The Modern Middle East (9 page)

Beginning in 1914, Hussein had started seeking British support for an uprising that he hoped would lead to the establishment of an independent Arab state, one whose boundaries stretched from the Iranian border in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west. The ensuing correspondence between McMahon and Hussein has since become the subject of great historical controversy because of different interpretations of exactly what territorial promises were conveyed to the aspiring rebels.
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But in any case Hussein started his rebellion on June 5, 1916, declaring himself the ruler of the newly independent Hijaz. A protracted desert war ensued for the next two years, one of the effects of which was the rise of an adventurous British military adviser named T.E. Lawrence.
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More important were the revolt’s actual consequences for the political geography of the Middle East. In September 1918, as British forces marched toward Damascus, one of Hussein’s sons, Faisal, declared himself the ruler of Syria. The dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire had thus begun, and so, it seemed, had Arab independence.

But the latter was not to be. By October 1916, Britain and France had finalized the Sykes-Picot Agreement, in the form of eleven letters ex--changed between the two sides, through which they divided the Ottoman provinces into different spheres of influence (map 2). Under the agreement, upon partitioning the Ottoman Empire, Britain and France were to “recognize and protect an Arab State or a Confederation of Arab States . . . under the suzerainty of an Arab Chief.” For those parts of the empire excluded from the Arab state, the two European powers were “allowed to establish such direct and indirect administration or control as they desire and as they may think fit to arrange with the Arab State or Confederation of Arab States.”
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Consequently, Greater Syria, which included southwestern Turkey in the north and Lebanon in the west, along with parts of northern Iraq, was to become the sphere of influence of France. Britain was to gain control over Iraq, the Arabian peninsula, and Transjordan. Palestine was subject to an international regime. To ensure their support for the Allied cause, Italy was promised southern Anatolia, and Russia was to obtain control over Istanbul, the strategically important Bosphorus Straits, and parts of eastern Anatolia.

Map 2.
The Sykes-Picot Agreement

The Sykes-Picot Agreement was later revised and in many ways substantially changed. Among the major changes to the agreement was the exclusion of Russia and Italy from its provisions, that of the former being due to the October 1917 revolution. The Balfour Declaration also seemed to undermine the status that the agreement accorded to Palestine. Moreover, the agreement did not delineate the precise boundaries of the territories in question, and only through later treaties did the current shape of many Middle Eastern countries emerge. But the ultimate importance of the Sykes-Picot Agreement lay in its allocation of spheres of influence to Europe’s two remaining paramount powers. Awarded control over Syria through the agreement, French troops marched
on Damascus on July 25, 1920, having defeated Faisal’s army two days earlier.

The deposed king, whose reign had officially lasted for only a few months, was not to be countryless for long. To quell an insurrection in Iraq in 1920, the British brought in Faisal, where, after a plebiscite generally agreed to have been rigged, he was proclaimed king in 1921. His brother Abdullah, meanwhile, was persuaded by the British colonial secretary, Winston Churchill, to accept temporary control over the newly declared Emirate of Transjordan. No one, it appears, expected Transjordan to last, including Churchill himself. This is indicated by Abdullah’s own account of a conversation with Churchill during which the British colonial secretary said he “hoped that in six months he would be able to congratulate us [i.e., Abdullah] on the return of Syria to our hands.”
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As history would have it, Transjordan did last, changing its name, in 1946, to Jordan.
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For a time, under British tutelage, the Hashemites were in control of three countries: Hussein in the Hijaz and his two sons, Faisal and Abdullah, in Iraq and Jordan, respectively. The father’s reign was the first to go, in 1924, swept away by a band of puritanical warriors headed by the Saud clan. In 1958 the Hashemites lost Iraq also, this time to a military coup inspired by the Arab revolutionary of the day, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser. Jordan was a different story, however, for there the Hashemite dynasty not only has remained in firm control to this day but, especially in the past decade or so, has become the possessor of a political asset rather rare in the Middle East—popular legitimacy.

Mention must be made of what history has come to label the Balfour Declaration, issued on November 2, 1917, in the form of a letter from the British foreign secretary, Arthur James Balfour, to a leading Zionist, Lord Rothschild. The Balfour Declaration was neither a product of wartime humanitarianism nor a hasty improvisation in the face of mounting crises in Palestine. Rather, it was the result of months of calculations and deliberations, with numerous drafts of it being prepared beginning in summer 1917. The final version was released only after receiving the private approval of U.S. president Woodrow Wilson.
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The released text, which has since assumed immense historical importance in the Middle East, read, “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish People, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
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There are different
interpretations as to why Britain issued such a declaration, to which a majority of British Jews and the only Jew in the ruling cabinet at the time were opposed. Two main reasons seem to underlie the declaration, one personal, the other political.
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Politically, Britain appears to have hoped that the declaration would please American Jewry, who would in turn pressure the U.S. government to be more forthcoming in its assistance to the Allied war effort. It was also hoped that Russian Jews would apply pressure to Russia’s revolutionary government to once again return to the war theater. “From a purely diplomatic and political view,” Balfour is reported to have told the rest of the British cabinet, by making “a declaration favourable to such an idea, we should be able to carry on extremely useful propaganda both in Russia and America.”
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As it turned out, at the time of its publication, the declaration was hardly noticed by the British press and the public at large, and Russia left the war shortly afterward, anyway.

