turning their backs on the centralised state first imposed by Bell and the British authorities and later by Saddam. When asked by a reporter recently why Iraqi politicians argued so much over a new government, President Jalal Talabani quipped: "This is the Iraq our British friends created." Juan Cole, professor of Middle East history at the University of Michigan, agreed. "British policies unbalanced Iraq and Gertrude Bell played a significant role in that." TEA BY THE TIGRIS Bell, who had an aristocratic upbringing, lived in a more genteel Baghdad than today's city of sandbags, armoured vehicles and the bombed-out hulks of Saddam-era government buildings. She wore long muslin dresses and feathered hats and rode side-saddle along the banks of the Tigris. In her letters, she describes a Baghdad of tea parties, regattas, swimming excursions and luncheons on the verandas of colonial buildings. But as revolt spread and Britain used bombs and poison gas against those opposed to its presence, she faded from public life. "We have underestimated the fact that this country is really an inchoate mass of tribes which can't as yet be reduced to any system," she once said. Five years before her death from an overdose of sleeping pills aged 57 in 1926, she wrote: "You may rely upon one thing -- I'll never engage in creating kings again; it's too great a strain." When she was buried, thousands thronged the streets to watch her casket pass as it headed toward the British cemetery in Baghdad's Bab al-Sharji district. Mansur, who lives with his wife in a shack inside the cemetery, said a local church pays him $3 a month to clear weeds from Bell's grave. The tomb itself was cleaned and restored by a well-wisher last year and, before the war, foreign journalists used to stop by. Now, Mansur said, they are too afraid of getting killed or kidnapped to venture here. © 1998-2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. 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