The End of the Modern Middle East?
by Gabriel Scheinmann
inFocus Quarterly
Spring 2014
Until now, the post-Ottoman Middle Eastern order, fashioned by wartime
exigency, imperialist ambitions, and ignorance of local identities,
has survived independence, revolutions, and wars. A political map of
the region sketched in 1930 looks nearly identical to one drawn in
2010. Even as the ongoing Arab revolt exposes submerged seams,
Washington remains committed to defending the cartographic status quo.
In contrast, the geopolitical evolution of modern Europe has entailed
the gradual emergence of nation-states out of the ashes of numerous
multi-ethnic European empires. Just as the concept of
self-determination eventually led to the greatest period of peace in
Europe’s history, the Balkanization of the Middle East, while violent
at present, could lead to a more peaceful region in the future.
The Post-Ottoman Regime
As it did in Europe, World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman
Empire radically transformed the political geography of the Middle
East. Ottoman provinces became Arab kingdoms and Christian and Jewish
enclaves were carved out in Lebanon and Palestine, respectively.
Syria, Libya, and Palestine were names resurrected from Roman
antiquity: Libya reappeared in 1934, Palestine was merely a Syrian
appendage, and the French mandate marked the first time Syria had been
used as the name of a state. Iraq had been a medieval caliphal
province, whereas Lebanon was a mountain and Jordan a river. The new
Arabic-speaking states adopted derivations of the Flag of the Arab
Revolt, which had been wholly designed by British diplomat Sir Mark
Sykes. The four colors of the Arab flag–black, white, green, and
red–each represented the standards of different Arab
dynasties–Abbasid, Umayyad, Fatimid, and Hashemite–and remain the
colors of half of today’s Arab states.
Furthermore, the borders of the new states were determined not by
demography, but by the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement, which became the
blueprint of today’s map. A large Kurdish population was divided among
four states, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Shiite Arabs were
similarly split, running from Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the eastern
provinces of Saudi Arabia. Alawites, a heterodox Shiite Arab sect,
were subdivided, residing today along the northern Lebanese, Syria,
and southwestern Turkish coasts. The Druze were distributed between
what today is Israel, Lebanon, and Syria. Lebanon, supposedly a
Christian redoubt, entailed large Sunni and Shiite Arab populations,
as well as Alawi and Druze. At the dawn of the 21st century, minority
ethnic groups ruled Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Bahrain, often
repressively.
By the 1960s, Arab republics outnumbered Arab monarchies, as coups
were common and kingdoms were overthrown. Attempts to merge alien
states–such as Syria with Egypt and Iraq with Jordan–were short-lived
and repeated failure to excise the Zionist presence marked the end of
the endeavor. Arab leaders proved more interested in maintaining their
own European-delivered fiefs than in abdicating their cathedra for the
greater Arab cause. Through it all, neither independence nor Israel
had altered the imperial map.
While the external borders remained unaltered, ethno-religious strife
was evident throughout. The creation of Greater Lebanon, turning a
once Christian enclave into a multi-communal state, led to decades of
discontent that ultimately erupted into a full-blown ethnic civil war,
killing over 100,000. In Iraq and Syria, strongmen from minority
groups adopted Baathism, a secular Arab nationalist ideology, in order
to centralize power and subdue ethnic differences, but to little
avail. Sunni Arab uprisings against an Alawite Arab regime in Syria in
the 1980s and Shiite Arab uprisings against a Sunni Arab regime in
Iraq in the 1990s were squashed. The Sykes-Picot order barely
flinched.
Similarly, varied efforts were made to forcefully marginalize Kurdish
identity. Kurds were stripped of their Syrian citizenship in 1962 and
both the Asad and Hussein regimes attempted to “Arabize” Kurdish areas
by expelling local populations and supplanting them with Arabs from
elsewhere. Saddam’s infamous gassing of large Kurdish populations in
Halabja in 1988 and the broader al-Anfal ethnic cleansing campaign mar
Kurdish history. In Turkey, Kemalism, also a secular-nationalist
ideology, attempted to “Turkify” the country’s large population of
Kurds, going so far as to denying their existence through the
ubiquitous use of the term “Mountain Turks.” A Kurdish insurgency has
blazed across southeastern Turkey for several decades, with upwards of
50,000 casualties.
