Desk Report,
How the ‘mask’ of Arab leaders is being revealed, and how long will it last?
The post-Ottoman Arab states that were created after World War I were for the benefit of Western imperialists—not for the benefit of the region’s own people.
How the ‘mask’ of Arab leaders is being revealed, and how long will it last?
By 1918, British hegemony in the post-Ottoman Middle East was becoming clear. Recognizing this, an official in British India wrote, “The old slogans are now obsolete. We must choose a new path; one that will help us achieve our main goal. The task is possible, but it requires some change of perspective. The “Arab mask” may have to be placed on a firmer foundation than we had previously planned.”
At the so-called Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the British realized that they could no longer impose their hegemony directly in this era of seemingly disrupted “self-determination.” So they needed a mask called ‘local authority’ to hide their dominance. Some British imperialists, like T. E. Lawrence, thought that they were satisfying their ego by helping the Arabs. But they were essentially servants of the British Empire.
On the one hand, these imperialists wanted to maintain their dominance in the Middle East; on the other hand, they claimed to have wholeheartedly accepted this new era of independence after Ottoman rule.
The British helped the Arabs to overthrow the Ottoman rulers. In 1916, they incited the Arab revolt by supporting and financing the Hashemite leader Sharif Hussein ibn Ali. The Hashemites had previously served the Ottomans, but switched sides during the First World War.
This ‘Arab mask’ was a new version of an old British strategy called ‘indirect rule’—just as they had introduced it in Africa. Here too, a new system was built in that mold. The aim was to prevent any real independence and continue to rule themselves under the name of local rule.
Indirect rule
The British helped the Arabs overthrow the Ottoman rulers. In 1916, they incited the Arab revolt by supporting and financing the Hashemite leader Sharif Hussein ibn Ali. The Hashemites had previously served the Ottomans, but switched sides during World War I.
The British promised Sharif Hussein an independent Arab state that would include Palestine. However, they never wanted to grant true sovereignty over this vast area. They only wanted to break the unity of the Ottomans.
The Arabs now knew that the British and French had secretly decided how to divide the Ottoman Arab lands among themselves. This secret agreement was called the Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916), which directly contradicted the British promises made to the Arabs. The phrase ‘Sykes-Picot’ is used as a metaphor for colonialism as a whole.
Today’s Arab rulers can play a somewhat strategic role, but they do so while remaining loyal to US policy, especially on the Palestinian question, even if it goes against public opinion. These rulers are sometimes spectators, sometimes accomplices, but in a word, they survive under the umbrella of an external power that despises Muslims and Arabs.
Exactly one year later, in 1917, the British government issued the infamous Balfour Declaration in support of the establishment of a ‘Jewish national home’ in Palestine. The declaration essentially supported a nationalist and colonial project by European Jews in Palestine; where Jews were a small part of the population at the time. However, the majority Arab population of Palestine was denied national rights. The declaration contemptuously referred to the Arabs as ‘non-Jewish people’.
Attempts to put on a mask after the Sykes-Picot and Balfour Declarations
After the leak of the Sykes-Picot and Balfour Declarations, the British and French publicly announced their goals for the Middle East to appease the angry Arabs. In a joint statement in November 1918, they stated that their goal was to end “Turkish oppression” and give the people of the region the freedom to establish national governments.
The underlying purpose of this declaration (known as the Anglo-French Declaration) was to make the mask stronger and more lasting. The main element of this mask was an unelected local ruler who would be loyal to British imperialism; would consider his fate and posterity linked to British loyalty; would not resist British support for the establishment of Jewish colonies; and would choose the path of reassurance, not repression, to reduce public pressure for the liberation of Palestine.
Accepting these conditions would only result in nominal freedom.
Historians have shown that the Hashemite family adapted to this structure, as did other Arab dynasties, such as Ibn Saud and King Fuad of Egypt.
Sharif’s two sons, Faisal and Abdullah, were installed as puppet rulers in Iraq and Transjordan.
Arab-American author Amin Rihani wrote in his biography of Iraqi King Faisal, “Such rulers had to be little more than colonial puppets, but little less than independent leaders.”
This was the “Arab mask” of the 1920s. In contrast, the Kemalist movement in Turkey, led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, successfully resisted Western partition. Although its persecution of minorities, population exchanges with Greece, and pursuit of secular nationalist fundamentalism were condemned, Turkey’s sovereignty was much stronger than that of the Arab states.
