File 42/1931 'Nejd-Transjordanian Raid Claims' [‎337r] (678/930)

3^
The Howeitat counter-raids, therefore, did not fall
on the principal offenders (except in so far as local
Shararat had joined in Itm Mashhur ? s wake) but upon Ibn
Saoud’s outpost of Jauf, itself already isolated and
holding out with some difficulty,,
The very fact that the frans-Jordon counter-
raids occurred when Ibn Saoud 7 s position was everywhere
tottering, caused him to resent them more bitterly as
a kind of stab in the back* To the Trans-Jordan tribes,
on the other hand, the issue was clear - their flocks
had been looted and taken to Hejd and they replied by
counter-raiding into Mejd to recover them*
4* do^Bmmr i mmmnm*
Faced with this crisis and chaos on their
frontier, the Trans-Jordan Government were in no position
to act* Their desert was almost a terra incognita* They
had 210 experience of desert administration and no money c
Iraq was, at the same moment * faced wi* h the same crisis,
namely uncontrolled raiding on a large scale bp iheja
which Ibn Saoud was powerless to slop* But Iraq already
had the rudiments of a desert admuni strati on and a good
deal of experience*
This does not signify any superiority on the
oart of the Iraq Government* The Akhwan had, however,
commenced to raid tod massacre into Iraq in 1919-20
actually before the fall of Hail* Both Governments were
equally unwilling to embark on f? new commitments” by
attempting to control the desert* But Iraq began in
1920 the lesson which it did not fully learn until 1926
namely that the desert must be controlled and administered
It was not until the Autumn of 1926 that the Iraq tribes
definitely ceased raiding into Nejd*
On