The Arab Awakening: The Story of The Arab National Movement by George Antonius

Author:George Antonius
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

3.

The Sykes-Picot Agreement is a shocking document. It is not only the product of greed at its worst, that is to say, of greed allied to suspicion and so leading to stupidity: it also stands out as a startling piece of double-dealing.

A glance at the map will reveal the faults of its basic provisions. Taken together, Syria and Iraq with the sparsely inhabited or desert regions between them form a rough rectangle of which three sides – the north, the east and the south sides – are land-bound, while the fourth is formed by the Mediterranean seaboard on the west. The population inhabiting it is made up of Arabic-speaking communities who had reached different stages of development, those occupying the eastern and western extremities of the rectangle (that is to say, the coastal regions of the Mediterranean seaboard and the lower basins of the Tigris and the Euphrates) being intellectually more advanced and politically more developed than those, mainly nomadic, who lived in the inland regions. In spite of various social and confessional differences, the population was, in its broader characteristics, homogeneous. The fact of a common language and culture made for unity, and the growth of the national consciousness had already made its influence felt.

What the Sykes-Picot Agreement did was, first, to cut up the Arab Rectangle in such a manner as to place artificial obstacles in the way of unity. That may have been the deliberate intention of its authors – an unconscious echo perhaps of Palmerston’s hostility to the idea of a stable Arab state planting itself across the overland route to India; but it was none the less retrograde and in conflict with the natural forces at work. An awakening had taken place since Palmerston’s days, and the national movement was now a force with the plank of Arab unity as well as independence in the forefront of its aims. Whatever gains the Allied Powers may have hoped to derive from the partition of that territory, it showed a lack of perspicacity on their part to have imagined that it could make for a peaceful or a lasting settlement.

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