1987 to 2001 in the United Arab Emirates, the Middle East, Israel, the US and Lebanon
Chapter 19 concerns Fisk’s interest in the truth behind the 30 years of murder and mayhem he has witnessed in the Muslim world perpetrated against, and often by, Muslims – the economics of the international arms trade directed at the Islamic world, especially for the West. Fisk finally focuses on his investigation into the provenance of and responsibility for the use of the seven year old Boeing or Lockheed “Hellfire” anti-armour Air-to-Ground missile first deployed for use by US Marines in the 1991 Gulf War fired from an Israeli helicopter in 1996 into an ambulance full of civilians that killed two women and four children in southern Lebanon.
1975 to 2005 in the Middle East especially around his base of Beirut so Syria, Palestine and Jordan
Chapter 20 is a reflection on changes of the guard that have occurred in his thirty years of reporting in Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia and the Middle East. His parents died, king Hussein of Jordan died, president Hafez Assad died and he and his friends grew older and wiser and some died (but the oppressions of the Middle East, he argues, continue as if in a time warp).
1918 to 2001 in the Middle East, Libya, the USA and Afghanistan
Chapter 21 (Why?) is concerned, at bottom, with the ‘reasons’ for the 9/11 atrocity. It also asks why the US reacted as it did by repeating many of the mistakes already made so many times in the past century by ‘Western Powers’, especially the US and the UK.
2002 to 2003 in Afghanistan, the UN and Iraq
Chapter 22 is concerned with the “War on Terror” as it continued to affect Afghanistan in 2002 and began to affect Iraq beginning with Bush’s 12 September 2002 address to the UN General Assembly. Fisk intertwines the story of the “Tripartite Aggression” (or Suez Crisis) of 1956 as another example of the British will to war, deception and propaganda.
2003 in Iraq
Chapter 23 tells the story of the first 2003 bombardments and invasion of Iraq by the ‘Allies’.
2003 to 2006 in Iraq
Chapter 24 concludes the story of post-Saddam Iraq up until the Northern Summer of 2006. Fisk also notes the circumstances surrounding the death of his friends, including Rafiq al-Hariri virtually before his eyes on the Beirut Corniche, and of others. He also discusses the situation in Algeria, Israel, Lebanon, Afghanistan and the rest of the Middle East further before concluding that we may all inevitably be victims of the ‘history’ of our forefathers as our descendents will be victims of our ‘history’.
All in all, Fisk presents a slew of unpleasant facts that don’t exactly redound to the credit of Western ‘Allies’. He occasionally writes obtusely but also occasionally makes salient points about Middle Eastern history and current affairs. Most importantly, his contribution is of those facts that we must not ignore.
Showing posts with label middle east today. Show all posts
Showing posts with label middle east today. Show all posts
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Part 4
c. 2000 to late 2002 in Israel/Palestine (Part III)
Chapter Thirteen continues the Palestinian story. The author professes to not be able to understand the mentality of either various Israeli Jews or various Palestinian Arabs. He also notes he can understand the general struggle but only as a vicious circle but that there are voices of reason among at least two Jewish women writing about and living in Gaza and Lebanon. As usual, he professes to regard Israeli settlements as illegal with the implication that they must end in order for peace to be possible. He notes the feeling he had soon before 9/11 that an Arab ‘explosion’ was imminent and concludes with the Sharon story including his use of that event as an excuse for his brutal reoccupation of the West bank in 2002. His comparison of Sharon's struggle with that of the French in Algeria leads to the author’s next chapter on Algeria.
1827 to 2004 in Algeria
Chapter Fourteen contains a map of northern Algeria. Fisk outlines the French pretext for occupation from 1830, the initial resistance, the story of the 1956 to 1962 war of independence and that of the ten year ‘holy’ war by FIS against the FLN government and the military that began in 1992 linking all the pieces together. The clearly brutal and genocidal (at a magnitude of 200,000 souls) Sunni-on-Sunni killing spree engaged in between the many Islamist and other elements including the various government factions for those ten years has apparently been appallingly followed, he notes, by recent cooperation between US Special Forces and the Government of Algeria.
1990 to 1991 in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait
Chapter 15 concerns the lead up to, and events of, the 1991 US invasion of Iraq in the first Gulf War to secure the sovereignty of Kuwait. As usual, he reports the atrocities that occurred (up to Saddam’s surrender).
1991 in Iraq and surrounds following the events of Chapter 15
Chapter 16 tells the story of the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War especially among the Kurds but also among the Shi’a and Marsh Arabs, Chaldeans, Armenians and Assyrians and their “Betrayal” by the Western and Arab ‘Allies’.
1991 to 1998 in Iraq
Chapter 17 analyses the ‘sanction years’ in Iraq especially from 1990 to around 1998.
1993 to c. 2000 in Iraq
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Part 3
1980 to 2004 in the Iran/Iraq War (the Original Gulf War (of modern times))
Fisk begins Chapter Six discussing his arrival at Basra, the Shatt al-‘Arab and the Fao Peninsula to report on the beginnings of the Iran-Iraq (or Gulf) War in September and October of 1980 (the official starting months). A map of the two countries together is included with many border and other localities shown. He notes that the sides were somewhat evenly matched (in the last chapter, I think) and the stalemated nature of the war he describes in the south of both countries with the Iraqis barely making any headway into Iran at all seems to bear this out. The first major town in the south to fall was Khorramshahr (al-Mohammorah to the local Arabs) in early October and Fisk notes his immediate visit with the invaders. At various times he also refers to visits to Amara, Amman and Kuwait and the region of Dezful in the early months and years of the war. He also refers to a 1980 interview with an Iranian Ayatollah Beheshti (who died before this war) and a 1982 visit to Tehran. Fisk stresses the focus of the Iraqis on Arabic-speaking Iranian areas in the south that were also the most strategically important areas for both countries and Saddam’s Nazi-like Arab nationalism that had also led to his earlier purging from Iraq of Iraqis of ‘Iranian origin’.
As the tide was turning in 1982 (Iranians eventually encroached on Iraq) Fisk appears to have become a guest of the Iranians at the fronts whereas he had initially been welcomed by the Iraqis in the other side’s ‘trenches’. He also discusses gassing of Iranians and the Kurds of Halabja which he followed up with Kurds in 1991 in the north of Iraq (which became virtually independent after the war to liberate Kuwait from Saddam) and in Baghdad in 2004. He also notes the apparent complicity of the West in whatever Saddam sought to do in order to defend his regime from the Iranians.
1984 to 2003 in the Iran/Iraq War (continued)
Chapter Seven begins with interviews in Baghdad in 2003 concerning an Iraqi air force firing in 1987 on the USS Stark which may have led to the US ending its support. His vantage points during the middle phase of the war evidently included at various times Beirut, Tehran, Baghdad, the front lines of both sides in both countries north and south, an NBC-hired helicopter, Iranian helicopters and the HMS Broadsword. Fisk also notes the 1987 press conference at which Rafsanjani discussed Iran Contra and discusses his own knowledge of the characters involved. He also discusses the sea war including the international war, Iraqi atrocities in Kurdistan and against Iranians, both civilians and soldiers, and the advance of the Iranians on Basra in which he participated.
1988 to c. 2003 in the Iran/Iraq War (part III)
Chapter Eight begins with Fisk’s eyewitness account of the aftermath of the US shooting-down of an Iranian civilian commercial Airbus flight in 1988. He then notes that the reluctant acceptance of the peace by the dying Khomeini (who was nevertheless still able to settle thousands of internal scores in the immediate aftermath) soon followed. Fisk suggests that the Lockerbie bombing may yet prove to be Iranian revenge for the US Navy shooting-down of the Iranian airliner. The remainder of the chapter concerns Fisk’s visits to war graves and memorials and interviews with old soldiers and relatives of victims of the war. He examines the attitude to death especially of the Iranians and notes that there are exceptions to the apparent arch welcoming of death expressed by many Iranians. This chapter examines the aftermath of war in both Iran and Iraq (and to an extent in the rest of the world, too).
