ملف رقم ٢١٨٢ لسنة ١٩١٣ الجزء ٩ "الجزيرة العربية - السياسة تجاه ابن سعود" [و‎‎١‎٤‎٤] (٤٠٦/٢٨٥)

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lie admitted the impeachment and merely pleaded that, so lono> as smnffedim?
_ a n J arge sc f le was P^tised m Kuwait to the profit of the lo°cal merc!iants°
it v.as scarcely reasonable to expect him to penalise the merchants of Ms
Q“ S_mdeed ^ C0UW UOt d ° S ° Wlth0Ut -io us %rk of^nh^Te
Colonel Hamilton and I eventually proposed that a system of Basse*
should be introduced, whereoy facilities for export from Kuwait wou'T'iX"
g-ranted only to persons certified by the possession of such passes, signed by
Ibh Saud or his local Amzrs, to be Ibn Saud’s subjects and reliable"indivK
duals, and on the condition that Ibn Saud himself should accent ne^soml
responsibility that goods, so exported, should not pass his frontier P < 1
He demurred slightly at an arrangement so novel to Arab ideas and
offered us an alternative to undertake the policing of the Kuwait frontier •
Such an arrangement, however, amounting as it did to a request for free
permission to vex and harass the Shaikh of Kuwait and his people could not
for a moment be entertained; and for want of any other suftaWe altemaW
bv ?h?f t0r the a S Ce ? ance ° f our ori ^ mal pronosals, to which Ibn Saud—
by this Lime assured of a satisfactory settlement of the Ajman question—
eventually assented on the understanding that the British Government would
enemy! rl ° US StePS t0 preveilt a11 direct smuggling from Kuwait itself to the
It was accordingly arranged as follows: —namely,
(1) that Ibn Saud should undertake the vigorous blockade of enemy
erritory accepting full personal responsibility that no supplies
destinaticm^ ed ^ teiTltories ’ sllould leave tPem for an enemy
(2) that the British Government should arrange for an effective blockade
system at Kuwait;
(3) that permission to export from Kuwait would not be conceded to
o? resTdence Pr0Vlded Wltil a paSS Slgned tlle Amir of p is place
(4) that such permission would on no account be granted even to
nendly Shammar elements unless they were accompanied by
a responsible representative of Ibn Saud himself; and,
(o) that a form of pass, evolved in the course of our discussions, should
be introduced without delay and distributed to the local Amirs,
ioi use the bearer of the pass would be required to present it
to the British authorities at Kuwait, to be endorsed bv them with
the quanuty of each article to be exported and, on his arrival
at his destination, he would appear before the local Amir, who
would endorse on the pass the quantities of each article duly
brought to the intended destination, the document being even-
K /° endor f d and si gmed, to the British author
ities at Kuwait for record.
f ^.Hot content with the consummation of this agreement, we lost no onnor-
a H-b °i impressing on Ibn Saud that his interests, no less than those of the
British Government were at stake and that the importance of p?eventiW
supplies reaching the enemy could not be exaggerated He accordiimlv
despatched letters to his Amirs, and particularly to those of the Qasim
plammg the urgent necessity of implicit obedience to and strict enforcement
of his orders-addmg incidentally that he had entered into a solemn under
taking with the British Government in this respect the advantages of wliMK
to his own subjects would become apparent in due course g
Coionei Hamilton returned to Kuwait to make arrangements to Mve
effect to the policy thus agreed on and some little delay occurred in work in o-
out the necessary details and removing the difficulties incidental to the estab-
hshment ffi a blockade pos t a t Kuwait; but, in due course, a blockade Officer
was appointed to that pest and everything was ready for the inception of a
scheme destined, it was hoped, to complete the cordon shuttinS out the
enemy from all access to the markets of the outer world. °
This was the position when I returned to Ibn Saud in April 1918
According ^ 0 custom large enravans from the interior had takeiHadvantage
of the spring season to go down to the coast to bring up supplies for the
summer Towards the end of the month, disturbing reports began to come
through to the effect that all the caravans had been turned away empty in
Xw a H e? r 1C1 n te f t0 , Ca T ^f rm - Tt is not too much to say Hat the
vl ole of Aa.id, suddenly faced with the prospect of spending the summer
without supplies^ was m a ferment. The military precautions, including the
placmg of machine guns on the roof of the Political Agent’s residence at
Shuwaikh and the landing of a detachment of troops, taken to obviate the
occurrence of trouble m connection with the turning away of the caravans
were commonly interpreted as an act of hostility towards the people of Kajd
P °f llCy o£ ^ lend . s ! li P with tlle British Government came in for
a good deal of unfavourable criticism.