A History of the Middle East

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A History of the Middle East Page 25

by Peter Mansfield


  As events turned out, all the treaty’s concessions to Egyptian nationalist demands were largely nullified by the clause which gave Britain the right to re-occupy the country with the unrestricted use of Egyptian ports, airports and roads in the event of Britain’s involvement in war. Only three years passed before this clause was invoked. However, in 1936 the immediate reaction of the Egyptian crowds was favourable. The young king was wildly cheered in the streets – even Sir Miles Lampson was applauded. There were hopes of a new era, as the king gave the impression that he would take a special interest in the plight of the impoverished fellahin. Under his guidance the Wafd would institute some true reforms.

  The reality was rather different. Farouk did not lack either intelligence or good intentions, but he had been badly trained for his task. Also, he shared his father’s detestation of the Wafd and his taste for political intrigue.

  The Wafd remained the party of the masses and the true expression of political Egypt. However, before the treaty, its ‘anti-Britishness’ was the only real plank in its political platform. Its ranks contained a whole spectrum of views, from arch-conservative to extremely radical, but its centre of gravity was well to the right. The vast majority of those who voted for it lived in the rural areas which were dominated by the large and medium-size landowners. Very few Wafdist members of parliament wanted any serious changes in Egypt’s social or economic system; above all they did not want any reform in the fantastically unequal holdings of land, which meant that 6 per cent of the proprietors owned 63 per cent of the cultivated area. On the other hand, Egypt’s small but growing industrial sector was the creation of a few wealthy Egyptians outside the Wafd, such as Sidky Pasha and Talaat Harb, who co-operated with a number of European industrialists and financiers in establishing an Egyptian Federation of Industries in 1924.

  In one field – education – the Wafd could claim to have instigated reform to repair the neglect of the Cromer era. One of the first acts of the Zaghloul government in 1923 had been to declare education free and compulsory. The education budget was steadily increased in the 1920s and 1930s, and the number of pupils of both sexes rose rapidly. The expansion was most remarkable in secondary and university education. But there were serious defects. Since few new schools were built, the classes became overcrowded and standards declined. Also, no attempt was made to adapt the system to Egypt’s needs and, as later became characteristic of many newly independent countries, a growing body of graduates from the state secondary schools and universities was unable to find employment. The problem was compounded by the existence of an entirely separate network of foreign secular and religious schools alongside the Egyptian state system. These had high prestige but they greatly accentuated class divisions, as the sons and daughters of the Egyptian upper class who were sent to them grew up speaking French and feeling little in common with the mass of their fellow-countrymen.

  The students began to show increasing impatience and discontent with the Wafd and with Egypt’s handicapped form of parliamentary democracy in general. Many of them regarded the Anglo-Egyptian treaty as a betrayal, and some of them looked to a new leader – an eloquent and charismatic former schoolteacher named Hassan al-Banna, who founded his Muslim Brotherhood in Ismailia in 1928.

  In his early years al-Banna appealed most to the poor and illiterate, but in 1934 he moved his headquarters to Cairo and began to attract supporters from the better educated – students, teachers, civil servants and army officers. Branches of the Brotherhood sprang up throughout the country. Al-Banna’s appeal was simple and idealistic. He called for an Islamic state based on the Holy Koran, the traditions of Islam providing everything that was needed for the new social order. But if the Brotherhood lacked a political programme, it had organization through its network of branches. Its youth groups began to receive paramilitary training.

  The Brotherhood had rivals in its appeal to Egyptian youth. There was the Young Egypt (Misr al-Fitat) party of Ahmad Hussein, which was nominally socialist but which, with its uniform of green shirts modelled on Mussolini’s Black Shirts, had a strongly fascist character. In response the Wafd organized a rival group of Blue Shirts, who fought a series of pitched battles with the Green Shirts in the universities. It was not long before a fascist-type royalist youth movement was formed and joined the fray. Egyptian political life was speedily deteriorating.

