It is true that some difficulties arose. It had been intended to raise two battalions: one of mountaineers, and one of Urmi men. The latter, however (owing to the mistaken advice of some foreign friends), demanded impossible conditions of service; while the mountain men declared their readiness to go anywhere, if only they had British officers to lead them. The double battalion was raised, in consequence, of the mountain men alone. Then Petros Agha, who was now describing himself as the “Commander-in-Chief of the Assyrian Army,” demanded as of right that any contingent raised should be under his orders, with such British officers to assist him as he judged expedient. When this modest demand was refused, he began intriguing against the project, till it became necessary to shepherd him gently out of the camp, and suggest Baghdad (or India) as his residence in future. The force was raised however, and the little campaign that became necessary against the Kurds in the summer of 1919 gave these hillmen an opportunity of getting as near to their own conception of heaven as some of them are ever likely to get, for they were given good rifles and good leaders, and a real chance of a slap at their hereditary enemies!
Experienced judges were loud in praise of their marching and fighting capacities, though admitting that they were “a trifle indiscriminate” at times. “Those Assyrians have got into it quick,” said the G.O.C. on one occasion, noting how quickly the men opened fire in their advance up a hill they had been ordered to clear of the enemy. “Oh no, sir,” said an A.D.C., who had experience of the creature; “I’ll bet what you like it’s a pig they are firing at!” He did them but a small injustice; it was a bear and not a boar; but having finished him, they cleared the hill. “How did the Assyrians really do in the fighting?” asked a British officer of a Subadar of the Gurkhas with whom they were brigaded. “Why did you not give us the same mountain sandals that they wear?” came the answer. “Then we should have done as well as they did!” Verily, when[{395}] Gurkhas apologise for not doing as well as the irregular, there is no fault to find with the fighting capacity of the latter.[169]
Once, it must be admitted, a party of them found civilised campaigning too slow, and committed the heinous crime of deserting while on active service; but the apology they sent in (in a mixture of Syriac and English) went far to redeem their fault. “To the beloved and reverend Major Knight, our Commander, peace and love be multiplied,” it began. “Dear Father, be it known to you that we did not run away because we did not wish to kill Kurds, but because we so wished to kill them; and by the blessing of God, we have been doing that thing for ten days. Regret to report following casualty: soldier, private, one. But we have killed a lot more Kurds. Now, dear Father, if you will promise to punish us yourself, we will come in. But we fear going to Mosul Gaol.”
The Major promised that if they came in he would punish them all right, and he did so; but he subsequently squared matters somehow with his conscience, and reported that there had been a gratifying absence of crime on active service!
The campaign had the effect of clearing what is known as the Sapna area of Kurds; and, incidentally, the house of the English Mission at Bibaydi, the building of which has been referred to,[170] was fortified and occupied by British[{396}] troops. Those old enemies of the writer who had prophesied that “if that house is built we shall see British troops in it before our beards are grey,” were so delighted at the fulfilment of their prophecy, and at the local kudos that it brought them, that they entirely forgot their ill-feeling against the Englishman who had caused it, and greeted him on a visit as a long-lost friend![171]
Men on the spot now held that the Assyrian problem could be solved at once; the nation could be settled in the area that they had helped to clear and conquer, where they would be an admirable frontier guard for the future state of Irak. Suggestions to this effect were sent home, but no answer was returned. Those in authority could neither allow the men on the spot to act for themselves, nor could they produce any other plan. It was not that they objected (that would at least have been positive action of a sort), but they neither could, nor would, say or do anything; and so time passed until local circumstances (notably the impossibility of keeping British troops dangling in the hills till folk in comfortable offices at home had made up what they pleased to call their minds) made a withdrawal inevitable, and a promising scheme impossible.
