Not convinced of the ability of the Arab leaders to keep the national movement in check Britain turned to the Zionists ••. taking place between France, Britain and Russia with a view to the carve up of the rest of the region between the imperialist powers - the Sykes-Picot Agreement. This agreement was totally at odds with the promises made to Hussein by McMahon.
Not surprisingly it was kept secret and only became known to the Arabs following the Bolshevik revolution. The Bolsheviks renounced Russian claims and published the SykesPicot text. The publication of this agreement finally broke any alliance between the Arab nationalist movement and Britain.
However, British imperialism also had other irons in the fire. Not convinced of the ability of the Arab leaders to keep the national movement in check Britain turned to another source of support, the Zionist movement.
In November 1917 the British Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lord Balfour wrote a private letter to Lord Rothschild. In his letter Balfour states that:
"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it clearly being understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country".
The Balfour Declaration had four main purposes: to win the support of the existing Jewish community in Palestine; to persuade ••••... American Jews to support a war in which they would have to ally themselves with the anti-Semitic Russian monarchy; to win over the Jews of central Europe to whom Germany was also appealing; to convince Russian Jews to pressurise the Bolsheviks to remain in the war.
More cynically still a Jewish homeland in Palestine was seen as providing a British controlled buffer zone between Syria and Lebanon (which would be allocated to France under Sykes-Picot) and Egypt and the Suez Canal.
Nevertheless, the prospect of increased Jewish immigration did not immediately alarm Arab leaders: the agreement signed in January 1919 between Hussein and Chaim Weizmann on behalf of the Zionist Organisation suggests the opposite. Later that year, however, the King-Crane Commission warned of impending dangers if the programme of the Zionists was not curtailed: in particular they drew attention to the difference between a national homeland and a Jewish state. Zionist determination to achieve the latter, even by peaceful means of purchase, could not be squared with preserving the 'civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish population. (Significantly the Balfour Declaration makes no mention of 'national' rights).
At the end of the First World war Britain and France were awarded A' Mandates (which suggested eventual independence) by the League of Nations over Syria Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq. In theory this represented a move away from old-style imperialism, in line with US President Woodrow Wilson's 14 Points and the Anglo-French Declaration of November 1918, which claimed to support 'national governments and administrations drawing their authority from the free choice of the indigenous populations.
Such fine sentiments were totally at Sods with the actual practice o
the ground where Britain distributed former Ottoman land to trusted individuals as their private property and appointed them as unelected leaders.
However, the Mandates were a clear rejection of the call made at the Paris Peace Conference by Faisal (one of Sharif Hussein's sons) for independence for the Arabic speaking lands to the south of Turkey and of the decisions of the Syrian Congress in 1920, which declared the independence of Syria (which included Palestine and Lebanon) with Faisal as king. In fact the proposed Mandates were themselves a step back from the King-Crane Commission's recommendations that Syria (in the broad sense) should not be partitioned.
The decision of Britain and France to provinces) of Baghdad, Basra and Mosul There is no historical basis for linking these three vilayets into a single state.
in fact the Mosul wilayet had originally
been given to France under the SykesPicot agreement. The French only gave up their claim after being given the 25 per cent share in the Turkish Petroleum Company previously held by the Deutsche Bank
The Turkish nationalist government of Ataturk also had claims on Mosul, an issue only resolved in 1926 when Turkey was granted 10 percent of Iraq's oil royalties for 25 years.
Mosul was not only an oil-rich province: it also had a large Kurdish population. In 1919 the Kurds rose up but were suppressed by British troops. The following year a wider rebellion against British rule broke out. This too was suppressed by Britain, with the Royal Air Force bombing villages and dropping poison gas.
However, the high cost (in both British lives and money) of defeating the 1920 uprising favoured that section of the British ruling class that supported a more indirect form of rule. Faisal, who had been forced out of Syria after the French military imposed a full colonial administration, was crowned king of Iraq in August 192l.
Such a solution had been envisaged two years earlier by Kidston, a Foreign Office official, who wrote 'what is wanted is a king who will be content to reign but not govern and whose religious views are such that the sheikhs may acquiesce in his rule.
Unless such a solution was achieved it was feared that Faisal might encourage the Americans to take over. Standard Oil already had its sights set on Iraq and the US supported Turkish claims to Mosul.
A Council of Arab Ministers was allowed though it had no control over foreign affairs. Real power remained with Britain, which forced the Iraqi government to allow the RAF to maintain bases on Iraqi soil and pegged the Iraqi dinar to sterling.
The issue of British domination, in particular the military bases, would become major issues of contention in the future.
Continued next issue
page 15 of the scan
International resistance Sharon: racist, corrupt and cornered nce February 2003 15