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Another iniquitous division of the Middle East maybe no better than a Daesh caliphate

December 10, 2015 at 2:30 pm

One recurring theme during last week’s House of Common’s debate on airstrikes in Syria that merits far greater attention than it’s been given is the “imaginary line in the sand” between Syria and Iraq. In fact it’s gone completely under the radar, with barely any follow up conversation about its significance for the region.

Part of David Cameron’s case in support of airstrikes was the suggestion that the operation in Syria was not a new decision about going to war but merely an extension of an existing campaign, which Britain is already committed to in Iraq; that the borders between Iraq and Syria are simply an imaginary line on the sand and it made no sense to pull back British jets from entering Syria. Members of Parliament repeatedly mentioned the absurdity of respecting a border that Daesh has no respect for.

It’s true, Daesh does not respect these borders; or any borders for that matter, but it was unusual, to say the least, to hear MP’s assuming the logic of Daesh in stressing that the borders between Syria and Iraq were not, after all, inviolable.

Putting aside the obvious contentions that would inevitably be raised by any sovereign state whose territory was being violated, my thoughts cast back in history when these borders were carved out through a similar cavalier approach.

When it comes to the Middle East, the irony of seeing politicians arbitrarily designating “violable” and “inviolable” borders would not have been lost on anyone, most of all to James Barr, author of “A Line in the Sand”. His book tracks the struggle between Britain and France that shaped the region.

In many ways, the Commons debate was a repeat of a previous conversation that took place a century ago between five statesmen in number 10 deciding how to carve up the moribund Ottoman Empire.

At the height of World War One the five men: H.A Asquith, the British Prime Minister; Herbert Kitchener, famed British minister for war; Arthur Balfour, the foreign Secretary; Lloyd George, minister of munitions and the diplomat Mark Sykes co-author of the infamous eponymously named Sykes-Picot agreement, determined that a “line should be drawn between the ‘e’ in Acre to the last ‘k’ in Kirkuk. The imaginary line marked the inviolable border between Syria and Iraq.

Just as in Palestine, little to no consideration was given to the regions demographic, political and economic history in imposing a new political order. The primary consideration for the British when these violable- inviolable borders were being drawn was undermining the French that too were trying to undermine British interest in the region, to the extent of supplying arms to Jewish terrorists in Palestine in destabilising British rule in the region.

The rivalry between the two and their rapprochement, it has to be said, doomed the region to cycles of endless strife and conflict.

At the meeting, Prime Minister Asquith, who was previously warned of the dangers of “disturbing the hornets’ nest of Arab tribes” by intervening in the Middle East, now exhausted from the long and complex discussion, was happy to delegate the matter and liked the “simple line in the sand” drawn by Sykes.

It was an inglorious period in British and European history, with generational consequences, noted the British commander Archibald Wavell. Before becoming a senior commander in the British Army, leading forces of the overly extended British empire to victories in Africa during the Second World War, Wavell made one of the more perceptive observations in history; one that surpassed his rank and experience.

Commenting on the Treaty of Versailles, which ended the First World War, and endorsed the British and French agreement he said: “After the ‘war to end wars’, they seem to have been pretty successful in Paris at making a ‘Peace to end Peace’.”

In all likelihood it was a throw-away comment by the commander who served under General Allenby in the Palestine campaigns. He would have been unaware of the profundity of his remarks given that, nearly a century since the European powers carved up the Middle East, his words entail a truth that encapsulates the devastating plague that has beset the regions politics better than anything else.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to suggest that nearly all political turmoil in the region has, in some shape or form, been a revolt at the organisation of politics and society carried out in consideration of European power rivalries with little to no thought given to the hopes, fears and interests of the region’s population: How would Iraq function with three large minorities, without a common identity? How would Syria function under minority rule appointed by the French? Would the creation of a Jewish homeland hinder or hamper Palestinian self-determination? What of the millions of Kurds separated largely into three countries? These were just a few of the many unanswered questions.

The observations of the field marshal inspired a work of history that many would regard a tour de force of the modern Middle East: A Peace to End all Peace by the historian David Fromkin. It’s nearly three decades since its publication but the question at the heart of the book; how diverse peoples are to regroup in creating new political identities for themselves is as important now as it was nearly a century ago.

The Arab Spring, the refugee crises and rise of Daesh has once again pushed this question right to the front, exposing like never before the total inadequacy of the regions political structure riven by unanswered questions. They didn’t just expose the misrule and injustices endemic in these countries, more seriously, they fractured the identities on which these countries were founded upon. Iraqis, Syrians, Libyans, Lebaneses and – to a lesser extent – Egyptians, have all been perilously weakened as identities for organising disparate groups of people with multiple identities.

Arab disillusion with their invented nations manifested in different ways. While it is commonly accepted that Daesh wishes to eviscerate the fake borders within which Arab self-determination had been divided and bound, it is also true to say that the stillborn Arab Spring and the march of millions of refuges from the Middle East are also symptoms of the “original sin” that has been an albatross around the neck of social cohesion, democracy and peaceful co-existence. With a massive legitimacy deficit these regimes have been flung into a whirlpool of instability and violence.

They Sykes-Picot agreement was an almost cancerous expression, writes veteran journalists Robert Fisk. The kings and despots foisted on to the Arab populations have passed their political sell by date; they are politically expired; these are not “failed states” so much as imaginary nations that no longer have any purpose and have no meaningful way to address the concerns of their population in the new century.

Fisk makes the admission that, like many, he was wrong to attribute the Arab Spring to “increased education,” and the “power of the social media and internet”, and failed to recognise that there was something much deeper at work, which reflected “deeply held Arab conviction; that the very institutions that we in the West had built for these people 100 years ago were worthless, that the statehood which we had later awarded to artificial nations within equally artificial borders was meaningless. They were rejecting the whole construct that we had foisted upon them.”

Robert Fisk isn’t alone in pointing to the deeper malaise behind the political instability, repression and cycles of violence. The plight of refugees and the symptoms of political misrule in the Middle East, notes the philosopher John Gray, is the result of states that have been dismantled by western policies of regime change. The chief driver of millions of people who find themselves in countries they want to flee from and not countries they want to live in, remains failed states.

Creating new functional states, Sykes-Picot MKII, are on the minds of many. The former British foreign secretary writing in the Telegraph said: “The borders of Syria and Iraq were largely drawn by two British and French diplomats in 1916. They should not be considered immutable. If the leaders of either country cannot construct a state where all communities can live together, it will be right to consider international support for their partition. Kurds have shown their ability to run their own affairs. A subdivided Syria might now be the only one that can be at peace.”

One gets the sense that prominent countries have begun to manoeuvre in anticipation of another carve up of the Middle East and to lay claim to the spoils of war. The zones of anarchy that have been created by failed states like Syria and Iraq are being capitalised on. Israel for example is opportunistically taking advantage of the chaos in Syria to expand its illegal settlements in the Golan Heights, just as new oil reserves were discovered in the annexed Syrian territory. The New York Times noted that “many Israeli leaders and thinkers seizing on the chaos in Syria to solidify Israel’s hold on the Golan.”

Many, including the former British Foreign Secretary, would be surprised to find themselves in the same place as the Daesh terrorists in their estimation that the Sykes-Picot borders are no longer sustainable. Though they are a millions miles apart regarding what should replace these borders, further iniquitous lines on the sand may also condemn the region to conflict for another hundred years, which the Daesh version of the caliphate is also certainly going to do.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.