Even after excising themselves from direct regional control, external
powers have repeatedly intervened to caulk the cracks exposed by
ethnic violence. Twice, first in 1958 and again in 1982, American
forces were sent to quell ethnic violence in Lebanon. After the Gulf
War, Washington imposed no-fly zones in Iraq to protect the Kurds and
Shia respectively from Sunni Baathist attacks. More recently, French
and U.S. forces have tried to roll back a secessionist Tuareg state in
northern Mali. Meanwhile, Washington flatly opposes Kurdish moves
towards independence, chastising KRG-Turkish strategic cooperation and
supporting Baghdad. Whatever the outcome in Syria, U.S. and European
officials agree on keeping Syria intact. No matter the volatility,
Washington, Paris, and London have clung onto the post-war order that
they created.
A reluctance to contemplate redrawing the map is understandable.
Today’s Middle East is itself an example of poorly-executed
partitions. Inviolable political borders are the defining
characteristic of state sovereignty, without which the modern concept
of citizenship or nationality is meaningless. Only in extraordinary
circumstances and from positions of power, such as in Kosovo, do
states support unilateral partitions. For example, Kosovo remains
unrecognized by states that have secessionist movements of their own,
such as Spain, Russia, and China. By violating the sanctity of
sovereign borders, precedents become set. If Kosovars deserve
self-determination, why don’t Tibetans, Catalans, or Chechens? In
order to maintain global stability, states shy away from fiddling with
borders, concerned that the redrawing may never end.
Looking in the Mirror
Ironically, today’s Europe, which also once consisted of multi-ethnic
empires, is the result of a century of partitions, secessions, and
wars of self-determination. The Ottoman Empire once ruled southeast
Europe, including Greece, the Balkans, Romania, and Bulgaria. Prior to
World War I, the Russian Empire roosted on eight modern European
states. Norway achieved independence from Denmark and then Sweden only
in 1905. Austria-Hungary was a conglomeration that has given way to
six independent nation-states. Nearly a century after its creation,
the dissolution of Yugoslavia–from whence comes “Balkanization”–has
resulted, so far, in seven states. Meanwhile, Spain, the United
Kingdom, and Belgium may look different in coming years as they
grapple with Catalan, Scottish, and Flemish nationalism, respectively.
Europe has become a bastion of nation-states–50 in total–and is a
shining example of how squiggly borders can lead to greater peace and
stability. Recent events in Ukraine only highlight this dynamic.
With few exceptions, each European state now exclusively consists of a
people with a shared ethnicity, a shared language, and a shared
religion. The French speak French in France; Germans speak German in
Germany. In contrast, the modern Middle East houses only four such
entities–Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Turkey–and even these, as
renowned Middle Eastern historian Bernard Lewis once wrote, have
exceptions. “Iran” is a modern term, Arabic has no word for Arabia,
and Israeli Arabs, without including those in the West Bank, comprise
nearly 20% of the Jewish State’s population. Turkey’s supposed ethnic
homogeneity ignores its 15-million strong Kurdish population and was
achieved only following the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians and
forced expulsion of 1.5 million Orthodox Greeks in the aftermath of
World War I.
Previous flickers of self-determination were contemplated, but never
fully realized. President Wilson’s Fourteen Points included a specific
reference to self-rule for the Ottoman Empire’s non-Turkish
minorities, yet was never implemented. After expelling the
British-installed Hashemite ruler of Damascus in 1920, France, more
aware of the ethnic mosaic than their cross-Channel collaborators,
actually created five separate Levantine states based on the Ottoman
vilayets: Greater Lebanon, an Alawite mountain state, a Druze mountain
state, the State of Aleppo, and the State of Damascus. However,
concerned that a rising Germany was making inroads into its colonies,
France acquiesced to a unified Syria in 1936. Only Lebanon survived as
an independent entity and, even then, had incorporated large,
non-Christian areas over French objections.
Similarly, the 1920 Treaty of Sevres, which ended the war between the
Ottomans and the Allies, granted immediate independence to the Hijaz
and Ottoman Armenia–sometimes known as “Wilsonian Armenia” after the
United States drew its borders–and eventual statehood to Ottoman
Kurdistan. However, these arrangements were also quickly reversed
three years later after Turkish forces smashed the Western-backed
Greek and Armenian armies. A renegotiated settlement, the Treaty of
Lausanne, ended the dreams of Greater Kurdistan and Greater Armenia
and set the boundaries of modern Turkey. Implementation of any of
these paths would have dramatically altered the post-Ottoman era.