1914 to 2005 in the First World War and its Aftermath
Chapter Nine explores ancient ‘Crusading’ linkages between the French town of Douai known to Fisk’s father (as one of its WWI liberators) and a Douaihy family in Lebanon. Perhaps more to the point, he argues that the arbitrary drawing of borders after that war and other effects of the war continue today to ruin the lives of many in the Middle East and elsewhere.
1919 to 2005 in Ottoman Turkey, Nazi Germany and Modern-Day Turkey
Chapter Ten explores one of the alleged results of the First World War: the so-called “Armenian Genocide”. He also explains the handing-over of the piece of the Armenia promised by the post-First World War Treaty of Sevres by France to Turkey in 1939 and discusses a smaller and roughly contemporaneous Iraqi genocide of Assyrians (arguably while Iraq was under British control in the 1930s). Incidentally, he notes that the perpetrators of much of the violence of both of these genocides were Kurds, now being (as they have also been for some time) subjected to their own repressions by Turkey, Iran and Iraq. He also regards the Armenian genocide, witnessed by many Germans and other Europeans, as a kind of prototype of the Jewish Holocaust and remarks that at least Germany had got over denial of the crimes of its 'patriots'. The chapter records work done by Fisk in Beirut, Syria, England and elsewhere in the Middle East and beyond finding bodies, reviewing records and interviewing survivors and scholars.
1897 to 1993 in Israel/Palestine
Chapter Eleven concerns Palestine viewed firstly from Fisk’s stationing in Beirut and then from his work around the world. It begins with a short essay on the life of the former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem al-Haj Mohamed Amin al-Husseini and ends with a discussion of Fisk's reservations with regard to the 1993 Oslo Peace Accord.
c. 1993 to c. 2000 in Israel/Palestine (continued)
Monday, May 17, 2010
More Fisk Precis
1980 in Afghanistan and Pakistan (continued)
Chapter Three continues the story as the author returns to Afghanistan gaining access only by bribing a border guard or guards, this time based in Jalalabad and Kabul at various times from late January or February of 1980. The climax of this second sojourn appears to be an epic journey to, and noteworthy stay in, Kandahar before returning to Kabul, Peshawar and finally his main base, war-torn Beirut. A theme seems to be developing in the work that a journalist is not a visionary. Most of the signs he notes that he missed are of major developments such as the break-up of the Soviet Union under the pressure of nationalist and religious rivalries between states and the advent of Arab involvement in major geo-political movements such as the one that produced the Soviet defeat and 9/11. He also refers briefly to a 48-hour flying visit a few months later to Kabul in the summer of 1980.
1978 to 1980 in Iran
Chapter Four turns to Iran where Fisk first covered the Iranian Revolution that ousted the last Shah two years before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. A map is included. He begins by noting the British and US role in the anti-democratic coup and return of the Shah in the 1950s. He then details the venality and viciousness of the Shah’s subsequent regime and the rise of the opposition force, Ruhollah Khomeini. He intimates his pre-revolutionary experience of Iran and then records his meetings and activity in Tehran throughout 1979 and in 1980 as the US briefly sheltered the Shah and Iranians retaliated by attacking the embassy and visits to Qom, once when a revolutionary trial was occurring, to meet Hojatalislam Khalkhali, the ‘hanging judge’, several times and another time to meet Khomeini.
He also writes of learning from former Iranian internal spies of Western cooperation with the brutal security agencies and from Revolutionary government figures that cooperation continued between the countries. His discusses certain Iranian-published captured secret American embassy and other documents at length. He also refers to his extensive train travel specifically in the North West, especially in the troubled region of Kurdistan and to a small village. He deals at some length with Iran’s revolution’s issues with neighbours such as the USSR, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Late 1970s to 1985 in Iraq and the Middle East generally
In Chapter Five the author turns to Iraq and begins with a discussion of the British involvement from its First World War campaign. He discusses the British-French Sykes-Picot Agreement and also provides a map. He notes the history which followed the 'Great War' up until the ‘Confrontation Front Summit’ in Baghdad led by Saddam Hussein and his predecessor al-Bakr in the late 1970s which the author attended. He then recounts interviews with an Egyptian journalist and a ‘victim’ concerning the nature of Saddam’s rule, both of which took place outside Iraq. He goes on to note attending a 1980 Saddam press conference and making reports in that year from Iraq. He raises the fear felt by the regime at the time of the political Islam of the Shi’a majority inspired as it was by the revolution in Iran next-door and its reaction which involved the execution of Ayatollah Bakr Sadr (the chief of Khomeini’s supporters) at the Shi’a holy city of Najaf and the author’s 1980 visit to the city. He mentions another visit shortly after Rumsfeld’s now-famous 1983 visit to normalise relations (probably his 1985 visit which Saddam decided should be his last though the author notes he returned presumably after Saddam’s final downfall).
He then refers to US support of Iraq first in its opposition to Communists and then in its opposition to Iran. Fisk finally concludes this chapter with a review of this abominable period of the early 1980s in what he calls an arc of hate that stretched from Iraq through Iran to Afghanistan and notes he sees it as a prelude to the disastrous mutual agitation for what became the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. He suggests also that the arc extended at least to Lebanon and perhaps Chechnya.
Chapter Three continues the story as the author returns to Afghanistan gaining access only by bribing a border guard or guards, this time based in Jalalabad and Kabul at various times from late January or February of 1980. The climax of this second sojourn appears to be an epic journey to, and noteworthy stay in, Kandahar before returning to Kabul, Peshawar and finally his main base, war-torn Beirut. A theme seems to be developing in the work that a journalist is not a visionary. Most of the signs he notes that he missed are of major developments such as the break-up of the Soviet Union under the pressure of nationalist and religious rivalries between states and the advent of Arab involvement in major geo-political movements such as the one that produced the Soviet defeat and 9/11. He also refers briefly to a 48-hour flying visit a few months later to Kabul in the summer of 1980.
1978 to 1980 in Iran
Chapter Four turns to Iran where Fisk first covered the Iranian Revolution that ousted the last Shah two years before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. A map is included. He begins by noting the British and US role in the anti-democratic coup and return of the Shah in the 1950s. He then details the venality and viciousness of the Shah’s subsequent regime and the rise of the opposition force, Ruhollah Khomeini. He intimates his pre-revolutionary experience of Iran and then records his meetings and activity in Tehran throughout 1979 and in 1980 as the US briefly sheltered the Shah and Iranians retaliated by attacking the embassy and visits to Qom, once when a revolutionary trial was occurring, to meet Hojatalislam Khalkhali, the ‘hanging judge’, several times and another time to meet Khomeini.
