Influence of Britain and Australia on Middle East during the Great War
The Great War, or the World War I, saw its end in 1918, but even after 86 years, there is no end in sight to the violence that it triggered. The end of the War influenced and shaped our modern world to an extent like none else. Although the reflection of today’s development, as a whole, traces its route back to the decisions taken during and post-World War I, the one place where the violent results still echo is Middle East.
Middle East had been ruled by the Ottoman Empire since four decades. By the end of 1914, the collapse of Ottoman Empire, the world’s largest Islamic power of the time, led to the increased tensions between the inhabitants and the external interests. The neighboring powers were in a state of war with each other for the control of Middle East, which forced the Ottoman powers to give up its diplomacy and don an aggressive role in the war. As a result, the Sultan declared a military Jihad against the “Allied” powers consisting of Russia, France and Great Britain. Germany and Hungary-Austria were the members of “Central” powers. Although they maintained a neutral stand during the initial phases of the War, the major motivation behind the Ottomans giving it up was the recent defeat they faced at the hands of Libya and Balkans. Blinded by the greed to regain the lost territory and win new lands that can be incorporated in the empire, the Ottomans treated the war as an opportunity. Another factor forcing them into the war was the large debt they owed to the Europeans. To repay the debt, they initially tried to side with the Allied powers, but ended up joining the Central Powers on being rejected by the former.
The British already had a control on India since 1857 and Egypt since 1888. The Middle Eastern Ottoman empire was situated right in the middle of these two colonies, which made British determined to win over it and expand their Middle East Empire as part of the war. But with Germany as an ally, the Ottoman power posed a serious threat to the British forces. To win over the war and fulfill their motivations, the British strategized of turning the subjects of the Empire against the government. Hejaz, the western region of the peninsula, was their easiest target. They talked the governor of Makkah, Sharif Hussain bin Ali, to revolt against the Ottoman government. What he got in return from the British government was a promise of a sufficient supply of money and weapons for a fight against the Ottoman army and his own Arab kingdom (covering the whole Arab including Iraq and Syria) after the revolt. This communication between Sir McMahon, the British high commissioner in Egypt, and Sharif Hussein came to be known as McMahon-Sharif Correspondence.
In June 1916, the Arab Revolt campaign began when Hussein led a group of Bedouin warriors from Hejaz. Within the next couple of months, the rebels captured various cities in Hejaz, including Makkah and Jeddah. In the revolt, the rebels received support from British in the form of money, weapons, soldiers and a flag. This flag later came to be known as the “flag of the Arab Revolt” and became a basis for the flags of other Arab countries such as Palestine, Sudan, Jordan, Syria and Kuwait. In the coming years, when World War progressed into 1917 and 1918, the Ottomans had lost almost all their major cities to the rebels, which made it easier for British to march into Palestine and Iraq and capture Baghdad and Jerusalem.
However, the British had other plans behind the whole Arab revolt. In 1915, the diplomats of Britain and France met secretly to decide the fate of the post-revolt Arab land. Both the powers decided to divide the empire between them and this fate was sealed in an agreement called Sykes-Picot agreement. The modern day area of Jordan, Kuwait and Iraq went to Britain, while French got the land mass of Syria, southern Turkey and Lebanon. Palestine was put on hold, for Zionism and its influence had to be taken into consideration. While most of the areas came directly under the purview of either British or the French powers, they allowed Arab self-control in some areas. This secret agreement was exposed by the Russian government, which was in total contradiction with the promises made in the McMahon-Sharif correspondence, leading to high tension between the Turks, the leaders of the Arab Revolt and the British.
Apart from the British and French, another nation that had major influence on Middle East during the Great War was Australia. Britain was the closest ally and the mother country of Australia. As a result, Australia had promised full support to the British army during the war. By the time the war began, the Australian population was a little less than five million and looking at the number of casualties and deaths, it’s clear that Australia was the nation that made the maximum sacrifice for the Allied forces.
