thesis - a mandate for the profit (final ready to print)

Scott Nicholas Stirling Curtin ID: 17559175

Scott Nicholas Stirling [Student No. 1755175]

Masters Dissertation

M a s t e r s D i s s e r t a t i o n

Compare and contrast the effect British imperial policies in Iraq and French imperial

policies in Syria have played in the instability of the Middle East region. Examine the

period 1900 to 1948 in order to investigate the influence of British and French imperial

energy policies and their consequences on peace and stability in the region.

Dissertation Title

A Mandate for the Profit: Imperial Policies in Mesopotamia and the Levant

Name: Scott Nicholas Stirling

School: School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts

Word Count: 16,424

Curtin University of Technology

I, Scott Stirling, declare that this dissertation is an account based on my own research, that all references consulted have

been cited correctly, and that it contains no work previously submitted for a degree at any tertiary educational institution. A

dissertation submitted in part fulfilment of the degree of Masters in International Relations & National Security on the 20th

May 2015

___________________________

I, Gavin Briggs, declare that this work is now ready for assessment on the 20th May 2015

___________________________

Abstract

This thesis contends that the imperial policies of Britain in Iraq and France in Syria - including their exploitation of the

natural resources of the region and their division of Mesopotamia and the Levant into controllable and Western-styled

nation states - are very much to blame for much of the conflicts and instability in the Middle East. This thesis is a

postcolonial critique of imperial policies in the Middle East, and draws on a consequentialist platform for its moral

reasoning. It is therefore a critical theory and revisionist examination, drawing on the key critical theory concept of the

‘subaltern’ or oppressed.


Masters of International Relations and National Security Page | 2

Table of Contents

Masters Dissertation ...................................................................................................................................... 1

Table of Contents ................................................................................................................................ 2

A Mandate for the Profit ........................................................................................................................... 3

Introduction.......................................................................................................................................... 3

1. British Mandate in Iraq: A Regional End Game ............................................................................ 11

1900-1920: The Sykes-Picot Arrangement and the San Remo Conference.......................... 12

1920-1922: The Great Iraqi Revolution and Air Policing ........................................................ 18

1922-1939: The Iraqi Petroleum Company and Quasi-Independence ................................... 25

1939-1948: The Needs of Great Wars and the Little Wars That Fund Them......................... 31

2. French Mandate in Syria: Not to Be Left Out ................................................................................ 35

1900-1919: The Old Imperial Prerogatives and the 1919 Revolts ......................................... 37

1920-1927: The Franco-Syrian Wars and the Warriors of the Druze ..................................... 41

1927-1938: The Partition to Divide and Control and the Broader Context ............................. 45

1938-1948: The Fall of France and the War Comes to Syria ................................................. 49

3. Geopolitical Ramifications: Comparisons and Results ................................................................. 52

‘Chomping at the Bit’: Subalterns Unify Against The Oppressor ............................................ 52

Ramifications of Partitioning: Divide-and-Conquer Shows Motivations .................................. 54

Common Fall: Imperial Rule Collapses From Exhaustion, Not Ethics ................................... 57

Conclusion......................................................................................................................................... 60

Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................. 64

Author Surname: A - E ............................................................................................................ 64

Author Surname: F - J............................................................................................................. 71

Author Surname: K - O ........................................................................................................... 76

Author Surname: P - T ............................................................................................................ 83

Author Surname: U - Z ............................................................................................................ 92



A MANDATE FOR THE PROFIT IMPERIAL POLICIES IN MESOPOTAMIA AND THE LEVANT

“By the fall of 1918, it was clear that a nation's prosperity, even its very survival,

depended on securing a safe, abundant supply of cheap oil.” - Albert Marrin, Black

Gold: The Story of Oil in Our Lives1

“Oil creates the illusion of a completely changed life, life without work, life for free.

Oil is a resource that anaesthetises thought, blurs vision, corrupts. People from

poor countries go around thinking: God, if only we had oil!” - Ryszard Kapuściński,

Shah of Shahs2

Introduction

The Islamist group known as Islamic State (referred to hereafter as ‘IS’) - formerly

Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (Greater Syria), Islamic State of Iraq and the

Levant, originally Al-Qaeda in Iraq and more recently referred to by its Arabic

acronym ‘Daesh’ - have within a period of two to three years occupied a vast

territory across Syria and Iraq, playing a dominant role in the current civil war in

Syria and a destabilising role in Iraq. Their statements of intent, achievements over

such a short period of time, and ability to move across national borders with ease

making those same borders all but irrelevant, have caused many writers to revise

and revisit the long history of Western foreign policy in the Middle East and the

events that shaped the region’s current cartography. Specifically, IS seems to have

set its sights on one particular event, that of the Sykes-Picot Agreement and

preceding Mandate era, as its main source of purpose. This scenario begs the

question which this thesis will attempt to answer; to what extent have British and

1 Marrin, A. (2012). Black Gold: The Story of Oil in Our Lives. New York, New York: Random House, Inc.

2 Kapuściński, R. (1982). Shah of Shahs. London, England: Quartet Books Limited.



French imperial legacies played a destabilising, divisive role in the geopolitical

structure of modern-day Middle East nation-states? In addition, can British and

French energy and economic security policies be clearly shown as their dominating

motivations for such interventions? To answer these questions, this thesis will

investigate first British energy and economic security and foreign policy in Iraq and

second French energy and economic security and foreign policy in Syria. The

period being investigated will begin in 1900 when the allied powers first began

discussing the future of the Middle East post-Ottoman rule, and end in 1948 with

the establishment of the State of Israel and end of the British Empire. The period is

referred to broadly as the Mandate period, the League of Nations-sanctioned ‘right’

given to Britain and France to manage areas previously controlled by the Ottoman

Empire before their fall in 1918, and ‘differed only in name from other colonial

possessions.’3

Here it is important to clarify some details about terminology used, dates

investigated and the broader ‘scope’ of this thesis. Officially the British Mandate in

Iraq ended in 19324, and the French Mandate in Syria officially began in 1923 and

had a phased end between 1943 and 1946.5 The period to be investigated extends

back to 1900 and continues through to 1948 for several reasons. Firstly, two of the

most fundamental and formative events, the Sykes-Picot arrangement and the

McMahon–Hussein Correspondence, occur before 1918. Both are central to the

argument of this thesis that energy and economic security concerns of the British

and French empires were put ahead of the right to self-determination. Additionally,

despite 1945 marking the end of the Second World War, 1948 marked the creation

of the State of Israel and the end of the British Empire, two essential components

in the influence of Western powers over the structure of the Middle East and

defining geopolitical events that signified a new chapter in Middle East history. As

3 Callahan, M.D. (2004). A Sacred Trust: The League of Nations and Africa, 1929-1946. Portland, Oregon: Sussex Academic

Press. Pg 2. 4 Rassam, S. (2005). Christianity in Iraq: Its Origins and Development to the Present Day. Herefordshire, England:

Gracewing. Pg 133-4; McBeth, B.S. (2013). British Oil Policy 1919-1939. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 84. 5 Moubayed, S.M. (2006). Steel & Silk: Men and Women who Shaped Syria 1900-2000. Seattle, Washington: Cune Press.

Pg 417.



such, the period 1900 to 1948 gives the most appropriate date range suiting the

intended scope for this thesis.

It is important to note that despite the official British Mandate in Iraq ending more

than 15 years before the research period ends, post-1932 Iraq was independent in

name only, with unofficial British control extending well beyond this date.6 It is also

important to clarify that when referring to ‘Iraq’ and ‘Syria’ it is clear that during this

period whilst the British Mandate of Iraq lines up closely with what we would know

as modern day Iraq, ‘Syria’ during this period quite often referred to by scholars as

including Lebanon as well. Lebanon did not achieve independence from Syria

proper until 1936, and did not become independent from the French Mandate until

1946, after numerous constitutional suspensions.7 Additionally, much of the French

policy in Syria centred on carving the land into controllable parts, with Lebanon

being an important part of their puzzle. Thus ‘Syria’ will hereafter refer to modern

day Syria and Lebanon.

This thesis will argue that the imperial policies of Britain in Iraq and France in Syria

- including their exploitation of the natural resources of the region and their division

of ‘Greater Syria’ into controllable, Western-styled nation-states – are key

contributors to regional instability in that era of Middle East history. By comparing

and contrasting the differing policies, interests and motivations of the two imperial

powers, it will be argued that the Great War delivered to the ‘Allies’ a clear

understanding that oil was the future of economic growth and expansion. More

importantly was the knowledge, beginning as early as 1908, that oil’s greatest

source was to be found in the ‘fertile crescent’ of the Middle East, known then as

either Greater Syria or the Levant (modern day Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine

and Jordan), and Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq and Southern Turkey). In order to

6 Haj, S. (1997). The Making of Iraq, 1900-1963: Capital, Power, and Ideology. Albany, New York: State University of New

York Press. Pg 82; Salamey, I. (2014). The Government and Politics of Lebanon. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 36. 7 Arfi, B. (2005). International Change and the Stability of Multiethnic States: Yugoslavia, Lebanon, and Crises of

Governance. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. Pg 189; Brown, N.J. (2002). Constitutions in a Nonconstitutional World: Arab Basic Laws and the Prospects for Accountability. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. Pg 71; El-Husseini, R. (2012). Pax Syriana: Elite Politics in Postwar Lebanon. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. Pg 7-8.



focus attention on the specific policies of these two ‘great powers’ in these two

specific regions, certain pieces of the puzzle fall outside the scope of this

dissertation. Whilst an important source of oil and most certainly part of British and

French imperial concerns, the Arabian Peninsula and its politics will not be directly

addressed. In the same manner and for the same reason, the foreign policies

conducted by the United States of America and Soviet Union, whilst playing an

important role in destabilising in the region, will also fall outside of both the content

and timeline of this project. The (1) role of the Cold War superpowers and the

geopolitical impact of the Middle East becoming a pawn in their proxy war, (2) the

defence and financial assistance provided and (3) the effect of that on the stability

of the region will be topics for future research.

In investigating the legacy of imperial energy and economic security policies in Iraq

and Syria, and in attributing much of the blame for regional instability to these

interventions, this thesis is a postcolonial critique of British and French foreign

policy. As such it joins a broader postmodern and critical theory examination of

‘Western influence’ in the Middle East, and will thus take a revisionist view of the

period’s history. To this end, the key concept of ‘subaltern’ communities and

societies, a term derived straight from critical theory, will feature prominently. The

term describes a person or group of people deprived of their ‘agency’ within

society8, and will be used to explain the bitterness, betrayal and control felt by

Arabs during the Mandate period.9 After 400 years of Ottoman rule, it will be

argued that whilst overtures in the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence promised

self-determination and independence, the energy and economic interests of Britain

and France were put above the Arabs. It will be argued that imperial rule and

influence - despite wearing several different systems to mask said influence -

8 Reinelt, J.G. & Roach, J.R. (2007). Critical Theory and Performance. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press.

Pg 68; Mignolo, W.D. (2000}. Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Pg 196; Barker, F., Hulme, P. & Iverson, M. (1994). Colonial Discourse/ Postcolonial Theory. New York, New York: Manchester University Press. Pg 138. 9 Worley, R. (2012). Orchestrating the Instruments of Power. Raleigh, South Carolina: Lulu Press Inc. Pg 139; Page, M.E. &

Sonnenburg, P.M. (2003). Colonialism: an international, social, cultural, and political encyclopedia. A-M. Vol. 1. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, Inc. Pg 905; Friedman, I. (2010). British Pan-Arab Policy, 1915-1922. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. Pg 31.



created a region of subalterns. This rejection of Arab independence and betrayal

stemmed from the conflict between two plans for the Middle East. The first is found

in the McMahon-Hussein Correspondences, with promises which convinced the

Arabs to go to war and die in battle against the Ottoman Empire. The second was

a deal made in secret for oil and influence, called the Sykes-Picot arrangement,

whereby the British government, in consultation with the French and Russians,

carved up land that did not belong to them for the benefit of the royal tables of

Europe. Much evidence will be brought to bear to outline how this decision to

renege on the agreement - found mainly in the McMahon–Hussein

Correspondence which Hussein believed to be binding10 - and to ‘plunder’ the

Middle East, fuelled regional instability.

The link between the opening remarks about IS and the British and French imperial

policies during the period researched may seem stretched, but the relationship is

clearly demonstrated in a sermon delivered by the head of IS, Abu Bakr al

Baghdadi, at the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul;

This blessed advance will not stop until we hit the last nail in the coffin of the Sykes-Picot conspiracy.

11

To understand this connection it is crucially important to turn to the work of J.A.

Turner, who explains modern day Middle East history as four overlapping but still

distinct ‘eras’; the Ottoman, Colonial, Cold War and US periods, with the Colonial

era being the focus of this thesis.12 Of note also is the work of Hobson, who in

Imperialism: A Study, attempts to define the difference between the terms

10

Abu-Lebdeh, H.S. (1997). Conflict and Peace in the Middle East: National Perceptions and United States-Jordan Relations. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, Inc. Pg 44; Kantowicz, E.R. (1999). The Rage of Nations. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. Pg 202; Quandt, W.B., Jabber, P. & Lesch, A.M. (1973). The Politics of Palestinian Nationalism. Los Angeles, California: University of California Press. Pg 8-9. 11

Shankar, V. (10 November 2014). Of Lawrence, Sykes-Picot and al-Baghdadi. Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies. Retrieved February 2015, available from http://goo.gl/Jb1vXS; Tharoor, I. (30 June 2014). The new Islamic caliphate and its war against history. The Washington Post. Retrieved February 2015, available from http://goo.gl/C9dK0L; Jones, S.G. (2014). A Persistent Threat: The Evolution of Al Qa'ida and Other Salafi Jihadists. Santa Monica, California: RAND Corporation. Pg 16; Ruthven, M. (25 June 2014). The Map ISIS Hates. The New York Review. Retrieved February 2015, available from http://goo.gl/x2FYvJ; Russell , M. (2014). The Middle East and South Asia 2014: The World Today Series. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 88; Grossman, M. & Henderson, S. (22 October 2014). Lessons From Versailles for Today’s Middle East. YaleGlobal Online, Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, Yale University. Retrieved February 2015, available from http://goo.gl/drISxd 12

Turner, J.A. (2014). Religious Ideology and the Roots of the Global Jihad: Salafi Jihadism and International Order. New York, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, St Martin’s Press, LLC. Pg 146.



‘colonialism’ and ‘imperialism’. Hobson sees colonialism as a ‘natural overflow of

nationality’13, such as the Australian example, which has been a colony of British

people in another land for hundreds of years. Hobson defines imperialism as

dominance of one powerful nation over another for the benefit of the more

powerful.14 Others define ‘land-grabbing’ imperial policies as stemming from

‘extractive’15 or ‘mercantile’16 imperialism. This thesis will use Hobson’s term

‘imperial’ whenever possible - without changing pre-existing terms or quotes from

authors who use the word ‘colonial’ - as it most accurately addresses the type of

relationship both Britain and France had with Iraq and Syria respectively, and

Turner’s Colonial era.

Views such as the Marxist/Leninist school of thought that imperialism ‘dominance

of finance capital’, the final ‘parasitic’ evolutionary stage of capitalism, is

understood as an opposing view to the above definitions, but will not form part of

the argument in this thesis.17 The below extract outlines an additional legitimate

type of imperialism, as in Cain and Harrison;

The word ‘imperialism’ dates from the end of the nineteenth century and minimally connotes the use of state power to secure (or, at least, to attempt to secure) economic monopolies for national companies... it is apparent that later use of the term has not been too respectful of Marxist technicalities.

18

One might call the above a ‘commercial’ of ‘monopolistic’ imperialism, and this

interpretation of the Marxist treatise on imperialism is very relevant to the research

question. Thus all of the four above understandings of imperialism - extractive,

exploitative, mercantile or commercial - fall within the scope and argument of this

thesis, and will be used later to help contrast motivations between the two imperial

powers. The idea that both Britain and France were extending their influence into

13

Hobson, J.A. (2005). Imperialism: A Study. New York, New York: Cosimo. Pg 7-8. 14

Miéville, C. (2005). Between Equal Rights: A Marxist Theory of International Law. Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV. Pg 226. 15

Petras, J. & Veltmeyer, H. (2014). Extractive Imperialism in the Americas: Capitalism's New Frontier. Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV. Pg 130. 16

Screpanti, E. (2014). Global Imperialism and the Great Crisis: The Uncertain Future of Capitalism. New York, New York: Monthly Review Press. Pg 42. 17

Lenin, V.I. (1966). Essential Works of Lenin: "What Is to Be Done?" and Other Writings. [Editor : Christman, H.M.]. New York, New York: Bantam Books, Inc. Pg 177. 18

Cain, P.J. & Harrison, M. (2001). Imperialism: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies, Volume 3. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 352.



the Middle East motivated by their imperial interests is one of the core arguments

put forward by this thesis, and it will be argued that the Mandate system was

merely political cover for extractive, exploitative, mercantile and commercial

interests. British and French attempts to gain political control over foreign nations

in order to secure a monopoly over contracts for the extraction of oil and

dominance in the international silk, cotton and tobacco markets, represented an

existential threat to early 20th century Arab freedom in the Middle East, and played

a destabilising role in the region’s history.