  Although the Anglo-Egyptian treaty was unpopular with those who wanted to end all traces of the British occupation, it had one side-effect which helped their cause. The Egyptian army was now theoretically an ally of the British, so Britain was anxious to improve it; at the same time the Wafd needed to gain popularity. For the first time the Military Academy was opened to young men from classes other than the landowning aristocracy. Gamal Abdul Nasser, Anwar al-Sadat and a score of other ambitious young Egyptians were able to take up a military career and so play their part in the Free Officers movement which seventeen years later launched the 1952 revolution which brought both the monarchy and the British occupation to an end.

  The Wafd was, however, in a slow but inexorable decline and no longer had the unrivalled control over the masses of Zaghloul’s day. King Farouk, who now enjoyed the advantage over his father of being in control of his own secret police as well as the paramilitary youth movement, made the active independent politician Ali Maher his chef de cabinet. In December 1937 he felt strong enough to dismiss the Wafd ‘for having violated the spirit of the constitution’, and in the subsequent elections, which were partially rigged, the Wafd was heavily defeated. In August 1939, barely two weeks before the outbreak of the Second World War, the king felt able to appoint Ali Maher prime minister.

  However, although the Wafd’s power was in decline, the king still had to reckon with the British embassy, and this was now in de facto alliance with the Wafd. Although Lampson in theory no longer enjoyed Cromer’s degree of authority, he behaved as if he did, and his treatment of the young king recalled Cromer’s handling of the rebellious Khedive Abbas Hilmi forty years earlier. Lampson referred to him contemptuously as ‘the Boy’ and assured the Foreign Office that he was perfectly capable of dealing with him. Farouk, who had detested Lampson from the moment when Lampson arrived in Egypt, lacked the courage and strength of character to stand his ground against the British embassy on questions of genuine political importance; he could only irritate and provoke Lampson in minor matters, such as keeping him waiting for appointments.

  Nevertheless, a modus vivendi would probably have been reached if it had not been for the outbreak of war in 1939. This vastly increased Egypt’s importance to Britain as a military base and, at the same time, strengthened Lampson’s hand in his dealings with the king.

  (b) The Mandates

  The system of mandates set up by the League of Nations under Article 22 of its Covenant was unprecedented. It was also a form of compromise. While the victorious powers in the First World War wished to retain the former German colonies and the territories of the Ottoman Empire which in most cases they had made great sacrifices to conquer, they had made frequent pledges that their inhabitants would not be handed back to their former masters. They had also made solemn undertakings that the annexation of territory was not their aim in war. The outstanding example was the Anglo-French declaration about the former Ottoman provinces of 5 November 1918.

  The mandates were not colonies but a form of trust in which the mandatary power administered the territory under the supervision of the League of Nations through a Permanent Mandates Commission. The supreme council of the League defined the terms of the mandates and the boundaries of the territories. The United States was not a member of the League but, as one of the former Allies, insisted that its consent to the mandates was necessary, and all mandate proposals were therefore submitted to the United States, which approved them on condition that ‘free and equal treatment in law and in fact was secured to the commerce of all nations.’

  It must be said that some British and French statesmen regard
ed the distinction between mandates and colonies as no more than a fiction. One of the frankest was the British foreign secretary, Lord Curzon, who told the House of Lords on 25 June 1920,

  It is quite a mistake to suppose…that under the Covenant of the League or any other instrument, the gift of the mandate rests with the League of Nations. It does not do so. It rests with the Powers who have conquered the territories, which it then falls to them to distribute, and it was in these circumstances that the mandate for Palestine and Mesopotamia was conferred upon and accepted by us, and that the mandate for Syria was conferred upon and accepted by France.

  The mandated territories, which included the former German colonies in Africa and the Pacific, were at varying stages of political and social development. Since the mandate principle was that they should be brought to independence as soon as was practically possible, they were divided in three classes. The former Turkish vilayets of Mesopotamia (Iraq), Palestine and Syria, were included in class A, for which early independence could be most easily foreseen. The mandates for them were issued to Britain and France only when the Treaty of Lausanne came into force in August 1924, by which time the two Allies had already made various de facto arrangements for the establishment of boundaries and forms of administration which the League of Nations was in no position to reverse. Many faits accomplis had to be accepted.

