The last days of the British raj extended from 1947 to the seventies when the paramount imperialists of the previous two centuries finally left Africa. Some thirty years later, the last traces of empire are disappearing from the pages of history.
The British drew the maps of the 20th century. America is getting ready to redraw them as the 21st century begins. If the United States can sustain what it is setting out to do, which is infinitely more difficult, then, and only then, will it be able to call the 21st the American century.
The British took control of the last two great empires ruled by Muslims in the second millennium: the Mughal empire in South Asia and the Ottoman empire across West Asia and Africa. Success in both cases came in stages rather than through one decisive blow. On the Indian subcontinent the process was complete by 1857. It took defeat in the First World War for the Ottomans to surrender in 1918.
The British were nothing if not impartial: partition was their recipe for both the empires. In India they encouraged 'Muslim nationalism' in order to weaken the Indian nationalist movement. In the Ottoman lands they encouraged 'Arab nationalism' when they wanted an uprising against Ottoman Turkey during World War 1, when they had no desire whatsoever to give the Arabs any independence.
The betrayal of the Arabs by Britain and France was organized at the same time as the promise was being given. It was as cynical as that.
The Hashemite family (now rulers of Jordan), direct descendants of the Prophet, who had the honour of being the Sherif of the holy city of Makkah, sounded out Lord Kitchener, British agent and consul general in Egypt from 1911 till the start of the Great War, on possible British support for an Arab revolt against Ottoman Turkey. Six days before war was declared by Britain against Turkey, Kitchener wrote to Emir Abdullah, second son of Sherif Hussein, head of the Hashemites, suggesting that "it may be that an Arab of true race will assume the Khalifate at Makkah or Medina..." The Ottoman rulers had become the caliphs of the Muslim world from the time of Selim II.
When Britain declared war against Turkey, Sultan Mehmet V responded with a call for a jihad against Britain, France and Russia. The British were determined to disrupt this attempt to unite Muslims against the allies. They began distributing promises with abandon. In the summer of 1915, Hussein sent a letter to Sir Henry McMahon, Britain's high commissioner in Egypt, seeking support for a Hashemite caliphate that would extend from the border of Turkey down south to Yemen, and from the Mediterranean to the eastern edge of Mesopotamia.
Sir Henry agreed, in a letter to Hussein dated October 24, 1915, that Britain would "recognize and support the independence of the Arabs within the territories included in the limits and boundaries proposed by the Sherif of Makkah" with some differences, as for instance seeking a different status for regions that were not specifically Arab in demographic character.
He also retained the right of both Britain and France to keep 'special measures of administrative control' to protect their interests. There was no mention of Palestine, Jerusalem or Jews. In December Sir Edward Grey, the foreign secretary, wrote to Sherif Hussein favouring "Arab independence of Turkish domination". On June 5, 1916, Sherif Hussein fired a symbolic shot at the Ottoman barracks in Makkah to signal that the Arab revolt against Ottoman rule had begun.
No one of course had told him about two gentlemen who had begun to discuss the future of the region seven months before. In November 1915, Francois Georges-Picot, a former French diplomat in Beirut, arrived in London to begin talks with Colonel Sir Mark Sykes, a respected British Arabist.
In May 1916, that is, only weeks before the Arabs displayed their hand and rose against their fellow-Muslims, they signed the secret Sykes-Picot agreement. There was very little talk of Arab independence here. Instead, it envisaged two regions, one under French control and the other under British control. The French would get Lebanon from north of Beirut to the south of Tyre; the British would rule Acre and Haifa while Palestine would be the responsibility of all three allies - Britain, France and Russia.
The peace conference that followed the war took up the fate of the Ottoman empire last, but nothing was forgotten. It ceded the Arab lands to the victors as 'mandates' sanctioned by the League of Nations: Britain got what is now Iraq, Palestine and Transjordan, while France was given Syria and Lebanon.
The alliance did not prevent the victors from some bitter fighting over the spoils. An indication of what they really wanted was evident in the last days of the First World War when Britain raced to seize oil-rich Mosul although the Sykes-Picot agreement had placed it within Syria. But Britain refused to cede Mosul, and would do no more than award its ally some concessions.
This is not the place to record how Turkey, under Mustafa Kemal, united to defeat British plans to partition the country; or the schemes and scheming that saw London-purchased kings placed on suddenly created thrones across the Arab world by 1932. It is sufficient to note that the straight-line maps drawn by British Arabists, whether just or unjust, held through the century.
With the American invasion, and presumed conquest, of Iraq, these lines could fall apart.
Sub-nationalism is a problem in almost every contemporary country of significant size. Only those with good fortune (both as wealth and as luck) have been able to defuse demands for further 'self-determination'. Iraq has at least three sub-nationalities.
The Kurds in the north - allies in the American offensive against Saddam Hussein - are already practising autonomy and believe that the coming war will give them liberation from Baghdad.
Iran has been encouraging the huge Shia majority in the east of Iraq to link its destiny with Shia Iran. The minority Sunni population is in power, but divided. One of the potential horror stories is revenge killings against Sunni civilians by Kurds or Shias if authority collapses in Baghdad and the United States cannot find the infrastructure to fill the vacuum.
No one believes that Iraq has a serious defence against an Anglo-American invasion. And no one knows what the implosion of the ruling Baath dictatorship would entail. If the Americans believe that they can replicate Afghanistan, where they replaced the Taliban with a patchwork coalition sanctioned by a supervized Loya Jirga, then they have little understanding of either the country or the region.
A handful of exiled groups, protected by foreign armies, is unlikely to form a government that has any credibility. Relief from dictatorship will not subsume the demand for new nations.
The Kurds could be instrumental in unsettling the region, for they extend to Turkey and Iran as well. Turkey will not compromise on its territorial integrity, but might find it useful to send the troublesome element among its Kurdish minority towards this new Kurdistan.
There is greater danger if the eastern border - already the focus of a deadly but inconclusive war in the eighties between Iraq and Iran - begins to unravel. There are elements in the Bush administration that have already begun to dream of the next Crusade, after the "recovery" of Iraq. This is a war against Iran.
American columnists with a connection to the State Department or the White House have begun to suggest that the real threat to western interests is not from an empty dictator like Saddam, but from an ideologically committed nation-state like Iran. Iran was named in George Bush's "axis of evil". Americans will be tempted to strike at Iran's nuclear installations to snuff out its capacity to make a bomb. (The message from North Korea is not lost on anyone; its nuclear power is protecting it from invasion.)
The American military presence in the region will itself be a temptation for a counter-offensive by groups working in isolation, and any successful strike that kills a significant number of troops will work Washington up to a frenzy. American troops will have effectively encircled Iran if Baghdad falls. They are in Afghanistan, in the Gulf (on waters and on land), in Turkey and in Central Asia already. Iraq completes the circle.
President Pervez Musharraf has already said something startling - that Pakistan could be an American target after Iraq. One assumes that the words did not slip out accidentally, or thoughtlessly. The idea is in fact too careful to be thoughtless. President Musharraf is giving notice that American thoughts are turning to Pakistan's nuclear capability, and powerful voices are suggesting that the only Muslim country to possess effective nuclear weapons should be defanged.
Turmoil may have a beginning, but who knows how it will end? This is what keeps nations like France, Germany and Russia from fully endorsing the Bush rush to war. It is difficult to see how George Bush can avoid war without self-destructing. He rules when American power is at its peak. He has received an extraordinary inheritance. We cannot yet say what his legacy will be. He is mapping his future around the contours of Iraq.
The writer is editor-in-chief, Asian Age, New Delhi.
http://www.dawn.com/2003/01/28/op.htm#1