This thesis will use Turner’s understanding of the eras of history in the Middle East,

and outline how the foreign energy and economic security policies of the British

and French have played their role in destabilising the region through the ‘Colonial’

era. It is true that the Ottoman rule oppressed Arab freedom through 400 years of

empire. It is equally as it is true that the Cold War period split the region in two

geopolitical spheres, and that US foreign policy interventions of the last 20 years

have contributed to a now global jihadist movement. And whilst these times and

factors fall outside the scope of this thesis, this thesis contents, as Turner does,

that all periods share varying responsibility for regional instability. This thesis will,

however, only address the effect of the colonial or Mandate period as a

postcolonial critique, and compare British actions and intentions in Iraq with French

actions and intentions in Syria.

The energy and economic interests of Britain and France in Middle Eastern stores

of resources will be proven the one of the main motivations for the British and

French imperial policy of control and intervention through Mandate. This will be

explained in depth largely by the changing energy and economic security context

of the years 1908-1920; a period in which the politics of the Middle East ceased to

be a region characterised by large investments, and became a hotbed of

competition for the new, ‘black-gold standard’ of geopolitical and strategic

dominance. This energy and economic interests of the two Empires led to the

political betrayal of the Arabs through the Sykes-Picot arrangement. The social



upheaval of the partitioning that would occur throughout the Mandate period

poured fuel on the fire, contributing to regional instability. This thesis will argue that

through the Imperial Policies in Mesopotamia and the Levant, Britain and France

operate a Mandate for the Profit.



1. British Mandate in Iraq: A Regional End Game

“The worst thing that colonialism did was to cloud our view of our past.” - Barack H.

Obama, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance19

The influence of the British Empire in Iraq between 1900 and 1948 demonstrably

contributed to regional instability. Whilst the promise espoused in the McMahon-

Hussein Correspondence allowed Arab nationalists to set up a completely

independent and sovereign government, ultimately these higher ideals were

subject to the realpolitik of energy and economic security, and to the requirements

of great war. The needs of the British Empire to (1) secure Mesopotamian oil fields,

(2) safe transportation routes through the region, (3) port access at Haifa, Palestine

to the Mediterranean and through Basra, Iraq to the Persian Gulf, and (4) the

geopolitical security of the eastern plains to India, far outweighed the needs or

ambitions of the local population. As a pawn in a much larger game, Iraq’s

significance and value would increase across the research period as oil became

more and more important to British national security. Under the League of Nations

Mandate system, the British Empire exerted both hard and soft power20 influence

across the research period 1900-194821, relinquishing direct control in 1932 and

opting for using a combination of violence and manipulation to achieve their ends.22

As a direct result of British troops on the ground in Iraq, instability erupted into a full

blown insurgency, known now as the Great Iraqi Revolution of 1920, which was

19

Obama, B.H. (1995). Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. New York, New York: Crown Publishing Group, Random House, Inc. 20

Nye, J.S. (2004). Soft Power: The Means To Success in World Politics. PublicAffairs, Perseus Books Group. 21

Collier, P.H. (2010). World War II: The Mediterranean 1940-1945. New York, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 14; Tucker, S.C. (2010). The Encyclopedia of Middle East Wars: The United States in the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, and Iraq Conflicts. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, LLC. Pg 768. 22

Etheredge, L. (2011). Middle East Region in Transition: Iraq. New York, New York: Britannica Educational Publishing. Pg 124-5; Russell, M. (2014). The Middle East and South Asia: The World Today Series. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing. Pg 77; Lowi, M.R. (2009). Oil Wealth and the Poverty of Politics: Algeria Compared. New York, New York: Cambridge University Press. Pg 149.



fuelled by the issuing of a fatwa against support for the British occupation.23 The

British-controlled Turkish Petroleum Company, later the Iraqi Petroleum Company,

secured 75 year oil concession contracts24 through the British government-installed

puppet leaders taken mainly from the Sunnis of Baghdad and Mosul, a policy that

combined with the ‘scapegoating’ of the Shi’a, increased sectarian divisions.25 After

six military coups a seventh Axis-supported coup in 1941 led to the re-invasion of

Iraq by British forces in 1941.26 What became increasingly clear during the

research period was that the British were willing to take the pain internal instability

and sectarian violence brought, knowing that there was much to gain, literally just

below the surface.

1900-1920: The Sykes-Picot Arrangement and the San Remo Conference

Central to the argument of this thesis is that there were two competing plans for the

future of the Middle East. The first was that found in the McMahon-Hussein

Correspondence, where the British Government promised an independent Arabia

under the control of the Sharif of Mecca and his sons.27 Even putting aside the

McMahon-Hussein correspondences between 1915 and 1916, Quandt, Jabber and

Lesch make it clear that there were several different indications of support from the

British for an independent Arabia;

Concrete promises to let the Arabs decide their own political destiny were contained in the British declaration to Syrian Arab spokesman in 1918, the British army’s recruiting campaign in Palestine that year, the Anglo-French declaration to the peoples of Syria

23

Phillips, D.L. (2015. The Kurdish Spring: A New Map of the Middle East. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. Pg 15; Nance, M.W. (2015). The Terrorists of Iraq: Inside the Strategy and Tactics of the Iraq Insurgency 2003-2014. Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group. Pg 23; Ajami, F. (1986). The Vanished Imam: Musa al Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. Pg 37-8. 24

Askari, H. (2013). Collaborative Colonialism: The Political Economy of Oil in the Persian Gulf. New York, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 34; Zedalis, R.J. (2009). The Legal Dimensions of Oil and Gas in Iraq: Current Reality and Future Prospects. New York, New York: Cambridge University Press. Pg 264. 25

Rajan, V.G.J. (2015). Al Qaeda’s Global Crisis: The Islamic State, Takfir and the Genocide of Muslims. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 58; Boon, K.E., Huq, A. & Lovelace, D.C. (2010). Assessing the GWOT: Terrorism Commentary on Security Documents. New York, New York: Oxford University Press. Pg 186. 26

Thomas, B. (1999). How Israel was Won: A Concise History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books. Pg 150; Buttsworth, S. & Abbenhuis, M.M. (2010). Monsters in the Mirror: Representations of Nazism in Post-war Popular Culture. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, LLC. Pg 158. 27

Grief, H. (2008). The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel Under International Law: A Treatise on Jewish Sovereignty Over the Land of Israel. Jerusalem, Israel: Mazo Publishers. Pg 330-6; Tucker, S.C. & Roberts, P. (2008). The Encyclopedia of the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Political, Social, and Military History [4 volumes]: A Political, Social, and Military History. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, LLC. Pg 671; Harmon, C.C. & Tucker, D. (1994). Statecraft and Power: Essays in Honor of Harold W. Rood. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, Inc. Pg 96; Baxter, K. & Akbarzadeh, S. (2008). US Foreign Policy in the Middle East: The Roots of Anti-Americanism. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 13.



and Mesopotamia of November 1918, and the terms of reference of the Paris Peace Conference’s special commission appointed in the spring of 1919.

28

The British government was in no uncertain terms promising an independent

Arabia, although there is much disagreement on what boundaries that independent

state would have; disagreement found no more violent than on the question of

Palestine and the Balfour Declaration, cited in Boehling & Larkey and others.29

Furthermore, Ulrishsen claims the very fact that the McMahon correspondence had

the effect of convincing the Sharif of Mecca and his sons Faisal and Abdullah to

join the British against the Ottomans should be evidence enough that the Sharif

was under the impression that a deal had been made.30 Craig argues that it is

important to remember the other side of the coin - the hatred the Arabs held for the

Ottomans - as a factor in their decision making.31 Ozoglu maintains that

dissatisfaction with centralised governance and a move away from Mecca as a

power base led Faisal to find the ideology of Arab nationalism, ‘instigated by the

British’ to be an effective way of ‘eliminating the threat to their traditional authority

over Arab society.’32 However, the presence of T.E. Lawrence, acting as military

liaison to the Arab Bedouins and nationalists under the protection of Hussein33,

further shows the extent of the alliance for mutual benefit. DeFronzo, Yamani and

Wynbrandt outline that a combination of support from Hussein in the Levant and

Mesopotamia, and Arabian rival al-Saud in Persian Gulf, would assist the British in

cutting off the Ottomans supply lines and pressuring the Ottomans from the south

28

Quandt, W.B., Jabber, P. & Lesch, A.M. (1973). The Politics of Palestinian Nationalism. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. Pg 9. 29

Boehling, R. & Larkey, U. (2011). Life and Loss in the Shadow of the Holocaust: A Jewish Family's Untold Story. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Pg 290; Harmon, C.C. & Tucker, D. (1994). Statecraft and Power: Essays in Honor of Harold W. Rood. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, Inc. Pg 96; Stockman-Shomron, I. (1984). Israel, the Middle East, and the Great Powers. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. Pg 177-8. 30

Ulrichsen, K.C. (2014). The First World War in the Middle East. London, England: C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd. Pg 155; Cavendish, M. (2006). World and Its Peoples: Middle East, Western Asia, and Northern Africa. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Corporation. Pg 824. 31

Craig, J.S. (2005). Peculiar Liaisons: In War, Espionage, and Terrorism in the Twentieth Century. New York, New York: Algora Publishing. Pg 81. 32

Ozoglu, H. (2004). Kurdish Notables and the Ottoman State: Evolving Identities, Competing Loyalties, and Shifting Boundaries. Albany, New York: State University of New York. Pg 12. 33

Del Testa, D.W. (2013). Government Leaders, Military Rulers and Political Activists. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 106; Thackeray, F.W. & Findling, J.E. (2012). Events That Formed the Modern World. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, LLC. Pg 49.



as well as with a revolt from within.34 This is more than enough evidence to

convince this author that (1) a deal was made, and (2) that both sides would

benefit substantially.

The second plan for the Middle East was that espoused in the Sykes-Picot

arrangement, referenced in a July 2014 sermon by Islamic State leader Abu Bakr

al Baghdadi as the ‘Sykes-Picot conspiracy’ and the supposed end game of IS.

Karber frankly describes the agreement as two ‘Catholic aristocrats slicing up a

Muslim, Arab world for oil’. He argues that the Arabs were outraged at the

‘cartographic conniving’ that was the Sykes-Picot Agreement, giving ‘Britain the

mandates for Palestine and oil-rich Iraq, and France the mandate for Lebanon and

Syria.’35 Key to this thesis is the effect of the Sykes-Picot Agreement on the people

of the region. According to critical theory, the actions of the imperial powers

removed the agency of the Arabs, making them subalterns36, with ‘the clash of

unequal cultures under colonialism and the dominance of colonial modernity.’37

The ‘Orientalism’38 of this perspective is the subject of key author Edward Said’s

critical study Orientalism, where he pioneers a controversial postcolonial critique of

European attitudes towards the Middle East, Asia and Africa as patronising and

false, a view supporting this thesis’ anti-Western argument.39 In an interesting side

note, Spivak outlines a ‘double colonisation’ suffered by women under both

imperial control and patriarchal ideology.40 More broadly, Baxter and Akbarzadeh

34

DeFronzo, J. (2010). The Iraq War: Origins and Consequences. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Westview Press, Perseus Books Group. Pg 11; Yamani, M. (2006). Cradle of Islam: The Hijaz and the Quest for an Arabian Identity. New York, New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 7; Wynbrandt, J. (2004). A Brief History of Saudi Arabia. New York, New York: Facts on File, InfoBase Publishing. Pg 177. 35

Karber, P. (2012). Fear and Faith in Paradise: Exploring Conflict and Religion in the Middle East. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Pg 152. 36

Hawley, J.C. (2001). Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 106. 37

Ludden, D. (2002). Reading Subaltern Studies: Critical History, Contested Meaning and the Globalization of South Asia. London, England: Anthem Press, Wimbledon Publishing Company. Pg 19. 38

Said, E.W. (1980). Islam Through Western Eyes. The Nation. Pg 488-492; Said, E.W. (1979). Islam, Orientalism and the West: An Attack on Learned Ignorance. Time Magazine. Pg 54. 39

Howe, S. (7 November 2008). Dangerous mind? Stephen Howe chases the storm of controversy surrounding the ideas of Edward Said. The New Humanist. Retrieved May 2015, available from https://goo.gl/Nqb1o6; Ashcroft, B. & Griffiths, G. (1995). “Orientalism” The Post-Colonial Reader. London, England: Routledge. Pg 87-91; Dutton, M. & Williams, P. (1993). Translating Theories: Edward Said on Orientalism, Imperialism and Alterity. Southern Review: Literary and Interdisciplinary Essays, Vol. 26(3). Pg 314-357. 40

Nelson, C. & Grossberg, L. (1988). Can the Subaltern Speak? in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press. Pg 271-281; Morton, S. (2007). The Subaltern: Genealogy of a Concept in Ethics,



describe removal of agency and creation of subalternity41 as the dominance of

foreign interests over the domestic, centred in 1916 agreement;

The agreement carved up the Middle East on the basis of the economic and geo-strategic interests of France and the United Kingdom. The two colonial powers sought to assure their maritime access to and political dominion of the areas of the Middle East already under their influence. The Sykes-Picot Agreement is usually understood by pro-Arab historians as a contradiction of the spirit, if not the letter, of the Husayn-McMahon Correspondence, which at minimum provided a generalised endorsement of Arab self-determination.

42

The key phrase there for this thesis and the scope it is addressing is in fact

‘generalised endorsement of Arab self-determination’. The sheer volume of

different interpretations of what particular areas were, and were not, included by

McMahon in his agreement with Sharif Hussein of Mecca are irrelevant to the most

fundamental and plain text reading of the agreement. The central promise was that

the Arab nationalists would be given post-war independence in exchange for

military support against the Ottoman Empire.43 Accordingly, between 1918 and

1921 after having defeated the Ottomans - with the assistance of the British

Foreign Office embedded Officer T.E. Lawrence operating on the above

understanding - an Arab government and administration began to form with the

Hashemite Faisal I as its King.44 Shapira describes these years as the ‘pivotal

years in shaping the nature of political relations with the British and the Arabs’,

years that saw ‘bitter disappointment’ turn into an ‘upsurge in national feeling and

its militant expression.’45 The aforementioned bitter disappointment was felt no

more than in 1920, when the new government in Damascus officially declared the

Subalternity and the Critique of Postcolonial Reason. Malden, Massachusetts: Polity. Pg 96-97; Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G. & Tiffin, H. (1995). The Post-colonial Studies Reader. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 234-5. 41

Merriam-Webster: noun, sub·al·ter·ni·ty \ˌsəˌbo lˈtərnətē, -bal-\, the quality, state, or position of being subaltern. See also

Merriam-Webster: adjective, sub·al·tern \sə- bo l-tərn, a person holding a subordinate position. 42

Baxter, K. & Akbarzadeh, S. (2008). Pg 13-4. 43

Tucker, S.C., Wood, L.M. & Murphy, J.D. (1999). The European Powers in the First World War: An Encyclopedia. Abingdon, England: Taylor & Francis Group. Pg 677; Gettleman, M.E. & Schaar, S. (2003). The Middle East and Islamic World Reader. New York, New York: Grove Press. Pg 116; Wagner, H.L. (2004). The Division of the Middle East: The Treaty of Sèvres. New York, New York: Chelsea House Publishers. Pg 33. 44

Ulrichsen, K.C. (2014). The First World War in the Middle East. London, England: C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd. Pg 186; Pateman, J. (2012). T.E. Lawrence in Lincolnshire. Lincolnshire, England: The Pateran Press. Pg 7; Zeine, Z.N. (1977). Struggle for Arab Independence: Western Diplomacy and the Rise and Fall of Faisal's Kingdom in Syria. Delmar, New York: Caravan Books. Pg 118-9. 45

Shapira, A. (1992). Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881-1948. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. Pg 85.



independence of the Levant and Mesopotamia. The Sykes-Picot agreement then

swung into full military force, with Britain and France ‘awarded’ Mandates six

weeks later, splitting the area and engaging locals militarily;

Faysal was forcibly ejected from Damascus by the French, and the British spent ₤40 million suppressing an open rebellion in Iraq. In Mecca, the stunned Sharif Hussein realised the extent of the betrayal. “I listened to the faithless Englishmen.”

46

Anghie contends that on paper, the Mandate system itself was built on the premise

that inchoate states were not mature enough to rule themselves, requiring ‘nursing’

as they were ‘deficient in power’.47 However by setting up government in

Damascus in such a short period of time, and doing so in accordance to the

understandings held within the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence, the Arabs

showed the capacity to administer their land domestically and operate

internationally; this negates the validity of the core mission of the Mandates as

control by great powers ‘until they [the Arabs] can rule themselves’. Stahn, Korman

and Claude argue that instead of supporting the development of young nations, it is

clear that the mandate system ‘served as a surrogate of conquest, because it

granted the victorious powers the substance of control over the newly acquired

territories.’48

46

Teller, M. (2002). The Rough Guide to Jordan. London, England: Rough Guides Publishers. Pg 386-7. 47

Anghie, A. (2004). Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law. New York, New York: Cambridge University Press. Pg 119. 48

Stahn, C. (2008). The Law and Practice of International Territorial Administration: Versailles to Iraq and Beyond. New York, New York: Cambridge University Press. Pg 75; Korman, S. (1996). The Right of Conquest : The Acquisition of Territory by Force in International Law and Practice. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Pg 143; Claude, I.L. (1964). Swords Into Plowshares: The Problems and Progress of International Organization. New York, New York: McGraw-Hill. Pg 323.