He also writes of learning from former Iranian internal spies of Western cooperation with the brutal security agencies and from Revolutionary government figures that cooperation continued between the countries. His discusses certain Iranian-published captured secret American embassy and other documents at length. He also refers to his extensive train travel specifically in the North West, especially in the troubled region of Kurdistan and to a small village. He deals at some length with Iran’s revolution’s issues with neighbours such as the USSR, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Late 1970s to 1985 in Iraq and the Middle East generally
In Chapter Five the author turns to Iraq and begins with a discussion of the British involvement from its First World War campaign. He discusses the British-French Sykes-Picot Agreement and also provides a map. He notes the history which followed the 'Great War' up until the ‘Confrontation Front Summit’ in Baghdad led by Saddam Hussein and his predecessor al-Bakr in the late 1970s which the author attended. He then recounts interviews with an Egyptian journalist and a ‘victim’ concerning the nature of Saddam’s rule, both of which took place outside Iraq. He goes on to note attending a 1980 Saddam press conference and making reports in that year from Iraq. He raises the fear felt by the regime at the time of the political Islam of the Shi’a majority inspired as it was by the revolution in Iran next-door and its reaction which involved the execution of Ayatollah Bakr Sadr (the chief of Khomeini’s supporters) at the Shi’a holy city of Najaf and the author’s 1980 visit to the city. He mentions another visit shortly after Rumsfeld’s now-famous 1983 visit to normalise relations (probably his 1985 visit which Saddam decided should be his last though the author notes he returned presumably after Saddam’s final downfall).
He then refers to US support of Iraq first in its opposition to Communists and then in its opposition to Iran. Fisk finally concludes this chapter with a review of this abominable period of the early 1980s in what he calls an arc of hate that stretched from Iraq through Iran to Afghanistan and notes he sees it as a prelude to the disastrous mutual agitation for what became the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. He suggests also that the arc extended at least to Lebanon and perhaps Chechnya.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Notes on "The Great War for Civilisation: the Conquest of the Middle East" (by Robert Fisk)
I found this work by Fisk fascinating so I'm sharing my notes on it in my last five posts before hanging up my blogging gloves indefinitely. That will make it 100 posts.
Fisk notes in the Preface to his 2006 revised edition his assessment of war as inherently the practice of powerful, relatively unaccountable and villainous figures and of his role as a journalist being to hold those arrogant powers to account. His personal attention in this work appears to have been paid to the following regions in the following periods for the following main stories (originally generally reported from his base in Beirut):
1975? to 1978 Beirut Lebanese Civil War
1979 to 1980 Iran Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution
1980 Afghanistan the Soviet Invasion and Occupation (and
making of Osama Bin Laden)
1980 to 1988 Iran/Iraq/Beirut the Iran/Iraq War (Gulf War), Lebanese Civil War
1986 Libya, Egypt American Attacks, Suez Anniversary story
1989 Beirut Lebanese Civil Wars and Hostage Crises
1990 to 1991 Iraq/Kuwait the 1990-1 War for Kuwait (Gulf War)
1992 Algeria the 1992 to 2002 Algerian Civil War
1993 to 2003 Israel/Palestine/Iraq the Israeli/Palestinian ‘Peace Process’
US (and sanctions against Iraq and war)
2001 Afghanistan/Pakistan the ‘Allied’ hunt for Bin Laden
2004 to 2006 Beirut, US and Iraq Unrest and Occupation
1993 to 1997 with Osama Bin Laden in the Middle East generally and in Sudan and Afghanistan
Chapter One gives an account of Fisk’s three interviews in 1993 in Sudan and in 1996 and 1997 in Afghanistan with Osama Bin Laden and Bin Laden’s history (in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Sudan, the US and Afghanistan again), popularity and views. It follows a map of the Middle East which shows most of the places he mentions.
1980 in Afghanistan and Pakistan
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Factors in the Making of the modern Middle East
I want now to explain how the Middle East actually 'hangs together' today, so to speak (having considered what ideas have been and are around), and how that may also have a bearing on the rest of the world. While answering the question that we in the West seem to want answered (i.e. is the East a threat to the West?) I want to now consider in the course of this discussion how the West most certainly has threatened the East. L. Carl Brown famously wrote that the Middle East has been the most penetrated region in the world and this surely cannot fail to have had a critical negative impact upon it.
As I examine how well states are doing the job of ruling in the next few posts, I will naturally expose problems for which the solutions devised internally may well have to be major and possibly revolutionary changes. Some of the most important issues faced include issues of economic and social development, equality of resource allocation and treatment of women and minorities.
At the same time, there will be external pressures for change that result from a Globalised world and the interests of other states (both within and outside the region) conflicting with regional and local interests. Issues of relative democratisation and disparities of wealth between countries may also bring pressures to bear in the region.
For our purposes, as discussed at the outset of this blog, I consider the Middle East to include Arab and to some extent pseudo-Arab North and North East Africa, Arab and Israeli West Asia, Turkey and Iran (some include parts of the Caucasus, as I've also mentioned). Turkey is an especially interesting case because it may be able to play a special role of linking the Arab or certainly the Islamic world with the European world. Iran and Israel complete the roll call of the non-Arab states in the region.
The Arab world itself is, of course, geographically and historically divisible into various regions with unique characteristics. The least truly Arab area of the ‘Arab’ world, though with some claim to Arab status, is the North East African sub-region encompassing the Comoros Islands, Somalia, Djibouti and Eritrea. Farthest west is the Maghreb which includes Western Sahara (a disputed region), Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Morocco and Mauritania. Nilotic Egypt, centred on one main river as it is, has tended to be relatively stable as a unified state when compared with Nilotic Sudan un-centred as it is on various Nile tributaries. These areas are far superior to the remaining Arab areas in terms of both Arab population numbers and land area. The Arab areas that remain are West Asia and the Arabian Peninsula.
Besides these differences, there are, as I mentioned, differences that have come about because of oil wealth being divided unequally. There are also a number of pronounced similarities that I would like to discuss now. Modern pan-Arab nationalism is a relatively recent phenomenon dating to the end of the Ottoman period. The Arab League was actually formed under the auspices of Britain in the 1940s. Regionalism has been too pronounced for the political unity first proposed in the 40s and current until the 60s, however, to be realised as European political unity is being much more in the European Union, for example.
There is obviously linguistic and also cultural and much historical contiguity in the Arab region. Foreign intervention has been overlaid over the common factors to produce divisions. Geography has also played a role, especially before the opening of the Suez Canal, however, in producing two zones with differing external and intra-zone trade interests, the Red Sea Eastern Zone and the Mediterranean Northern and Western Zone. Today this sense of two zones is less evident in government policies. The question of modernity, arguably especially on a Western model, versus tradition further divides governments from each other and their populations.
Globalisation generally is felt as an external threat from the West following a long line of others including from the possibly less hated Ottomans by many in the Arab region. There also remain major differences in the Arab world both within and between a variety of religions and between many tribal, ideological and ethnic identities.
In many ways, the governments of Egypt, Turkey and Iran have been best at managing the most diversity in the Middle East as a whole albeit often by the use of quite repressive measures. The legitimacy of political institutions of especially the Arab Middle East today was largely artificially created by Western powers and the weakened Ottoman power in the last century and this in itself is a potential problem for it. Democracy has not yet flourished in the region and that includes in Israel and Turkey. Most of the borders of the Fertile Crescent were essentially drawn up in line with the initially secret 1916 French-English Sykes-Picot Accord to serve essentially French and English interests. Israel was allowed to be created in the region specifically as a Jewish state at a time when Jews made up only around 33% of the population of the territory of the new state. Iraq continues to have an uncertain future today.
One of the most profound recent external influences on much of the Middle East (apart from Western rule or influence) has been Ottoman rule of the Arab region and parts of eastern Europe (from the Topkapi Palace in Constantinople (captured by Mehmet II) from almost the beginning) from the 13th Century (in the case of Anatolia and Eastern Europe) to the 16th and 17th Centuries (in the case of the Arab World) until the European-forced contractions of the 19th and early 20th Centuries.