Complementing these political considerations underlying the Balfour Declaration were several personal concerns by the various actors involved, especially close connections between leading advocates of the Zionist cause and members of the British cabinet. The famous Zionist Chaim Weizmann, later to become the president of Israel, was a close friend of Prime Minister Lloyd George and an influential figure in British political circles. Sir Mark Sykes, of Sykes-Picot fame, was also a strong believer in Zionism, though he himself was not a Jew.
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Balfour and Rothschild had had a long personal and professional acquaintance as well. These and other British policy makers saw the declaration as a great historical opportunity, not only to leave yet another of their own marks on global politics, but, more importantly, to right some of the wrongs that history had committed against the Jews.

From a larger historical perspective, it is hard to miss glimpses of Britain’s imperial temptation. Here was Britain, standing increasingly alone. The Ottomans were mortally wounded, Germany was soon to be saddled with the Versailles Treaty, Russia was in the midst of a revolution and a civil war, and France had found itself a less equal partner in sharing the spoils of victory. British policy makers appear to have genuinely thought that they could solve the historic problems of the Jews once and for all and attend to the ensuing problems of the Arabs as well, while at the same time furthering Britain’s imperial interests. The solution was thought to involve nothing more than a series of mandates. Before long, however, the force of circumstances had imposed increasing sobriety on the British. The Pandora’s box they had opened was not to be closed anytime soon, in fact not until long after their imperial glory had faded.

The end of World War I brought to a head tensions between high-minded Wilsonian idealism emanating from the United States and the reality of colonial control over the Middle East by France and Britain. The outcome was the concept of mandatory rule, a polite disguise for what a couple of decades earlier had been unabashedly called colonialism. The actual carving up occurred at the Conference of San Remo in April 1920 and was soon adopted by the League of Nations. The Ottomans, on their deathbed and in no position to influence the course of events dictated to them, signed off on the region’s new geopolitical realities the following August in the Treaty of Sèvres.

According to Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, “certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish empire” had not yet reached a stage needed to become fully independent and to foster development. Therefore, “Their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a mandatory unit until such time as they are able to stand alone.”
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The mandatory powers were designated as “trustees” of their mandates, and one of their tasks was to administer “within such boundaries as may be fixed by them.”
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With slight modifications, the allocation of mandates occurred along the lines of the Sykes-Picot Agreement: Britain acquired the mandates of Iraq and Palestine (including Transjordan), and France the mandate of Greater Syria (including Lebanon) (map 3).

The introduction of the mandate system was challenged by many of the peoples it affected. The French mandate in Syria, for example, was imposed after King Faisal was first threatened and then ousted by French forces advancing on Damascus. There were also major uprisings in Iraq following the awarding of the Iraqi mandate to Britain, the causes of which have been attributed to a mixture of nationalist, sectarian (Shiʿite), and tribal sentiments.
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Only the Zionists appear to have greeted with genuine excitement the idea of a Palestinian mandate going to Britain, which, in light of the Balfour Declaration, had already endorsed the idea of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. In fact, the British officials who drafted the Palestinian mandate, mostly junior in rank, did so on the basis of a Zionist draft and incorporated the Zionist program. The upper echelons of the Foreign Office, though not quite happy with the original draft, amended it only slightly.
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A word should also be said about the shape of the international boundaries that emerged from the San Remo Conference. With rulers in hand, French and British negotiators drew national boundaries and gave shape to the Middle East of today. What constrained or concerned them were not the wishes and aspirations of the peoples whose lives they were influencing but
rather their own diplomatic maneuvers and agendas.
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The creation of Lebanon is a case in point. For the sake of convenience, the French divided Syria into six administrative units based, in part, on the preponderance of religious groups in each area. The Sunni majority had never been enthusiastic about the idea of French rule, and administrative divisions were seen as an effective way of undermining the potential for anti-French solidarity on religious grounds.
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To make some of the smaller areas economically more viable, in August 1920 several adjacent regions were attached to
Lebanon, which had been one of the units, and the Greater State of Lebanon was subsequently created. Although separation from Syria and the creation of Lebanon were greeted with considerable excitement on the part of the new country’s Maronite community, ensuring economic viability had come at the expense of social and religious homogeneity.
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This was to have tragic consequences later. As for Syria, the remaining administrative units (
velayats
) were also amalgamated into one, and in 1924 Syria as we know it today was formed.