  The League was supposed to enjoy an unqualified right of supervision, and the mandatary powers were obliged to submit annual reports on the exercise of their trusteeship. In addition the League could receive petitions from inhabitants of the territories and other interested parties. The weakest point in the system lay in the impossibility of independent verification of the mandataries’ reports, which varied in completeness and accuracy.

  (I) IRAQ

  The new kingdom of Iraq suffered from many problems related to its national unity. The centrifugal forces were powerful. The large and rebellious Kurdish minority in the north felt that it had been deprived of its hopes of self-determination by the post-war settlement. There were also substantial Turkoman and Christian Assyrian minorities. The Arab population was divided between Sunnis and Shiites, the latter being more numerous but the Sunnis being politically dominant.

  However, Iraq was perhaps the most successful of the mandatary regimes. Although King Feisal I had been imposed on the country from outside, he proved to be an effective unifying force. Kurdish and tribal beduin lawlessness was gradually overcome, and the Shiite mujtahids or religious authorities (who were mainly Persian) were brought under control. Relations with Persia were not cordial but remained peaceful. The boundary disputes with Ibn Saud, exacerbated by Hashemite–Saudi rivalry, were more bitter, but a measure of reconciliation was achieved through British mediation. The relationship with the former Turkish suzerains was the most difficult. At the 1923 Lausanne Conference, the Turkish Republic demanded the return of most of the vilayet of Mosul, which was widely believed to be rich in oil. After two years of wrangling within the League of Nations, Turkey reluctantly but unequivocally accepted the award of Mosul to Iraq.

  Following the defeat of those British officials in the immediate post-war period who favoured Iraq’s incorporation into the British Empire, relatively liberal policies were pursued. The initially extensive powers of British officials were gradually reduced. A constituent assembly was convened in 1924 which, in the following year, approved an Anglo-Iraqi treaty and an Organic Law which made Iraqi ministers responsible to a two-chamber parliament. However, the treaty, which maintained important exclusive British rights in Iraq, was approved only under heavy British pressure against the radical opposition which demanded unfettered independence.

  By the late 1920s Britain was prepared to end the mandate, provided British interests could be maintained, but a new treaty was long delayed because of the continued nationalist opposition to any British tutelage in a concealed form. Some League of Nations members also insisted that Iraq was not yet ready for full independence. (France, in particular, was alarmed by the possible precedent for its own mandates.) Finally, an Anglo-Iraqi treaty was concluded in 1930, providing for a twenty-five year alliance during which the two countries undertook to consult each other in order to harmonize their common interests in matters of foreign policy. Britain would have the use of certain air bases in Iraq and existing means of communications and in return would provide a military mission to help train the Iraqi army.

  In 1932 the British mandate formally ended; Iraq became independent and joined the League of Nations under British sponsorship. Only a strong body of Iraqi opinion remained dissatisfied, believing that the country was still under British hegemony. In their view this was aggravated by the power of the Iraq Petroleum Company, which monopolized Iraq’s oil resources. In August 1933, an ominous prelude to independence was the massacre by an army unit of three hundred Assyrian villagers in northern Iraq. The massacre was applauded by most Iraqi opinion and the soldiers were never punished. A large part of the Assyrian community left for Syria.

