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

Author:Antonius, George
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2015-08-04T04:00:00+00:00

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.

Another peculiarity of the Agreement was that it provided for a topsy-turvy political structure in which the first were to come last and the last first. The inhabitants of Syria and Iraq were politically more developed and mature than the inhabitants of the inland regions. Yet the Agreement provided that the greater part of Syria and Iraq might be placed under a régime of direct foreign administration, while the inland regions were in any case to form independent Arab States. The absurdity of these provisions is particularly evident in the case of the regions destined to form the British sphere of influence. The Red area, comprising Baghdad and Basra, the two centres of politically-minded activity in Iraq, was to be placed under tutelage and denied even the outward forms of self-government; whereas area B, which is as to two thirds of its extent a semi-desert steppe and whose population lagged far behind in point of political experience and maturity, was recognised as being entitled to independent status.

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