The Controversial Legacy of Iraq's 'Desert Queen'

Sadly, the work the so-called "Desert Queen" did to establish a stable Iraq after World War I has come entirely undone, to disastrous effect. The British imperialist agenda that Bell signed up to has left a 100 year trail of destruction in the Middle East, and the resulting hangover is playing out in war torn Iraq to the tune of car bombs, airstrikes, and civilian slaughter.

But what motivates a young English woman to spend her life travelling alone in the Middle East in the first place? Bell was born on 14 July 1868 in Durham, England to a very wealthy family. She studied modern history at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University, where she was the first woman to earn first class honors. One of her contemporaries at Oxford was another big name in the post-WW1 Middle East: TE Lawrence—or Lawrence Of Arabia, to the uninitiated.

Even then, Bell didn't let the fact that she was a woman define her. And she certainly didn't let it rule her political views—so much so that she openly campaigned against women's suffrage. "She was very much her own person," explains Wallach. "Did she believe the suffragettes were doing a good job? No, she felt that they were too strident and too violent. She found it distasteful, the way that they went about it." In 1892 Bell left Oxford and went to Tehran, where her uncle Sir Frank Lascelles was the British Minister. And so began a life of adventure and freedom from the world she'd grown up in. "It was Romantic and she was getting away from this very inward-looking, stuffy society that her and her family were a part of," says Wallach. "It was boring, tedious, and dull—she wanted more out of life."

And she did: Bell spent the next decade travelling the world. She climbed mountains in Switzerland, met tribal communities in the desert, and learnt Arabic, Persian, French, and German. And as the Ottoman Empire fell apart she found herself in Mesopotamia, a region that today is made up of Eastern Syria, Iraq, Kuwait and southeastern Turkey.

This impressive skillset and the in-depth knowledge she developed of the area led to Bell being headhunted by the British army after WW1. At the time, Britain had occupied three former Ottoman provinces—Mosul, Baghdad and Basra—and had to negotiate their demand for independence from both the British and its former Ottoman rulers.

She'd never set out for a career in politics, but Bell soon became a key figure in the relations between the Middle East and the West. She'd eventually be part of the team responsible for installing King Faisal, a Sunni leader in the Arab revolt against the Ottomans, as the leader of the newly created state of Iraq.

In one of her many letters during this time, Bell anticipated the issues that are still crippling Iraq now. "We rushed into the business with our usual disregard for a comprehensive political scheme," she wrote in 1916. "Muddle through! Why yes, so we do—wading through blood and tears that need never have been shed." She asked, poignantly, "Can you persuade people to take your side, if you're not sure you'll be there to take theirs?"

Bell's personal life was as colorful as her professional one. Her first love was Henry Cadogan, an official from the British army, but her father refused to let her marry him. Wallach thinks the sadness this brought about explains her endless wanderlust. "Her falling in love with Cadogan and then his death, lead her in many ways to seek his soul in the Middle East," she says. "Because she knew that that's where their life would have been together." After helping to birth modern-day Iraq, Bell stayed in the country and channeled her love of antiquities into establishing the Baghdad Archaeological Museum, now known as the National Museum of Iraq. Two days before her 58th birthday, she died of an overdose of sleeping pills. [ For More Stories Like This, Sign Up for Our Newsletter ](https://confirmsubscription.com/h/i/DC735105D83847D9) If Bell's personal life was tinged with sadness, her relationships with the men she worked with were equally complicated. Her superiors mainly held her in high regard and appreciated her skills, but the men of her rank and below were less inclined to do so. Mark Sykes, the Conservative politician who negotiated the agreement with France to determine control of former Ottoman territory, described Bell as a "silly chattering windbag of conceited, gushing flat-chested, man-woman, globe-trotting, rump-wagging, blethering ass." (You've got to give the man some credit for his creativity.) But this experience of discrimination did not dampen Bell's capacity for compassion. "She had to overcome being a woman," says Wallach. "It was the depth of her knowledge, her understanding of herself, and her belief in herself that came across when she met with nobleman and the Sheikhs in the desert and the political leaders in the town. They felt her presence and they felt her knowledge and she expressed it in very clear ways."

Bell (or "Miss Bell," as she was remembered by many Iraqis) is often cited as the only British person whom the Arabs had any fondness for during that period—even if her attempts to create a stable Iraq under the rule of King Faisal failed when his grandson and successor was murdered in a republican coup in 1958.