The Joschka

"Western powers are hardly blameless for the Middle East's woes. Any mention of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, by which Great Britain and France partitioned the post-Ottoman territories, still incites such rage in the Arab world that it seems as if the plan, devised in secret in 1916, had been conceived only yesterday." (Post-caliphate, Saudi Arabia, Iran to provide Middle East flashpoint, Joschka Fisher, The Australian, 25/7/17)

But since Fisher (Germany's foreign minister and vice-chancellor from 1998-2005) nowhere mentions Britain's 1917 Balfour Declaration, which arbitrarily severed Palestine from Ottoman Greater Syria and handed it to the Zionist movement, among those woes, the Arab world presumably has no problem with it.

The Dogs of (World) War (I)

"The Armistice [of 11/11/1918] ended four years of bloodshed and heartache across Europe, the Middle East and Eurasia." (Today's Herald editorial: Remembrance Day: complacency is our enemy)

Right, and then the BritZ and the French unleashed those two savage mongrels, the Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916) and the Balfour Declaration (1917), on a war-ravaged Middle East.

Dismembering Syria

The Syrian army mortar round which struck the Turkish border town of Akcakale on October 3, killing 5, has prompted Turkey to not only retaliate in kind but talk of commencing cross-border raids against Syrian government forces. But there's an incredible irony here. Akcakale is in the southern Turkish province of Hatay, and Hatay was once a province of Syria known as the Sanjak of Alexandretta. In fact, the people of Akcakale, and Hatay in general, still speak Arabic and many have relatives south of the border in Syria. Thereby hangs a particularly outrageous but not generally known tale.

Whenever you hear about Turkish involvement in or threats against Syria - or British and French involvement/threats for that matter - it's always useful to recall the history of the post World War 1 Franco-British collusion which led to the dismemberment of greater Syria in general, and the Franco-Turkish collusion which led to France's handing over of large chunks of 'lesser' Syria to Turkey in particular. An understanding of the criminal interwar carve-up of historical Syria puts Turkey's (and France's and Britain's and USrael's) current, supposedly benign, involvement in the Syrian conflict in a whole new light.

The following extracts are taken from Syria expert Patrick Seale's 1988 biography of Hafiz al-Asad, Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East: 

"When the First World War finished off the 400-year-old Ottoman empire, its Arab provinces were left to the mercies of Britain and France, the victorious superpowers of the time, who had secretly arranged to share out natural Syria between them. France took the northern part which was to become the republics of Syria and Lebanon, while further south Britain seized what were to be Palestine and Transjordan.

"The inhabitants of the whole region made it clear that they wanted natural Syria to be independent and undivided: in July 1919 an elected body calling itself the Syrian National Congress repudiated the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Balfour Declaration and demanded sovereign status for a united Syria-Palestine. Overwhelming popular support for this demand was confirmed by the King-Crane commission, an American fact-finding team which visited scores of towns and villages and received nearly two thousand petitions. But in 1920, to the despair of the Syrians, the European powers were given Mandates over the new states carved out of the former Ottoman provinces. These mandates were conceived as a form of guardianship of young nations, but France ousted the Arab administration which the Amir Faysal had established in Damascus and proceeded to set up a colonial regime, before reordering the region to suit itself and its local friends.

"First, in August 1920, it detached large areas from Syria - the ports of Tyre, Sidon, Beirut and Tripoli, the Biqa' valley, and the Shi'i region north of Palestine - and attached them to Mount Lebanon, the fief of its Maronite proteges, so as to create the State of Greater Lebanon. At a stroke Damascus lost its outlets to the sea and saw its horizons violently contract.

"A second amputation occurred in October 1921 when France surrendered to Turkey large parts of the former province of Aleppo, bringing the Turks within 50 kilometres of the city. Aleppo's domain was further whittled away when France granted a special status to the Alexandretta-Antioch enclave of northern Syria because it contained a sizeable Turkish minority. (Less than 20 years later, the whole region was handed over to Turkey.) France then divided into four what remained of the country entrusted to it. In September 1920 Damascus and Aleppo were made the capitals of separate mini-states and in March 1922 the 'Alawi mountains and the Druze mountains were severed from Damascus and proclaimed 'independent'. In addition, the essentially tribal north-eastern part of Syria was brought under direct French rule and separatist sentiment encouraged by the settlement of Christians and Kurds.