The Empire was quite fluid, linguistically speaking. Arabic remained the first language of most people in the Arab region of the empire. The Ottomans themselves initially used Persian as their language of literature and Arabic as their language of law and religion. The rulers were however, after all, Turkish and so they also spoke Turkish. Therefore Turkish became a third language of the ruling class and the first language of the military and administration. The bureaucracy was meticulous and has consequently provided a large amount of material for today’s historians and other researchers in Turkish.
Formally, the Ottoman law was based on Hanafi Islamic jurisprudence and provided by a system of muftis (experts who were formally qualified to issue legal opinions) and Qadis (the judiciary) down to muezzins (who formally call Muslims to prayer), all public servants provided from the ranks of the Islamic ulema, and the regime’s legitimacy also derived in part from its political control of the Islamic holy sites of Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem. The sultans adopted the title “Servant of the Two Holy Mosques” for themselves with reference to their control of the main mosques of the first two cities. It was illegal, however, to issue a ruling (fatwa) against the Sultan (Sultana?) under the sedition law formally making him (her?) above the Islamic law, although rulings against the government were permissible. Mosque-building was a priority throughout the Empire as was construction of walls in Jerusalem.
Legitimacy, as always, derived also from the ability to maintain an orderly society. Within that society, trade guilds, or taifas, affiliated with Sufi taifas helped the government to maintain that order by providing an orderly system of feedback between the government and the various valued economic groups in the society. The hat makers’ guild has thus historically been responsible for the enormous head dresses of some Sufi orders.
Local autonomy within the Empire was reasonably common provided the local leaders were loyal to the Sultan. Elements of his rule tended to be oppressive, however, although he was an equal opportunity oppressor including the Turks in his oppression and perhaps even singling them out for more oppression than other ethnic groups. The Ottomans were also formally tolerant of the other religions and sub-religions practiced in the Empire but were, in fact, somewhat biased in favour of their version of orthodox Sunni Islam. Under the so-called millet system, local religious leaders were permitted to lead autonomously (and were generally also therefore considered answerable to the Sultan for the behaviour of) their flocks. They also represented them to the larger community and leadership structure. In original Qur’anic Arabic millet meant specifically a religious community but in Turkish it had come to refer also to national communities. Efforts to promote a more equal system for non Sunni Muslims began in the 19th Century.
From around 1830, the Ottomans began to modernise as they witnessed the increasing technology and techniques of organisation being employed in European wars and the increasing threat to themselves from Europe. As the army modernised in response to the external threat, Muslims including Arabs were conscripted into the services which had been previously formed from non-Muslim slaves garnered from around the Empire. Slaves in the army had always traditionally been able to advance socially to quite lofty levels in Ottoman society by means of good service in the army.
Suleyman Qanuni (the Lawgiver), or "the Magnificent" in English usage, adopted a modernised legal system and it ultimately permitted a great deal of legal impunity to European traders and expatriates who had first been permitted to live and trade in the Empire in his reign (the thin end of a giant wedge as it turned out). Europeans began noticing especially Christian minorities in the Empire and their treatment by the authorities was soon used as a pretext for European intervention in the region. Each European state seemed to pick out a favourite cause. The British, for example, chose the Druze (not being able to find an analogous religion to the Church of England in the Ottoman Empire) while the Catholic French had a close association with the Maronite Catholic Christians.
The Arab provinces, after early on being ruled centrally, soon came to be more autonomously ruled under the Ottomans. This was natural for reasons of geographical isolation in outlying provinces such as those in North Africa, for example, but local ruling dynasties (even Druze and Maronite Christian ones) were soon also established in areas such as Mount Lebanon and Palestine, for example.
Arab notables were ranked in the Ottoman tradition and often also had an Ottoman identity (especially before the Nahda). The highest rank was pasha, or governor of a province, responsible directly to the Grand Vizier, or Prime Minister, of the Sultan. Pashas were generally at first generals and bureaucrats who had received training centrally in the military/bureaucratic schools of the capital of the Empire.
The Arabs as a race had a special significance in the Empire, too, as in some sense the race that originated Islam. They also constituted a large portion of the total population of the Empire especially once the European colonies were lost. There were more Arabs than Turks, for example. The Arabs also experienced the Nahda in the 19th and 20th Centuries, as I've mentioned at length in earlier posts. The concomitant rise of Turkish nationalism was thus matched by a new Arab nationalism in this period. As conditions continued to worsen for them in the 20th Century, they thus became gradually less prepared to continue to live within the Turkish Ottoman Empire.
Some of the provinces had sub provinces with another level of rule. For example Mount Lebanon, Jerusalem, the Hijaz and Yemen were sub provinces. In these sub provinces, dynasties of rulers tended to form. The Hijaz was ruled by the family of the Sharif of Mecca, claiming descent from Hasan, Muhammad’s grandson. The Sayyids of Hadramawt in Yemen (near the current Omani border) claimed descent from Muhammad’s only other grandson, Husayn, and commanded similar prestige. However the ruler of Yemen was traditionally the current Imam of the local Zaydi Shi’a School. These sub provincial rulers, while formally responsible to their pashas, might occasionally appeal decisions of the pasha higher up the chain by force of personality.
Syria and Iraq were both rich regions of the Empire and Syria was additionally important to the Ottomans for being on both major pilgrimage routes and the so-called Silk Road.
In Egypt, one of the largest provinces with no sub provinces, the pasha continued to be forced to pay some attention to the opinions of remnants of the former Mamluk dynasty for some time. Muhammad ‘Ali put an end to that one day soon after becoming pasha by giving them a particularly treacherous banquet after which he had them all massacred. He also contended with and managed the prestige of al-Azhar.
The rank and file Arabs of the Empire, however, who generally lived tribal lives but had also been influenced by European nationalist ideas, began to feel oppressed by things like the new requirement of conscription as the Empire fell under threat. At the same time, the virtual independent dynasty formed by Muhammad ‘Ali from 1805 provided a model for further moves in the direction of fuller independence generally for Arab peoples and Wahhabism in Central Arabia provided another somewhat popular moralistic and much less secular and pluralist model.
The main rival of the Ottomans was the Ja’fari Shi’a Safavid regime in Persia. The rivalry was mainly expressed in the relatively peaceful practice of monumental building (notably in Isfahan) and in trade (especially with Europe). This rivalry may have contributed to some extent to Sunni/Shi’a rivalries that exist today, however. The other main rival of the time in the region (which competed in similar ways) was the Mughal Empire in South Asia.
The other major influence on the Middle East in recent times and an ongoing one was and is, of course, European. The first direct encounter with a European military excursion was the brief French occupation of parts of Egypt under Napoleon from 1798 to 1801 ended by British actions.
Europe and the Middle East had interacted since at least the Middle Ages, however, as discussed previously. Southern Iberia and parts of Eastern Europe had been conquered and European Crusaders had briefly conquered parts of the Middle East especially in the Eastern Mediterranean. Besides military contacts, trade missions were also engaged in, notably by the Italian city states of Genoa and Venice but also by Marseille and even British missions occurred (hence the knowledge of ‘Eastern types’ displayed in the works of Shakespeare, for example).
In the time of Suleyman the Magnificent, the European traders had been virtual supplicants hoping to trade with the great Ottoman trading power. European technology and learning was not at that time more advanced than in the Middle East and, in fact, was probably significantly less advanced. The balance of power began to shift, however, around the time of the discovery of the New World by Columbus in 1492 just before Suleyman’s reign commenced in 1494. Europe began to flourish in terms of pure knowledge and also in technological terms. Competition in trade was finally evened out and began to favour the Europeans especially with the mastery of the high seas of several militant European nations. By the late 18th Century (and especially by the early 19th Century once Napoleon’s ambitions within Europe were dashed), England and France had become the pair of nations to beat in terms of colonial and mutual world trade domination ambitions and rivalry. They were both interested in the Red Sea and Mediterranean trade routes that had for centuries been of especial interest to the Arabs and the Ottomans.