Cartoon published in 1907 depicts the Arab perspective on the Sykes-Picot arrangements

The 1920 San Remo Conference proved the ‘consolidation of this scheme’49,

providing the League of Nations approval necessary for the creation of the

geostrategic groundwork required to support the restructured ownership of the

Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC). This Company was 50% owned by British

Petroleum (BP), 22.5% Royal Dutch Shell and 25% of which was given to France

in exchange for British control of Mosul.50 But as Hunt eludes to in The History of

Iraq, the San Remo Conference and the fulfilment of the Sykes-Picot Agreement

49

Maugeri, L. (2006). The Age of Oil: The Mythology, History, and Future of the World's Most Controversial Resource. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 27. 50

Vassiliou, V.S. (2009). The A to Z of the Petroleum Industry. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, Inc., Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 275; Atasoy, Y. (2005). Turkey, Islamists and Democracy: Transition and Globalization in a Muslim State. New York, New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 41; Amineh, M.P. (2007). The Greater Middle East in Global Politics: Social Science Perspectives on the Changing Geography of the World Politics. Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV. Pg 30; Fry, M.G., Goldstein, E. & Langhorne, R. (2002). Guide to International Relations and Diplomacy. New York, New York: Continuum Social Science. Pg 199; Kibaroğlu, M. & Kibaroğlu, A. (2009). Global Security Watch--Turkey: A Reference Handbook. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 21.



would have a lasting influence on the region’s stability due to the arbitrary nature of

the boundaries and their geostrategic effects on the ground;

As part of the agreement at San Remo, new national and regional borders were drawn for each mandate. These essentially amounted to straight lines drawn on the Middle East map, with little consideration or interest in traditional boundaries of local realities. The new borders crisscrossed the desert and divided local tribes and clans as well as inadvertently placing rival tribes under the same mandate. These arbitrarily drawn borders caused strife throughout the Middle East but were particularly disastrous for Iraq.

51

1920-1922: The Great Iraqi Revolution and Air Policing

The result of the Sykes-Picot betrayal was felt on the ground immediately. Faisal

and his new Syrian government in Damascus now faced the sharp end of Sykes-

Picot, and their ‘scepticism turned to fear and outrage in late October 1919 as

British troops withdrew from the Syrian interior’52, leaving Faisal to defend his

independent Arabia alone.53 The French disembarked in Beirut in late 191954

where they took over from British troops, invading Syria and defeating Faisal at the

Battle of Maysaloun by July 24th 192055 which sent Faisal into exile in Britain.56

British priorities had changed, and they now chose to refocus their attention on

control of the southern region of Transjordan - west of the Hijaz Railway - a move

which Heydemann and Kent write was partially to shore up the southern Arabian

region against French encroachment, but mostly to secure important lines of

communication between Iraq and the Suez Canal base of operations.57 Schubert

and Kraus make the argument that the construction of the port and oil refineries at

51

Hunt, C. (2005). The History of Iraq. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 61. 52

Khoury, P.S. (1983). Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism: The Politics of Damascus 1860-1920. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Pg 89. 53

Hakim, C. (2013). The Origins of the Lebanese National Idea, 1840-1920. London, England: University of California Press. Pg 251-3; Sluglett, P. & Weber, S. (2010). Syria and Bilad Al-Sham Under Ottoman Rule: Essays in Honour of Abdul Karim Rafeq. Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV. Pg 588. 54

Beinin, J. (2001). Workers and Peasants in the Modern Middle East. New York, New York: Cambridge University Press. Pg 82. 55

Tabar, P. (2010). Politics, Culture and the Lebanese Diaspora. Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Pg 234. 56

Chamberlain, M.E. (2013). Longman Companion to European Decolonisation in the Twentieth Century. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 131; Smith, E. (2013). The Alec Guinness Handbook - Everything you need to know about Alec Guinness. Brisbane, Australia: Emereo Publishing. Pg 185; Taylor, N.W. (2013). The Tapestry of Israel. Bloomington, Indiana: AuthorHouse UK Ltd. Pg 98. 57

Heydemann, S. (2000). War, Institutions, and Social Change in the Middle East. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. Pg 50; Kent, M, (2013). Moguls and Mandarins: Oil, Imperialism and the Middle East in British Foreign Policy 1900-1940. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 25.



Haifa58 and the Transjordan mandate worked together to secure the region as a

‘transport state’ for Mesopotamian oil, projecting power over Egypt as the

geostrategic foundation of a broader campaign for a monopoly over the Suez.59

Given the above overarching British ‘master plan’ for the region, the nature of the

Sykes-Picot deal and the international rubber-stamp of support from the League of

Nations, Grainger writes that the outcome was decided long before it was actioned;

The constitutional [independent] system, monarchy or not, would have involved Britain and France abandoning their normal imperialistic attitudes, and breaking their promises to each other in favour of an untried ruler in a devastated country. Faisal never stood a chance of holding onto a Syrian kingdom, certainly not once Britain and France decided that their imperial interests demanded that they gain control of parts of his land for themselves.

60

The San Remo Conference put the region into French control in the north and

British control in the south, eventually including British support for an al-Saud

government in the Arabia peninsula - another promised made during the war -

which would lead to Sharif Hussein’s forced exile from Mecca in 1924.61 A plain

text reading of the actions of the two allied powers may assign blame squarely on

the decisions of persons or characters of the time. However it is useful to examine

these events from the perspective of a realist. Zedalis proposes that the actions of

states are their attempt to accurately ascertain the interests and motivations of

competing players for a region’s wealth, and provide the necessary resources to

counter or rebalance the equation.62 Hadfield-Amkhan further suggest that in the

‘realist paradigm’, states are driven by the ‘imperatives of rational power’ and the

‘cold rules of statecraft’.63 The realist perspective assists in understanding that in

the beyond players and people there existed a cold but rational philosophy of

58

El-Hasan, H.A. (2010). Israel Or Palestine? Is the Two-state Solution Already Dead?: A Political and Military History of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict. New York, New York: Algora Publishing. Pg 137-8. 59

Schubert, F.N. & Kraus, T.L. (1995). The Whirlwind War: The United States Army in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Washington, D.C.: Center for Military History, The Government Printing Office. Pg 5. 60

Grainger, J.D. (2013). The Battle for Syria, 1918-1920. Suffolk, England: Boydell Press, Boydell & Brewer Ltd. Pg 236. 61

Bowen, W.H. (2015). The History of Saudi Arabia. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, LLC. Pg 174; Campo, J.E. (2009). Encyclopedia of Islam. New York, New York: Facts on File, Inc., InfoBase Publishing. Pg 468. 62

Zedalis, R.J. (2012). Oil and Gas in the Disputed Kurdish Territories: Jurisprudence, Regional Minorities and Natural Resources in a Federal System. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 9. 63

Hadfield-Amkhan, A. (2010). British Foreign Policy, National Identity, and Neoclassical Realism. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Pg 101.



international relations by which the actions of the British and French make perfect

sense. Beyond the obvious international relations theories, San Remo also had

immediate impact in Iraq on the ground. Two months after the 1920 Conference in

Italy, the streets of Iraq were seething with anger towards British rule, and Tripp

writes that authorities reacted forcefully to demonstrations with heavy security

forces and intelligence services but were not able to prevent the spread of dissent;

The rebellion was developing its own momentum outside Baghdad. As early as May 1920 the sheikhs of some of the major tribes of the mid-Euphrates had discussed the possibility of acting against the British occupying forces.

64

Central to the problems faced by the new nation and its imperial masters was the

nation’s very design. Çetinsaya describes the British Mandate agreed to at San

Remo - formalised in 1921 - was made up of the three Ottoman vilayets or

provinces of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra.65 This created a nation with a diverse

ethnic and religious demographic most clearly seen along Sunni/Shi’a lines; Basra

a primarily Shi’a Arab province, Baghdad primarily Sunni Arab and Mosul primarily

Sunni Kurd.66 Additionally land and taxation policies, instituted in the immediately

aftermath of San Remo by the British, ignited class divisions where private

ownership now succeeded over the tradition of communal land use and cultivation,

as suggested by Ayubi and Lukitz.67 DeFronzo explains ‘this explosive British

agricultural policy provoked class conflict, accentuating tribalism and tribal

divisions.’68

Along with the structural sectarian issues caused by design and class tension

caused through land policy, the British decision to impose a tax on all those

wanting to be buried in the Holy City of Najaf - where Shi’a from all over the world

64

Tripp, C. (2000). A History of Iraq. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Pg 43. 65

Çetinsaya, G. (2006). The Ottoman Administration of Iraq, 1890-1908. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 15. 66

Rear, M. (2008). Intervention, Ethnic Conflict and State-Building in Iraq: A Paradigm for the Post-Colonial State. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 164; Castellino, J. & Cavanaugh, K.A. (2013). Minority Rights in the Middle East. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Pg 189-190; Davis, E. (2005). Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. Pg 20; Shamash, V. (2008). Memories of Eden: A Journey Through Jewish Baghdad. Surrey, England: Forum Books Ltd. Pg 57. 67

Ayubi, N.N. (1995). Over-stating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East. New York, New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 95; Lukitz, L. (1995). Iraq: The Search for National Identity. London, England: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd. Pg 50. 68

DeFronzo, J. (2010). The Iraq War: Origins and Consequences. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Westview Press, Perseus Books Group. Pg 14.



came to rest - led to an intense hatred of the British authorities from within the

Shi’a clerics.69 After San Remo, the British immediately began regulated money

flowing from Persian-based Shi’a charities and their pilgrimages to shrines,

severely depleting both the income and influence of the Shi’a clerics or

‘mujtahids’.70 The response from the Shi’a clerics was immediate. In the spring of

1920, Ayatollah Muhammad Taqi al-Shirazi and supporting Shi’a clerics demanded

complete independence under the rule of Faisal or Abdullah, sons of the Sharif of

Mecca, and an end to the British occupation.71 For a time, Sunni and Shi’a even

worked together to formulate the plans for a revolution.72 After the British arrested

his son, al-Shirazi issued a fatwa stating that working for the British Administration

was a sin and forbidden, which incited both peaceful and armed protest againsts

the British.73 The armed revolt began in Mosul and quickly spread along the

Euphrates, and soon the Sunni Kurds of the northern-most regions began revolting

against British rule too. The Kurdish interests was in securing an independence

they believed had been promised to them by the British before the fall of the

Ottomans.74

Of particular note to the central question of stability and motivations is the manner

in which the British forces quelled and ultimately defeated the Shi’a led rebellion. A

great deal of evidence exists that not only did Churchill’s decision as War

Secretary to use Royal Air Force and incendiary bombings cause a turn in the tide

69

Farag, G. (2007). Diaspora and Transitional Administration: Shiite Iraqi Diaspora and the Administration of Post-Saddam Hussein Iraq. Ann Arbor, Michigan: ProQuest Information and Learning Company. Pg 131; Phillips, D.L. (2015). The Kurdish Spring: A New Map of the Middle East. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. Pg 15. 70

Nakash, &. (1994).The Shi'is of Iraq. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Pg 67. 71

Bengio, O. & Litvakm, M. (2011). The Sunna and Shi'a in History: Division and Ecumenism in the Muslim Middle East. New York, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 106; Makdisi, S.A. & Elbadawi, I. (2011). Democracy in the Arab World: Explaining the Deficit. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 244; Bowen, S.W. (2009). Hard Lessons: the Iraq Reconstruction Experience: Report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq. Darby, Pennsylvania: Diane Publishing Co. Pg 2; 72

Rubin, B.M. (2010). Guide to Islamist Movements, Volume 2. New York, New York: M.E. Sharpe, Inc. Pg 280. 73

Hechtaer, M. (2013). Alien Rule. New York, New York: Cambridge University Press. Pg 62; Rogan, E. (2009).The Arabs: A History. New York, New York: Basic Books, Perseus Books Group. Pg 171-2; Israeli, R. (2004). The Iraq War: Hidden Agendas and Babylonian Intrigue : the Regional Impact on Shi'ites, Kurds, Sunnis and Arabs. Brighton, England: Sussex Academic Press. Pg 47. 74

Note: The Treaty of Sevres was originally designed to accommodate this, but due to the rebellion of the Atatürks the Treaty was voided and the Kurds left with no homeland. See Moazami, B. (2013). State, Religion, and Revolution in Iran, 1796 to the Present. New York, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 88-9; see also Ring, T., Salkin, R.M. & La Boda, S. (1995). International Dictionary of Historic Places: Southern Europe. Chicago, Illinois: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers. Pg 192.



in favour of the British, but additionally the use of chemical weapons in the form of

gas shells fired from British artillery positions had significant effect on what was

understatedly referred to at the time as ‘morale’.75 Such actions fuelled Shi’a hatred

of the British forces, and translated into sectarian tensions and conflict when, after

the rebellion, the Sunni Faisal was declared King and supported by a dominance of

Sunni leaders in key government positions of power.76 British Squadron Leader

Arthur Harris reported on the effectiveness of what was at the time referred to as

‘air policing’, a policy designed to reduce the need for an expensive boots-on-the-

ground operation;

“They [the Arabs] now know what real bombing means, in casualties and in damage; they now know that within 45 minutes a full sized village can be practically wiped out and a third of its inhabitants killed or injured by four or five machines which offer them no real target, no opportunity for glory as warriors, no effective means of escape.”

77

Ironically, it is that same strategic combination of fire bombs from aircraft and

chemical weapons that the West now opposes in Bashar al-Assad’s response to

the civil war.78 In the aftermath of the suppression of the rebellion, between 5,000

and 10,000 Arabs and Kurds, Sunni and Shi’a were killed, just a few months after

fighting broke out.79 After the rebellion, air policing remained a prominent feature in

post-revolution Iraq. British forces were augmented to rely less on ground troops,

with more emphasis placed on the ‘striking power of the aircraft to bomb villages,

tribes and individual leaders that proved unwilling to acknowledge the authority of

75

Mikaberidze, A. (2013). Atrocities, Massacres, and War Crimes: An Encyclopedia [2 Volumes]: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, Inc. Pg 318; Leonard, T.M. (2006). Encyclopedia of the Developing World. New York, New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Pg 868; Kaplan, L.D. (1995). From the Eye of the Storm: Regional Conflicts and the Philosophy of Peace. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Rodopi B.V. Pg 127. 76

Panjwani, I. (2012). The Shi'a of Samarra: The Heritage and Politics of a Community in Iraq. New York, New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 181. 77

Dwyer, P.G. & Ryan, L. (2012). Theatres Of Violence: Massacre, Mass Killing and Atrocity throughout History. Oxford, England: Berghahn Books. Pg 273; Grosscup, B. (2006). Strategic Terror: The Politics and Ethics of Aerial Bombardment. New York, New York: Zed Books Ltd. Pg 55; Cockburn, A. (1995). The Golden Age Is in Us: Journeys and Encounters. New York, New York: Verso, New Left Books. Pg 191; Young, R. (2003). Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Pg 37-8; McDowall, D. (2004). A Modern History of the Kurds: Third Edition. New York, New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 180. 78

Attar, S. (April 12, 2015). Aleppo Diary: The Carnage From Syrian Barrel Bombs. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 2015, available from http://goo.gl/b8GzlA; Masi, A. (March 24, 2015). Assad Regime Drops Chlorine Barrel Bombs As Jabhat al-Nusra, Rebels Battle For Idlib. International Business Times. Retrieved April 2015, available from http://goo.gl/F4ExAe 79

Martel, G. (2007). A Companion to International History 1900-2001. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Pg 214; Moazami, B. (2013). State, Religion, and Revolution in Iran, 1796 to the Present. New York, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 89.



the central government of Iraq’ or ‘to pay taxes.’80 The rebellion changed British

imperial strategy. Rather than relying on an expensive ground campaign, they

decided to rule through superior technology combined with increased but still

limited autonomy. At the Cairo Conference in 1921 Britain, represented by

Churchill and Lawrence, planned the reorganisation of Iraq into a quasi-

independent nation still subservient to British interests.81 Despite the instability

caused by the revolution and the significant cost of suppressing it, Bromley states

that Iraq remained geostrategically essential to British interests as an area that

along with Transjordan, Palestine and Egypt, ‘connected the eastern

Mediterranean to the Gulf and hence to India’.82 Choueiri and Rogers write that

Churchill’s plan was cunning; with Faisal as King, Britain would maintain control

over ‘military, fiscal and judicial administration’, and would rely on the ‘vicious but

low-cost use of air power’ to pacify the tribes, as well as a higher subsidy paid to

Arabian leader Ibn Saud financed by revenues from Mosul oil. 83

The Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1922 developed in response to the 1920 rebellion was

the tool of this continued exploitation, and despite seeming to provide Iraq with

more autonomy, Axelrod describes the deal below as a ‘canny’ and ‘diplomatic

sleight of hand’;

In the treaty of 1922, the British pledged to prepare Iraq for membership in the League of Nations - the final mark of sovereignty - “as soon as possible.” It was a vague phrase that gave the British an indeterminate amount of time to continue to conduct themselves in Iraq pretty much as they had under the mandate. In fact, all that was different was the word mandate.