"These internal and wholly artificial frontiers were eventually swept away but Syria never regained its lost territories. When the French finally withdrew in 1946, the country had shrunk to 185,190 square kilometres from the 300,000 square kilometres which had been the extent of the Ottoman empire's Syrian provinces. The Syrians did not easily recover from the shock of this surgery, and the feeling that their country was made smaller than it was meant to be became a continued source of frustration." (pp 15-16)

Further into his book, during his discussion of the founding fathers of the Ba'ath Party, the 'Alawi from Antioch, Zaki al-Arsuzi, and the Damascene Christian, Michel 'Aflaq, Seale touches specifically on the situation of the then Syrian province of Alexandretta, (now Turkish Hatay) in the late 30s:

"The great issue of the time in Arsuzi's home province of Alexandretta was the battle between Arabs and Turks for political control. Turks formed the largest single community but the electoral rolls showed that non-Turks - Arabs and Armenians - were clearly the majority. However, as war with Germany was looming, France was anxious to conciliate Turkey and fell in with its demand that Alexandretta should not be absorbed into the Syrian Republic, as the Arab nationalists wanted, but should retain the 'special status' it had been granted under the Mandate. The nationalists were furious at what they saw as France's betrayal of their interests. Taking command of the protest movement, Arsuzi brought youngsters out on to the streets, provoked clashes between Arabs and Turks and landed himself in jail - to no avail; in July 1938, France and Turkey signed a treaty of friendship, whereupon Turkish troops marched into the province and, to the Arabs' astonishment and indignation, the electoral rolls suddenly revealed the Turks to be in the majority. The outcome was that in June 1939 Alexandretta began a new life as the Turkish province of Hatay: another greedy bite had been taken out of Syria's short coastline. By disregarding its pledge to protect the integrity of Syria, France had committed a flagrantly immoral political act. Unwilling to live under Turkish rule, thousands of Arabs left their homes in the province of Alexandretta and moved south to take refuge in Syria." (pp 27-28)

Is Syria about to be dismembered yet again?

See also my posts French Mandate Redux (2/6/12) and Waiting for Francois Hollande (24/7/12)

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time...

To adapt the words of the late, immortal George Carlin, I don't just have pet peeves when it comes to politicians, I have major psychotic hatreds. One - just one - relates to Arthur James Balfour (1848-1930), the Lord Balfour of the infamous Balfour Declaration of 1917.

As David Hirst in his invaluable history of the Arab-Israeli conflict points out: "The Balfour Declaration was one of the two key documents that have shaped the modern history of the Middle East. The other was the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916. This secret deal was part of an understanding in which the 3 major allies, Britain, France and Czarist Russia, defined each other's interests in the post-war Middle East. Sir Mark Sykes, Secretary to the British Cabinet, and the French plenipotentiary, M Georges Picot, agreed that, after the break-up of the Ottoman empire, Britain and France would divide its former Arab provinces between them... France was to take over Lebanon and Syria, Britain would get Iraq and Transjordan. Palestine was to be placed under an 'international administration' of a kind to be decided on later." (The Gun & the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East, 1977, pp 37)

I'll be returning to Sykes later in this post, but, as Hirst relates, "The Balfour Declation grew out of Sykes-Picot, but, in retrospect, its importance far outweighs it. Indeed, it is difficult to recall a document which has so arbitrarily changed the course of history as this one. The Arab-Israeli struggle is the likeliest of contemporary world problems to precipitate the nuclear doomsday; if it does, surviving historians will surely record that it all began with with the brief and seemingly innocuous letter... which Arthur Balfour, the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, addressed to Lord Rothschild on 2 November 1917." (ibid pp 37-38)

You will, of course, be familiar with the second paragraph: "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 the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

In retrospect a colonialist cock-up of the first order, you may, like myself, have wondered from time to time if, in retrospect, Balfour had ever had any regrets over the document that bore his name. Unfortunately, it would appear that he didn't: In 1925 he set sail to inaugurate the new Hebrew University in Palestine. Embarking first at the Egyptian port city of Alexandria, he made his way to Cairo. There he was spared a protest staged by Palestinian Arabs living in Egypt, when the Interior Minister, Isma'il Sidqi, had the protesters arrested - surely proof positive, in light of the reception given by the Mubarak regime to the recent Gaza Freedom March and Viva Palestina aid convoy, that some things never really change in the Land of the Pharoahs. (See Palestine & Modern Arab Poetry, Khalid A Sulaiman, 1984, p 51)

