The Ottoman Empire at one time included most Middle East countries. When the empire disintegrated, its territories were subject to the greed of international powers who drew up new geographical boundaries. The Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 divided the Ottoman Empire between Britain (represented by Mark Sykes, an expert in Middle Eastern Affairs at the British Foreign Ministry) and France (represented by Georges Picot, previously General Consul in Beirut). Iraq went to Great Britain and remained under its mandate from 1920 to 1932.
Mark Sykes stated in the summer of 1917 that the core strategic aspiration for Britain was Iraq because it was a logistical center and axis to Britain’s regional power in the Middle East. Sykes’ suggestion greatly influenced the concentration on Iraq as a region of economic interest as Britain had begun to benefit from Iraqi oil as early as 1913.
Iraq’s oil wealth was, and still is, a political goal for anyone who seeks power in that country so uniquely positioned in the Middle East. It is an extension of the Gulf countries on one side and on the other, it borders the countries east of the Mediterranean Sea — its boundaries make it a prime strategic location and touch Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, Syria and Jordan (near Israel).
Sykes and the politicians of the British Empire are gone. History though does not change and neither do the tricks of war. Only the actors change; only the names change. But Iraq’s name remains unchanged; Iraq’s nobility has not changed and the Iraqi people’s steadfastness will not change though a thousand years may pass.
The British mandate in Iraq ended in 1932 and now comes America brandishing the idea of a military invasion of Iraq and the appointment of an American military leader in place of Saddam Hussein. Where is American democracy so sought after for the people of the region? Where is democracy when US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz aims to take Iraq back a few centuries and tear it up into petty states, wiping out the Iraqi state which includes all minorities, races and ethnicities? Is this American political duality? Or is this the ideal method by which America achieves its interests? Does Wolfowitz want to revert to Sykes’ principle? Divide, divide and then divide?
President Bush’s advisors, such as Paul Wolfowitz and his ilk, arrived at an idea that threatens the world in the 21st century — the idea of a war against terrorism — from an isolated American perspective, the concept of alliance and attacking peoples and nations that disagree with policies aimed at achieving purely American interests.
The late Indian leader, Mohandas Gandhi, once said: “We don’t need an alliance against terrorism but against poverty and disparity.” During the 1991 Gulf War, America built new bases in the Gulf region and now it has built another one, expanded into a number of countries in the region and has been able to take control of the most important strategic area envisioned by Mark Sykes, and as Paul Wolfowitz and other hawks in the White House see it, the “traditional line” from the Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea. Thus they control the world’s largest reserves of oil, just as they wish to do and just as Britain wanted to do previously. The core issue for the American administration in launching a military attack is entirely politico-economic and it is naïve to think otherwise. No doubt there may be other factors at play but they are of lesser importance and do not necessitate any military attack, especially as the UN weapons inspectors’ mission has not yet concluded. The decisive factor is therefore politico-economic: Oil first and the division of Iraq second.
We must not be unaware of the fact that Iraq is an indivisible constituent of the region from the Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea and whatever destruction and division befalls it will rebound on the region. This is an important and dangerous point. In reality whether Iraq is hit or not, Great America will seek control of the oil-rich Gulf region as it wishes, whether Saddam is around or not.
What we all hope for is that anti-war world opinion manages (though time is fast running out) to avert for Iraq, its people and the nations of the region and their people and for the whole world, a human, cultural, economic and political catastrophe much larger than any Mark Sykes, Paul Wolfowitz and people of their thinking imagined or imagine.
(The writer is associate professor of political history at King Abdul Aziz University, Jeddah.)
Arab News Opinion 9 March 2003