84

80

Terry, J.D. (2008). The Forty Thieves: Churchill, the Cairo Conference, and the Policy Debate Over Strategies of Colonial Control in British Mandatory Iraq, 1918--1924. Ann Arbor, Michigan: ProQuest LLC. Pg 5-6. 81

Fieldhouse, D.K. (2002). Kurds, Arabs and Britons: The Memoir of Col. W.A. Lyon in Kurdistan, 1918-1945. New York, New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 94; Fawcett, L. (2005). International Relations of the Middle East. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Pg 48. 82

Bromley, S. (1994). Rethinking Middle East Politics. Cambridge, England: Polity Press. Pg 77. 83

Choueiri, Y.M. (2005). A Companion to the History of the Middle East. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Pg 515; Rogers, P. (2008). Global Security and the War on Terror: Elite Power and the Illusion of Control. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 63. 84

Axelrod, A. (2009). Little-Known Wars of Great and Lasting Impact. Beverly, Massachusetts: Fair Winds Press, Quayside Publishing Group. Pg 247.



Davis agrees and cites the move of British policy in Iraq from the Foreign Office to

the Colonial Office shows the true attitudes of London.85 Spencer discusses an the

reciprocation of such hostile attitudes found in Iraqi poetry written in response to

the strings-attached nature of the new arrangement;

In the Book of Politics we are a people,

Owners of Sovereignty, yet we do

not even possess wreckage we could call our own.

In the Book of Politics we are Free,

Yet we are no more than handicapped orphans.86

One cannot help but hear in this Middle Eastern poetry echoes of European

Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau; ‘Man is born free; and

everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still

remains a greater slave than they.’87 The appearance of Faisal working for the

British seemed to some, like Grand Ayatollah Mahdi al-Khalisi, to be sinful

according to earlier fatwas issued by al-Shirazi. He would later issue his own

decrees boycotting the 1922-3 elections, snowballing sectarian conflict with Sunni

elites who had succumbed to the British and joined the new government.88 The

rebellion against British imperial forces was a sign that the region was deeply

angered. The policies of the British immediately after the rebellion stoked the fire of

tension between groups with the hope that the British could prevent further united

revolt.89 It later became clear that the brutal suppression of the 1920 revolt was

very much connected to reasserting the primary imperial goal of securing

85

Davis, R. (2013). British Decolonisation, 1918-1984. Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Pg 49. 86

Spencer, W. (2000). Iraq: Old Land, New Nation in Conflict. Brookfield, Connecticut: Twenty-First Century Books, The Millbrook Press, Inc. Pg 64. 87

Rousseau, J-J. (1913). Social Contract & Discourses. [Translated Cole, G.D.H.]. New York, New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. 88

Sluglett, P. (2007). Britain in Iraq: Contriving King and Country, 1914-1932. New York, New York: Columbia University Press. Pg 56; Osman, K. (2015). Sectarianism in Iraq: The Making of State and Nation Since 1920. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 70; Haddad, F. (2011). Sectarianism in Iraq: Antagonistic Visions of Unity. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Pg 42. 89

Kevorkian, H. (2008). Islamic Liberation Theology: Resisting the Empire. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 179.



Mesopotamian oil concessions and monopolies for their corporate interests in the

field, first and foremost the Iraqi Petroleum Company.

1922-1939: The Iraqi Petroleum Company and Quasi-Independence

Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Lord Curzon announced at the end of the

Great War that the ‘Allies floated to victory on a wave of oil’.90 He made the

statement as the Chairman of the Inter-Allied Petroleum Conference, which Ferrier

and Bamberg describe as ‘an expression of allied euphoria’ post victory.91 It

signified the energy and economic intentions of the British and French for the

decades to come and was one of was the first signs that the McMahon-Hussein

accord would not stand after the war. The allies had won and they had done so

using a resource that conveniently happened to be found in rich quantities in a

region they had just ‘liberated’ and thus conveniently already had under their

control.92 The euphoria between allies and the cooperation shown at the Inter-

Allied Petroleum Conference of 1918 was to be short lived. The British were the

first to make an aggressive move to secure an oil monopoly, demanding the return

of the strategically important French-owned but British-registered oil tankers,

representing the bulk of the French fleet.93

A monopoly was essential to survival, and there can no underestimating the

significance of this for the research question. Under Churchill’s tenure as First Lord

of the Admiralty, the entire British Royal Navy fleet had been converted to oil from

Welsh coal.94 Compared to the safe, domestically available coal, the faster, more

90

Olien, R.M. & Hinton, D.D. (2007). Wildcatters: Texas Independent Oilmen. Austin, Texas: Texas Monthly Press. Pg 13; Clark, W.R. (2005). Petrodollar Warfare: Oil, Iraq and the Future of the Dollar. Gabriola Island, Canada: New Society Publishers. Pg 69; Heshelow, K. (2008). Investing in Oil and Gas: The ABC's of Dpps (Direct Participation Program). Bloomington, Indiana: iUniverse. Pg 55. 91

Ferrier, R.W. & Bamberg, J.H. (1982). The History of the British Petroleum Company: Volume 1, The Developing Years, 1901-1932. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Pg 356. 92

Coleman, D.C. & Mathias, P. (1984). Enterprise and History: Essays in Honour of Charles Wilson. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Pg 242; Li, X. & Molina, M. (2014). Oil: A Cultural and Geographic Encyclopedia of Black Gold [2 volumes], Volume 1. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, LLC. Pg 248; Frank, A.F. (2005). Oil Empire: Visions of Prosperity in Austrian Galicia. Cambridge, Massachusetts: President and Fellows of Harvard College. Pg 202. 93

Nowell, G.P. (1994). Mercantile States and the World Oil Cartel, 1900-1939. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. Pg 113. 94

Yergin, D. (2012). The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power. New York, New York: Free Press, Simon & Schuster, Inc. Pg 140; Rasor, E.L. (2000). Winston S. Churchill, 1874-1965: A Comprehensive Historiography and Annotated Bibliography. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 157.



efficient oil had given the British greater sea power and naval supremacy over the

German Navy, which would now require an uninterrupted supply.95 Foreign policy

was now required not be subservient to energy security, and energy security

subservient to national security. Despite parliamentary opposition to the

conversion, it was ultimately the lobbying of Managing Director of Anglo-Persian

Oil Company (APOC) Charles Greenway that convinced Churchill - who had

helped to form APOC - to complete the move to oil, a policy begun by under

Admiral John Arbuthnot Fisher in response to the lobbying of Royal Dutch Shell

founder and President Marcus Samuel.96

Behind the betrayal of Arab independence for oil wealth and economic dominance,

lies the role played by and commercial interests of the companies, manipulating

the geopolitics to their own ends. Whilst APOC was set up to take advantage of

Persian strategic oil reserves97 - discovered in Tehran by British geologist William

Knox D’Arcy in 1908 after being granted an oil exploration concession in 190198

which was first secured by the British defeat of Iran 1856-799 - the Iraqi Petroleum

Company was set up in Mesopotamia in much the same circumstances and for the

very same purpose. The oil giant which would go on to become British Petroleum

(BP) was originally named the Turkish Petroleum Company (referred to hereafter

as ‘the Company’), and formed in 1912 and attained oil concessions from the

Ottoman Sultan in Constantinople.100 By 1914, following Churchill’s move to

convert the British fleet to oil, the British government moved to become a majority

95

Shojai, S. (1995). The New Global Oil Market: Understanding Energy Issues in the World Economy. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 218. 96

Vassiliou, V.S. (2009). The A to Z of the Petroleum Industry. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, Inc., Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 136; Tamminen, T. (2009). Lives Per Gallon: The True Cost of Our Oil Addiction. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, Shearwater Books, The Centre for Resource Economics. Pg 84. 97

McCormick, J. (2010). Comparative Politics in Transition. Boston, Massachusetts: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning. Pg 506; Davenport-Hines, R.P.T. & Jones, G. (1989). British Business in Asia Since 1860. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Pg 36. 98

Pesaran, E. (2011). Iran's Struggle for Economic Independence: Reform and Counter-Reform in the Post-Revolutionary Era. New York, New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Pg 24. 99

Mirza, R.M. (2010). American Invasions: Canada to Afghanistan, 1775 to 2010. Bloomington, Indiana: Trafford Publishing. Pg 240; Wright, D. (2001). The English Amongst the Persians: Imperial Lives in Nineteenth-Century Iran. New York, New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 128. 100

Campbell, C.J. & Wöstmann, A. (2013). Campbell's Atlas of Oil and Gas Depletion. Berlin, Germany: Springer Science & Business Media. Pg 287; Orwel, G. (2006). Black Gold: The New Frontier in Oil for Investors. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Pg 101.



shareholder of APOC, and subsequently had the British-controlled Turkish National

Bank’s 50% share in the Company transferred to APOC.101 In the same year, the

Company signed a deal with Ottoman Grand Vizier Mehmed Ferid Pasha giving it

exploration and mineral production rights in the vilayets of Baghdad and Mosul.102

This status quo continued after the war until a settlement with American interests

which changed the name of the Company from ‘Turkish’ to the Iraqi Petroleum

Company (IPC, will continue to be referred to hereafter as ‘the Company’) in a deal

known as the ‘red line agreement’.103 This agreement redistributed shares of the

Company into five components as shown in the table below.104

Percent Company Ownership (Modern Name)

23.75% Anglo-Persian Oil Company British majority (BP)

23.75% Royal Dutch Shell 60% Dutch, 40% British (Shell)

23.75% Compagnie Française des Pétroles French majority (Total)

23.75% Near East Development Corporation American (Exxon, Mobil, Chevron)

05.00% Calouste Gulbenkian Armenian oil billionaire investor

With so much to gain - or lose - from the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the

concessions already granted, it is clear that these oil exploration and production

interests were a major motivation for the Sykes-Picot arrangement, the deals made

at the 1920 San Remo Conference and the suppression of the Iraqi Revolution that

followed them both. It was necessary to secure the region and control who came

out on top, post-war. The presence of imperial British forces and influence -

101

Weissenbacher, M. (2009). Sources of Power: How Energy Forges Human History. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, LLC. Pg 374-5; Askari, H., Mohseni, A. & Daneshvar, S. (2009). The Militarization of the Persian Gulf: An Economic Analysis. Gloucestershire, England: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. Pg 102; Hahnemann, S. (2014). Oil, Israel and Modernity: The West's cultural and military interventions in the Middle-East. Hamburg, Germany: Books on Demand. Pg 76-7. 102

Styan, D. (2006). France and Iraq: Oil, Arms and French Policy-Making in the Middle East. New York, New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 13; Mitchell, T. (2011). Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil. London, England: Verso, New Left Books. Pg 58-9. 103

Marcel, V. (2006). Oil Titans: National Oil Companies in the Middle East. London, England: Chatham House, Royal Institute of International Affairs, Brookings Institution Press. Pg 18; Nersesian, R. (2015). Energy for the 21st Century: A Comprehensive Guide to Conventional and Alternative Sources. New York, New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Pg 152; Hurewitz, J.C. (1979). The Middle East and North Africa in World Politics: A Documentary Record. British-French supremacy, 1914-1945. London, England: Yale University Press. Pg 399-400. 104

Kayal, A.G. (2002). Control Of Oil. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 68-70; Markus, U. (2015). Oil and Gas: The Business and Politics of Energy. New York, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 75-6; Davies, N.J.S. (2010). Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Nimble Books, LLC. Pg 331-2; Alam, M. (1995). Iraqi Foreign Policy Since Revolution. New Delhi, India: K.M. Rai Mittal, Mittal Publications. Pg 144.



operating from two major military bases - was a seriously destabilising force in Iraq

over the research period. Heptulla writes security forces operating ‘as ‘advisors’

remained active instruments for the British to convert this independence into a

veiled protectorate’105 and helped attain monopoly over Iraqi oil concessions and

production;

In 1925, the British-controlled Iraqi government agreed to award a concession to explore and eventually produce oil, which covered most of Iraq’s territory, to the Iraqi Petroleum Company (IPC), of which Iraq owned nothing except the name… the companies were ‘to determine the output, price and export levels’, effectively placing the political and economic destiny of the country in the hands of a few multinational companies with very strong ties to Western countries.

106

The key phrase here is ‘British-controlled Iraqi government’, which on one hand

was the root of the instability, rebellion and fissures between groups that supported

the British and ones that did not, but on the other hand the very source of total

British control over oil concessions. With the balancing act required by the above

competing realities, and with Britain ‘concerned primarily with protecting the Suez

Canal and gaining access to Arabian oil reserves’107, the Iraqi government was

made a puppet to their interests, a rubber stamp mechanism that they could control

by force.108

The sequence of key dates (1908 oil is discovered in Persia, 1912 the Company is

formed, 1914 Britain buys majority in APOC, which then buys majority in the

Company) as well as the earlier decision by Churchill to complete the conversion of

the fleet to oil by 1914, indicates an unavoidable reality; the British interests in

Mesopotamian oil not only pre-dates the Great War and the fall of the Ottoman

Empire, but both the McMahon-Hussein and Sykes-Picot arrangement. Before the

Great War even began, the British government had purchased a majority stake in

the Company with sole rights to Mesopotamian oil at the same time as having

105

Heptulla, N. (1991). Indo-West Asian Relations: The Nehru Era. New Delhi, India: Allied Publishers Limited. Pg 100. 106

Looney, R.E. (2012). Handbook of Oil Politics. New York, New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Pg 250. 107

Parsons, T.H. (2014). The Second British Empire: In the Crucible of the Twentieth Century. Lanham, Maryland: The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Company, Inc. Pg 73. 108

Falola, T. & Genova, A. (2005). The Politics of the Global Oil Industry: An Introduction. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 184; Casey, M.S. (2007). The History of Kuwait. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 86.



converted their entire navy to the resource. It is the contention of this thesis that it

is very unlikely that the overtures made in the McMahon-Hussein

Correspondences regarding a fully independent Arabia were ever legitimately

sincere, given the essential nature of oil to British national security well before

1915. Bawardi writes that oil was now a function of national security as ‘reliance on

oil after converting from coal began to drive its [Britain’s] policy in the Middle

East.’109 Collier and O'Neill argue it was the combination of the ‘growth of the Royal

Air Force and the mechanisation of the British Army’ with the change to an oil-fired

Navy - moves both predating and following the McMahon-Hussein letters - that

‘rapidly increase the British dependence on the Middle Eastern oil fields.’110

Indeed, as is displayed in the 1920’s era cartoons below, the moves of ‘Western’

governments as interested in nothing else other than unfettered access to oil did

not go unnoticed;

Two period cartoons from 1920 depicting reaction to Western energy policies.

109

Bawardi, H.J. (2014). The Making of Arab Americans: From Syrian Nationalism to U.S. Citizenship. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press. Pg 162. 110

Collier, H. & O’Neill, R.J. (2010). World War II: The Mediterranean 1940-1945. New York, New York: Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 14.



Satia writes that oil concessions continued to dominate the Anglo-Iraqi relationship,

especially in the lead up to the 1932 official Iraqi ‘independence’ negotiations.111

Many writers agree that the outcome of the 1932 negotiations can be at most be

signified as an ‘increase in autonomy’ or ‘quasi-independence’.112 Roshwald makes

the argument that the British created a ‘façade of Arab self-government [wrapped

in] their hegemony’ using ‘Arab nationalism as the handmaiden of their imperial

ambitions.’113 Dodge adds that Iraq was given ‘de jure independence’ -

independence on paper only - because without the assistance of British air policing

and financial loans from the British Exchequer, Iraq’s Sunni politicians could not

control the ‘diverse and divided population.’114

It is for this reason that the formal end to the British Mandate in Iraq in 1932 makes

little difference to the question of British energy and economic policies causing

instability through the research period. By 1936, under the endless British

influence, air policing and control over government in addition to a crushing of tribal

unrest, the nation imploded.115 In October 1936, Iraq had its first military coup, in

which the IQAF (Iraqi Air Force) was an integral component.116 Within a year the

leaders of the coup were assassinated, and between 1936 and 1941 there were six

more coups with military officers playing decisive roles in ‘deposing or appointing

prime ministers either through the threat of or the actual use of force.’117 By

creating a weak central government to rule over three completely different

demographic strongholds as one, puppet nation, the British government secured

the oil concessions it needed for the Iraqi Petroleum Company. However, in the

111

Satia, P. (2008). Spies in Arabia: The Great War and the Cultural Foundations of Britain's Covert Empire in the Middle East. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Pg 18. 112

Aboul-Enein, Y.H. & Aboul-Enein, B.H. (2013). The Secret War for the Middle East: The Influence of Axis and Allied Intelligence Operations During World War II. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. Pg 41; Natali, D. (2005). The Kurds And the State: Evolving National Identity in Iraq, Turkey, And Iran. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. Pg 47. 113

Roshwald, A. (2001). Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires: Central Europe, the Middle East and Russia, 1914-23. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 152-3, 188. 114

Dodge, T. (2003). Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation-building and a History Denied. London, England: C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd. Pg 31. 115

Al-Marashi, I. & Salama, S. (2008). Iraq's Armed Forces: An Analytical History. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 46. 116

Wien, P. (2006). Iraqi Arab Nationalism: Authoritarian, Totalitarian and Pro-Fascist Inclinations, 1932–1941. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 21; Rayburn, J. (2014). Iraq after America: Strongmen, Sectarians, Resistance. Stanford, California: Hoover Institution at Leland Stanford Junior University. Pg 58. 117

Bergquist, MAJ R.E. (1982). The role of airpower in the Iran-Iraq War. Darby, Pennsylvania: Diane Publishing Co. Pg 21.



process it set in place a chain of circumstances whereby the Iraqi government was

permanently unstable. Unable to govern it is own right without the assistance of the

British air force, Iraq was strife with sectarian tensions caused by preferential

treatment and support. Plagued by tribal uprisings, Iraq was utterly dependent on

British finance, all contributing to an entire era of military coups and revolts.