Napoleon first established a relationship with the Sharifs of Mecca and then engaged himself briefly in Egypt, as I've mentioned above. By 1860, France had established an Algerian colony (at first merely at Algiers on the coast) that officially ended only in 1962. The British had occupied Aden and South Yemen generally in 1839 (and continued to do so until 1967) in support of their trade with 'British' India. A number of other Arabian states now forming the United Arab Emirates had relations with Britain in the 19th Century leading to their name in English for some time being the Trucial States.
Turkey and Iran have for various reasons been less affected directly by European influence than the countries of the Arab world. Nevertheless oil has been the curse for Iran that it has been for many of the Arab countries that I discuss below. In its case, the Shah suffered for not responding to calls for consultation with powerful class coalitions over his reformist agenda in his country (especially over land reform and engagement with the West) essentially because oil wealth reduced his incentive to seek a religious legitimacy that he ultimately found he needed. The result was of course a popular revolution sponsored by powerful authoritative classes. As discussed below with respect to some Arab countries, then, Islamism (in this case sponsored by a powerful ulema class) was the result of and not the cause of obstacles to democratisation the first being oil wealth and another being Western interests.
A justified suspicion of the West and its ideas including as they did the ‘divide and rule’ tactics which had supported Western hegemony also contributed to a suspicion of the very rational and liberal democratisation which many politicians of the West now claim to seek for the Middle East while they blame Islamism as an obstacle to it.
Iran has had a history of class distinctions not shared by Turkey which makes Turkey a very different type of country. As oil has not been the crutch it has been in Iran, Turkey has been more disposed than Iran to significantly industrialise (to the great benefit of many Turks). Turkey has also assumed (more or less grudgingly, perhaps) something of the role of a US-friendly buffer state between Europe and the Arab world that has not been a position available to Iran.
Iran and Turkey are, however, both relatively well-defined as nation-states when compared with most Arab states and Israel. In the case of Turkey, while being internally relatively homogenous, ethnically, externally Turkic peoples also exist in the region bordering Turkey so there is no exact correspondence between the state and the nation. In Iran, the situation is more or less reversed; while the Persian diaspora is relatively contained, several minority ethnic groups are significant within Iran as they are too in many Arab countries. The borders of both of these non-Arab countries were also largely determined by local forces whereas the borders of most Arab countries were essentially determined by the English and French.
In Sudan, too, a country to the immediate south of Egypt, whose name means black in Arabic but whose authoritarian government definitely promotes an Arab identity, the government is centralised and complex issues remain to be resolved. Sudan was actually invaded by Muhammad ‘Ali with the support of the British in 1899 after a period of control by the Mahdi (mentioned in an earlier post) and his supporters and formally became Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. After 1922, full control passed to the British until 1955. Problems left unresolved by the British in their many years of deliberately non-interventionist but dominating occupation have been argued to be the seeds of the many problems there today.
The Maghreb’s recent history has been mixed. Tunisia and especially Algeria were not well served by the so-called French ‘protectorates’. Libya has now been ruled since 1969 by Muammar al-Qaddafi despite both democratic and socialist pretensions. Morocco is a modernising monarchy with relatively strong union power. Mauritania was also quite progressive before recent set-backs to this progress.
The fairly brutal and persistent French occupation of Algeria proved to have arguably the worst consequences over the longest period for stability. The occupation was famously opposed in the middle of the 19th Century by Amir ‘Abd al-Qadir. The French colons were allowed to occupy and exploit the best land in the country confiscated from the locals. In the cities, they tended to settle next to the centres (Kasbahs) of old Algerian cities, whence the word Kasbah came to refer to the “Arab quarter” of Maghrebi cities. The French novelist and philosopher, Albert Camus was famously a French colon born in Algeria.
The French language was taught compulsorily in all public schools as the predominant teaching language leading to a cultural rupture between the Arab middle classes taught French in these school and the other classes taught only Arabic in the traditional Islamic elementary and other private schools. This pattern was also repeated in other French colonies. Incidentally, the brutal occupation ultimately didn’t help the colons adapt to normal life well. Following the bloody Algerian independence war, many of the privileged colons in Algeria later became the snooty and therefore hated pied noir in France after their forced exile from unrealistic privilege in Algeria.
The area known as the Fertile Crescent was first affected subtly by the West as the Ottomans sought to reform their government in response to a perceived Western threat. Part of it (now roughly Syria and Lebanon) was briefly occupied by the Albanian Ottoman ruler of another part of it, Egypt, Muhammad ‘Ali and his son and successor, Ibrahim.
From the 1860 Lebanese civil war (produced by the power vacuum that followed Ibrahim’s withdrawal) until 1914, Western interest and influence became more direct and increased. Ostensibly, the initial interference was to protect minorities in the area of Lebanon during the war and its outcome was that the Europeans determined (with the Ottomans) that the ruler of the Lebanese portion of the Crescent should be an Ottoman Christian citizen from outside the local area. The rural Syrian and Lebanese silk industries were also affected by the decision of Europeans to make silk locally, leading to an influx of Christian former rural silk producers into the cities. Eventually, mission schools and European novelties became prominent in the Crescent as the influence increased.
As in Egypt, under these influences health outcomes improved and transport, culture and literature also underwent developments as railways and presses went into overdrive (in the case of the latter, producing a lively range of books and journals for a new class of voracious idea-consumers, especially in Syria). While the relatively direct Ottoman control of the presses in Syria-Lebanon saw emigration of many Syrian journalists to the more liberal Egyptian regime, clubs and societies proliferated in Syria.
Education in mission schools created a division similar to the one caused in Algeria mentioned above once a more comprehensive national system was adopted, only in reverse. The new public school system became the Arab-speaking majority system unlike in Algeria where it was French speaking middle class system, while the private system became the European-speaking system favoured in this case by the religious minorities supported by the Europeans following the civil war. Thus the region entrenched a cultural rift between groups based on religion under the influence of European ‘protection’.
During and after the First World War, the French and English decided to formally divide up the region between them as ‘protectorates’. In 1915, Britain agreed to post-Ottoman Arab self-determination with the Sharif of Mecca in the Hussein-McMahon agreement as it sought Arab assistance in the war while secretly making the Sykes-Picot agreement with the French.
Also during the war, the Balfour declaration supported the setting up of a Jewish homeland in the region. Finally, the Treaty of Versailles implemented only British and French aspirations even against objections of US negotiators espousing the principles of the Wilson '14 point plan', regarded as naïve in the Old World, which favoured national self-determination.
The British and French Mandates survived until the 1940s. Pressure then continued to be exerted following the war both by the old colonial masters and the new powers, the US and the USSR, under the influence of the Cold War. Iraq (the remaining part of the Fertile Crescent), in particular, has had the dubious distinction of ‘benefiting’ from large oil reserves. States that have ‘benefited’ from oil rents have ironically tended to feel less external or internal pressure to democratise, as I've mentioned, as low taxes and oil-funded social welfare have lessened internal incentives to ‘rock the boat’ and Western oil dependency has generally inhibited powerful countries from exerting external pressure. There is little change to these circumstances in Iraq today.
The division of the Fertile Crescent by the English and French and more local divisions in Arabia have had the effect that the Arab nation has been formally divided at least partly from outside in the East of the Arab world and partly internally. As a result further nationalist forces have sprung up that have produced their own dynamics. The forces are divided between local, regional and pan-Arab affiliations along with pan-Islamic(ist?) ones. Even many Saudi Arabians have Saudi as well as their famed Muslim and Arab identities and Kuwaitis discovered a local identity (as invaded and demoted peoples are prone to do) following the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq. Equally, Palestinian identity has been forged by circumstances created by the creation of Israel.
