It’s time to look beyond the “original sins” of the Sykes-Picot Agreement and European interventions in the Middle East. Europeans should calmly make plans for the region’s future, but explain their intentions clearly.
In 1940, Olga Georges-Picot was born in Japanese-occupied Shanghai. They say she was beautiful, but too melancholic for the movie business. She studied under famed director Lee Strasberg in New York and then appeared in a number of notable films including The Day of the Jackal (1973), starring with Woody Allen in his Love and Death in 1975. She later appeared in the erotic French film Goodbye Emmanuelle to the score of Serge Gainsbourg. Olga married once, but only briefly.
What else is there to know about the actress? Her great-uncle François Georges-Picot was a prominent French diplomat. In 1916 he and British politician Mark Sykes drew up a plan to divide the Middle East between the World War I Entente powers, though the plan was discarded some time later.
Many have forgotten just how much Ottoman administration and population policy shaped the Middle East. So why is Uncle François more important to remember than his beautiful grand-niece? The Sykes-Picot Agreement, which had its 101 anniversary on 16 May this year, is thought of today as a major historical factor in explaining the failed states of the Middle East. The original sin, if you will, to which much of the region’s troubles has been attributed.
It fits rather well in the dramatic narrative that accuses Western powers of betraying and deceiving Arabs. For many, Sykes and Picot stand for a reliable constant: Whatever Europeans say, they’ve already long since made other plans behind closed doors. It inspires conspiracy theories and leads to attributing more power than is realistic to contemporary European diplomats, such as lowly politicians like Sykes or snooty diplomats like Picot (the likes of whom, however, may still exist in France).
The tendency to divide contemporary Middle Eastern history into a before and after of the Sykes-Picot Agreement is widespread not just in the Arab world, but also in Europe and the United States. The agreement is said to have created artificial boundaries by ignoring the “natural” and cultural geography of the Middle East, thus sowing the seeds of discord.
This is a frequent complaint when it comes to the separation of Palestine from historic Greater Syria, and modern Syria from Iraq. The boundary that separated Mesopotamia – and which the self-proclaimed ‘Islamic State’ (ISIS) recently claimed to have dissolved, declaring Sykes-Picot “finished” – doesn’t even appear in the agreement. Nor does the border between Lebanon and modern Syria.
Confessional groups and sectarianism
The boundaries of the Middle East as we know it are not solely the result of Sykes-Picot. One could even argue at length about whether it even had a long-term effect in shaping the political geography of the region at all. Because the Ottoman Empire collapsed after World War I, many have forgotten just how much Ottoman administration and population policy shaped the Middle East.
The Wilayate and Sanjak, as the provinces and districts of the Ottomans were called, may no longer exist, but they certainly influenced regional and historical identities. Much more serious is the heritage of confessional groups and sectarianism. European colonial powers certainly didn’t invent the latter, even if they sometimes used it as a political tool themselves. This system of dividing and denominating population according to their religious or confessional identities was bound to the Islamic ideology of domination und Ottoman rule, but also served administrative and economic interests. It left a far greater legacy on societies than the Sykes-Picot Agreement.
After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, a large number of agreements and decisions on the future of the region followed. Take the Middle East mandates given to France and Great Britain, the San Remo Conference in 1920, or the Treaty of Sèvres – which among other things determined the borders of Turkey and the creation of Lebanon.
Also largely forgotten are the establishment of Druze and Alawite states under a French mandate in what is now modern Syria, and the 1936 secession of the Sanjak of Alexandretta (now Iskenderun) populated mostly by “Syrians”. Out of concern for maintaining friendly ties with Ankara, the Entente powers made sure the Sanjak went to Turkey. Even if it’s not particularly suitable for the Syrian regime’s or even Islamist propaganda, the “Sanjak question” means as much (or as little) to many Syrians today as the loss of the Golan Heights to Israel.
While it may not vindicate the Sykes-Picot Agreement, finally asking the question about what would have happened if the Entente powers hadn’t “betrayed” the Arabs does help to better explain its historic significance. Of course it’s known that Great Britain supported Hussein, sharif and emir of Mecca and himself an Ottoman official, in staging an Arab uprising against the Ottomans with the help of T.E. Lawrence, also known as Lawrence of Arabia. Some British officials even saw this rebellion as decisive for the Empire in the outcome of the war, which is why the idea was floated to give the emir’s clan an Arab Kingdom in Greater Syria’s (Bilad al-Sham).
Oh Perfidious Albion? Certainly there were some upright Arab nationalists in the service of the sharif for whom the creation of an Arab state truly mattered. But was the claim of the sharif’s clan on Syria really that much more legitimate than those of the Ottoman Empire or of the European colonial powers just because he was an Arab and a Muslim? Arab Muslims want to believe that they have long ruled over the region, but the Levant has plenty of other cultural and historical identities.
Besides, figuring out the will of the people when it comes to “national self-determination” is just as difficult now as it was in the early 20th century. And you don’t need to be a revisionist or apologetic of colonialism to see that the notions of Arab sovereignty and self-determination against the imperialist West are stale today. Because despotic regimes have used this rhetoric for far too long to detract from the their internal problems.
In the future, states in the Middle East can no longer be invented by drawing them on maps, but by leaders who are ready to provide services and shelter to their “citizens.” The idea of a sovereign state only has value when it’s backed up by substance, and not merely the rhetoric of resistance. And if a state wants the right to sovereignty, it should prove its worthiness.
The names Sykes and Picot can be reiterated with abandon, but they can’t obscure the fact that the interests of the European powers in the Middle East are – apart from the particular issues regarding the alliance with Israel – too big, too unspecific and too contradictory to enact policies reminiscent of their time. It is no longer about oil wells, tobacco monopolies, the privilege of printing banknotes, or to protect sacred sites of Christianity. It’s about security, stability and refugees.
What’s more, the Middle East isn’t just Europe’s neighbour. Both sides also naturally influence each other politically. The Middle East is no longer just an artery of a global empire, but a shortfall of globalisation.
That’s why Europeans should refrain from acting out the Sykes-Picot complex and convince themselves that after once again committing sins in the region, from now on they must stay out of it. The opposite is true. Europeans should think different scenarios through to their conclusion and explain how they envision the future of the Middle East, not to mention the price they are willing to pay to see these plans materialise. They should also clarify their criteria for choosing their allies in the future and which limits they are willing to set. Not all strategic details need to be discussed in public. But the goals and guiding principles of European powers can be determined openly and critically assessed.
It bears mentioning that the beautiful Olga Georges-Picot, who took her own life some 20 years ago, starred in “Children of Rage”, a 1975 film directed by Arthur Allan Seidel which was partially set in a Palestinian refugee camp and told a story of violence and radicalisation. Never heard of this film? Critics back then found it boring. It flopped spectacularly at the box office.
