The Modern Middle East - A Political History Since World War I (Third Edition)
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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.”13 As history would have it, Transjordan did last, changing its name, in 1946, to Jordan.14 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.15 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.”16 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.17 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.”18 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.19 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.”20 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.”21 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.22 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.23
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.24 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.25 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.26 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.
Map 3. French and British mandates after World War I
The creation of Transjordan was also a thoroughly colonial endeavor, this time by Britain. Under Ottoman rule, the historic boundaries of Palestine had never been clearly delineated, and the area was at times viewed as part of “southern Syria.” More commonly, Palestine was seen as the area bordering the Mediterranean on the west, Syria on the north, and the Hijaz on the east. But under British mandatory rule after 1920, the sparsely populated desert area east of the Jordan River gained increasing autonomy, and it was here that Churchill convinced Abdullah, Faisal’s older brother, to abandon his Syrian campaign and become the ruler of the newly created Transjordan. By the time the League of Nations formally recognized the British mandate of Palestine in 1922, the area in question had already been partitioned into two, with Palestine west of the Jordan River and Transjordan on the east, and the Hashemites were in control of the latter.27 A 1928 agreement between the British government and Abdullah, who had now adopted the royal title of emir, gave Transjordan its own government, with British tutelage over foreign policy and finance. A succession of British military officers, the most famous of whom was Glubb Pasha, were put in charge of organizing and commanding the new country’s army, the Arab Legion.
Egypt’s story at this juncture is somewhat different, although, like that of its neighbors, it is still replete with colonial intervention. In July 1882 Britain had invaded Egypt, which had long been an autonomous province within the Ottoman Empire, to protect its access to the Suez Canal, whose construction had lasted from 1854 to 1869. Throughout the First World War and for decades thereafter, safe and ready access to the Suez remained Britain’s paramount goal.28 This concern prompted British control over Egypt to be near complete. While retaining the autonomous Ottoman governor (the khedive) in office, Britain controlled the Egyptian army and the ministries. The dominant political figure in Egypt, in fact, was not the khedive but rather the British consul-general.29 By the war’s end, however, rebellions in the Sudan (then part of Egypt) and serious anti-British riots in Egypt in 1919 had made overt British control of Egyptian affairs extremely costly. Weighing options that ranged from more extensive domination to conditional independence, Britain finally opted for the latter and, on February 28, 1921, unilaterally declared Egypt independent. But neither the control of the Suez nor the larger imperial interests of Britain were totally abandoned. Thus independence came with four conditions: control of the Suez and other British interests; control over Egyptian foreign policy and defense; control over the Sudan; and the right to protect foreign interests and religious minorities. Of all the former Ottoman provinces, Egypt was one of the first to become independent. But the extent and essence of this independence were far from complete.
In the Maghreb, meanwhile, the French remained firmly entrenched, having invaded and conquered Algeria in 1830, Tunisia in 1881, and Morocco in 1912. For some time, French merchants in Marseilles had retained commercial ties with the Maghreb, even after Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria had fallen under Ottoman suzerainty in the mid- to late 1500s. Initially, in all three of its Maghrebi provinces, Ottoman rule followed the pattern practiced elsewhere in the empire: an Istanbul-appointed governor, assisted by a corps of professional janissaries, a religious judge (qadi), and a navy, used primarily for privateering and harassment of commercial European ships in the Mediterranean.30 But this was not to last long, as local governors soon started paying only lip service to Istanbul and exercising considerable autonomy and independence. Given the geographic distance from the Ottomans’ Anatolian heartland and the Porte’s own internal difficulties, Istanbul was hardly in a position to impose its imperial authority on its Maghrebi possessions. By the middle of the seventeenth century, with their local rulers enriched by the revenues accrued through piracy and the sale of captured ship crews as slaves, Tunisia, Algeria, and Libya had become all but independent from Istanbul.
Morocco, for its part, was geographically too remote and isolated to have become subject to Ottoman rule. Despite the Porte’s initial efforts at conquest, Morocco developed an indigenous, tradition-bound system of religio-political rule of its own. From the 1550s until the 1830s, the country was ruled by a series of sherifian monarchs claiming to be descendants of the Prophet Muhammad (i.e., sherifs), belonging first to the Saadian and then to the Alawite dynasties. The sherifians made impressive headway in uniting the country and imposing central government authority throughout the territories. Nevertheless, on entering the twentieth century, in some respects Morocco remained divided into two parts. The Bilad al-Makhzan (government’s place) was located along the north and northwest coast, was populated by Arabic speakers, and eventually became subject to the official jurisdiction of the central government. The Bilad al-Siba, in the interior mountains and desert areas, was populated mostly by Berbers and remained largely outside central government control.31 The significance of Morocco’s division into the Bilad al-Makhzan and the Bilad al-Siba is a matter of some debate, with some scholars considering it a defining feature of the country’s colonial period and others seeing it as more of a divide deliberately perpetuated for purposes of colonial administrative convenience.32 But there is no doubt that the sultan’s power was geographically circumscribed and often contested.
Lack of preexisting central authority made it harder for the French to dominate the Maghreb. It took them nearly twenty years, for example, to pacify Morocco, and from 1921 to 1926 they were forced to fight a protracted war in the northern mountains of Rif. At its peak, some seven hundred thousand French and Spanish troops took part in what came to be known as the Rif War. Eventually, however, French colonial designs brought the whole of the Maghreb under direct French rule, with the exception of Libya, which fell prey to an Italian invasion in 1911. Unlike the British, who went into the Middle East to defend their imperial interests in the Indian subcontinent, the French went into North Africa with less clear strategic goals and interests. The French invasion of Algeria in 1830 appears to have been motivated primarily by domestic political considerations; competition with Britain seems to have been only a secondary concern. And when the French did conquer the Maghreb, they were initially and briefly undecided about what to do with their new acquisitions. Then Algeria was targeted for assimilation and treated as yet another French province—assuming, of course, that the Bureau of Native Affairs could make civilized Frenchmen out of the natives. Thus the colonial authorities actively promoted Algeria’s rapid colonization, and b
efore long an expanding and relatively affluent community of colons, with significant landholdings, emerged. Tunisia and later Morocco became protectorates, both used for their rich minerals and their farms, and, most importantly, for the protection of the newly acquired province. Consequently, French colonial rule was less direct than British rule, and some of the preexisting local institutions of judicial administration were allowed to exist side by side with colonial administrative organs.
Both British and French colonial authorities often contemptuously viewed the native population over whom they ruled as uncivilized. The French, additionally, frequently used violence and systematic mistreatment of the locals as part of their colonial policy, especially in Algeria. An 1833 report by a French parliamentary commission looking into the fall of Algeria is revealing:
Figure 2. Women in Algiers in the 1880s. Corbis.
We have sent to their deaths on simple suspicion and without trial people whose guilt was always doubtful and then despoiled their heirs. We massacred people carrying [our] safe conduct, slaughtered on suspicion entire populations subsequently found to be innocent; we have put on trial men considered saints by the country, men revered because they had enough courage to expose themselves to our fury so that they could intervene on behalf of their unfortunate compatriots; judges were found to condemn them and civilized men to execute them. We have thrown into prison chiefs of tribes for offering hospitality to our deserters; we have rewarded treason in the name of negotiation, and termed diplomatic action odious acts of entrapment.33