The Western Intervention In The Middle East:
From The Campbell-Bannerman Recommendations To The Current Situation
By Dr Salim Nazzal
04 February, 2015
Countercurrents.org
It is possible to say roughly that the Arab highest time in history was made during the Umayyad and Abbasid Dynasties, which ended in 1258 with the Tatar invasion to Baghdad. The invaders burnt the city and threw into the river the biggest library in the world, in one of the most tragic massacres for the written storage of human knowledge in history. However in reality, and since 847, the state was in continuous disintegration. The inter-religious conflicts and the continuous rebelling against the state were increasing all the time, which made the state in its last centuries a nominal state with a weak grip on its territory.
The last Abbasid Caliphates from the 9th century and until its tragic fall by the Tatar were rather nominal rulers. The real power was shifted between the Persians, the Sjuljuk and Bowie dynasties. The Abbasids, who survived the Tatar massacres moved to Cairo, and continued to be nominal rulers as before, and the Mamluk were interested in them, because they needed some religious legitimacy in a region where religion is the prime provider of legitimacy. However, the Mamluks ruled Egypt and Syria from 1261 until the Ottoman invasion in 1515. So one can say with great confidence that in the last 1000 years Arabs had been absent from ruling themselves. This must have its impact on Arabs in later periods as we shall see. When Arabs encountered Europe in the 19th century, and early twentieth centuries, they had no experience in politics and in diplomacy. They were still living in the culture of the Sultanic pre-modern state.
In 1516 the Ottomans invaded the Arab region defeating the Mamulk rulers of the region. The whole Arab speaking region except Morocco fell under the Ottoman rule. This was acceptable to Arabs due to religious basis. The Ottoman invaders were Muslims and the main bulk of Arabs are Muslims, and the Ottomans adapted the Hanafite Islamic Jurisprudence. Other schools of Islamic Jurisprudence require the ruler to be an Arab, and a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad’s family. The Hanafite principles enables non-Arab Muslims, and not necessarily from the Prophet’s Qureishi family to be rulers.
This is not however; equal to saying that the Ottoman rule was totally free of problems in the Arab region. There were some revolts against them led by local princes in Syria in the 16th and 18th centuries, and the unrest was increasing. The state was getting weakened, and even called the Sick man of Europe.
It is difficult to say that these revolts were driven by Arab ethnic awareness. Rather it was some spontaneous reaction to the increasing of oppression, and injustice in the old Ottoman state. Even the successful offensive made by Muhammad Ali the Albanian ruler of Egypt, against the Ottoman Empire was more likely motivated by personal ambition than Arab awareness despite some western vague reports which describe it as a sort of Arab awareness.
However, until the 19th century Arabs continued to live as they used to live without any radical change in their life on all levels politically, socially and economically. But this situation gradually changed due to the encounter with the west, which resulted in the Arab realization of their stagnation, and raised major questions like the question of Prince Shakib Arsalan, “Why did the West advance and the Muslims did not?”
In this context, it is difficult to ignore the impact of the French campaign (1799) as the Egyptian thinker Anwar Abed Al Malik notes, towards awakening the feeling of identity among the Egyptians and Arab Muslims in general. The campaign in his view represents the first direct encounter between the Orient and the West which resulted in the awareness of Egyptians and Arabs to the huge scientific gap between the orient and the west.
In his view, some attribute the awakening feeling in the revolutionary ideas of the French revolution, brought by the invading army, while others, return the consciousness to the resistance of the Arabs to the foreign, or to both factors.
We need here to mention that Napoleon was perhaps the first European leader who proposed the (return) of Jews to Palestine. In his letter published in the Paris Miniature Universal, he called upon Jews (to restore back what is taken from them by force and France will support them). This declaration was perhaps the begging of Western vision about Palestine and the region. This vision, as happened later, developed in the form of Western political projects, especially after the First World War, when Germany and the Ottoman Empire lost the war, and the allied forces of Britain and France occupied the Arab region of the former Ottoman state.
The Arab Renaissance in the 19th century contributed greatly towards the Arab consciousness about their identity, and about the importance to modernize their societies. It was indeed a period of soul searching where many issues were debated such as the formation of Pan Arab thinking and modern states, the question of education, the position of woman, the question of Arab unity, and the question of reforming Islam, among many issues. The outcome of the Arab enlightenment period was that Arabs realised that their defeats in the past was not only due to the lack of military modern arms, but rather the whole political system was too old to fit in modern times. The general Arab attitudes were positive towards the West due to the perception that the West established states based on laws and with respect to humanity.
Arabs who went to study in the west like Al Tahtahawi drew a very bright picture of Europe. And the missionary school established in the region also contributed to this bright picture. This naive thinking towards the West has probably contributed to some extent to the Arab decision to stand with Britain and France against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Arabs believed in the promises of the allied forces that they will grant them freedom, and the establishment of an Arab state in the Arab-Asian region, if Arabs fought the Ottoman state. This resembles a major change in the Arab mind, because of the twinning of the Arab culture with Islam. To fight the Ottoman Muslims and to ally themselves with the (Christians) in Europe meant a big shift in the Arab thinking.
Perhaps the declaration of Sharif Hussein of Mecca before the Arab revolt against the Turks in 1916 that “We are Arabs before we are Muslims” is a good example of the changes which were taking place in the Arab mind.
The paradox of this is that when Arabs declared the revolt in 1916, in that same year, the British and French diplomats Sykes and Picot with Russian presence; were planning to divide the region which today includes Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq. But when the Bolshevik revolution disclosed the secret agreement, and published it the Russian Pravda in 1917, Arabs were assured by Britain not to be worried considering as propaganda from the Ottomans, to divert Arabs from their alliances. In my view the Sykes-Picot agreement has established the base of an Arab distrust and even hatred towards the west. Arabs view that Europe betrayed them when they trusted it. This attitude has become stronger with the establishment of the state of Israel, and the western support for Israel.
