“In the light of the events of the last two months there's no getting out of the conclusion that we have made an immense failure here. The system must have been far more at fault than anything that I or anyone else suspected. It will have to be fundamentally changed and what that may mean exactly I don't know. I suppose 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. The Turks didn't govern and we have tried to govern - and failed. I personally thought we tried to govern too much, but I hoped that things would hold out till Sir Percy came back and that the transition from British to native rule might be made peacefully, in which case much of what we have done might have been made use of. Now I fear that that will be impossible.” – Lady Gertrude Bell, 1920, The Letters of Gertrude Bell.
“We as outsiders can't differentiate between Sunni and Shi'ah, but leave it to them and they'll get over the difficulty by some kind of hanky panky, just as the Turks did, and for the present it's the only way of getting over it. 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 mujtahid-run, theocratic state, which is the very devil.” – Lady Gertrude Bell, 1920, The Letters of Gertrude Bell.
Some notes about Gertrude Bell from Wikipedia - a fascinating woman. There have been several books written about her for those interested.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_BellGertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell (July 14, 1868 – July 12, 1926) was a British writer, traveler, political analyst,administrator in Arabia, and an archaeologist who found Mesopotamian ruins. She was awarded the Order of the British Empire.
Bell and T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) are recognized as almost wholly responsible for creating the Hashimite dynasty in Jordan and the modern state of Iraq. During her life, she was an unrecognised force behind the success of the Arab revolt in World War I. At the conclusion of the war, she drew up borders within Mesopotamia to include the three Ottoman Empire vilayets which later became Iraq.
On July 12, 1926, Bell was discovered to have committed suicide with an overdose of sleeping pills. She had never married or had children. She was buried at the British cemetery in Baghdad's Bab al-Sharji district. Her funeral was a major event, attended by large numbers of people.
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