All of these Arab parties continue to regard themselves as part of the larger Arab nation, however. This identity was arguably first spurred on as a result of the loss by the Ottomans of their Eastern European territories to nationalist independence movements and, ironically, also Turkish nationalism. Much later, both the formation of Israel and the leadership of especially Nasser in Egypt (despite the historically self-contained nature of Egypt) produced a general pan-Arabist resurgence that was, however, dealt a severe blow following the defeat of the Arab forces in the Six-Day War of 1967 by Israel.
The states of the Fertile Crescent thus suffer in terms of their legitimacy in many Arab eyes from a sense of only being a part of the whole Arab state appropriate to at least their Eastern region. Having emerged from French and British rule in the mid 20th Century, at first (and perhaps still) whether they had become truly independent from those countries was also doubtful. Iraq formally achieved independence first in 1933 (informally, though, it was only really achieved with the Ba’ath-backed coup of 1958). The French relinquished their formal control in the region in 1946 and then followed the remainder of the British ‘possessions’ to Israel and what is now Jordan and Israeli-occupied Palestine.
These twin issues of pan-regionalism and suspicion of external influence quite apart from the Israeli influence have caused significant conflict in the recent history of the Crescent. Added to these problems, inexperience at self-rule was also a serious issue and Western-trained elites actually tended to resist change from the dependent status. Jordan, Israel/Palestine and Iraq were (and arguably are) of course in the British sphere and Lebanon and Syria were (and arguably are) in the French sphere and at least part of such affinity as exists today between Lebanon and Syria is probably connected with a shared history as French mandates. The US, too, continues to exert its own less subtle form of influence.
As I examine how well states are doing the job of ruling in the next few posts, I will naturally expose problems for which the solutions devised internally may well have to be major and possibly revolutionary changes. Some of the most important issues faced include issues of economic and social development, equality of resource allocation and treatment of women and minorities.
At the same time, there will be external pressures for change that result from a Globalised world and the interests of other states (both within and outside the region) conflicting with regional and local interests. Issues of relative democratisation and disparities of wealth between countries may also bring pressures to bear in the region.
For our purposes, as discussed at the outset of this blog, I consider the Middle East to include Arab and to some extent pseudo-Arab North and North East Africa, Arab and Israeli West Asia, Turkey and Iran (some include parts of the Caucasus, as I've also mentioned). Turkey is an especially interesting case because it may be able to play a special role of linking the Arab or certainly the Islamic world with the European world. Iran and Israel complete the roll call of the non-Arab states in the region.
The Arab world itself is, of course, geographically and historically divisible into various regions with unique characteristics. The least truly Arab area of the ‘Arab’ world, though with some claim to Arab status, is the North East African sub-region encompassing the Comoros Islands, Somalia, Djibouti and Eritrea. Farthest west is the Maghreb which includes Western Sahara (a disputed region), Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Morocco and Mauritania. Nilotic Egypt, centred on one main river as it is, has tended to be relatively stable as a unified state when compared with Nilotic Sudan un-centred as it is on various Nile tributaries. These areas are far superior to the remaining Arab areas in terms of both Arab population numbers and land area. The Arab areas that remain are West Asia and the Arabian Peninsula.
Besides these differences, there are, as I mentioned, differences that have come about because of oil wealth being divided unequally. There are also a number of pronounced similarities that I would like to discuss now. Modern pan-Arab nationalism is a relatively recent phenomenon dating to the end of the Ottoman period. The Arab League was actually formed under the auspices of Britain in the 1940s. Regionalism has been too pronounced for the political unity first proposed in the 40s and current until the 60s, however, to be realised as European political unity is being much more in the European Union, for example.
There is obviously linguistic and also cultural and much historical contiguity in the Arab region. Foreign intervention has been overlaid over the common factors to produce divisions. Geography has also played a role, especially before the opening of the Suez Canal, however, in producing two zones with differing external and intra-zone trade interests, the Red Sea Eastern Zone and the Mediterranean Northern and Western Zone. Today this sense of two zones is less evident in government policies. The question of modernity, arguably especially on a Western model, versus tradition further divides governments from each other and their populations.
Globalisation generally is felt as an external threat from the West following a long line of others including from the possibly less hated Ottomans by many in the Arab region. There also remain major differences in the Arab world both within and between a variety of religions and between many tribal, ideological and ethnic identities.
In many ways, the governments of Egypt, Turkey and Iran have been best at managing the most diversity in the Middle East as a whole albeit often by the use of quite repressive measures. The legitimacy of political institutions of especially the Arab Middle East today was largely artificially created by Western powers and the weakened Ottoman power in the last century and this in itself is a potential problem for it. Democracy has not yet flourished in the region and that includes in Israel and Turkey. Most of the borders of the Fertile Crescent were essentially drawn up in line with the initially secret 1916 French-English Sykes-Picot Accord to serve essentially French and English interests. Israel was allowed to be created in the region specifically as a Jewish state at a time when Jews made up only around 33% of the population of the territory of the new state. Iraq continues to have an uncertain future today.
One of the most profound recent external influences on much of the Middle East (apart from Western rule or influence) has been Ottoman rule of the Arab region and parts of eastern Europe (from the Topkapi Palace in Constantinople (captured by Mehmet II) from almost the beginning) from the 13th Century (in the case of Anatolia and Eastern Europe) to the 16th and 17th Centuries (in the case of the Arab World) until the European-forced contractions of the 19th and early 20th Centuries.
The Empire was quite fluid, linguistically speaking. Arabic remained the first language of most people in the Arab region of the empire. The Ottomans themselves initially used Persian as their language of literature and Arabic as their language of law and religion. The rulers were however, after all, Turkish and so they also spoke Turkish. Therefore Turkish became a third language of the ruling class and the first language of the military and administration. The bureaucracy was meticulous and has consequently provided a large amount of material for today’s historians and other researchers in Turkish.
Formally, the Ottoman law was based on Hanafi Islamic jurisprudence and provided by a system of muftis (experts who were formally qualified to issue legal opinions) and Qadis (the judiciary) down to muezzins (who formally call Muslims to prayer), all public servants provided from the ranks of the Islamic ulema, and the regime’s legitimacy also derived in part from its political control of the Islamic holy sites of Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem. The sultans adopted the title “Servant of the Two Holy Mosques” for themselves with reference to their control of the main mosques of the first two cities. It was illegal, however, to issue a ruling (fatwa) against the Sultan (Sultana?) under the sedition law formally making him (her?) above the Islamic law, although rulings against the government were permissible. Mosque-building was a priority throughout the Empire as was construction of walls in Jerusalem.
Legitimacy, as always, derived also from the ability to maintain an orderly society. Within that society, trade guilds, or taifas, affiliated with Sufi taifas helped the government to maintain that order by providing an orderly system of feedback between the government and the various valued economic groups in the society. The hat makers’ guild has thus historically been responsible for the enormous head dresses of some Sufi orders.
Local autonomy within the Empire was reasonably common provided the local leaders were loyal to the Sultan. Elements of his rule tended to be oppressive, however, although he was an equal opportunity oppressor including the Turks in his oppression and perhaps even singling them out for more oppression than other ethnic groups. The Ottomans were also formally tolerant of the other religions and sub-religions practiced in the Empire but were, in fact, somewhat biased in favour of their version of orthodox Sunni Islam. Under the so-called millet system, local religious leaders were permitted to lead autonomously (and were generally also therefore considered answerable to the Sultan for the behaviour of) their flocks. They also represented them to the larger community and leadership structure. In original Qur’anic Arabic millet meant specifically a religious community but in Turkish it had come to refer also to national communities. Efforts to promote a more equal system for non Sunni Muslims began in the 19th Century.