The Identity Revolution
The map of the modern Middle East is potentially on the cusp of
drastic changes. A renaissance in Kurdish nationalism, as a result of
the U.S.-led liberation–their word–of Iraq, threatens to dramatically
redraw the boundaries in the heart of the region. The semi-autonomous
Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq issues its own visas,
hoists its own flag, and speaks its own language. A recent truce is
intended to end the Kurdish armed insurgency in Turkey in return for
far greater official Turkish recognition of Kurdish identity. As an
outcome of the Syrian conflict, Kurds have declared a provincial
government in the northeast corner of Syria, which they’ve renamed
“Rojava” or Western Kurdistan. Kurds now control a 400mile-wide band
of territory, from the Iran-Iraq border to the Syrian town of Ras
al-Ain, and are expanding their jurisdiction.
The U.S-led overthrow of the minority Sunni regime in Iraq marked an
etch-a-sketch moment in the modern Middle East. Majority Shiite rule
returned to Baghdad for the first time since the seventeenth century,
raising the hopes of beleaguered Shiite Arab populations in Kuwait,
Bahrain, and eastern Saudi Arabia. A recent Iraqi cabinet statement of
support for the creation of three new provinces in western Iraq,
giving Turkmen, Christians, and Sunni Arabs a greater share of the
federal budget, will likely not satisfy newly dispossessed Sunnis who
have demanded greater autonomy from Baghdad.
Likewise, the Syrian uprising has unleashed ethnic sectarianism that
claws at the current borders. Iraqi and Lebanese Shiite fighters have
poured into Syria to help preserve Alawite rule in Damascus. Ethnic
cleansing in coastal Syria has entertained talk of the creation of
“Alawitistan”, an Alawite enclave protected by the mountains that
could eventually stretch into northern Lebanon and Turkey’s Hatay
province. The trans-national Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS)
is a key force in the Syrian rebellion and recently took over the
major Sunni cities of Ramadi and Fallujah, as violence has spiraled to
nearly 2007 levels. A Druze enclave could emerge in southern Syria,
containing the nearly 1 million Lebanese and Syrian Druze. In the
future, Iraq, Syria, and even Lebanon may only be rump states, as
co-nationals seek to consolidate control across existing borders.
While these changes could take decades to play out, new entities have
already made their first leaps towards independence. In 2011, South
Sudan seceded along ethno-religious lines, marking the first
internationally recognized change in the borders of a Middle Eastern
state in nearly 80 years. Meanwhile, Ghaddafi’s downfall not only
threatens to devolve power to Libya’s former city-states, but has also
impacted the identities of Libya’s neighbors. In April 2012, the
National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad declared the
independence of northern Mali, setting in motion the French-led
intervention to roll back the secession and restore Malian sovereignty
last year. The “Arab Spring” has also roused Berber identity in Libya,
Algeria, and Morocco, where a Moroccan minister spoke Amazigh, the
Berber language, for the first time in parliament.
Ending support for the Sykes-Picot order is not equivalent to
unilaterally redrawing the map of the Middle East from Washington.
Events on the ground, such as Kurdish nationalism, Alawite retreats,
or Sunni Arab brotherhood, will drive these changes. The emergence of
Kurdistan or Alawitistan or the shrinking of the Maronite enclave in
Lebanon could partition clashing nations and dim long-running
ethno-religious violence. Like the Balkanization of Europe, cultures
would still compete, but the reduced stakes could ultimately lead to a
more stable and peaceful region.
Writing in 1989, historian David Fromkin compared Europe’s political
evolution to that of the Muslim Middle East. The length of time may be
different, “but its issue is the same: how diverse peoples are to
regroup to create new political identities for themselves after the
collapse of an ages-old imperial order to which they had grown
accustomed. The Allies proposed a post-Ottoman design for the region
in the early 1920s. The continuing question is whether the peoples of
the region will accept it.” A quarter-century later, Fromkin’s
question is in the process of being answered. The peoples of the
region no longer accept the post-Ottoman system and their calls for
self-determination echo those of European peoples of the last few
centuries. Perhaps we should heed their call.
Gabriel Scheinmann is a PhD candidate at Georgetown University and an
analyst at Wikistrat, Inc. An earlier version of this article appeared
in The Tower Magazine.