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Don't blame Sykes-Picot
"ARROGANT TO the point of blindness," British diplomat Mark Sykes and his French counterpart Georges Picot "carved up the Ottoman empire, not unlike a butcher slicing up slabs of meat fresh out of the freezer," a British columnist charged recently.The diatribe, leveled by Spectator columnist Taki Theodoracopulos, is shared by many, most notably Henry Kissinger, an authority on diplomatic Machiavellianism, who wrote of the Sykes-Picot deal ‐ a deal that had been meant to be kept secret ‐ that it was "the foundation for later wars and civil wars." Though Sykes and Picot did not actually redo the atlas, but merely drew the line between the prospective British and French spheres of influence, their deal was soon fleshed out by the cartographers who penciled borders that later proved unworkable, and in some cases have also become irrelevant, from Libya to Iraq and Syria. That is, of course, true. However, when seen in the broader context of post-colonial history, this external impact does not explain Arab civilization’s crisis, nor does it excuse it. The stuffing by foreigners of local rivals into single polities did not cause the bloody Iran-Iraq War ‒ because the imperialists did properly separate the Persians and the Arabs ‒ nor could Europeans be blamed for the strife along the years between Morocco and Algeria, or Libya and Egypt, or Iraq and Kuwait, all of which pitted Sunni Arabs against each other. In India, for instance, the British also bequeathed a sectarian tinderbox back when independence loomed, and the assassinated Mahatma Gandhi was but one of its victims. Conflict with Pakistan, the violent emergence of Bangladesh, and the unsolved dispute over Kashmir are also seen as colonialism’s farewell gifts. However, the subcontinent has produced a generally accepted political framework where an agricultural revolution was followed by an industrial revolution that soon sparked much social mobility and expanding prosperity. The same can be said of Vietnam, whose splitting and bleeding in the wake of foreign intrusions were followed by a post-ideological quest to manufacture, trade, profit, prosper and to live and let live. The Arab Middle East did not follow these patterns. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves. Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2016-07-23 |
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