From around 1830, the Ottomans began to modernise as they witnessed the increasing technology and techniques of organisation being employed in European wars and the increasing threat to themselves from Europe. As the army modernised in response to the external threat, Muslims including Arabs were conscripted into the services which had been previously formed from non-Muslim slaves garnered from around the Empire. Slaves in the army had always traditionally been able to advance socially to quite lofty levels in Ottoman society by means of good service in the army.
Suleyman Qanuni (the Lawgiver), or "the Magnificent" in English usage, adopted a modernised legal system and it ultimately permitted a great deal of legal impunity to European traders and expatriates who had first been permitted to live and trade in the Empire in his reign (the thin end of a giant wedge as it turned out). Europeans began noticing especially Christian minorities in the Empire and their treatment by the authorities was soon used as a pretext for European intervention in the region. Each European state seemed to pick out a favourite cause. The British, for example, chose the Druze (not being able to find an analogous religion to the Church of England in the Ottoman Empire) while the Catholic French had a close association with the Maronite Catholic Christians.
The Arab provinces, after early on being ruled centrally, soon came to be more autonomously ruled under the Ottomans. This was natural for reasons of geographical isolation in outlying provinces such as those in North Africa, for example, but local ruling dynasties (even Druze and Maronite Christian ones) were soon also established in areas such as Mount Lebanon and Palestine, for example.
Arab notables were ranked in the Ottoman tradition and often also had an Ottoman identity (especially before the Nahda). The highest rank was pasha, or governor of a province, responsible directly to the Grand Vizier, or Prime Minister, of the Sultan. Pashas were generally at first generals and bureaucrats who had received training centrally in the military/bureaucratic schools of the capital of the Empire.
The Arabs as a race had a special significance in the Empire, too, as in some sense the race that originated Islam. They also constituted a large portion of the total population of the Empire especially once the European colonies were lost. There were more Arabs than Turks, for example. The Arabs also experienced the Nahda in the 19th and 20th Centuries, as I've mentioned at length in earlier posts. The concomitant rise of Turkish nationalism was thus matched by a new Arab nationalism in this period. As conditions continued to worsen for them in the 20th Century, they thus became gradually less prepared to continue to live within the Turkish Ottoman Empire.
Some of the provinces had sub provinces with another level of rule. For example Mount Lebanon, Jerusalem, the Hijaz and Yemen were sub provinces. In these sub provinces, dynasties of rulers tended to form. The Hijaz was ruled by the family of the Sharif of Mecca, claiming descent from Hasan, Muhammad’s grandson. The Sayyids of Hadramawt in Yemen (near the current Omani border) claimed descent from Muhammad’s only other grandson, Husayn, and commanded similar prestige. However the ruler of Yemen was traditionally the current Imam of the local Zaydi Shi’a School. These sub provincial rulers, while formally responsible to their pashas, might occasionally appeal decisions of the pasha higher up the chain by force of personality.
Syria and Iraq were both rich regions of the Empire and Syria was additionally important to the Ottomans for being on both major pilgrimage routes and the so-called Silk Road.
In Egypt, one of the largest provinces with no sub provinces, the pasha continued to be forced to pay some attention to the opinions of remnants of the former Mamluk dynasty for some time. Muhammad ‘Ali put an end to that one day soon after becoming pasha by giving them a particularly treacherous banquet after which he had them all massacred. He also contended with and managed the prestige of al-Azhar.
The rank and file Arabs of the Empire, however, who generally lived tribal lives but had also been influenced by European nationalist ideas, began to feel oppressed by things like the new requirement of conscription as the Empire fell under threat. At the same time, the virtual independent dynasty formed by Muhammad ‘Ali from 1805 provided a model for further moves in the direction of fuller independence generally for Arab peoples and Wahhabism in Central Arabia provided another somewhat popular moralistic and much less secular and pluralist model.
The main rival of the Ottomans was the Ja’fari Shi’a Safavid regime in Persia. The rivalry was mainly expressed in the relatively peaceful practice of monumental building (notably in Isfahan) and in trade (especially with Europe). This rivalry may have contributed to some extent to Sunni/Shi’a rivalries that exist today, however. The other main rival of the time in the region (which competed in similar ways) was the Mughal Empire in South Asia.
The other major influence on the Middle East in recent times and an ongoing one was and is, of course, European. The first direct encounter with a European military excursion was the brief French occupation of parts of Egypt under Napoleon from 1798 to 1801 ended by British actions.
Europe and the Middle East had interacted since at least the Middle Ages, however, as discussed previously. Southern Iberia and parts of Eastern Europe had been conquered and European Crusaders had briefly conquered parts of the Middle East especially in the Eastern Mediterranean. Besides military contacts, trade missions were also engaged in, notably by the Italian city states of Genoa and Venice but also by Marseille and even British missions occurred (hence the knowledge of ‘Eastern types’ displayed in the works of Shakespeare, for example).
In the time of Suleyman the Magnificent, the European traders had been virtual supplicants hoping to trade with the great Ottoman trading power. European technology and learning was not at that time more advanced than in the Middle East and, in fact, was probably significantly less advanced. The balance of power began to shift, however, around the time of the discovery of the New World by Columbus in 1492 just before Suleyman’s reign commenced in 1494. Europe began to flourish in terms of pure knowledge and also in technological terms. Competition in trade was finally evened out and began to favour the Europeans especially with the mastery of the high seas of several militant European nations. By the late 18th Century (and especially by the early 19th Century once Napoleon’s ambitions within Europe were dashed), England and France had become the pair of nations to beat in terms of colonial and mutual world trade domination ambitions and rivalry. They were both interested in the Red Sea and Mediterranean trade routes that had for centuries been of especial interest to the Arabs and the Ottomans.
Napoleon first established a relationship with the Sharifs of Mecca and then engaged himself briefly in Egypt, as I've mentioned above. By 1860, France had established an Algerian colony (at first merely at Algiers on the coast) that officially ended only in 1962. The British had occupied Aden and South Yemen generally in 1839 (and continued to do so until 1967) in support of their trade with 'British' India. A number of other Arabian states now forming the United Arab Emirates had relations with Britain in the 19th Century leading to their name in English for some time being the Trucial States.
Turkey and Iran have for various reasons been less affected directly by European influence than the countries of the Arab world. Nevertheless oil has been the curse for Iran that it has been for many of the Arab countries that I discuss below. In its case, the Shah suffered for not responding to calls for consultation with powerful class coalitions over his reformist agenda in his country (especially over land reform and engagement with the West) essentially because oil wealth reduced his incentive to seek a religious legitimacy that he ultimately found he needed. The result was of course a popular revolution sponsored by powerful authoritative classes. As discussed below with respect to some Arab countries, then, Islamism (in this case sponsored by a powerful ulema class) was the result of and not the cause of obstacles to democratisation the first being oil wealth and another being Western interests.
A justified suspicion of the West and its ideas including as they did the ‘divide and rule’ tactics which had supported Western hegemony also contributed to a suspicion of the very rational and liberal democratisation which many politicians of the West now claim to seek for the Middle East while they blame Islamism as an obstacle to it.
Iran has had a history of class distinctions not shared by Turkey which makes Turkey a very different type of country. As oil has not been the crutch it has been in Iran, Turkey has been more disposed than Iran to significantly industrialise (to the great benefit of many Turks). Turkey has also assumed (more or less grudgingly, perhaps) something of the role of a US-friendly buffer state between Europe and the Arab world that has not been a position available to Iran.