1939-1948: The Needs of Great Wars and the Little Wars That Fund Them

In the period which followed, political, social and sectarian conflict rose both as a

function of the past, but also in response to the events of the day, and the

mounting casus belli in continental Europe. In Iraq, Faisal had passed away in

1933 and in 1939 Faisal’s son King Ghazi - who was a vocal critic of British

influence118 - died suddenly in car crash, with British forces widely suspected of

killing him.119 Ghazi was too independent for London’s liking, and Tripathi writes

that British ambassador, Maurice Peterson, saw Britain’s only options as to have

him ‘controlled or deposed’;

R.A. Butler discussed with Peterson the “relative merits” of finding other members of the royal family to replace Ghazi “in case any emergency might arise.” Only a few days after these conversations, King Ghazi died in a car crash. The damage to the car was minimal, and the two other passengers in the car “disappeared without a trace” … the episode inflamed the anti-British sentiment in Iraq. Riots broke out, and the British consul in Mosul was assassinated.

120

The British named Ghazi’s three year old son King Faisal II, with his uncle Crown

Prince Abd al-Ilah as regent. Black writes al-Ilah was chosen precisely for his

support of the British, and was able to form a stable government with Prime

Minister Nuri al-Said, ‘generally viewed as tolerant of the British presence in

Iraq.’121 With a child as King and a puppet as regent, the British once more had a

firm grip on Iraqi politics, despite the seven military coups in six years.122 At the

118

Tripp, C. (2000). A History of Iraq. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Pg 98. 119

Khadduri, M. & Ghareeb, E. (1997). War in the Gulf, 1990-91: The Iraq-Kuwait Conflict and Its Implications. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Pg 43-4. 120

Tripathi, D. (2013). Imperial Designs: War, Humiliation & the Making of History. Dulles, Virginia: Potomac Books. Pg 72. 121

Black, E. (2004). Banking on Baghdad: Inside Iraq's 7,000-Year History of War, Profit, and Conflict. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Pg 309. 122

Simon, R.S. (1986). Iraq Between the Two World Wars: The Militarist Origins of Tyranny. New York, New York: Colombia University Press. Pg 107; Dougherty, B.K. & Ghareeb, E.A. (2013). Historical Dictionary of Iraq. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 22.



start of the Second World War, the British government moved to secure their oil

reserves in Iraq as a function of total war against Germany, for Iraq was ‘the object

of a peripheral but critical struggle between Great Britain and the Axis powers.’123

Nicosia also refers to a ‘contentious mix of opinion within the Iraqi government

toward the two sides in the war’ of deep concern to British interests.124 Pro-Axis

Iraqi Prime Minister Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, who had become a major player in the

opposition to British rule pre-war, led a short-lived coup in April 1941. This coup

precipitated the May 1941 Anglo-Iraq war which was successful in suppressing the

riots, overthrowing the coup leaders and re-installing British Hashemite puppets.125

In a broader context, regional anti-British sentiment and pro-Axis leanings led

Egypt’s King Farouk to express ‘great admiration for the Führer’126, with Saudi King

Ibn Saud expressed great respect for Germany in its anti-Jewish stance, promising

‘active assistance [in] jointly fighting the Jews.’127 The Saudi King even provided

Arabia land as support, becoming ‘a way station for German weaponry shipments

to Palestine.’128 Other players in the Middle East, such as the Mufti of Jerusalem

Haj Amin al-Husseini, were also pushing a pro-Axis agenda129 in line with Farouk

and Ibn Saud’s preference for German allegiance as a counterbalance to the

stranglehold Britain had held since the fall of the German-supported Ottoman

Empire.130

123

Mikaberidze, A. (2011). Conflict and Conquest in the Islamic World: A Historical Encyclopedia, Volume 1. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, LLC. Pg 420. 124

Nicosia, F.R. (2015). Nazi Germany and the Arab World. New York, New York: Cambridge University Press. Pg 163. 125

Kaplan, E. & Penslar, D.J. (2011). The Origins of Israel, 1882–1948: A Documentary History. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press. Pg 324; Barrett, R.C. (2007). The Greater Middle East and the Cold War: US Foreign Policy Under Eisenhower and Kennedy. New York, New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 109. 126

Reynold, N. (2014). Britain's Unfulfilled Mandate for Palestine. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 236. 127

Stegemann, B. & Vogel, D. (1995). The Mediterranean, South-east Europe, and North Africa, 1939-1941: From Italy's Declaration of Non-belligerence to the Entry of the United States Into the War. New York, New York: Oxford University Press. Pg 172. 128

Silberklang, D. (2007). Yad Vashem Studies. Göttingen, Germany: Wallstein-Verlag GmbH, Verlag und Werbung. Pg 126. 129

Küntzel, M. (2007). Jihad and Jew-hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11. New York, New York: Telos Press Publishing. Pg 31-3. 130

Muravchik, J. (2014). Making David Into Goliath: How the World Turned Against Israel. New York, New York: Encounter Books. Pg 7; Ṣulḥ, R. (2004). Lebanon and Arabism, National Identity and State Formation 1936-1945. New York, New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, St Martin’s Press in association with The Centre for Lebanese Studies, Oxford. Pg 129; Kedourie, E. (1974). Arabic Political Memoirs and Other Studies. New York, New York: Frank Cass & Co Ltd. Pg 24.



Thus the anti-British sentiment felt at the beginning of World War II in Iraq must be

seen in the context of the legacy of the imperial years of oppression and the

regional influence and control that Britain sought to keep in other nations like Saudi

Arabia and Egypt. At the same time it was also a proxy European conflict playing

out in the strategically important Middle East. In order to understand the actions of

the British in 1941 against the coup, it is useful to consider the geostrategic

importance of Iraq in the broader context of the British war with Germany. In

addition to British concerns for the safety of the Suez Canal, Diamond explains

why it was imperative Britain kept oil flowing out of Iraq; apart from American lend-

lease agreements, all British oil came from Iraq.

If Iraqi oil fell into German hands, coupled with an interruption in the transatlantic flow from the United States, Britain would probably have to surrender. Iraq’s loss would have also fanned the flames of Arab nationalism … which could have made the Middle East indefensible. The loss of the Suez Canal to Rommel, together with a successful rebellion in Iraq, would have threatened British control over India. Thus British control over Iraq was vital.

131

So naturally when al-Gaylani took power in 1941 and attempted to cut off oil to

Britain, the imperial forces invaded and swiftly defeated the pro-Axis Iraqi forces,

sending al-Gaylani into exile in Germany. This demonstrated that instability was

only unacceptable to Britain when it threatened strategic oil fields and through

them national security.132 Diamond is suggesting that if Iraq fell into in German

hands - or even out of British geopolitical orbit - and had Britain surrendered long

before the end of 1941, Axis powers may very well have won the Second World

War. There would be little stopping the British mainland falling to Germany.

In conclusion the strategic importance of oil as a function of national security

cannot be overstated when reviewing the events. The British had entangled their

external security in oil when they converted their fleet in 1912, ensuring naval

supremacy in the First World War, but exposing themselves to reliance on a

131

Diamond, J. (2012). Archibald Wavell: Leadership, Strategy, Conflict. Oxford, England: Osprey Publishing. Pg 32. 132

Gilbert, M. (2014). The Routledge Atlas of the Second World War. New York, New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Pg 37; Majd, M.G. (2012). August 1941: The Anglo-Russian Occupation of Iran and Change of Shahs. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, Inc. Pg 157; Lyman, R. (2005). Iraq 1941: The Battles for Basra, Habbaniya, Fallujah and Baghdad. Oxford, England: Osprey Publishing. Pg 16.



foreign energy resource. Thus at the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the British had a

compelling interest in maintaining a monopoly over Mesopotamian oil, signing

several agreements with the French, Dutch and American from 1920 through the

research period to both politically and economically control the nation. Iraq

revolted, Shi’a-led sectarian strife grew in response to preferential treatment of

Sunnis by the imperial establishment, and imperial control created a weak central

government. This puppet government was weak and vulnerable to collapse and

division, leading to an era of military coups. Finally a pro-Axis coup coupled with

the requirements of the Second World War forced Britain to invade Iraq once more

to prevent circumstances that would lead to British surrender in Europe. The period

was characterised by instability, with Britain motivated by the need to exploit Iraq

for oil to ensure the national security of the Empire.



2. French Mandate in Syria: Not to Be Left Out

“The key element was imperial perspective, that way of looking at a distant foreign

reality by subordinating it in one's gaze, constructing its history from one's own

point of view, seeing its people as subjects whose fate can be decided by what

distant administrators think is best for them. From such wilful perspectives ideas

develop, including the theory that imperialism is a benign and necessary thing…

Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires,

that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate." - Edward

W. Said133

France, in its imperial control of what is now modern day Syria and Lebanon

(referred to from here on as ‘Syria’), much like Britain in its imperial control of what

is now modern day Iraq, was a major contributor to the ongoing regional and

internal instabilities that plague these two nations. Much like Britain in Iraq, French

economic and energy interests in the region were key motivators for imperial

presence in Syria. As mentioned earlier, the events of the research period are but

one part in a series of four eras in Middle East history - as outlined by key author

Turner134 - that has removed agency and autonomy from the Arabs. This made

them subalterns according to a body of postcolonial critical theory espoused in

works by Sabry, Spivak, Courville and Mignolo and Escobar with influences from

Marx and Foucault.135 Importantly for the French in Syria, Lockman explains

Gramsci’s original works on ‘hegemony theory’, which is the model by which

imperial powers ‘convince subaltern groups to believe in the historical construction

133

Said, E.W. (July 20, 2003). Blind Imperial Arrogance: Vile stereotyping of Arabs by the U.S. ensures years of turmoil. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved April 2014, available from http://goo.gl/bSm0eI 134

Turner, J.A. (2014). Religious Ideology and the Roots of the Global Jihad: Salafi Jihadism and International Order. New York, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, St Martin’s Press, LLC. Pg 146. 135

Sabry, T. (2010). Cultural Encounters in the Arab World: On Media, the Modern and the Everyday. New York, New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 187; Morton, S. (2007). Gayatri Spivak: Ethics, Subalternity and the Critique of Postcolonial Reason. Cambridge, England: Polity Press. Pg 162; Courville, M. (2010). Edward Said's Rhetoric of the Secular. New York, New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. Pg 95; Mignolo, W.D. & Escobar, A. (2010). Globalization and the Decolonial Option. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 339-340.



of political community propagated by the ruling class’, adding that ‘control through

self-discipline by subaltern groups themselves is a much more efficient form of

domination than the exercise of force or violence.’136 It is this combination of what

Nye coined as ‘soft-power’137 and traditional hard, military power that allowed

France to control Syria during the Mandate period for its own imperial energy and

economic gain. This makes it an Empire, just like all the others.

Post-First World War cartoon depicting Ottoman Empire shared amongst the victors.

136

Lockman, Z. (1994). Workers and Working Classes in the Middle East: Struggles, Histories, Historiographies. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. Pg 295; Howson, R. & Smith, S. (2008). Hegemony: Studies in Consensus and Coercion. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 57-9; Makaryk, I.R. (1993). Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory: Approaches, Scholars, Terms. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press Incorporated. Pg 345; Martin, J. (2002). Antonio Gramsci: Marxism, philosophy and politics. New York, New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Pg 445-6. 137

Nye, J.S. (2004). Soft Power: The Means To Success in World Politics. PublicAffairs, Perseus Books Group.



1900-1919: The Old Imperial Prerogatives and the 1919 Revolts

As Faisal rode into Damascus in 1918 with 1,500 Arab horseman in formation

behind him, Hopwood writes that he would have seen this as the ‘goal of their

national ambitions’ and ‘the beginning of a revived Arab empire’.138 Hopwood goes

on to explain that whilst British General Allenby did inform Faisal that he had

orders to eventually hand over control to the French, he permitted Faisal to set up

a constitutional government, both men holding onto the hope that the Paris Peace

Conference and subsequent San Remo Conference would stay faithful to their

individual interpretations of the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence.139 Despite the

French having already named Picot himself as the new French High Commissioner

to Syria,140 General Allenby became a strong advocate for Arab independence,

making ‘an emotional plea’ to the British Government on behalf of the Arabs - what

would turn out to be a prescient warning - stating;

“If Powers persist in their attitude of declaring null and void the action of Feisal and the Syrian Congress, I feel that war must ensue.” He warned. “If hostilities arise, the Arabs will regard both the French and the British as their enemies and we shall be dragged by the French into a war which is against our own interests and for which we are ill-prepared.

141

Because of the view shared by Mack that ‘French occupation would inevitably lead

to violent resistance’142, Allenby recommended that the British support ‘Faisal’s

sovereignty over ‘an Arab nation embracing Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia.’143

Neither the British Government, nor the French imperial powers moving in on

Syria, took any notice of the General’s warnings of the political instability that would

138

Hopwood, D. (2013). Syria 1945-1986 (RLE Syria): Politics and Society. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 20. 139

Ibid; Berger, E. (1993). Peace for Palestine: First Lost Opportunity. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida. Pg 221-2; Mohs, P.A. (2008). Military Intelligence and the Arab Revolt: The First Modern Intelligence War. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 142. 140

Kerr, S.E. (1973). The Lions of Marash: Personal Experiences with American Near East Relief, 1919-1922. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. Pg 52; Kassir, S. (2010). Beirut. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. Pg 252-3. 141

Karsh, E. & Karsh, I. (1999). Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East, 1789-1923. Cambridge, Massachusetts: President and Fellows of Harvard College. Pg 285-6. 142

Mack, J.E. (1976). A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T. E. Lawrence. Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown and Company. Pg 278. 143

Ibid; Paris, T.J. (2003). Britain, the Hashemites and Arab Rule: The Sherifian Solution. London, England: Frank Cass Publishers. Pg 65.



be a direct result of imperial occupation.144 Additionally, it is worth noting that the

establishment and subsequent abandonment of the King-Crane Commission had

similar findings and recommendations to that of Allenby’s above plea.145

Established in 1919 by American President Woodrow Wilson, the King-Crane

Commission set out to visit Syria after the end of the First World War, and to

discuss the needs and desires of the local population in order to make

recommendations to the international community.146 Harris and Criss write that the

arrival of the King-Crane Commission - first in Istanbul and later in Damascus -

was met with ‘rejoicing’, and - ironic as it may seem in contrast to the modern

American experience for Arabs - many in the Middle East viewed the influence of

the Americans as the ‘only solution to curb selfish interests of the avaricious

European powers.’147

But, as in Iraq under the British, the French Mandate in Syria proved to be nothing

more than political cover for an exploitative, extractive, commercial and mercantile

imperialism - the old imperial prerogatives - with little the Americans or anybody

else could do to prevent the inevitable fall of Faisal’s Damascene experiment.