  King Feisal I died suddenly in 1933 and was succeeded by his son Ghazi. Handsome and popular, Ghazi had the reputation of being an Arab nationalist, but he lacked his father’s authority. In 1927 oil had been discovered in commercial quantities near Kirkuk in the north, and production bringing in the first substantial revenues began in 1934. Irrigation, communications and the public services all made progress – the development of the country’s vast potential resources had begun. However, the absence of King Feisal made the development of a viable political system more difficult. The country was served by some able and devoted ministers and officials who survived from the Ottoman period, of whom the most outstanding was Nuri al-Said. But parliamentary democracy failed to take root. No authentic political parties developed. Elections were largely controlled, with conservative, personal and class interests remaining dominant. A series of incompetent, reactionary and increasingly authoritarian cabinets succeeded each other in office. Politicians had no hesitation in organizing a tribal uprising, which could never be fully controlled, against the government of their rivals in office. The old-style politicians were opposed by an alliance of reformist middle-class intellectuals and young nationalist army officers inspired by the example of Kemal Atatürk. In 1936 these seized power under the leadership of General Bakr Sidqi. The movement ended, ten months later, as it had begun – with assassination and a military coup. It had failed because the reformist elements were soon set aside; the army was divided and the bulk of the population was alienated from the new rulers. But the coup was an event of great significance, because it established a precedent for military coups in the Arab world. Despite its failure, the Iraqi army had gained a new self-assurance and a taste for interference in political life.

  The army faction which overthrew Bakr Sidqi remained in power behind the scenes, capable of making or unmaking cabinets. However, in 1938 this group, known as The Seven, was instrumental in bringing a civilian – Nuri al-Said – to power. Pro-British and conservative, Nuri was to dominate the Iraqi state for the next twenty years through his strong personality and political finesse.

  (II) SYRIA AND LEBANON

  Having enlarged Lebanon at Syria’s expense, France based its policy in the two mandates on the strengthening and promotion of the traditionally Francophile Maronite Christian elements as against the Muslim Arab population. In both countries in the early years of the mandates France behaved in the manner of a colonial government backed by superior military power. The press was controlled, and nationalist demonstrations were instantly suppressed.

  The terms of the mandates promised a constitution for both countries in three years. But France considered the creation of an independent unitary state in Syria to be a very distant goal. The French army regarded strategic control of the region as essential, and French politicians were always concerned with the potential effect of concessions on France’s North African possessions.

  Some members of the minorities and a small proportion of
the Sunni Muslim majority accepted that French rule might bring advantages. But the vast majority, especially the educated élite, demanded immediate independence, and many went further to insist that the independent state should also include Palestine and Transjordan. France, on the other hand, with the unmistakable purpose of dividing Syria in order to rule it more easily, partitioned the country into separate autonomous districts: one in the Alawite (Nusairiyah) mountains in the north-east inhabited mainly by the sub-Shia Alawite sect, one in the Jebal Druze in the south where most of the people were Druze, and one in the rest of Syria with Damascus as the capital. Within the last a special status was given to the district of Alexandretta (now Iskenderun) with its mixed population of Arabs, Turks and Armenians. All three districts had autonomous administrations with French advisers, but there was an overall supervisory administration under the high commissioner for Syria and Lebanon in Beirut.

  The fragile framework was soon shaken when in 1925 a revolt in the Jebal Druze, due to local grievances, led to an alliance between the Druze and the nationalists of Damascus, who had begun to organize themselves in the People’s Party.

  The Druze warriors penetrated Lebanon and even the suburbs of Damascus, provoking a two-day French bombardment. The rebellion continued sporadically for two years, leaving much bitterness, but the French were constrained to pursue a more conciliatory policy. In 1928 they allowed elections to be held for a Constituent Assembly. These were clearly won by the nationalists, who formed a cabinet. The constitution drafted by the assembly was, as expected, unacceptable to the French because it spoke of the unity of geographical Syria and failed to recognize French control.

  In 1930 the French high commissioner unilaterally promulgated a new constitution which made Syria a parliamentary republic with France retaining control over foreign affairs and security. Desultory and unsuccessful negotiations followed to draw up a Franco-Syrian treaty which would be acceptable to both sides. However, by 1936 a new situation had arisen. A left-wing Popular Front government had come to power in France, and Britain had created precedents by granting independence to Iraq and reaching a treaty agreement with Egypt. Like their Egyptian counterparts, the Syrian nationalists, now organized in a National Bloc coalition, were concerned by the rising tensions in the Mediterranean region created by Italian imperial ambitions.

 

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