142 A Short History of the Middle East
British government infused with Arab elements... / Meanwhile
nationalist activity had passed from agitation to open defiance.
Already early in the year Arab irregulars with encouragement
from the Arab government in Damascus had forced the British to
withdraw from Dair az-Zor, their furthest outpost in the direction
of Syria.1 In June a force under the Iraqi officer Jamil Midfa'i2
seized the post of Tell Afar, thirty miles west of Mosul and-massa-
cred its small British garrison, but was driven back before it could
reach Mosul itself. In the months of May and June ^7,000 in
gold was reported to have reached extremists at Karbala.
The British government announced on 20 June that Sir Percy
Cox would return in the autumn as Chief British Representative
in anticipation that the Mandate, when finally promulgated, would
constitute Iraq an independent state. But this gesture came too late.
Owing presumably to the severe climate and the steady drain of
demobilization, the Civil Administration was staffed mainly by
very young and inexperienced men, who shared the somewhat
headstrong views of their Chief.3 It seems probable that had the
Civil Administration been less anxious to justify its continued
existence' (with generous pay and allowances, be it noted, at a
time of rising unemployment and wage-cuts in Britain) 'by prov-
ing its superiority over the previous regime and all other possible
regimes . .. had it been staffed by men older and more experienced
in dealing with the Arab character ancl temperament, or had it
shown itself more sympathetic to the idea of Arab government
instead of merely paying it lip service as a possibility in some re-
mote or indefinite future, many of the classes who hardened their
hearts against the once-popular British regime would have con-
tinued to support it.*4 The revenue collected in 1920 was three
and a half times that received by the Turks in 1911. Taxation,
which was enormously heavier than in India, tended to press most
heavily on the fellahin, but was vexatious also to the landlords and
dignitaries and to the tribes, who had formerly largely escaped pay-
ing taxes. The Iraqis hadno say in the objects on which these revenues
1 Under the Ottoman Empire this part of the Euphrates valley had not be-
longed to any of the vilayets of Iraq, but had formed an independent sanjaq.
2 He has subsequently been Prime Minister of Iraq, and is now (April
1948) Minister of the Interior.
3 In the autumn of 1919, out of a total of 233 officers only four were over
forty-five years of age. On 1st June 1920 two-thirds of the Divisional Political
Officers were under thirty, and almost one-quarter were only twenty-five or less.
4 Ireland, op. cit., 252. cf. Ph. Graves, Life of Sir Percy Cox, 262 f.