By a very unfortunate decision the Assyrian contingent was disbanded shortly after this, owing to some breaches of discipline in the corps. Men who were at least being kept from idleness were thus returned to Baqubah, where a policy of pauperising was sapping all the morale of the nation; and where Assyrian and British, tied up together under uncomfortable conditions for too long, were rapidly getting on one another’s nerves, and each showing the other their worst side! About the same time, too, the nation was deprived of its titular leader by the death of Polus Mar Shimun, their patriarch. Tuberculosis brought on by hardship had[{397}] become worse in the dust-laden air of Baqubah, and a removal to the purer air of Sheikh Mattai[172] by Mosul had been too late to stop the disease. A flicker of improvement at the last had encouraged him as is so often the case, and he returned to his own people, but only to die. Meantime Authority, both in Mesopotamia and England, was getting very anxious to be rid of the Assyrians—as is frequently the case, when a man knows that he has neglected a good opportunity of getting a thing done. And it was at this juncture, when the nation had no titular head and all were anxious to be rid of an incubus, that Agha Petros came forward with a new scheme. Somewhat to the north of the area occupied by the British was a stretch of relatively fertile land, extending from the plain of Gawar to the town of Ushnu, which had once been largely Christian and was now practically derelict. To the east it stretched nearly to the Urmi plain; on the west it bordered on the Hakkiari mountains. Petros proposed to lead up the whole nation, duly armed, and to occupy this “Gawar-Ushnu” area. There they would be in a state of practical independence under his rule, and those Urmi folk who wished to return to their own homes could do so, while Hakkiari would be open to the mountaineers. The fighting men could go up first and take seizin[AA?] of the land, and the women and non-combatants could follow after a little.
The scheme was not impossible, provided that the people had enough of cohesion to unite on any scheme at all, and Petros enough of the statesman in him to enable him to execute any. If feasible, it certainly had the merit of providing an Anglophile buffer state just where one was most wanted; and as such, and as offering some means of getting the refugees off the shoulders of the British taxpayer, it was accepted by the Mesopotamian authorities, and urged with more or less of authority on the nation at large. Under this pressure, the bulk of the nation accepted it; though it is to be feared that one of its merits in their eyes was its indefiniteness, and the fact that it could be interpreted by everybody in his own sense. An Assyrian state with a measure[{398}] (undefined) of British protection was what everyone wanted; but everyone also assumed that the area of the supposed state would include his own old home. And it is to be feared that Petros Agha[173] got a large measure of his support by promises to the effect that everybody should have just what he wanted, if only he was willing to come up with his true national leader to get it!
Even so the Patriarchal House, and certain sections of the mountaineers as well, rejected the scheme, owing to their rooted distrust of Petros and all his works. This, however, was disregarded. The “House,” left leaderless by the death of the Patriarch, and by the fact that Surma Khanim (possessor of the best brain in it) had gone to England to put the case of her nation before the Government[174] was just then at a discount in the nation and had left the camp for Mosul. It was therefore ignored. It was assumed that the recalcitrant sections would follow with the rest when they found themselves alone; and so preparations were made for the breaking-up of the Baqubah camp, and the transfer of its inmates to Mindan (north-east of Mosul), which could be the base of the new move.
Assyrian ill-luck, however, dogged the scheme throughout. Time was of the essence of the plan, if several thousand people had to be got up to a high tableland, and there to provide food and shelter for themselves before the winter set in, and one cause of delay after another supervened. There was a change in the central authority first, for Sir[{399}] Arnold Wilson, acting Chief Commissioner, was not only removed from office, but practically dismissed from the service of the King. Politicians at home found it convenient to make the good man on the spot the scapegoat for the fact that the policy they had approved was more expensive than they had anticipated, and were full of virtuous indignation because he did not effect in Mesopotamia the drastic economies which they could not themselves enforce in England. A new Chief Commissioner (Sir Percy Cox) was soon in the field; but the change implied delay, and the new man had not (owing perhaps to his home instructions) that power of giving a quick decision on a question which had been one of the strong points of his predecessor. Sir Percy, however, approved the general lines of the policy laid down, and the move to Mindan was in full swing when the Arab rising of 1920 put a stop to all action. All fighting men and all transport were imperatively needed elsewhere, and the Assyrian problem had to wait.