The ratification of this crucial treaty had come close to failure. As to the condition the Assembly imposed, Dobbs recognized the importance which many Assembly members attached to securing Mosul and commented to his wife that the Colonial office “may be vexed by this sentence. I can’t help it. They are lucky to get the treaty at all…. I have pulled the moon out of the bottom of the sea.” In the coming years, however, he failed to secure the agreement from the Iraqis needed to ratify another Treaty negotiated in 1927, while his relations with King Faisal and his government became more difficult. Existing accounts and indeed at some points a dispirited Dobbs himself suggested it would take a new high commissioner to move things forward. Dobbs’ tactics had altered little but changed circumstances in both Iraq and Britain had created much greater obstacles to the agreement he always hoped for.
A Second Treaty Crisis 1927-1929. By early 1927, King Faisal pressed policies which raised strong objections from both the High Commissioner and the British government, notably conscription, and vigorously protested the British government’s delay in getting Iraq into the League of Nations. This developing situation encouraged Dobbs in his view of the two British policy objectives of ending the mandate through Iraq independence and of leaving behind a country “friendly and well-disposed to Britain” being effectively met by advocating for early entry to the League, ideally in 1928. Dobbs argued strongly to the Colonial office for this although Sluglett writes only of Dobbs’ frustration at their unwillingness to relax controls on the Iraqi army. However, the most Dobbs achieved was the negotiation in 1927 of a new but never ratified Anglo-Iraq treaty.
In early January 1927, Amery sought Dobbs views of the release of Iraq from mandatory control when the treaty and agreements were due for review in 1928. William Ormsby-Gore, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, observed most members of parliament, including many Conservatives, were anxious to hasten Iraq’s entry into the League, but at the same time he recognized “we are not the sole judges on the point of time.” In response to Amery’s request, Dobbs put forward his idea as support for Faisal’s demands for the government to consider pressing for Iraq’s admission to the League in 1928. However, the local reaction Dobbs anticipated if the date were deferred provided Amery with evidence, if he chose to use it, against an early release from mandatory responsibilities. He predicted a scenario in which the Iraqi Army would “waver” when confronted with the assassinations, anarchy and chaos which would follow an announcement to such an effect, requiring the redeployment of British troops, or in the last resort, complete withdrawal from Iraq. Both Dobbs and Faisal clearly expected this prospect to intimidate London.
To the contrary, interdepartmental correspondence in the wake of Dobbs’ dispatch revealed the Ministers most directly concerned in the management of the mandate now opposed Iraq’s early release from mandatory control, nor were they convinced by Dobbs’ dire predictions of the effect in Iraq if the date of independence were deferred. Furthermore, the Foreign Secretary, Austen Chamberlain, did not believe the League would accept an application for membership until the British government could prove to the League Iraq would be able to exist as an independent state.
Together with Chamberlain’s concerns, a memorandum circulated by Amery may have been pivotal to the decision by Cabinet in July to delay Iraq’s admission to the League. He offered a compromise between satisfying “reasonable” public opinion in Iraq, and overcoming probable opposition at Geneva, by proposing that the government announce that “if all goes well in Iraq in the interval, His Majesty’s Government will be prepared to support an application by Iraq for membership of the League in 1932.” The intervening five years, according to Amery, would give the government time to make arrangements for securing imperial interests beyond Iraq’s admission to the League. The Cabinet’s decision to defer to the League was not, however,
influenced primarily by progress in country, but rather, by how a recommendation for early release would reflect on the government, given the provisions attached to the Leagues decision on the frontier. Furthermore, Chamberlain’s opposition to was influenced by anticipated opposition from the French government due to Syria, and the possible effect on negotiations currently in progress for an Anglo-Egyptian treaty.
While Faisal eventually accepted the treaty by the guarantee of independence by 1932, ratification depended on the Iraqi government’s acceptance of the subsidiary agreements regarding financial and military items. However, negotiations over the agreements also broke down over the revived demand by Churchill, now the Chancellor of the Exchequer, for the Iraqi government to pay the difference between the cost of stationing the Royal Air Force in Iraq and at home. The stalemate generated confusion in the Colonial Office, which had no contingency policy for this situation. Dobbs proposed to inform the Iraqi government that the British government was “indifferent” to the fate of the draft agreements, and was quite content to carry on with those currently in force from the 1922 treaty. As an indication of the quandary confronting the Colonial Office, however, one of the Middle East Department officials suggested bypassing the treaty altogether, and reverting to the mandate. While the effect in Iraq would have been counter-productive, a reversal of policy of such a drastic nature would almost certainly have aroused suspicions in Geneva.
“En veux, en voila” or October Indifference. B.H. Bourdillon appeared before the Permanent Mandates Commission in October 1928 to present the annual report on the Iraq’s progress. Dobbs later informed Amery the members of the Commission had criticized some of the claims in the Annual Report regarding the country’s progress. As a way of countering the contradictions inherent in the treaty/mandate arrangement, and a further reflection of the Colonial Office attitude to the League, Hall suggested in future relations with the Commission, “[a]ll that is needed is administrative camouflage, something to satisfy the busybodies at Geneva, i.e. the maximum of apparent control with the minimum of real interference.” Dobbs in his private correspondence to his wife spoke freely of this British role in the current diplomatic impasse. Dobbs complained to her, on the same day he wrote a lengthy telegram to the Colonial Office, “… the British Govt in 1926 pledged themselves to withdraw all their forces in 1928 and now find that they can’t do so.” Securing the land route to India and the oil fields of Kirkuk required, in London’s opinion, some type of British military presence. Yet, this demand once again served only to upset Iraqis and threaten British involvement in the country, as Dobbs accounted in detail in another letter to his wife on the 27th