Iran and Turkey are, however, both relatively well-defined as nation-states when compared with most Arab states and Israel. In the case of Turkey, while being internally relatively homogenous, ethnically, externally Turkic peoples also exist in the region bordering Turkey so there is no exact correspondence between the state and the nation. In Iran, the situation is more or less reversed; while the Persian diaspora is relatively contained, several minority ethnic groups are significant within Iran as they are too in many Arab countries. The borders of both of these non-Arab countries were also largely determined by local forces whereas the borders of most Arab countries were essentially determined by the English and French.
In Sudan, too, a country to the immediate south of Egypt, whose name means black in Arabic but whose authoritarian government definitely promotes an Arab identity, the government is centralised and complex issues remain to be resolved. Sudan was actually invaded by Muhammad ‘Ali with the support of the British in 1899 after a period of control by the Mahdi (mentioned in an earlier post) and his supporters and formally became Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. After 1922, full control passed to the British until 1955. Problems left unresolved by the British in their many years of deliberately non-interventionist but dominating occupation have been argued to be the seeds of the many problems there today.
The Maghreb’s recent history has been mixed. Tunisia and especially Algeria were not well served by the so-called French ‘protectorates’. Libya has now been ruled since 1969 by Muammar al-Qaddafi despite both democratic and socialist pretensions. Morocco is a modernising monarchy with relatively strong union power. Mauritania was also quite progressive before recent set-backs to this progress.
The fairly brutal and persistent French occupation of Algeria proved to have arguably the worst consequences over the longest period for stability. The occupation was famously opposed in the middle of the 19th Century by Amir ‘Abd al-Qadir. The French colons were allowed to occupy and exploit the best land in the country confiscated from the locals. In the cities, they tended to settle next to the centres (Kasbahs) of old Algerian cities, whence the word Kasbah came to refer to the “Arab quarter” of Maghrebi cities. The French novelist and philosopher, Albert Camus was famously a French colon born in Algeria.
The French language was taught compulsorily in all public schools as the predominant teaching language leading to a cultural rupture between the Arab middle classes taught French in these school and the other classes taught only Arabic in the traditional Islamic elementary and other private schools. This pattern was also repeated in other French colonies. Incidentally, the brutal occupation ultimately didn’t help the colons adapt to normal life well. Following the bloody Algerian independence war, many of the privileged colons in Algeria later became the snooty and therefore hated pied noir in France after their forced exile from unrealistic privilege in Algeria.
The area known as the Fertile Crescent was first affected subtly by the West as the Ottomans sought to reform their government in response to a perceived Western threat. Part of it (now roughly Syria and Lebanon) was briefly occupied by the Albanian Ottoman ruler of another part of it, Egypt, Muhammad ‘Ali and his son and successor, Ibrahim.
From the 1860 Lebanese civil war (produced by the power vacuum that followed Ibrahim’s withdrawal) until 1914, Western interest and influence became more direct and increased. Ostensibly, the initial interference was to protect minorities in the area of Lebanon during the war and its outcome was that the Europeans determined (with the Ottomans) that the ruler of the Lebanese portion of the Crescent should be an Ottoman Christian citizen from outside the local area. The rural Syrian and Lebanese silk industries were also affected by the decision of Europeans to make silk locally, leading to an influx of Christian former rural silk producers into the cities. Eventually, mission schools and European novelties became prominent in the Crescent as the influence increased.
As in Egypt, under these influences health outcomes improved and transport, culture and literature also underwent developments as railways and presses went into overdrive (in the case of the latter, producing a lively range of books and journals for a new class of voracious idea-consumers, especially in Syria). While the relatively direct Ottoman control of the presses in Syria-Lebanon saw emigration of many Syrian journalists to the more liberal Egyptian regime, clubs and societies proliferated in Syria.
Education in mission schools created a division similar to the one caused in Algeria mentioned above once a more comprehensive national system was adopted, only in reverse. The new public school system became the Arab-speaking majority system unlike in Algeria where it was French speaking middle class system, while the private system became the European-speaking system favoured in this case by the religious minorities supported by the Europeans following the civil war. Thus the region entrenched a cultural rift between groups based on religion under the influence of European ‘protection’.
During and after the First World War, the French and English decided to formally divide up the region between them as ‘protectorates’. In 1915, Britain agreed to post-Ottoman Arab self-determination with the Sharif of Mecca in the Hussein-McMahon agreement as it sought Arab assistance in the war while secretly making the Sykes-Picot agreement with the French.
Also during the war, the Balfour declaration supported the setting up of a Jewish homeland in the region. Finally, the Treaty of Versailles implemented only British and French aspirations even against objections of US negotiators espousing the principles of the Wilson '14 point plan', regarded as naïve in the Old World, which favoured national self-determination.
The British and French Mandates survived until the 1940s. Pressure then continued to be exerted following the war both by the old colonial masters and the new powers, the US and the USSR, under the influence of the Cold War. Iraq (the remaining part of the Fertile Crescent), in particular, has had the dubious distinction of ‘benefiting’ from large oil reserves. States that have ‘benefited’ from oil rents have ironically tended to feel less external or internal pressure to democratise, as I've mentioned, as low taxes and oil-funded social welfare have lessened internal incentives to ‘rock the boat’ and Western oil dependency has generally inhibited powerful countries from exerting external pressure. There is little change to these circumstances in Iraq today.
The division of the Fertile Crescent by the English and French and more local divisions in Arabia have had the effect that the Arab nation has been formally divided at least partly from outside in the East of the Arab world and partly internally. As a result further nationalist forces have sprung up that have produced their own dynamics. The forces are divided between local, regional and pan-Arab affiliations along with pan-Islamic(ist?) ones. Even many Saudi Arabians have Saudi as well as their famed Muslim and Arab identities and Kuwaitis discovered a local identity (as invaded and demoted peoples are prone to do) following the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq. Equally, Palestinian identity has been forged by circumstances created by the creation of Israel.
All of these Arab parties continue to regard themselves as part of the larger Arab nation, however. This identity was arguably first spurred on as a result of the loss by the Ottomans of their Eastern European territories to nationalist independence movements and, ironically, also Turkish nationalism. Much later, both the formation of Israel and the leadership of especially Nasser in Egypt (despite the historically self-contained nature of Egypt) produced a general pan-Arabist resurgence that was, however, dealt a severe blow following the defeat of the Arab forces in the Six-Day War of 1967 by Israel.
The states of the Fertile Crescent thus suffer in terms of their legitimacy in many Arab eyes from a sense of only being a part of the whole Arab state appropriate to at least their Eastern region. Having emerged from French and British rule in the mid 20th Century, at first (and perhaps still) whether they had become truly independent from those countries was also doubtful. Iraq formally achieved independence first in 1933 (informally, though, it was only really achieved with the Ba’ath-backed coup of 1958). The French relinquished their formal control in the region in 1946 and then followed the remainder of the British ‘possessions’ to Israel and what is now Jordan and Israeli-occupied Palestine.
These twin issues of pan-regionalism and suspicion of external influence quite apart from the Israeli influence have caused significant conflict in the recent history of the Crescent. Added to these problems, inexperience at self-rule was also a serious issue and Western-trained elites actually tended to resist change from the dependent status. Jordan, Israel/Palestine and Iraq were (and arguably are) of course in the British sphere and Lebanon and Syria were (and arguably are) in the French sphere and at least part of such affinity as exists today between Lebanon and Syria is probably connected with a shared history as French mandates. The US, too, continues to exert its own less subtle form of influence.
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