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and pan-Arab causes and curated his own predominantly Muslim
Waffen-SS troops, who perpetrated widespread atrocities, mostly against
Serbs and Jews in the Balkans. He should, of course, have stood trial as a
war criminal at Nuremberg. Unfortunately, however, despite British
efforts to arrest him, he was permitted in 1945, with the connivance of the
French and Egyptian governments, to drift back to the Middle East unar-
raigned and unpunished. There the ex-Mufti attempted with only modest
success to resume his prewar position of influence among Palestinian
Arabs and Arab nationalists. Despite postmodern attempts to rationalize
and relativize his antisemitism, it is his cynical adoption of SS ideology and
his enthusiastic support of the Waffen-SS that remain the most chilling
aspects of his legacy. For all the personal charm that he could turn on and
off like a cold tap, al-Husayni deserves to be remembered for his share in
the criminality of the Nazi fanatics whose odious racist policies he chose to
implement, and with whom he should therefore have been brought to
equal and inexorable justice.^26
A deep moral abyss separated the ex-Mufti and his so-called Arab
Bureau from the educated, cultured British Arabists of the Baghdad Set,
many of whom, no matter their political loyalties, and though fighting a
world war in Western interests, genuinely cared about the future of the
Middle East and of Iraqis—Shia, Sunni, Jew, Kurd, Assyrian, Yezidi. As
they prepared to leave Iraq, a few members of the Set may have nursed
some lingering resentment towards what they perceived as the general
ingratitude of anti-British Iraqis. Yet even those who were convinced of
the a priori efficacy of indirect rule would have conceded that Britain’s
strategic policy of providing support and ensuring security in Iraq had
been dictated largely by political self-interest. Even so, attempts had been
made in good conscience to placate successive Iraqi governments with
ingenuous gestures of friendship. For instance, the Mandate had been
terminated prematurely, and the Iraqi army had been supplied with the
latest, most modern equipment. While the shrewd positioning of political
and military advisers had militated in favour of maximum British control
over vital areas of the Iraqi polity, much of the advice the British provided
had been given with good intentions and had benefitted the inexperienced
leaders of a very young country. We are all familiar with the popular
aphorism about the evil consequences of good intentions; however, Iraq
did not become a hell until after the British left. As ‘CJ’ Edmonds, the
most influential of political advisers, wrote to Freya Stark in 1972, 14 years
after the brutal, bloody murder of the Hashemites and Nuri as-Said during