From Cairo, Balfour travelled on to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Balfour biographer R J Q Adams takes up the story: "There was much pausing at kibbutzim and townships where Jewish settlers wished to cheer the man they identified as their benefactor, and Balfour smilingly endured the unwonted part of popular hero. The highlight of the visit was the formal inauguration on 1 April of the new university, and, before an assembly of ten thousand gathered at the foot of Mount Scopus, Balfour did the honours garbed in the gown of the chancellor of Cambridge University. Like Weizmann, he found the long speeches trying - most were in Hebrew, a language of which he knew nothing - but he endured them, and the ceremony concluded to tumultuous applause. Fatigued by the extended ceremonies, he was pleased to spend a few days as the guest of Lord Samuel, since 1920 the high commissioner in Jerusalem. He revived quickly, and was soon enjoying tennis with his host on the clay courts of the residency. The British authorities and the Jewish defence force, the Haganah, provided security for the official party, but Balfour wished to continue on to view the historic sights of Syria, where the protection of the visitors became the responsibility of the French administration, already anxious over a recent insurrection. Their plans soon went awry as in Damascus a hostile Arab crowd - infuriated by the presence of the author of the hated 1917 Declaration - advanced on his hotel, only to be received by French cavalry who fired volleys of warning shots. General Sarrail, the military governor, was anxious to bundle the party out of his city, and Balfour and his friends were packed off to Beirut and kept on board ship for three days before their vessel was allowed to sail. Though Balfour brushed aside his adventure, insisting he had faced worse times in Ireland, later he would speak only of the Palestinian days of his adventure. Certainly it in no way shook his confidence in the rightness of the famous Declaration, and he steadfastly discounted any signs of religious and racial strife in Palestine, writing in 1927, 'Nothing has occurred during that period to suggest the least doubt as to the wisdom of this new departure'." (Balfour: The Last Grandee, 2007, pp 368-369)

Sir Mark Sykes (1879-1919), he of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, was apparently a different man entirely:

"Sir Mark Sykes had returned to Paris early in February [1919] from a tour of over two months in Palestine and Syria, and had brought disquieting news. What he had observed on that journey had opened his eyes to realities that had hitherto escaped him. He had been particularly affected by his own discovery of the gap between what he had previously understood Zionism to be and what he had just seen of Zionism in the making in Palestine and of its effects on the minds of the Arabs. '... From being the evangelist of Zionism during the War he had returned to Paris with feelings shocked by the intense bitterness which had been provoked in the Holy Land. Matters had reached a stage beyond his conception of what Zionism would be. His last journey to Palestine had raised many doubts, which were not set at rest by a visit to Rome. To Cardinal Gasquet he admitted the change of his views on Zionism, and that he was determined to qualify, guide and, if possible, save the dangerous situation which was rapidly arising'. Syke's views about the Sykes-Picot Agreement had undergone a similar revulsion: he had become convinced of its inadaptability to actual conditions and of the futility of trying to execute it. And, although he was feeling worn out with the exertions of his tour, he had hurried back to Paris bent upon doing all he could to correct false hopes and put a brake upon ambitions which now seemed to him insensate. But within a few days of his return he fell ill and died: and it is perhaps not an exaggeration to say that, for Jews, Arabs and British alike, to say nothing of the French, his death at that juncture was little short of a calamity. Without going so far as to suppose that one individual, however genuine, talented and forceful, could have infected the Versailles peacemakers with his own sense of justice, there is little doubt that, had he lived, his recital of facts and his forecast of consequences might have filled the minds of the politicians with those anxieties which are often, in politics, the beginning of wisdom. In those few days of activity before his fatal illness, Sykes had seen Lord George, Balfour and several of his French and Zionist friends, and had begun the campaign for a return to sanity upon which he had set his heart. What effect his warnings may have had at the time is not known. But when, a few weeks after Sykes' death, [Emir] Faisal's proposal for an inquiry [to visit Syria and Palestine and ascertain the wishes of the population*] on the spot began to be seriously considered, the prevalent sentiment in British, French and Zionist political circles was one of still greater discomfort. And Balfour went to the lengths of addressing a memorandum to his chief, in which he urged that Palestine be altogether excluded from the purpose of the inquiry, while Clemenceau kept insisting that France could not consent to its being held unless it were to cover Iraq and Palestine and well was Syria." (The Arab Awakening, George Antonius, 1938, pp 290-292)

[*This became the King-Crane Commission with regard to Syria-Palestine & Iraq, 28/8/1919. See my 18/6/08 post Avnery's Apology: A Critique]

To draw on Carlin again, it looks like the wrong man got pencilled in for a sudden visit from the Angel of Death.