Mikaberidze reminds us of the betrayal at the hands of the British diplomats,

enforced later by French forces, changing ‘the agreements, retaining control over

Palestine, Transjordan and Mosul and leaving the French a free hand in Syria.148

Neep writes that the Mandate system itself was a legal attempt to reconcile two

competing values within the League of Nations; US President Woodrow Wilson’s

advocacy of ‘independence and self-determination’ and the ‘old prerogatives of

overt colonial domination.’149 Watenpaugh outlines the outcome of this internal

144

Berberoglu, B. (1999). Turmoil in the Middle East: Imperialism, War, and Political Instability. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. Pg 51. 145

Friedman, I. (2010). British Pan-Arab Policy, 1915-1922. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. Pg 268-9. 146

Schmidt, Y. (2001). Foundations of Civil and Political Rights in Israel and the Occupied Territories. Norderstedt, Germany: Books on Demand, GmbH. Pg 65; Howland, D. & White, L. (2009). The State of Sovereignty: Territories, Laws, Populations. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. Pg 65-6. 147

Harris, G.S. & Criss, B. (2009). Studies in Atatürk's Turkey: The American Dimension. Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV. Pg 21. 148

Mikaberidze, A. (2011). Conflict and Conquest in the Islamic World: A Historical Encyclopedia, Volume 2. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, LLC. Pg 322. 149

Neep, D. (2012). Occupying Syria Under the French Mandate: Insurgency, Space and State Formation. New York, New York: Cambridge University Press. Pg 20-1.



division; ‘under the guise of a League of Nation’s mandate, the French established

a colonial presence in Syria and would remain for a generation’150, and the

response to French influence and interests in Syria was, as in Iraq, immediate and

violent. Two revolts occurred in 1919 which eventually joined forces151; the first led

by Alawite Shi’a sheikh Salih al-Ali in the highlands and the second in Aleppo

under Ibrahim Hananu, the combination of which were not fully suppressed until

1923.152

The results of these old imperial prerogatives leads to two inescapable

conclusions. The first is that internal revolts are an inevitable consequence of a

massive shift in the status quo, where the very opposite of a power vacuum - a

surplus of power - changes the internal domestic politics of a nation. The first

evidence of this is found in the internal rivalries between pro and anti-French

groups. The Ismaili from Qadmus for example engaged the Shi’a forces of Salih al-

Ali on behalf of the French.153 The Maronites of Greater Lebanon were pro-French

supporters of Lebanese independence against traditional, Napoleonic-era rivals the

Druze.154 The Druze opposed French occupation and Lebanese independence and

would later be a central anti-French force in the Great Syrian Revolt of 1925.155

Migliorino writes that despite an overwhelming Sunni Muslim majority population

across Syria, French forces pursued a policy of making alliances with minority

groups who supported their rule, promoting their interests ahead of the majority

150

Watenpaugh, K.D. (2014). Being Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Arab Middle Class. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Pg 124. 151

Moubayed, S.M. (2006). Steel & Silk: Men and Women who Shaped Syria 1900-2000. Seattle, Washington: Cune Press. Pg 363; Commins, D. & Lesch, D.W. (2014). Historical Dictionary of Syria. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press Inc., The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 36; Bengio, O. & Ben-Dor, G. (1999). Minorities and the State in the Arab World. Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. Pg 131. 152

Talhami, G.H. (2001). Syria and the Palestinians: The Clash of Nationalisms. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida. Pg 15; Rogan, E. (2009). The Arabs: A History. New York, New York: Basic Books, Perseus Books Group. Pg 225. 153

Allawi, A.A. (2014). Faisal I of Iraq. Cornwall, England: TJ International Ltd., Yale University Press. Pg 282; Moosa, M. (1988). Extremist Shiites: The Ghulat Sects. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. Pg 282. 154

Nash, G. (2005). From Empire to Orient: Travellers to the Middle East, 1830-1926. New York, New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 63; Salamey, I. (2014). The Government and Politics of Lebanon. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 18; Shehadi, N. & Haffar-Mills, D. (1988). Lebanon: A History of Conflict. New York, New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, The Center for Lebanese Studies. Pg 109. 155

Hazran, Y. (2014). The Druze Community and the Lebanese State: Between Confrontation and Reconciliation. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 26; Smith, D. (2013). The State of the Middle East: An Atlas of Conflict and Resolution. New York, New York: Earthscan, Taylor & Francis Group. Pg 62.



population and entrusting them with positions of power.156 Zamir agrees and

outlines the strategic necessity of these alliances, writing that it was Maronite

support in Greater Lebanon that allowed the French to avoid defeat, using Beirut

as an important supply port and Rayak as an air force forward operating base to

launch bombing runs on rebel groups in Syria.157 Chalabi adds that a combination

of the ‘economic devastation’ of the First World War and the ‘dramatic

administrative restructuring by the French that altered the politics and livelihood of

the tribes’ led to the formation of a decentralised, unorganised collection of gangs

that took fuel from anti-French sentiment and through periodic skirmishes

increased domestic instability.158

Further to the point of French restructuring Syrian society, White in his study of the

emergence of the concept of ‘minorities’ in Syria, also accuses the French

Administration of bringing classical ideas and misconceptions about the nature and

success of the pre-existing Ottoman religious and social law, or millet system;

This was the understanding that the French officials under the mandate brought to Syrian society; they believed that it was a society already divided along religious lines into numerous mutually suspicious and insular communities, and that religious identities trumped all other kinds - a tenacious misconception about the Middle East.

159

Dawisha and Parrott further explain this ‘tenacious misconception’ as one that has

roots in the late nineteenth century Ottoman millet reforms, where those not

ethnically Turkish had begun to pass ‘from a millet consciousness to a national

consciousness without ever passing through an Ottoman consciousness.’160 The

French understood religious divides, but when it came to the changing

consciousness’s of ethnically non-Turkish Ottoman subjects, Dawisha and Parrott

are arguing that the millet system was busy dying, failing to create loyal citizens

156

Migliorino, N. (2008). (Re)constructing Armenia in Lebanon and Syria: Ethno-cultural Diversity and the State in the Aftermath of a Refugee Crisis. Oxford, England: Berghahn Books. Pg 54. 157

Zamir, M. (2000). Lebanon's Quest: The Search for a National Identity, 1926-39. New York, New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, St Martin’s Press. Pg 10. 158

Chalabi, T. (2006). The Shi'is of Jabal 'Amil and the New Lebanon: Community and Nation-State, 1918-1943. New York, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Pg 71. 159

White, B.J. (2011). The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East: The Politics of Community in French Mandate Syria. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press Ltd. Pg 49. 160

Dawisha, K. & Parrott, B. (1997). The End of Empire? The Transformation of the USSR in Comparative Perspective. Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, Inc. Pg 106.



just as the French were reimagining and reusing it in the context of imperial French

rule.161

Whilst revolt against imperial control was inevitable given the above French

policies and misunderstandings, the second lesson is that external suppression

was equally inevitable. Thomas writes in The French Empire Between the Wars

that in the years leading up to 1920, French leaders ‘Millerand, de Caix and

Gourand laid the politico-military foundations for a French take-over that nullified

Faisal’s protracted efforts to carve himself out a role’ with ‘little prospect that Arab

forces could long resist the French.’162 Starr in Revolt in Syria: Eye-witness to the

Uprising recounts the first hand testimonies and stories of Syrians, recalling the

ensuing war as the ‘bravest Syria fought in its resistance to European

colonialism.’163 Both resistance and suppression were inevitable, as the brutal

decade to follow would prove.

1920-1927: The Franco-Syrian Wars and the Warriors of the Druze

The next period of French rule in Syria is bookended by two great and violent

battles causing massive domestic instability. By 1920, as a direct result of the

League of Nations decision at the San Remo conference, French troops had

moved in to Syria. In the first great battle, the French engaged and defeated

Faisal’s new military and disbanded his government.164 By 1927, the French had

survived 7 years of riots, revolts and revolutionaries, finally crushing the Great

Syrian Revolt in the second great battle for Syria.165 At the centre of the conflict

161

Aboona, H. (2008). Assyrians, Kurds, and Ottomans: Intercommunal Relations on the Periphery of the Ottoman Empire. Amherst, New York: Cambria Press. Pg 143; Sugar, P.F. (1977). Southeastern Europe under Ottoman Rule, 1354-1804. Seattle, Washington: University of Washington Press. Pg 231. 162

Thomas, M. (2005). The French Empire Between the Wars: Imperialism, Politics and Society. New York, New York: Manchester University Press. Pg 44. 163

Starr, S. (2012). Revolt in Syria: Eye-witness to the Uprising. [Eye-Witness Testimony]. London, England: C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd. Pg 18. 164

Gelvin, J.L. (1998). Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. Pg 3-5; Herb, G.H. & Kaplan, D.H. (2008). Nations and Nationalism: A Global Historical Overview. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, LLC. Pg 728; Tauber, E. (2013). The Formation of Modern Iraq and Syria. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 36; Murphy, D. (2008). The Arab Revolt 1916-18: Lawrence Sets Arabia Ablaze. Oxford, England: Osprey Publishing Ltd. Pg 83. 165

Martel, G. (2007). A Companion to International History 1900-2001. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Pg 215; Provence, M. (2005). The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press. Pg 141.



was a violent reaction to imperial rule, with strong opposition to the foreign

economic and energy interests of France. Whilst Sorek calls the first great battle a

‘major myth of victimhood for Syrian and pan-Arab identities’166, influential Arab

nationalist Sāṭi` al-Ḥuṣrī states in Beshara’s work The Origins of Syrian Nationhood

that the day of Maysaloun was the day that ‘the first modern Arab state

perished.’167 When the French July ultimatum to Faisal to disband or be invaded

came and passed, Jankowski and Gershoni write that chaos gripped the capital

Damascus, and Syrians took to the streets, accusing the government of

‘collaborating with the enemies of the nation’ in anticipation of capitulation.168

Tauber writes that the battle lasted only a few hours, from 6:30am until 10:30am of

July 20 1920, and states that French artillery and tank columns caused the final fall

of the Syrian forces, with their War Minister Yusuf al-‘Azma shot dead by a tank

gunner.169

But that first great battle was not the end of opposition to French rule, indeed it was

merely the beginning. Fieldhouse describes the chaos and instability of the period,

agreeing in part with the aforementioned proposition that ‘Syria had to go through a

period of revolt and the suppression of resistance to French rule between 1920 and

1927’, what turned out to be seven years of turmoil;

These risings had effectively been suppressed by 1923, but resentment continued to simmer. The major rising came in 1925, based on the Jabal Druze but involving much of the rest of the combined state of Damascus and Aleppo.

170

This period of resistance was as a direct result of French occupation of Syria under

the guise of a ‘mandate’, and is evidence of their true nature and intentions.

Following the Battle of Maysaloun and the exile of Faisal, ‘Syrians found French

rule oppressive’, with French authorities proceeding to take over all levels of

166

Sorek, T. (2015). Palestinian Commemoration in Israel: Calendars, Monuments, and Martyrs. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, Leland Stanford Junior University. Pg 32. 167

Beshara, A. (2011). The Origins of Syrian Nationhood: Histories, Pioneers and Identity. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 278. 168

Jankowski, J.P & Gershoni, I. (1997). Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East. New York, New York: Colombia University Press. Pg 231. 169

Tauber, E. (2013). The Formation of Modern Iraq and Syria. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 218. 170

Fieldhouse, D.K. (2006). Western Imperialism in the Middle East 1914-1958. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Pg 282-3.



government including placing currency control in the hands of French bankers with

little care for local shareholder interests.171 Humphreys writes that along with the

‘minor and not so minor uprisings and nationalist incitements’, the French still

pursued a policy of making local tribal leaders ‘lords’ - what Khoury calls a

formation of leadership by ‘liberal elitism’172 - as their tools of coercion and as

‘instruments of the new, modern legality.’173 Owen and Pamuk outline revenues

raised went into a single budget administered by the French high commissioner,

who along with infrastructure spending used the monies raised to support and

subsidise ‘ten or so large, French-owned, concessionary companies which

provided a range of monopoly services.’174 Attie goes as far as saying that the

entire financial policy of the French in Syria was predicated on ‘perpetuating

French domination and safeguarding economic interests,’ coupled with the

‘manipulation of the grain market, and French-applied customs policies’ which

favoured French imports.175 The French increased support for their feudal lords

over the research period causing two-thirds of the peasantry to become landless,

and with 35% of the land falling into the hands of 6% of the population, the French

had begun to infuriate the tribes by effectively ending the tribal nomadic lifestyle.176

Zamir takes a step back, and speaks to the broader regional and geopolitical

considerations. Zamir argues that the challenges French intelligence services

faced in Syria were greater due first to opposition from Syrians - as the Mandate

had been ‘forcibly imposed’ - and second due to the competing influence of

regional and European rival powers such as ‘Germany, Italy, Turkey and the Soviet

171

Cavendish, M. (2006). World and Its Peoples. New York, New York: Cavendish Square Publishing. Pg 258. 172

Khoury, P.S. (1987). Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920-1945. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Pg 340-1; Schumann, C. (2008). Liberal Thought in the Eastern Mediterranean: Late 19th Century Until the 1960s. Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV. Pg 207. 173

Humphreys, S. (1985). The Discourse of Law: History and Anthropology. New York, New York: Taylor & Francis. Pg 387. 174

Owen, R. & Pamuk, S. (1998). A History of Middle East Economies in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Pg 65. 175

Attie, C.C. (2004). Struggle in the Levant: Lebanon in the 1950s. New York, New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 16. 176

van Nieuwenhuijze, C.A.O. (1977). Commoners, Climbers and Notables: A Sampler of Studies on Social Ranking in the Middle East. Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV, Brill Archive. Pg 250-1.



Union.’177 In response to these challenges and those posed specifically in the

south, the French made the mistake of appointing Captain Carbillet as governor of

the Druze minority, and despite being described by Omissi as a ‘dynamic

moderniser who hoped to destroy the feudal system and free the Druze peasantry’,

his policy of forced local labour to build roads and railways alienated those he

hoped to free.178 Tensions between the French authorities and the al-Atrash had

not eased since the failed Druze revolt of 1922-3, in which the French had

attempted to crush the Druze leader Sultan Pasha al-Atrash by first plundering his

home and then aerially bombarding to teach him a lesson.179 Al-Atrash didn’t heed

the French warning shots. The action had no positive effect on the anti-French

sentiment, and a second and much broader Druze revolt began in 1925, sparked

by the arrest of three al-Atrash family members at a meeting organised by the

French.180 Al-Atrash was able to convince Arab nationalists in Damascus to join the

cause, and soon the revolt had spread as far as the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. As

was the case with earlier revolts, suppression followed;

The French responded with brutal violence… French guns and airplanes bombarded Hama, where landowners readily capitulated after the French guaranteed security of their property. At the same time, French bombers and artillery blasted Damascus, destroying entire quarters of the city. Hundreds of women, children and elderly people were trapped in collapsed buildings, and more than 500 people were believed killed… Casualties were estimated at more than 10,000 deaths on both sides.

181

By 1927, the smaller skirmishes were crushed and what Harzan describes as ‘the

most significant and serious test of the relationship between the traditional

leadership and the mandatory rulers’ was over.182 The French authorities then

177

Zamir, M. (2015). The Secret Anglo-French War in the Middle East: Intelligence and Decolonization, 1940-1948. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 55. 178

Omissi, D.E. (1990). Air Power and Colonial Control: The Royal Air Force, 1919-1939. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press. Pg 189. 179

Atiyeh, G.N. & Oweiss, I.M. (1988). Arab Civilization: Challenges and Responses. Albany, New York: State University of New York. Pg 249. 180

Kahana, E. & Suwaed, M. (2009). The A to Z of Middle Eastern Intelligence. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, Inc., The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 100. 181

Thompson, E. (2000). Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon. New York, New York: Columbia University Press. Pg 46. 182

Hazran, Y. (2014). The Druze Community and the Lebanese State: Between Confrontation and Reconciliation. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 29.



engaged in a new policy to prevent further uprisings and cement their control to

serve their imperial interests.

1927-1938: The Partition to Divide and Control and the Broader Context

The ‘divide and conquer’ imperial policy or theory of partitionism183 was designed

to prevent further uprisings, the likes of which the French could not contain

indefinitely.184 Bengio and Ben-Dor write that French policy weakened Syrian

society by encouraging ‘separatist tendencies’ in the ‘Sunni majority and crippled

its capacity to actualise nationalist aspirations to an independent Arab or Syrian

state.’185 Tejel agrees, writing that the divisions fuelled ethnic and sectarian friction

and created the new concept of ‘minority’ groups within the new boundaries. 186

Neep argues that ‘French paternalistic sensibilities’ and attitudes went well beyond

‘mere rhetoric to disguise France’s underlying material interests’;

Colonial rule was in the object interests of the peoples of the region, even if their uncivilised state meant they were not in a position to recognise this truth for themselves… French visions of a mosaic society productively informed the strategies by which the Mandatory Power consciously sought to govern the Levant.

187

However, a closer examination of the full, nuanced scope of motives for the initial

French presence in Syria, beyond the aforementioned superior attitudes. It must be

made clear from the outset that these imperial motives were not exactly the same

as that of the British, but they do share some similarities. In the case of the British,

it is clear from the research that by 1914, their policy was to secure a monopoly

over Middle Eastern oil that initially provided naval supremacy and later would

allow for greater use of the Royal Air Force and mechanisation of the Army,

advancements that would further project British influence throughout their Empire.

183

Term used in Wright, F. (1987). Northern Ireland: A Comparative Analysis. Dublin, Ireland: Gill and Macmillan Ltd. Pg 286-7. 184

Russell, M. (2014). The Middle East and South Asia: The World Today Series 2014-2015. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. Pg 169; Ismael, T.Y. (1986). International Relations of the Contemporary Middle East: A Study in World Politics. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. Pg 79; Malaspina, A. (2009). Lebanon. New York, New York: Chelsea House, Infobase Publishing. Pg 46. 185

Bengio, O. & Ben-Dor, G. (1999). Minorities and the State in the Arab World. Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. Pg 131. 186

Tejel, J. (2009). Syria's Kurds: History, Politics and Society. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 8. 187

Neep, D. (2012). Occupying Syria Under the French Mandate: Insurgency, Space and State Formation. New York, New York: Cambridge University Press. Pg 26.



