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restore law and order, the British diplomats and political advisers under
Cornwallis, and the intelligence and security forces under Wood and
Dawson-Shepherd,^6 with the cooperation of the British and Indian occu-
pying forces and the Iraqi authorities, had to create and maintain a robust,
efficient system for the secure acquisition, analysis, and distribution of
political, tribal, and security intelligence.
On the basis of his extensive prewar experience in Iraq as adviser to the
interior ministry, Cornwallis was convinced that the system of information-
gathering that had been used before independence would have to be res-
urrected if the British were to maintain their influence on local
administrators, sheikhs, and other powerful people. He therefore created
the Political Advisory Staff (PAS), whose political advisers (PAs) were to
cover the former Ottoman vilayets (provinces) of northern, central, and
southern Iraq with headquarters in Kirkuk, Baghdad, and Basra, respec-
tively.^7 In the former Ottoman liwas or sanjaks (districts), Cornwallis
posted additional assistant and deputy assistant political advisers (APAs
and DAPAs) to work directly under Vyvyan Holt, the oriental secretary.
Their reports were to be sent to the ambassador, to C.J. Edmonds at the
interior ministry (see below), and to CICI, who would incorporate them
into their widely distributed intelligence summaries. Besides combatting
Nazi influence and improving Anglo-Iraqi relations, these advisers would
also fulfil a valuable liaison role facilitating communications between
PAIFORCE and the provincial authorities. It was a bold scheme which
might have offered ample potential for friction between the civil and mili-
tary authorities. However, Cornwallis cannily pre-empted such conflict by
placing the PAS technically (though not functionally) under CICI com-
mand, allowing Chokra Wood to continue to post his area liaison officers
(ALOs) to various outposts, sometimes in parallel with political advisers.
Remarkably, there was neither overlapping nor conflict; instead, mutually
beneficial intelligence was usually shared.^8 One of the most important and
stable pieces of the puzzle was Cecil John Edmonds (1889–1979)—
known to all as ‘CJ’—a Kurdish expert who served as adviser to the inte-
rior ministry for ten years from 1935 onwards. Edmonds, a gifted
orientalist with many years of field experience in Kurdistan, performed a
vital two-way liaison function for Cornwallis, bringing British policy to
the Iraqis while providing the embassy with intelligence of quality on
Iraqi political activity at the highest levels of government. Educated at
Christ’s Hospital and Cambridge, as a young man during the First World
War Edmonds had served in the consular service as vice-consul in Bushire