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The Root of All Evil in the Modern Middle East

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The Root of All Evil in the Modern Middle East The root of all evil in the modern Middle East “We are calling them to fight for us on a lie, and I can’t stand it.” --T.E. Lawrence, in a note to Gilbert Clayton, May 1917 By Dr. John C. Hulsman I find myself in a terribly awkward social and analytical position, for I find the barbarians of the Islamic State (IS) have one big thing right. It is not the present splintering of Sunni nation-states that is the great tragedy of the region; rather it was their forced imposition in the first place one hundred years ago that is the root of all evil in the modern Middle East. In July 2014, as their shattering offensive in Iraq came to its ghastly climax, it is no accident that IS cadres boasted that they had at last ‘broken’ the detested Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. This secret pact between Britain, France, and Tsarist Russia indiscriminately carved up the Ottoman Empire’s Arab provinces, making new western colonies of the region, throwing disparate religious and ethnic groups into European-style nation-states, thereby ensuring their instability. And indeed, across what were Iraq, Syria, Yeman, Libya, and Lebanon, artificial states are now coming unglued before our very eyes. As these fragile edifices have collapsed, citizens have been thrown back into the arms of more enduring and organic forms of self-identification, based of sectarianism, clans, and tribes. For as Lawrence of Arabia presciently observed a century ago, beneath the veneer of national constructs lurked these true units of politics in the Middle East. To ignore them—as Sykes-Picot so blatantly did—was to fail; to work with them (as Lawrence did during the Hashemite Desert Revolt against the Turks) was to succeed. For all his great fame in the wake of the peerless David Lean biopic about him, Lawrence’s importance as a thinker has been almost wholly obscured, as has been his credo, that to be successful in the Middle East, it is imperative to work with existing cultural and political realities, and not against them. The Gospel According to Lawrence In August 1917, following his miraculous capture of Aqaba, the British High Command, worrying that Lawrence could be killed at any moment given the day-to- day risks he was running spearheading the Arab guerrilla campaign against the Ottomans, tasked him with codifying what he had learned about the Arabs in a manual that could be used by British soldiers serving in the field with Prince Feisal of Mecca’s troops. It was rightly feared that if Lawrence were to die, his unique knowledge of dealing with the Arabs would be lost forever. So Lawrence, in the midst of the fighting that followed on from Aqaba, grumpily began typing his “Twenty-Seven Articles” in the heat of the desert sun. Appearing in the Arab Bulletin, August 20, 1917, the “Twenty-Seven Articles” is a brilliant mixture of political, military, and psychological thought, offering nothing less than a new way for outsiders to look at the Arab world. Decades ahead of his time, Lawrence realised that without the political backing of the local Arab population he could not win, and that with their support he could not lose. For Lawrence, local organic developments, specific cultural knowledge, and an emphasis on the particular are the keys to understanding the Arab world. He stressed the conservative view of the Anglo-Irish philosopher and statesman Edmund Burke that politics is at base an organic construction; like a plant it grows out of the soil of a unique history, culture, and set of circumstances. Proceeding on from this central point, Lawrence stressed that for the region’s analysts to be successful, determining the local unit of politics is the key; in the case of his fiercely independent allies in the Hejaz (western Arabia) it was the tribe and not the western preference of some form of Jeffersonian construct that held sway. As his Bedu (Arab Bedouin) battled their way into Syria, Lawrence observed, “The largest indigenous political entity in settled Syria is only the village under its sheikh, and in patriarchal Syria the tribe under its chief.” Brilliantly, Lawrence understood that such a fractured political reality called for the “minimum of central power,” as confederation organically meshed with the strong localism that defined Arab politics in Prince Feisal’s army as well as in Greater Syria. Lawrence, knowing his Bedu comrades, could see that less government for them was better, as it suited their lifestyle as well as their intrinsic political view of the world. Tailoring a system to fit the local unit of politics—rather than imposing a one-size-fits-all overly centralised system on indigenous peoples as Sykes-Picot was shortly to do—is a major insight Lawrence has