IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF SIR PERCY

Tim Llewellyn on some provocative

re-drawing of borders in post-war Iraq

Umm Qasr, Iraq TAM DALYELL, MP, descendant of Scots warriors, dark-suited under the Iraqi sun, articulate, emphatic, is the model of the upright Briton. It is a type that still, despite everything, impresses Arabs, even the hard-eyed officials in Ba'ath Party uni- forms, one of whom reminds him, he says, of a Labour political agent in the Scottish border country. Mr Dalyell has the bear- ing, the aura, of a colonialist, born to rule, but he condemns colonialism's negative consequences at every opportunity. Thus he confesses regularly and publicly to our hosts during our voyage through Iraq that his parents worked in Mesopotamia 70 years ago on the staff of Sir Percy Cox, the British High Commissioner in Baghdad. He apologises. The Iraqis forgive him. They are like that.

Sir Percy was one of the colonial offi- cials who, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, intrigued on Britain's behalf against Arab independence. He sketched defining lines in the sand between our mandated territories of Kuwait, Transjordan and Iraq, and Saudi- ruled Arabia. Mr Dalyell excuses himself for not having inherited his parents' Ara- bic, a failing for which he was once mildly reprimanded by President Nasser. He is forgiven again.

This indulgent attitude may soon be constrained. On this journey a cloud of anglophilia envelops us, but it is hard to understand why. It is embarrassing. The ghost of Sir Percy is present, and his spiri- tual descendants ar;e at work, in Whitehall and elsewhere, at their post-Gulf war drawing-boards.

Their most recent skilled handiwork is evident at Umm Qasr, Iraq's only remain- ing working port, on the Khor Az Zub- bayr, a deep-water inlet which is the country's one existing navigable outlet to the waters of the Gulf. Here, the seeds of a forest of future disputes and battles are being planted by the Gulf war allies, with 'Oh Simon– you and your come-to-bed eyes . Britain as prime mover and expert cartog- rapher in the Cox tradition.

Umm Qasr was developed in the 1970s as an alternative port to Basra, about 40 miles to the north, on the Shatt al-Arab. Basra was overloaded, and the shallow waters of the Shatt aggravated the prob- lem. Umm Qasr became even more impor- tant during the Iran-Iraq war, when Iran closed the Shatt and eventually laid long siege to Basra. Iraq built its only naval base at Umm Qasr, from which it launched sor- ties against the Iranians, and, later and sui- cidally, the allied armada.

Basra continued to diminish in impor- tance. It had only just been rebuilt when it was clobbered comprehensively by the allies in January and February 1991. That March it was torn apart yet again from the inside by rebels, rioters, assorted Iranians and the just plain vengeful in the brief but murderous uprising that followed Saddam Hussein's defeat and short-lived loss of control.

Basra remains shut off from the Gulf by silt and sunken shipping. Umm Qasr is therefore essential to Iraq's waterborne trade — exports of fertiliser, petrochemi- cals and other petroleum products — or will be so, when Iraq can trade again.

During the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, with Kuwait's approval, the town, port and base of Umm Qasr expanded a half-mile or so south of Sir Percy's 1923 boundary (reaffirmed by Britain after a border shindig in 1961). The border, without Kuwaiti demur, shifted south, just beyond the naval base. After all, so it was said, Iraq was defending its Arab brothers, especiallY Kuwait, which was, we were led to believe, firmly in the Ayatollah's sights.

Now the frontier is back where it was in 1923, redrawn by a special United Nations Boundary Commission, approved by the Security Council, slap through the middle of Umm Qasr. This leaves the naval base and about a dozen civilian houses in what is now, de jure, Kuwait, though there is not a Kuwaiti in sight and nor has there been in any strength or settlement throughout history. The nearest properly Kuwaiti-pop- ulated area is an oilfield some 40 miles south of Umm Qasr.

Further west, six oil-wells used by Iraq until 1991 have now been handed to Kuwait, as have tracts of Iraqi farmland. Farmers have already been firing at UN and other observers. This is no Coxian line in the sand, but one through bricks, mortar and homesteads. The pre-war border dis- putes that partly caused the crisis in 1990 have not only not been-settled even-hand- edly but been compounded. If the Iraqis are angered by this piece of post-war diplomacy now, they will be bark- ing mad when 1990 is as vague a menwl to outsiders as Iraq's 1980 occupation 0 Khorramshar, in Iran, is now, and the cara.- van has moved on. Saddam Hussein,

al might be said, invited such punitive g, peremptory treatment when he invade° Kuwait and caused everyone so much trou- ble. But all Iraqis — Saddam supporters, neutrals, opposition and quiet critics alike, and even many far-sighted Kuwaitis — are horrified by this rubbing of Iraq's nose in the sand. 'A recipe for future disaster,' said Mr Dalyell, looking aghast at the sand-swept bollard in the middle of one of Umm Qasr's main roads, marker of the new frontier. We walked round it, without hindrance, into the new, expanded Kuwait, to talk to 'Kuwait's' new Iraqi residents. 'I'm not leaving unless I'm shoved out. I'm an Iraqi,' said Amina, a 21-year-old moth- er of five more Iraqis. Next door, in a stone house he owns with a large front gar- den, is Ahmed, an Iraqi army officer. I suppose he is the last Iraqi soldier in Kuwait. The allies should know about it. United Nations soldiers drive up and down occasionally, observing the idiocy, but do nothing to interfere with us or the 'dis- placed' Iraqis.

It is hard to envisage Kuwait ever press- ing its claims on Umm Qasr; but come the day when Iraq needs the port and the base, and is an approved member of the interna- tional community again, there either will have to be some western diplomatic U- turn or this half-usable town will threaten anew the relationship between Iraq and the rest of the world, particularly Kuwait. The new border, and its extension sea- wards, also raises the possibility that Iraq's territorial waters will be changed to its dis- advantage. It has little enough already.

Iraqis see all this as a western plot to keep the Gulf states at each others' throats, easily divisible, rulable and tar- getable for our weapons — either to sell to them or to bombard them with, depending on the political season. It is, in fact, part of a policy of trying to squeeze the Iraqi peo- ple until Saddam Hussein's pips squeak, a futile campaign. He is firmly in control of all Iraq except Kurdistan, and cares noth- ing for the suffering of his people, whether induced by such indignities as the new Kuwaiti border or the disease, malnutri- tion, inflation and massive unemployment brought about by sanctions.

'Why are you trying to make enemies of us?' asked an Iraqi businessman, a Chris- tian. from Zhako in the north, a graduate of Manchester University. 'I love England, I speak and read English, and I follow Manchester United. We want to do busi- ness there, have holidays there. . . I want my children to go to college there. I don't want to learn French or Japanese. Nor do they. They may have to.'

He stared glumly out of the car window at the gigantic picture of Saddam in his Somerset Maugham rig — Panama hat and linen suit — beaming down on his people. Tam Dalyell had no answer for him. Perhaps Sir Percy Cox would have been able to find a few words.

Tim Llewellyn is Middle East correspondent of the BBC.