British motives also had a broader context as a regional plan to secure the western

continental access to their colony in India. The British had acquired a network of

Mandates, not only in Iraq but also in Palestine and Transjordan, as transport

states for pipelines and ports to provide the necessary infrastructure for

connections between the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf.188 Whilst the French

were keen on securing a 25% and later 23.75% share in the Iraqi Petroleum

Company’s Mesopotamian exploration and production venture, French ambitions

and economic interests initially focused less on oil extractive exploration and more

on mercantile and exploitative imperial motivations. French use and dependence

on oil occurred later than Britain, with oil exploration in Syria beginning in 1933.189

Additionally, French policy makers had preferred a policy of ‘supply diversification’

with Central and South American states like Venezuela, Mexico and Colombia, and

European suppliers such as Romania, Poland and Russia.190

It is important to see the French presence in Syria in the broader Mediterranean

context. Shwadran writes that alongside securing oil concessions, the existence of

the French Mandate in Syria allowed the Iraqi Petroleum Company (the Company)

to lay and use 267 miles of pipeline without paying any transit fees or concerning

itself with transit rights to the Syrian people.191 In this way Syria played a similar

‘transport state’ role much like Transjordan. Stilwell helps link oil pipeline

cooperation with an understanding of a broader cooperative Mediterranean

strategy. The British Royal Navy possessed the strongholds of ‘Gibraltar in the

West, Malta in the centre Alexandria in the East’ and French presence centred

around their North African interests in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. These African

188

El-Hasan, H.A. (2010). Israel Or Palestine? Is the Two-state Solution Already Dead?: A Political and Military History of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict. New York, New York: Algora Publishing. Pg 137-8; Kandiyoti, R. (2012). Pipelines: Flowing Oil and Crude Politics. New York, New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 53-4; Sharfman, D. (2014). Palestine in the Second World War: Strategic Plans and Political Dilemmas. Eastbourne, England: Sussex Academic Press. Pg 9. 189

Saunders, B.F. (1996). The United States and Arab Nationalism: The Syrian Case, 1953-1960. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 6; International Business Publications, USA. (2013). Syria Country Study Guide: Strategic Information and Developments, Volume 1. Washington, DC: International Business Publications. Pg 128. 190

Nowell, G. P. (1994). Mercantile States and the World Oil Cartel, 1900-1939. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. Pg 261. 191

Shwadran, B. (1977). Middle East Oil: Issues and Problems. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Schenkman Publishing Company, Inc. Pg 37.



possessions would be complemented well by another 250 miles of coastline in

Syria to the East.192 Grant adds that the Mediterranean would become a major

geostrategic factor in Italy’s involvement in the coming Second World War, with

ambitions to challenge French and British dominance there.193 Paxton and Hessler

describe the French cooperation required with the British Navy to secure the

Mediterranean when the need arose for Britain to counter Germany in the English

Channel in an increasingly costly mechanised, oil-fuelled war.194 The addition of

the Syrian coastline and the port at Beirut would significantly increase French sea

power in the Sea.

In his in-depth work Joint Operational Warfare, Vego outlines the geostrategic

importance of Syria to France as the aforementioned eastern base of operations

for Mediterranean control. It complimented the strong influence stemming from a

major naval base at Toulon on the southern French border, as well as well-

equipped North African airfields at ‘Bizerte, Bône, Phillipeville, Algiers and Oran.’195

Pre-eminent historian John B. Hattendorf - with titles included Ernest J. King

Professor of Maritime History, Chairman Maritime History Department and Director

of the Naval War College Museum - argues that French and British Mediterranean

strategies and geostrategic interests converged in the basics and diverged in the

specifics. The French interests in North Africa meant that their primary concern

was the North-South shipping lanes. British control in Gibraltar coupled with

priorities their eastern interests in Egypt, Iraq, Palestine, Transjordan and Iran

meant more concern over East-West shipping lanes. The lanes were also crucial to

British interests in the Suez Canal routes connecting the Mediterranean to Iran and

India via the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean.196 Given these broader geostrategic

contexts, Sluglett and Weber conclude that the region had become ‘fully absorbed

192

Stilwell, A. (2004). The Second World War: A World in Flames. Oxford, England: Osprey Publishing. Pg 168. 193

Grant, R. (2012). World War II: Europe. London, England: Arcturus Publishing Limited. Pg 18. 194

Paxton, R & Hessler, J. (2012). Europe in the Twentieth Century. Boston, Massachusetts: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning. Pg 54. 195

Vego, M.N. (2009). Joint Operational Warfare: Theory and Practice. Washington, DC: Naval War College, Government Printing Office. Pg IV-50. 196

Hattendorf, J.B. (2000). Naval Strategy and Power in the Mediterranean: Past, Present and Future. Oxon, England: Frank Cass Publishers. Pg 87-8.



in the efforts of European states to acquire colonies and spheres of influence.’197

The above imperial concerns fall broadly into the category of an exploitative brand

of imperialism, using the geostrategic benefits of Syria to the benefit of the French.

In addition to these geostrategically exploitative policies, Neep argues for a special

prominence in the French economic interests specific to Syria, with the French

heavily invested in the Lebanese silk industry and in the process of further

development of the cotton industry out of the agricultural region of Jazira.198

However it was a commercial, monopolistic imperial policy that precipitated the

major ‘tobacco revolts’ of 1936. The revolt began in response to the French

imperial powers giving a tobacco industry monopoly to the Companie Libano

Syrienne des Tabacs, with opposition coming from Maronites, cultivators and

parliamentarians alike.199 Weiss writes that with the renegotiation of treaties to

legitimise French presence in the region, the revolt was ‘the largest instance of

collective action and one of the only significant instances of popular protest in

Jabal ‘Amil’ with ‘nationalist enthusiasm aboil.’200 Nordbruch writes that in the

background to this, Germany had already begun to destabilise the French

mandate, sending the Abwehr (German military intelligence) figure Rudolp Roser,

and former German Consul General to Beirut secretary Paula Koch, to begin a

propaganda campaign in conjunction with Arab nationalist groups.201 The Middle

East would once again be a pawn in a major European conflict.

197

Sluglett, P. & Weber, S. (2010). Syria and Bilad Al-Sham Under Ottoman Rule: Essays in Honour of Abdul Karim Rafeq. Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV. Pg 483. 198

Neep, D. (2012). Occupying Syria Under the French Mandate: Insurgency, Space and State Formation. New York, New York: Cambridge University Press. Pg 26. 199

Chalabi, T. (2006). The Shi'is of Jabal 'Amil and the New Lebanon: Community and Nation-State, 1918-1943. New York, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Pg 132-3; Zamir, M. (2000). Lebanon's Quest: The Search for a National Identity, 1926-39. New York, New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 164; Cox, H. (2000). The Global Cigarette: Origins and Evolution of British American Tobacco, 1880-1945. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Pg 286. 200

Weiss, M. (2010). In the Shadow of Sectarianism: Law, Shi’ism and the Making of Modern Lebanon. Cambridge, Massachusetts: President and Fellows of Harvard College. Pg 200. 201

Nordbruch, G. (2009). Nazism in Syria and Lebanon: The Ambivalence of the German Option, 1933–1945. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 92.



1938-1948: The Fall of France and the War Comes to Syria

This period cannot be understood without referring to British forces, pro-German

influence in Iraq and German influence in Syria.202 When France fell to Germany in

1940, the geostrategic importance of Syria took on a familiar proxy war dimension.

Once under the command of Vichy France, Syria opened up its airfields to the

German air force - the Luftwaffe - allowing German forces the capacity to launch

bombing runs on British interests in the region.203 Curtis confirms the importance of

the use of the airfields by the Luftwaffe and adds that Vichy France, through its

Deputy Head of Government Admiral François Darlan, made a second agreement

to allow Germany use of the Tunisian port of Bizerte and the Tunis-Gabès railway

to resupply Rommel’s Afrika Korps.204 It was the presence of essential British and

French interests in the region that drew the realities of the Second World War to

the Middle East, and the resulting struggle for dominance in the region and

acquisition of adversarial interests caused massive instability.

Heartfield writes that Darlan had also provided the Iraqi Revolt and pro-Axis leader

Rashid Ali al-Gaylani air power support for his insurrection in Iraq205, so naturally

the British saw the Syrian circumstances as part of the larger threat to European

interests in the Middle East, Africa and as mentioned in earlier chapters, control of

the Mediterranean. Whilst it is true that the Axis powers’ motivations were broad,

Shugg and DeWeerd and Lightbody concur that it was the Nazi’s ambition to wrest

British control of the Suez and through it, cut off their connection to India, that was

at the heart of moving the Luftwaffe into Syria.206 Thus part of the region’s

geostrategic significance during the Second World War was directly due to French

and British interests. In the context of war, it became geostrategically beneficial for

the Axis powers to strike at the nations that supplied the French and British empire.

202

Messenger, C. (2013). Reader's Guide to Military History. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 778. 203

Parson, R.W. (2013). Every Word You Write ... Vichy Will Be Watching You: Surveillance of Public Opinion in the Gard Department 1940-1944. Tucson, Arizona: Wheatmark. Pg 65. 204

Curtis, M. (2002). Verdict on Vichy: Power and Prejudice in the Vichy France Regime. New York, New York: Arcade Publishing, Inc. Pg 86-7. 205

Heartfield, J. (2012). An Unpatriotic History of the Second World War. Hants, England: John Hunt Publishing Ltd. Pg 196. 206

Shugg, R.W. & DeWeerd, LTCOL H.A. (2013). World War II : a concise history. Whitefish, Montana: Literary Licensing, LLC. Pg 72; Lightbody, B. (2004). The Second World War: Ambitions to Nemesis. New York, New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Pg 84.



Both the French and British empires were economically dependent on the

resources of the Middle East, and geostrategically exposed should the region fall to

German and Italian interests, further exposing the region to war.

The central argument of this section is that independence was never a part of

French imperial policy, and that the collapse of France was at the heart of Syria’s

post-war independence. Morris argues that post the Second Word War, France

‘effectively conceded Syria and Lebanon to the British.’207 While writing that though

de Gaulle saw his legacy as ‘independence, empire and the sword’, - the title of his

memoirs - Courteaux quotes British historian Martin Thomas as arguing that

empire was central to the resurrection of France and remained a ‘necessary

ingredient of national power.’208 Thomas and Fedorowich in their work International

Diplomacy and Colonial Retreat, see the ‘French evacuation of Syria and Lebanon

less as an act of decolonisation than as a surrender of imperial power to Britain’

with de Gaulle interpreting British actions from 1941-1945 as ‘part of a broader

scheme to consolidate Britain’s imperial influence.’209 D'Agostino contends that de

Gaulle was furious at the omission of any mention of continuation of the French

empire in the declarations made by the British after their successful invasion,

saying ‘British policy all along had contrived “sometimes stealthily and sometimes

harshly” to replace France in Syria.’210 Heydemann makes the argument that the

operations of the Anglo-American Middle East Supply Centre did not demonstrate

the beginnings of an infrastructure to support independence, but rather;

precise links with both increasing state-interventionism in Egypt and Syria, and the consolidation of a state-sponsored import-substituting industrialisation regime.

211

207

Morris, W. (2014). A History of ACS: The American Community School at Beirut, 1905-2012. Halden, Norway: Al Mashriq Publishers. Pg 41. 208

Courteaux, O. (2013). Canada between Vichy and Free France, 1940-1945. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press. Pg 200-1. 209

Fedorowich, K. & Thomas, M. (2013). International Diplomacy and Colonial Retreat. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 72. 210

D'Agostino, A. (2012).The Rise of Global Powers: International Politics in the Era of the World Wars. New York, New York: Cambridge University Press. Pg 419. 211

Heydemann, S. (2000). War, Institutions, and Social Change in the Middle East. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. Pg 328.



Lloyd makes the point that the Supply Centre’s chief purpose was justified ‘on the

strategic grounds that maintenance of law and order and prevention of famine and

civil unrest were vital to the success of the Allied arms.212

From this we can see that the fall of France, the establishment of Vichy control in

Syria, the re-invasion by the British in June of 1941 and the withdrawal period all

tell the same story; nothing had changed. French presence in Syria led directly to 7

years of riots, revolts and revolution. The ‘divide and conquer’ policy led to

dangerous mixes of groups, fuelling ethnic and sectarian friction. In the end,

O'Sullivan writes even the Free French troops were just as unwilling to give up

control over their Middle East territories as the British213, and any withdrawal had

more to do with the realities of two world wars than the spirit and text of their

Mandate of responsibility to the region. This period further reinforces the true

motivations and intentions of French presence in Syria, and makes the case that

French and British interests of the Middle East are one of the ‘pull factors’ that

brought the Second World War to the region. Syria, just like Iraq, became a pawn

in the ‘great game’ between Western powers, a reality that would persist in the

region throughout the Cold War to come. The nature of their withdrawal does not

indicates a staged or phased education of a young nation by a great democracy,

but rather an exploitative, commercial and mercantile imperialism motivated almost

exclusively the realist paradigm-driven policy of taking as much as possible from a

nation that could do nothing to prevent it.

212

Lloyd, E.M.H. (1956). Food and Inflation in the Middle East, 1940-45, Issue 9. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. Pg 92. 213

O'Sullivan, C.D. (2012). FDR and the End of Empire: The Origins of American Power in the Middle East. New York, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press LLC. Pg 133.



3. Geopolitical Ramifications: Comparisons and Results

“The Orient and Islam have a kind of extrareal, phenomenologically reduced status

that puts them out of reach of everyone except the Western expert. From the

beginning of Western speculation about the Orient, the one thing the orient could

not do was to represent itself. Evidence of the Orient was credible only after it had

passed through and been made firm by the refining fire of the Orientalist’s work.” -

Edward W. Said214

This thesis has set out to examine British energy and economic policy decisions in

Iraq and French energy and economic policy decisions in Syria, and by comparing

and contrasting those actions and motivations, seeks a clearer perspective of the

causes of regional instability. Far from guiding young nations until maturity, as was

the intention of the League of Nations Mandates, both powers showed flagrant

disregard for the rights of the Arabs to self-determination and to lead their own

political destinies. Clear differences in intentions and motivations between British

and French actions, as well as different strategies to get the most out of their

spheres of influence. However the resulting brand of anti-colonial sentiment and

anger felt by the Arabs of both the Levant and Mesopotamia, and the numerous

attempts to rid themselves of their imperial overlords, share distinct and uncannily

commonalities. The chapter below will seek to take further lessons from the British

and French policies by comparing and contrasting to more clearly determine

motivations and further outline their effect on regional instability.

‘Chomping at the Bit’: Subalterns Unify Against The Oppressor

The motivations of the British and French differ greatly in the details of their

policies. The British controlled Iraq because of their massive oil resources and an

‘imperial obsession’ with protecting the ‘North-West Frontier’ from forces seeking to

214

Said, E.W. (1979). Orientalism. New York, New York: Random House, Inc.



weaken the empire by attacking India.215 The French imperial concerns focused

mainly on protection of its North African assets, providing an additional eastern

coast line for greater dominance over North-South Mediterranean shipping lanes,

and in securing transport and pipelines concession for the Iraqi Petroleum

Company and monopolies for French corporations. Whilst these details vary, the

main thrust of the motivations of the British and French share a strong commonality

- geostrategic exploitation.

This commonality is also demonstrated in the responses of the Arabs to imperial

rule. As mentioned earlier, the lessons of British rule of Iraq and French rule of

Syria are clear. Imperial rule removes independence and agency, nations turn into

subalterns, and subalterns violently resist oppressive foreign control. The periods

directly after the 1920 San Remo conference show immediate resistance to both

the British and the French. Both nations suffered examples of revolts in response

to both imperial presence and more specifically to their administrative and taxation

policies. Both nations show examples of a splitting of the population between those

who supported the imperial powers and those that did not, and in both nations

there is evidence that this drove sectarian and ethnic tension. Both Iraq and Syria

also share a common history of their resistance being met with crushing defeat,

with imperial powers using their technological superiority to remain in control.

It is also important to briefly make the point that instability creating by imperial force

and policies fell squarely on a group in each region - the Kurds. The terms of the

Treaty of Sèvres is widely seen as both the holy grail of Kurdish independence,

and simultaneously the cause of the 1921 Ataturk revolution under Mustafa Kemal

that dashed those very same hopes.216 The regional implications of depriving an

215

Marsh, B. (2015). Ramparts of Empire: British Imperialism and India's Afghan Frontier, 1918-1948. New York, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press LLC. Pg 2. 216

Galbraith, P.W. (2006). The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End. New York, New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc. Pg 150; Walt, S.M. (1996). Revolution and War. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. Pg 301-5; Nash, G.D. (1968). United States Oil Policy, 1890-1964: Business and Government in Twentieth Century America. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: University of Pittsburgh Press. Pg 57-8.



ethnic group of a homeland was deeply significant. Without a home of their own217,

Kurds occupied and still occupy northern Syria, Iraq and Iran and southern Turkey.

This adds another layer or dimension to the instability in all four of those nations,

as the group has fought over the last century for independence.218 Both Meho and

Entessar argue that the Kurds as an ethnic group are a prime example of a group

deprived of autonomy and agency. This due partly to external factors such as the

discovery of oil in the Kurdish-majority Mosul vilayets and the rise of Ataturk

nationalism, and partly due to the unwillingness of the European powers to remain

true to their promises espoused in the Treaty of Sèvres.219 In this case, imperial

interests prevailed, and the results can be directly linked to domestic instability, as

nationalists will always resist oppressive rule for sovereignty, and oppressive rulers

will always attempt to crush any form of resistance, very often asymmetrically and

successfully. This results in cycles of violence, a pattern which featured

prominently through the research period under both British and French mandates.

