Al-Nafisi and Lord Trevelyan
former academician and politician abdullah al-nafisi during an interview with ammar taqi on the black box program commented on kuwait prohibiting the broadcast of one of the episodes of his program (the round table) in the 1970s saying, ‘i asked for an interview with sir humphrey trevelyan because of the importance of the person and his history’.
sir humphrey is a british jew from the well known trevelyan jewish family. he was the british ambassador to egypt during the 1952 coup in cairo and the british ambassador to baghdad when abdul karim qassim led the coup in iraq in 1958.
al-nafisi says he met sir humphrey and noticed that he had a “jewish” nose, and was surprised when he asked for money for the interview. he said he was not prepared to pay the money for the interview but the kuwaiti embassy in london intervened and paid him the sum of money. sir humphrey also said the charges for electricity must also be paid – the electricity consumed during the filming of the interview.
al-nafisi repeated for the third time that sir humphrey was a jew, a metaphor that describes the jews who are presumed to be misers. then he touched on the most important part of the interview, saying according to humphrey the interview had to be a private affair and that no recording or no filming the episode. he added, when sir humphrey took him to his library, he ran through his private photo album. in one photo he saw sir humphrey with abdul-karim qassim, swimming together, and that the ambassador told him that qassim is their man in baghdad.
when al-nafisi asked him why he (qassim) was not prevented from attempting to annex kuwait, the ambassador responded that they (the british) were behind it to teach kuwait a lesson or what he called ear-pulling to discipline kuwait. nafisi added the interview was barred from being broadcast on kuwait tv because ambassador sir humphrey during the interview had attacked the gulf rulers.
first: lord humphrey is the son of rev. george trevelyan, the grandson of trevelyan, archbishop of taunton, and the third son of sir john trevelyan. second: sir humphrey on february 12, 1968, he became a ‘lord’ before the interview was conducted.
from the biography of humphrey trevelyan, we find that he was transferred to egypt during the suez crisis, ie 1956, not 1952, as al-nafisi said in the interview. he was also appointed an ambassador to iraq at the time of the crisis with kuwait, in 1961, and not when qassim led the coup in 1958, as reported by nafisi.
in the light of these facts, i leave the reader to believe the rest of the interview and the things mentioned therein, whether related to the fact that qassim is a british man in iraq. if so, what prompted the ambassador to meet and go for a swim with their man in iraq?
wasn’t the meeting supposed to take place in secret? or was it britain that asked qassim to mention what is called ear-pulling of kuwait. and how sir (lord) humphrey being a jew, asked for the electricity bill to be paid – the electric power consumed during the course of the interview and money to be paid to give an interview?
britain stood with us during the darkest hours of our history, and it is regrettable that today, almost sixty years later, someone comes to distort britain’s honorable role.