They started training in Egypt as 1st Australian Division, New Zealand Australian Division and 1st Light Horse Brigade later merged to form Anzacs (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps). When the Ottoman Turkish had entered into a war, as per the British strategy, the Anzacs landed in the north Gaba Tepe and the British forces entered Gallipoli peninsula, aiming to capture the Turkish forts. At the same time, the French forces attacked the Turks on the Asia Minor. Various factors like the lack of intelligence and coordination among various forces, no knowledge of the terrain and a strong resistance by Turks turned the decision of the battle in the favor of Turks. The Allied Forces had suffered heavy casualties and the campaign turned out to be a big failure. As a result, the British had to decide to evacuate Gallipoli. This battle was important because of two factors: it was the first major defeat of Allied forces at the hands of Arabs; and secondly, the heroic performance of Australian forces in the campaign became a tie to bind the people from all colonies in Australia.
Meanwhile, there was another situation unfolding in Palestine. Palestine was going through a political movement, called Zionism, for the establishment of a Jewish state. Zionist leaders were another group that now wanted a say in this political scape. And, their obvious and the most convenient option was a talk with the British government to allow them to settle in Palestine after the war was over. Hence, came into picture the Balfour declaration, a written support by Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary at the time, to a Zionist leader, Baron Rothschild.
During this tenure, the British had made three conflicting commitments to three different groups. Arabs were looking at an Arab kingdom, independent of the Ottoman Powers, as promised to Sharif Hussein, French expected their divided share of the Arab land and Zionists were hoping for Palestine. By the time the war ended with Allies emerging as the winner, the Ottoman Empire was completely destroyed. The land was completely under the British control, but its future struggled between the three different sides. As a result of the war, the League of Nations was formed, whose main job was to divide the Ottoman land.
The League divided the area into arbitrary mandates and each mandate was to be under the control of either French or British, until they are able to stand on their own. The borders in the land were drawn according to these mandates, without considering the wishes of the people living there or the religious, geographic or ethnic boundaries. This division gave the British and the French the control they wanted over the area. Hussein’s sons were allowed to rule certain areas; however the real authority still lied with the British and the French. The Europeans also allowed the Zionists to settle in Palestine, but introduced limitations. To stay politically correct and not willing to anger the Arabs already living in Palestine, they introduced a restriction in the number of Jews that were allowed to move to Palestine. This made the angry Zionists to look for illegal ways to move to Palestine, while Arabs viewed this as encroachment on a land that they considered their own since the liberation of Salah al-Din.
When the British and the French decided to divide Middle East land among them, the partition was based on sectarian lines. Lebanon was supposed to be an area dominated by Christians and Druze; Palestine would become a Jewish community; Bekaa valley, lying between the two countries was to be dominated by Shia Muslims and Syria was to be left to Sunni Muslims. But this thinking failed to translate into action. When different countries were created by the League, no sectarian, ethnic or tribal distinctions among the people were considered. On the contrary, the division of the land into different countries created differences among the people that did not exist before, and neither were required to be.
The conflicting commitments made by the British created a political mess, which has failed to die down even today. The Muslims were divided and turned against each other by the British. The aftermath of the war led to the creation of different countries, which destabilized the political system of the peninsula. The scenario, coupled with the rise of Zionism in the area, corrupted the governments, leading to a political and economic decline of Middle East as a whole. The cause of a united Arab was lost somewhere between the disputes these nations involved in, and as a result, the map never changed.
The emergence of the Arab states from the Ottoman Empire also followed the European way. When the Arab nations were carved out of Ottoman provinces, even the names that they got were the resurrected names from the Roman and Italian history. The flags that these states adopted were derived out of the flag of the Arab Revolt, designed by the British. In essence, everything about these nations – the names, the flags, and the borders – were decided upon the European powers and had no relevance to any of the peninsular inhabitants or the Arab culture.