Ramifications of Partitioning: Divide and Conquer Shows Motivations

When the imperial means of controlling Mandate Iraq and Syria are examined,

there are once more similarities in broad policy and differences in details. The

biggest difference is that whilst the British actively merged and attempted to

maintain the unity of the three Ottoman vilayets of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra

under an Sunni-led ‘Arab façade’220, the French were much more interested in

dividing the region into clusters that could be controlled, fuelling separatists

tendencies to keep Syria weak.221 Despite this difference in political structuring,

both circumstances showed that each of the imperial forces were willing, even

217

Chaliand, G. (1993). A People Without a Country: The Kurds and Kurdistan. London, England: Olive Branch Press, Interlink Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 33-5. 218

Wagner, H.L. & Mitchell, G.J. (2004). The Division of the Middle East: The Treaty of Sèvres. New York, New York: Chelsea House Publishers, LLC. Pg 59-61. 219

Meho, L.I. (1997). The Kurds and Kurdistan: A Selective and Annotated Bibliography. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 9; Entessar, N. (2010). Kurdish Politics in the Middle East. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 70. 220

Mufti, M. (1996). Sovereign Creations: Pan-Arabism and Political Order in Syria and Iraq. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. Pg 23. 221

Paul, J.A. (1990). Human Rights in Syria. New York, New York: Human Rights Watch. Pg 83; Joubin, R. (2013). The Politics of Love: Sexuality, Gender, and Marriage in Syrian Television Drama. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 26.



eager to play groups against each other. In Syria, White and Chaitani argue the

French walked the fine line between hindering the development of a unified, anti-

French nationalism, and creating an nation-state that was effective enough to use,

creating ‘statelets’ under minorities they favoured, such as the Christians in

Lebanon.222 The Shi’a minority in Syria, especially the Alawites, were given power

within the military for their support of France. In Oil, Israel and Modernity,

Hahnemann writes that when the intentionally weak government showed its

colours, the military followed suit and after decades of coups, led a ‘well

positioned’223 minority Shi’a Alawite to government in modern day majority Sunni

Syria.224 As for the influence of the mandates on modern Iraq and Syria, there can

be no greater evidence than the presence of Bashar al-Assad’s minority Alawite

government in modern day Syria. In Iraq, the British favoured a strong, central

government and a policy of using air power policing. Dodge refers to this as the

‘midwife in the birth of the Iraqi state’225 and Bolger calls it ‘RAF persuasion’226, to

quell tribal resistance and enforce taxation and obedience.227 In this we can see

the French preference for avoiding conflict - though not ultimately successful in this

endeavour - and the British attitude that more opposition simply required more

firepower.

The contrast between Britain and France can also be seen in their differing levels

of focus regarding types or brands of imperialism. In the context of the descriptions

of imperial motivations (exploitative, extractive, commercial and mercantile)

outlined in the introduction and used throughout this thesis, both imperial powers

222

White, B.J. (2011). The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East: The Politics of Community in French Mandate Syria. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press. Pg 12; Chaitani, Y. (2007). Post-colonial Syria and Lebanon: The Decline of Arab Nationalism and the Triumph of the State. New York, New York: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press. Pg 8. 223

Lesch, D.W. (2012). Syria: The Fall of the House of Assad. London, England: Yale University Press. Pg 3. 224

Hahnemann, S. (2014). Oil, Israel and Modernity: The West's cultural and military interventions in the Middle-East. Hamburg, Germany: Books on Demand. Pg 185; Taylor, W.C. (2014). Military Responses to the Arab Uprisings and the Future of Civil-Military Relations in the Middle East: Analysis from Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Syria. New York, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press LLC. Pg 106. 225

Dodge, T. (2003). Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation-building and a History Denied. London, England: C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd. Pg 136. 226

Bolger, D.P. (2014). Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. New York, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Pg 106. 227

Baxter, C. (2013). Britain in Global Politics Volume 1: From Gladstone to Churchill, Volume 1. New York, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, St Martin’s Press LLC. Pg 86.



exhibited evidence of all four. However the mix and prominence of the four brands

differs between Britain and France. British imperial interests in in Iraq centred

around extractive policies, deeming the control of Middle Eastern oil and its

transport through geostrategically important states as paramount to its presence in

the region. Additionally, the British naturally felt that one of the strategic benefits of

controlling the Iraqi government was the ability to grant oil concessions to

themselves, and thus demonstrated a commercial, monopolistic imperialism. The

British also had other motivations, such as the exploitation of Iraq’s position in the

protection of India, control of the southern approach to the Suez Canal and

securing the mercantile shipping lanes through the Mediterranean. The most

pressing motivation however was achieving maximum British control of oil as a

function of national security, fuelling their power projection and supremacy.

The French brand of imperialism operated the other way around. Having only a

small stake in the Iraqi Petroleum Company, extractive and commercial

motivations formed but one small part of French motivations in Syria. However

French mercantile interests as well as the exploitation of the Syrian coastline as an

extension of their ability to control the Mediterranean and protect the North African

coast from Morocco to Tunisia, weighed heavily on their concerns. With regards

the earlier arguments relating to French control of the Mediterranean later in the

Second World War, Kupchan further cements this case and writes that even up

until the 1980’s, French policy was ‘dictated by considerations of how the political

situation in the Arab Middle East would affect French possessions in Africa.’228 So

whilst British and French imperial control and suppression of resistance showed

distinct similarities, and whilst the reactions of the populations of Iraq and Syria

were equally divided in their opposition to imperial rule - resulting in increased

sectarian violence - there were significant difference between British and French

imperial motivations. That difference was seen in the extent to which each brand of

imperialism worked to effect foreign imperial policy decision-making.

228

Kupchan, C. (2011). The Persian Gulf and the West: The Dilemmas of Security. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 165.



It is beneficial to understand these motivations from the approach of the

international relations school of thought called realism. The history of realism and

‘realpolitik’ more broadly dates back to Thucydides in ancient Greece229 and Han

Feizi in ancient China.230 More modern antecedents such as Niccolò Machiavelli in

Italy follow in this tradition, that ends justify means231 and that ‘prudence is the

biggest virtue in politics and the principle of national survival has the highest moral

significance.232 He joins Thomas Hobbes in England233 and Carl von Clausewitz in

Prussia234 for a global and scholarly perspective on the international relations

power politics of realism. And whilst a detailed review is not permitted in the scope

of a thesis such as this, realism’s school of thought on international relations has

assisted this author in understanding the justifications offered by both Britain and

France for their actions and objectives during the research period.

Common Fall: Imperial Rule Collapses From Exhaustion, Not Ethics

Both Iraq and Syria found the beginnings of real independence - albeit violent and

unstable - in the aftermath of the Second World War. This section contends that it

was the economic realities of a crushing war in Europe that led both the British and

French empires to crumble, as was discussed earlier in the fourth sections of

Chapters 1 and 2 respectively. Whilst writers like Gaidar and Owusu argue that the

steady stream of independences until 1948 - culminating in the independence of

India, the ‘crown jewel of the British Empire’235 - represents what Owusu views as

the total collapse of the British empire236 and what Gaidar calls the ‘inevitability of

229

Brown, C., Nardin, T. & Rengger, N. (2002). International Relations in Political Thought: Texts from the Ancient Greeks to the First World War. New York, New York: Cambridge University Press. Pg 20. 230

Shambaugh, D.L. (2013). Tangled Titans: The United States and China. Lanham, Maryland: The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 10. 231

Coyle, M. (1995). Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince: New Interdisciplinary Essays. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press. Pg 177. 232

Petre, I. (2009). Machiavelli and the Legitimization of Realism in International Relations. Iași Romania, Editura Lumen. Pg

46. 233

Donnelly, J. (2000). Realism and International Relations. New York, New York: Cambridge University Press. Pg 13-5. 234

Hartmann, U. (2002). Carl Von Clausewitz and the Making of Modern Strategy. Norderstedt, Germany: Books on Demand, GmbH. Pg 18. 235

Olson, J.S. & Shadle, R. (1996). Historical Dictionary of the British Empire, Volume 2. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 611. 236

Owusu, K. (2000). Black British Culture and Society: A Text Reader. New York, New York: Routledge. Pg 14.



the disintegration of colonial empires.’237 Singer and Langdon quote Cooper and

write that despite the tumult of the Mandate period and Second World War, French

attitudes toward colonialism had survived the chaos they fuelled in Syria;

Cooper’s summary of French attitudes … at the end of the decade applies to the entire imperial edifice of that era: “On the eve of the Second World War, belief in Empire was thus strong in metropolitan France. Official rhetoric, colonial policy and cultural interpretations all appear to support the perpetuation of French colonial rule.”

238

What must be understood is a fundamental separation of rhetoric and reality. In

both cases we see a lack of capacity to sustain empire, with rhetoric still clinging to

the edifice of past greatness. Watson writes that just as surely as the First World

War brought about the ‘creation of the mandates as a curious extension of the

French Islamic Empire’, the events of the Second World War brought about their

demise, with strong Arab resentment of the ‘lingering presence’ of the French.239

Indeed it was the efforts of the Sultan al-Atrash, an Arab nationalist symbol240, in

his third attempt at revolt that ultimately defeated the French and established

Druze independence without British assistance.241 It was exhaustion and defeat -

not liberal idealism - that lead to the withdrawal from the Middle East;

The British withdrawal from the Middle East was determined less by a lack of imperial nerve, than exhaustion after two enormously costly wars. When Churchill was asked to characterise the Exchequer at the end of World War II, he used the word ‘bankrupt’. Middle East nationalist [had] bitter memories of having been let down by the British after World War I.

242

British and French policies therefore share similar fates. The desire for empire - the

need for the resources of imperial possessions to restore prosperity - was present

at the end of the Second World War. However, this thesis contends that the fact

that exhaustion played more of a role in the collapse of the British Mandate in Iraq

237

Gaidar, Y. (2007). Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Pg 9. 238

Singer, B. & Langdon, J.V. (2004). Cultured Force: Makers and Defenders of the French Colonial Empire. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press. Pg 230. 239

Watson, W.E. (2003). Tricolor and Crescent: France and the Islamic World. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 90. 240

Swayd, S.S. (2006). The A to Z of the Druzes. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, Inc., The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. Pg 2. 241

Philipp , T. & Schäbler , B. (1998). The Syrian Land: Processes of Integration and Fragmentation : Bilād Al-Shām from the 18th to the 20th Century. Stuttgart, Germany: Franz Steiner Verlag GmbH. Pg 371; Rogers, M. (2014). The Esoteric Codex: Hermeticism I. New York, New York: lulu.com. Pg 123. 242

Adelson, R. (1995). London and the Invention of the Middle East: Money, Power, and War, 1902-1922. Suffolk, England: St Edmundsbury Press. Pg 213.



and the French Mandate in Syria than the ideals of the Mandates themselves

shows how empty the terms of those Mandates were in the first place. Motivations

for empire were exploitative, extractive, mercantile and commercial in both the

British and French cases, both causing immense instability.



Conclusion

The actions of the British in Iraq and the French in Syria during the years 1815-

1948 show complete disregard for peace, stability and self-determination. Britain

and France made a secret deal with each other on how to best split up the Middle

East to suit their needs, making the statement by IS leader al-Baghdadi about a

‘conspiracy’ they are working to end seem very plausible. Both imperial powers

created unnatural nation-states, in some cases completely irrelevant of ethnic and

religious differences and tensions, and in other cases specifically set up to favour

certain, more controllable groups over other, less preferred groups. In Iraq, this

lead to a tribal Shi’a-led uprising in 1920 that was brutally suppressed by a

combination of chemical weapons-based artillery attacks and the fire-bombing of

villages in what was called at the time ‘air policing’. In Syria, 1920 was also the

date of the invasion of French forces, first landing in Beirut and taking over from

British troops. They then moved east to Damascus in a Franco-Syrian war that

deposed the sitting King Faisal. The proceeding decades saw a very intentional

policy of ‘divide and conquer’ from the French, splitting their ‘Greater Syria’

mandate area into Syria and Lebanon, as well as reorganising provinces to best

suit the Christian populations. However, this policy was primarily for imperial

benefit, keeping all groups too weak and separated to form a proper resistance.

The use of both hard power - in British and French troops - and soft power in

influence over politics, opened and expanded social fissures down sectarian and

ethnic lines. In Iraq, three Ottoman vilayets were brought together to form one

nation under the British Mandate for Iraq. The tensions of those three groups

formed into one nation-state are still felt to this day. Shi’a-Arab Basra, Sunni-Arab

Baghdad and Sunni-Kurdish Mosul continue to play a significant role in modern

day tensions, especially in post-Saddam Hussein and post-US Iraq. As a result of

the preference shown to Sunni Arabs as leaders of Mandate era Iraq, Shi’a clerics

openly rebelled, and their eventual exile to Iran would haunt the British decades

later. Iran began to form into a Shi’a hegemon in the region, playing a Shi’a/Sunni

proxy war with the other two hegemonic powers in the region - Ataturk’s new



Turkey and al-Saud’s new Saudi Arabia. In post-US Iraq, it was the Shi’a that

secured political dominance, forcing out Sunni tribal and political leaders. This

created the necessary preconditions for a Sunni terror group like IS to play one

group against the other and destabilise Iraq along the lines that the British created,

as far back as 1920. Meanwhile, having been betrayed by almost everyone, the

Kurdish people were left without a home, split into three pieces and forced to

reside in northern Iraq, northern Syria and southern Turkey. Their battle for

independence has spawned militant Cold War era groups such as the Kurdistan

Workers’ Party, designated a terrorist organisation by many nations including the

US.

In Syria, weak central government was made ripe for decades of military coups

and finally a military Ba’athist takeover, and resulted in the resurrection of pan-

Arabism or the Arab nationalism that was so brutally crushed in the early 1920’s.

The ‘divide and conquer’ mentality of the French, their oppressive taxation policies

and fundamental misunderstanding of an Ottoman local government system that

had proven to work caused a general uprising between 1925-27. This parallels the

1920 Iraqi Revolution, and was met with the same brutally repressive end. The

ground work for the Shi’a Alawite dominance of modern day leader Bashar al-

Assad and the prominence of the Shi’a Alawite sect in a majority Sunni nation-state

was an attempt by the French to counter Sunni hostility to French rule. This rule of

a Shi’a minority sect over a Sunni majority nation-state is the fundamental driver of

the current Syrian civil war, and provided the necessary fuel by with the group IS

has been able to achieve many of its ends and a prominence in the international

consciousness.

Ultimately the imperial powers put groups together that would never have formed a

nation of their own accord. By doing so using the centralised Western-style nation-

state model, they created a prize at the core of these country - the power to rule

them all. Whilst each of the groups fought each other for the scraps of domestic

control and dominance, the imperial powers wielded ultimate constitutional power,



always remaining the masters of financial and foreign policy. Once in control after

quelling the opposition of the late 1919’s and early 1920’s, the imperial powers got

to work on their end games; oil. European national companies were given oil

concessions and control over oil fields, pipelines were constructed to move the

important product west through to new ports and refineries like Haifa on the

Mediterranean coast or east to the Persian Gulf. Whilst giving each of the Mandate

regions varying levels of staged-autonomy, both Britain and France continued their

exploitative, extractive, commercial and mercantile imperialism right up until the

Second World War. Finally the pressures and losses sustained by the two allies

during the war with Germany led to the collapse of the ability to manage the

Mandates entirely, leaving behind a divided, exploited and abused region. This

made the region ripe for the turmoil that was to follow in what Turner describes as

the Cold War and American eras of Middle East history.

Research has shown that it is too simplistic to say that the imperial powers were

motivated purely by their needs for oil and the industries of the Middle East. The

research provides a more nuanced view of national interests and imperial

motivations, where it is more accurate to make the argument that the British and

French engaged in empire in the Middle East for a host of factors. They both

engaged in an exploitative imperialism, using the geographical realities of both Iraq

and Syria for their own purposes. Both powers engaged in an extractive

imperialism, motivated by the need to secure Mesopotamian and later Levantine oil

fields and the transport nations that would allow for processing and delivery to

Europe. Britain and France both engaged in creating puppet governments that

would rubber stamp oil concessions and create oil exploration and production

monopolies for the Iraqi Petroleum Company. And both imperial players used their

control of Iraq and Syria in a broader campaign to control the Mediterranean and

shipping lanes, the French focusing on North-South African routes and the British

on the East-West, Suez Canal through to Gibraltar routes. As long as this is

understood, then it is appropriate to argue that these motivations can all fall into

the broad categories of energy and economic policy.



British policy in Iraq and French policy in Syria, and the actions they took to secure

their control, helped create the unstable modern-day Middle East we know today

and the tensions, violence and conflicts that characterise it. Tensions existed well

before the Colonial chapter, but the origin of modern-day Sunni/Shi’a conflict in

Iraq and Syria can trace much of its chaos and dysfunction straight back to the two

imperial powers that created the two modern-day nation states. Motivated by

exploitative, extractive, commercial and mercantile interests, the two imperial

powers controlled the bulk of the Middle East for well over two decades, building a

foothold in the region that would support their swelling domestic economies and

struggles for dominance in Europe. Much like the later Cold War era, and in line

with the school of thought and critique that is Postcolonialism, the struggles for

dominance in the European continent spread to other continents via imperial

policies, choices and decisions by men seeking power, and the right to rule. Their

presence was incredibly destabilising, and their motives were far from pure.

Much of the instability of Iraq and Syria can be attributed to Britain and France, and

their energy and economic interests were the motivating factors through the

research period. One the reasons groups like IS have had such success in Iraq

and Syria is due partly to their ability to exploit social fissures within the Iraqi and

Syrian communities along ethnic and sectarian lines and from a cartography

formed back during the time of the lies of the McMahon-Hussein letters. The

people of Mesopotamia and the Levant were betrayal in the Sykes-Picot

arrangement. They resistance to imperial rule was met with brutal suppression.

Preferential treatment of minority groups fuelled sectarian and ethnic tensions. The

tradition of weak government, left in the wake of the empires from decades of

puppeteering, has created a power vacuum that groups like IS have sought to fill.

Iraq and Syria were destabilised, exploited and made ripe for rifts for decades to

come.



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