still to teach western observers today, as vitally he understood that local legitimacy was the key to stability in the Middle East. Sykes-Picot as the snake in the garden As the desert campaign reached what ought to have been its glorious climax, with the capture of iconic Damascus in reach, a major political crisis loomed on the horizon for Lawrence and his Arab comrades, due to British political duplicity. For in the life-and-death desperation of World War I, London had offered Greater Syria (today’s Syria and Lebanon) to two different allies, the Arabs and the French. While guessed at by both Lawrence and Prince Feisal (though neither were directly privy to its terms), the Sykes-Picot Agreement of February 1916 was a precise exercise. Signed by Britain, France, and Russia, it amounted to an imperial carve-up of the Middle East, along the lines of the standard nineteenth century exercise of imperial power, and in complete contradiction to Lawrence’s philosophy. France was to get parts of the Lebanese and Syrian coast, with the Arabs gaining titular control of the Syrian hinterlands (while in practice being dominated by French advisers). This secret accord was in clear conflict with the promises the British government had made to King Hussein of the Hejaz, Prince Feisal’s father, and the supreme political leader of the Arab cause. Beyond Arabia—which was reserved for King Hussein—Britain was to get much of what was left, including Mesopotamia (today’s Sunni and Shia regions of Iraq), and Palestine. However, the agreement did not remain a secret for long, as in October 1917—following the Russian Revolution—the Bolsheviks gleefully published all of the Tsar’s secret treaties with the capitalist powers in the newspaper Izvestia. Its unearthing was a dagger pointed at the heart of the British war effort in the Middle East. For everyone knew that the motive behind the Arab Revolt was the genuine belief that the Arabs would have a truly independent state after the war had come to an end. Without the possibility that this dream would be fulfilled, the rebellion was certain to peter out. That the British government (not to put too fine a point on it) lied to the Arabs to keep them in the field is not in doubt. As Feisal later remembered, “King Hussein communicated to London and the British Government assured him that the sensational news reported by the Turks (who had translated the Izvestia report into Arabic) was merely an intrigue on their part, and that England had no interest other than that of the liberation of all the Arabs.” Lawrence, fearing the worst, took it as his personal responsibility to scupper the Sykes-Picot agreement and ensure that Feisal became King of Greater Syria. Lawrence made several attempts to clarify British intentions. He was met by more British duplicity. Finally, on June 16, 1918, London made a formal declaration of its policy in the Middle East. The British government recognised the “complete and sovereign independence” of all those “territories liberated from Turkish rule by the Arabs themselves.” Both Feisal and his father saw this declaration as the definitive repudiation of the earlier Sykes-Picot Agreement, a view that was strongly reinforced by Lawrence. Ominously, the French had yet to ratify the British change to their common diplomatic position as General Allenby and Lawrence neared Damascus in the summer of 1918. On November 9, 1918, just before the defeat of Germany, the British Foreign Office Undersecretary, Lord Robert Cecil, published a further Anglo-French statement on the Middle East. In line with its most recent declaration, and contradicting Sykes-Picot, it stated that Paris and London encouraged the establishment of native governments in Syria and Mesopotamia, and would not interfere in the workings of any local government. Cecil’s document clearly states, “Far from wishing to impose on the populations of these regions such or such institutions, they (Britain and France) have no other care than to assure by their support and practical aid the normal working of the governments and institutions which these populations have freely set up.” Words matter, and these ought to pretty much put to rest the notion that the tragedy that was about to ensue was the result of some sort of grand linguistic misunderstanding. Rather, the British and French understood all too well the game they were playing. October 1, 1918 should have been the greatest day of Lawrence’s life. He was following in the footsteps of conquerors whose glory has not died, even in the modern world—the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar, the Persian Cyrus, the Greek Alexander the Great, and the Roman Pompey. His name was about to be added to the ages. He was to take Damascus, the pearl of the Arab world, symbol of all its past power and strength, and he was to do so at the age of 30.
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