The question is, “What are the reasons which made Britain and France practice this policy?” I think this can be explained by the British knowledge of the impact of the Arab enlightenment period and the growing of Arab nationalistic sentiments, where a great deal of the debate about it took place in Egypt which was a British colony since 1882.
They know that the region is homogeneous in many ways. There is a common language spoken by all Arabs, and a religion which connects the vast majority of them, and these two factors are enough to lay the ground of a strong Arab state in the region, which fears the imperial powers which decide to eliminate its possibility to come to life. In his informative article (The Origins of Imperial Israel) Andrew Marshal digs into the roots of the conflicts in the Middle East.
Marshal writes about the concern of the British prime minister Campbell Bannerman, about the future of the imperial Britain. The answer to his concern was laid by British strategists, which recommends a number of measures, which were realized later in the document known as Sykes Picot in 1916 or Asia Minor agreement.
The major ideas of the Campbell-Bannerman recommendations can be summarized in three major points: first to promote divisions in the area in order to create weak states. Second, to prevent any potential unity, and thirdly to establish a buffer state.
These recommendations were made in 1907, when the Ottoman Empire was still the ruler of the region. But then called the sick man of Europe, and the European diplomats in the Ottoman state had power much more than the Ottoman officials themselves.
The Sykes peace agreement officially known as the Asia Minor Agreement, was a secret agreement between the governments of the United Kingdom and France with the assent of Russia, dividing the Arab orient into spheres of influence for these countries, and thus transforming the region into artificial states under the influence of these two powers.
In 1917 this agreement was followed by the Balfour Declaration, which promised Palestine to be a homeland for Jews without considering in reality the hopes and desires of the native population of Palestine. The connection between both declarations is very obvious, without the Sykes Picot recommendation there would be no Balfour Declaration. Both declarations belong to the same mindset stated in the recommendation of the Campbell-Bannerman recommendation in 1907 and the Sykes Picot in 1916.
It's obvious that the carve-up of the region by the imperial powers was a successful policy of divide and rule principle. Its result was a catastrophe for the whole region, which is still paying until this moment.
The political impact of the agreement was disastrous for the whole region for the several reasons:
First
It deprived the Arabs from the right of self-determination, which includes the establishment of an Arab state in the Arab speaking region.
Second
It opens the road towards the Balfour Declaration, and the establishment of the Zionist state in Palestine in 1948. The establishment of the Zionist state in the region has led to the weakening of what I call (baby democracy) in the Arab region, and the emergence of the military regimes as a response to the challenge made by the state of Israel. This too has led to the spread of the culture of war and violence in the region since 1948 where about 12 major and middle wars have taken place in the region.
It has also hindered development and increased poverty which benefited the ideas of extremism. It also weakened the cultures of civil societies in the Arab region, or hindered it from existence in others? But the most dangerous thing is that it led to the emergence of the Islamic fundamentalism, which was fed by poverty, the culture of war, and despotism, and the humiliation Arabs fell under the defeats in wars with Israel. In addition, that fundamentalism saw in Israel the model of the Jewish state which can be imitated.
It has also affected greatly the negative sentiments towards the west, which is seen by the average Arabs as hypocrites and double standards.
Third
The agreement destroyed the social fabric which was established in thousands of years. It sometimes puts the same family in two different countries with different nationalities. But the most affected among the population, is the Arab Christians in the region. At the time of the Sykes Picot the Arab Christians were estimated to be from 25 to 30 percent of the population in the region.
Fourth, it has destroyed the traditional commercial routes which have gone on since the dawn of history. Which, naturally has negative impact on the economic development in the region.
Fifth:
It created artificial states which later invented history for each to legitimize its existence. The thinking of dividing the region, and to hinder any unity continued to be the policy of Britain and France. In 1965 both countries alongside Israel attacked Egypt, which was the base of the Pan Arab ideology.
The same policy continued with Israel to weaken Arabs and to dominate over the region. Ben Gurion, the first prime of Israel had spoken about the necessity to establish sectarian religious states in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Egypt, where the Jewish state would be the strongest of all.
At the time being when the civil wars are taking place in Iraq and Syria in addition to other Arab countries. The rumors about a new Sykes Picot agreement has become much circulated in the media. Much of the analysis is predicting that the US, alongside Israel, are planning to establish small sectarian religious states in Syria and Iraq. How much this is true, it is difficult to say at the moment. But a major difference between now and the times of the Sykes Picot, is that the civil wars are promoting divisions on the ground and hatred among the various sects, the Sunni and the Shia in particular. This atmosphere of bitter civil wars, raises serious concerns that the divisions this time have some legitimacy due to conflict on the ground.
The western powers and the state of Israel are helping directly and indirectly, the ideas of fundamentalism to spread in the region. The western support to the Israeli occupation and to the Arab dictatorships in the region, has empowered the most extreme ideas to circulate especially in the poor areas which lost hope.
To end, the current situation in the region is somehow similar to the situation of the 1916. The states are disintegrating, and the super powers and Israel are active in reshaping the region to fit their interest following Julius Ceaser’s principle of divide and rule. The Middle East has entered a dark stage of its history, which may last for many years.
(Based on a lecture at a seminar in the garden of knowledge in Valetta .Malta 30th of January 2015)
Dr. Salim Nazzal, a Palestinian-Norwegian historian on the Middle East, He has written extensively on social and political issues in the region.
.
Comments are moderated