Thomas Russell

Sir Thomas Wentworth Russell (22 November 1879 – 10 April 1954), better known as Russell Pasha, was a British police officer in the Egyptian service. He was the fourth child and third son of the Rev. Henry Charles Russell, the grandson of the sixth Duke of Bedford, and his wife, Leila Louisa Millicent Willoughby, the daughter of the eighth Baron Middleton.

As the director of the Central Narcotics Intelligence Bureau (CNIB), Russell Pasha became an anti-drug campaigner when he realised that opium, heroin, cocaine and hashish were being smuggled into Egypt in great and increasing quantities.

Al Jazeera writes:"Thomas Russell Pasha, who reached the highest administrative and functional ranks during his long service in the Egyptian Ministry for a period of 44 years, was a shrewd British man in Egypt, and one of the most important figures who laid the foundations for the emergence and development of the security apparatus in Egypt before the 1952 revolution."

Studies He was educated at Cheam School, Haileybury College, and Trinity College, Cambridge, between the years 1899 and 1902. In 1902, he was awarded a BA. His choice of career was settled when he was invited to visit Cairo by a distant cousin, then adviser to the Egyptian minister of the interior. He went back home to graduate, entering the Egyptian service in October 1902.

Early days After an apprenticeship with the Alexandria coastguards, he was appointed provincial sub-inspector in the Ministry of Interior, in January 1902. He served later as inspector, in every Egyptian province, acquiring great knowledge of local officials, while directing police activities of all kind. In 1911 he was appointed assistant commandant of police in Alexandria. He was transferred to Cairo as assistant commandant in 1913. Regarding the formation of the Egyptian Central Narcotics Intelligence Bureau, Russell Pasha writes in his memoirs:

While his main focus was on drug related crimes, in his 44 years of police work he also dealt with a large collection of other crimes. They included: many common murders (happening an average of eight times a day in Egypt, mostly committed by fellahin in compensation of their business or personal feuds), as well as the clarification of some big political assassinations in Cairo.

War on drugs

In his memoirs, Russell Pasha describes hashish and opium as "black drugs", and cocaine, morphine and heroin as "white drugs". It's the latter, chemical ones that he determined as a "major danger to the country" |

He also declares a feeling of fortune about the "exceptionally efficient team of officers and constables from the Egyptian Police" Hashish was banned in Egypt between 1868 and 1884. Muhammad Ali Bey, an important medical doctor (who was going to be later the head of the medical school and the editor of Egypt's first medical journal, Ya'sub al-Tibb), published a detailed report in 1868 that led to the ban on cultivation, use and importation of hashish. In 1874 hashish was imported under the payment of duty, but in November 1877 an imperial order from Istanbul stipulated that all hashish brought into Egypt was to be destroyed. In March 1879 the Egyptian government banned the cultivation, distribution and importation of the drug in Egypt.

This prohibition of hashish in Egypt can be seen as a response to an image that started to become popular among European travellers and local Egyptian westernised intellectuals: of the Egyptian lower classes as demented, lethargic, irrational and unproductive hashish smokers and of Egyptian streets carrying the sweet and debilitating smell of hashish smoke. Banning hashish was a step in the direction to becoming a civilised society and a way to discipline the lower classes into rationality.

Russell Pasha's view on Hashish

Russell Pasha considered hashish consumption as a relatively innocuous habit, in comparison to the "plague" of heroin and cocaine consumption, which became popular after the First World War. Baron Harry D'Erlanger, Russell's associate, similarly declared that hashish was no more than a 'pet failing of many members of the poorer classes'. According to D'Erlanger, Russell considered legalising the drug, turning it into a revenue-producing good, thus preserving national funds, which would be spent on home-grown products rather than importing from abroad. Even though several British officials supported the legalisation of the drug, they continued to enforce the ban and guarded Egyptian borders, ports and shores to get a hold on the small percentage of the hashish that eventually found its way to Egyptian consumers. |

Writing about those early days he states:

Curing addicts

As described by Russell Pasha in his memoirs, one of the traits of the drug addiction in Egypt was the pitiful desire of many addicts to be cured:

Progress made by the year 1931

The international trafficking of hashish (Indian hemp) was made illegal to countries that had criminalised it at the League of Nations' 1925 Opium Convention, after a suggestion made by Egypt. The League of Nations made this 'humanitarian effort' thinking that with international collaboration they could help heal the world's physical and social ills. Russell Pasha's reports on drugs and hashish to the Home Office in London were passed around the League of Nations Advisory Committee in 1929. Realizing the importance of examining the facts in those reports, Russell Pasha appeared at the Committee in Geneva as the Egyptian representative.

In January 1931, in a Communication to the League of Nations Special Committee Meeting in Geneva, where Russell Pasha was representing "the Kingdom of Egypt", he writes:

Books The Wild Ducks and Various of Egypt (1932) Egyptian Service: 1902–1946 (John Murray, 1949)

Retirement and later years of life

Russell Pasha retired in 1946 and dedicated the rest of his life to salmon fishing. He died in London on 10 April 1954.