Cairo Conference (1921)

The 1921 Cairo Conference, described in the official minutes as Middle East Conference held in Cairo and Jerusalem, March 12 to 30, 1921, was a series of meetings by British officials for examining and discussing Middle Eastern problems, and to frame a common policy. Particular concerns of the conference related to resolving the conflicting policies defined in the McMahon letters (1915), the Sykes-Picot agreement (1916) and the Balfour Declaration (1917). Winston Churchill, the newly appointed Colonial Secretary, called all the British Military Leaders and civil administrators in the Middle East to a conference at the Semiramis hotel in Cairo to discuss these issues. It was an experimental conference organized by the Colonial Office, with the purpose to solve problems more efficiently, with improved communications, without protracted correspondence.

At the conference, it was agreed that Lebanon and Syria should remain under French control and that Britain should maintain the mandate over Palestine and continue to support the establishment of a Jewish Homeland there. As the result of meetings with Abdullah bin Hussein, it was agreed that he would administer the territory east of the Jordan River, Transjordan. It was decided that Faisal should become king of a newly created Kingdom of Iraq. Husain, the Sharif of Mecca, was to be recognized as King of the Hejaz and Abdul Aziz ibn Saud left in control of the Nejd in the heart of the Arabian Desert. Both were to continue to receive financial support from Great Britain.

During 1920 a popular uprising had broken out in British Mandatory Iraq, a new creation. The British army had suffered hundreds of casualties and sections of the British press were calling for the ending of the Mandate. T.E. Lawrence, whose wartime activities were beginning to capture the public imagination and who had strong attachments to the Husain dynasty based in the Hejaz, was lobbying the British Government on behalf of Emir Feisal. The Emir's attempt to establish a kingdom with Damascus as its capital had been thwarted by the French army. In November 1920 Feisal's older brother Abdullah appeared with several hundred followers in the town of Ma'an and announced his intention of attacking the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon and restoring his brother to power there.

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