Cursed accord still haunts Arabs
WHEN Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the self-styled Islamic State, ostentatiously declared, in June 2014, that his new “caliphate” had come into being, it was both an assertion of the organisation’s ambitions and the untangling of the SykesPicot map in Syria and Iraq.
Historically, World War I saw the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire The empire’s entry into the war was with much deliberation; while the prime minister argued for continued neutrality as its best option, the opportunism of the minister of war led the empire into war and, arguably, to its imminent end.
Having harboured strategic interest in the empire, the Allied Powers (Britain, France and Russia) failed to deliver a more coherent defence policy. To this extent, the Ottomans were driven into an alliance with Germany.
An essential component of British strategy was to encourage the Arabs to rise up against their overlords. As World War 1 raged, behind closed doors the SykesPicot Agreement was concluded. It spelt out the partitioning of the Arab lands of the Ottoman Empire, relegating them to British and French spheres of influence. Subsequent to World War 1, the Allied powers reneged on their promise to grant the Arabs independence for their support against the Ottomans.
With the stroke of the colonial pen, on May 16, 1916, the Sykes-Picot Agreement was concluded. Allied victory saw ruler-drawn, arbitrary lines drawn across the Sykes-Picot map, whose architects, the Briton Mark Sykes, and Frenchman George Picot, chose to ignore ethnic and religious distinctions – the touchstone of all regional hostilities.
The decades following World War I saw colonial powers exert tremendous influence over the Arabs, frustrating their efforts at establishing democratic governance. This resulted in nationalism whose main objective was to oust the foreigners and authoritarian rulers.
In Syria in 2011, the Sykes-Picot structure began to unfold when its countrymen took to the streets for reforms. The Basher al-Assad regime responded with a brutal crackdown on civilians, escalating into civil war.
American foreign policyendorsed the war on Iraq (2003-2011), resulting in the overthrow of Saddam’s Ba’ath Party and his execution. Nuri al-Maliki’s government, dominated by Shia, was seen as alienating the Sunnis, fuelling a Sunni insurgency which saw the emergence of al-Qaeda in Iraq re-emerging more ferociously after the US withdrawal, in the form of IS.
The physical destruction of the Syria-the group had seized vast swathes of territory and bulldozed the old borders.
The profound historical changes wrought on the colonial map have deep political significance. Time alone will tell the fate of the Middle East, and indeed that of the world.