High Representative attends a Book Launch Event

News : 1/31/2023

London, United Kingdom (uk.gov.krd), The Traveller Club organised a book launch event for Professor Brad Faught, for his book titled “Cairo 1921, Ten Days That made the Middle East”. the event was attended by many academics, historians, and diplomats. This book is the first comprehensive history of the 1921 Cairo Conference which reveals its enduring impact on the modern Middle East.

Cairo Conference called by Winston Churchill in 1921, and it set out to redraw the map of the Middle East in the wake of the First World War and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The summit established the states of Iraq and Jordan as part of the Sherifian Solution and confirmed the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Profeser Faught stated No other conference had such an enduring impact on the region.

During the presentation Professor Brad Faught demonstrates how the conference, although dominated by the British with limited local participation, was an ambitious, if ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to move the Middle East into the world of modern nationalism. Faught reveals that many officials, including T. E. Lawrence and Gertrude Bell, were driven by the determination for state building in the area to succeed.

Karwan Jamal Tahir, KRG High Representative to the UK in an observation, asked the author, “Winston Churchill favoured independence, believing that a Kurdish state would serve as an important buffer between the Arabs and Turkey, and Churchill feared that an Iraqi ruler ‘might ignore Kurdish sentiment and oppress the Kurdish minority”, which seemed to be accurate, 100 years passed. Still, the Kurdish nation’s rights are denied.

In response, Professor Faught stated that Winston Churchill lost his argument over Kurdish rights; Gertrude Bell imposed her influence as she greatly admired Mesopotamia and wanted to keep it united, but they indeed left the Kurdish question unresolved.

London
30th January 2023