Even after giving up the power and control over the middle-east, the external agencies continued to exercise indirect control and intervene to ensure that the regional order stays undeterred, in spite of ethnic violence. U.S. soldiers were ordered into Lebanon after Maronite-Sunni clashes. The pattern repeated over the years, and later involved Israeli Jews and Syrian Alawites as well. With the recent involvement of U.S. in the whole scenario, no-fly zones have been implemented in Iraq. Even in the lack of any idea of how to do so peacefully, Washington, London and Paris continue to intend to follow the century-old state order that was created after the World War I.
In the coming years, there had been many efforts by various Arab leaders to bury these differences by bringing in the wave of Arab nationalism. The idea of a united Arab to dissolve the social and demographic differences swept the peninsula. However, when these ideas failed to materialize, the leaders resorted to brutality. But, the tensions failed to dilute. With the gradual disappearance of these strong leaders, who held the people together, and the uprising of small economic groups, who fought for their personal gains, the old friction that had been hidden since decades, started coming to the surface.
While the external borders remain unaltered, extreme uneasiness and chaos began to grown within the land. The formation of Greater Lebanon, that turned a once Christian community into multi-communal land, created decades of discontent. Over the time, this discontent took the form of a full-fledged civil war killing over hundreds of thousands of people. A national secular ideology of Baathism, in order to reduce the tension between various ethnic groups and to centralize the power, began to grow in Iraq and Syria, but failed to create a difference. Sunni revolts against Syrian regime and Shiite uprisings against Sunni regime also failed to see the sun, and the state order implemented by the League stayed untroubled.
Another major impact on the peninsula was an identity struggle. Even after the creation of the state system, the Arabs failed to address the dilemma they had faced since the past century. They had to choose between nationalism and secularism on one side and Islamism on the other. Arab liberal age began in the late 19th century until 1940s. It led to the formation of various state constitutions that gained support from many social groups, but failed to bring the conservatism, piousness and the religious mindset into the modernization, that the Arabs had achieved. As a result, the gap widened between the rich and the poor, which failed to reduce despite the major advancements in the industrialization. Arab world has failed at coming up with any serious attempt to confront the contradiction that is now weaved into its social fabric.
The political borders in the Middle East do not represent different groups of people. It was just a European way to turning the Muslims against each other, and in no way represent any ethnic, geographic, linguistic or regional differences among the inhabitants. However, these boundaries and the differences remain strong even today, and the seeds of hatred sown back then have grown into a tree in the form of Middle-East Crisis. This is evident from the fact that no other group of countries in the whole world, given their small size, has seen so many terrorist attacks, overthrows and wars as the six middle-east countries, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Israel, Palestine and Iraq. Arabs continue to consider Palestine as their promised kingdom, while Jews (Zionists) still continue to fight for Palestine as their promised home.
All these have had a serious impact on the present generation, which has inherited these economic and political problems - for which they were not responsible, yet are bearing the consequences. The modern day uprisings in the Arab land are this generation’s efforts at changing the results and the consequences of the state order that came in as an outcome of the Great War. This transformation is a result of a generation searching for a better future, but has engulfed the peninsula in a wave of chaos that cannot be seen to die down in the coming years.
On the other hand, the impact of the war on Europe turned out to be quite positive. Instead of following the state order it imposed on Middle East, modern Europe has emerged gradually as nation-states, formed out of the ashes of various multi-ethnic empires. Following this process of self-determination and improvement, Europe has been able to maintain the longest period of peace in the history.
The World War has had major impact throughout the world. On one hand, middle-east is still bathing in the post-war violence and yet, has failed to alter the state structure to suit its own ethnic and demographic distinctions; Europe has emerged to be one of the highly developed continents. Europe and Middle-East have had similar backgrounds to begin with, but Middle-East failed to evolve out of its self-created conservative differences and continue to muddle in ethnic violence even after almost a century, Europe has emerged out of a chain of partitions and self-determination wars, becoming a model of how peace, stability and development can prevail among a continent of nation-states.
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