14. The Middle East and the Sykes-Picot Treaty: A Poisonous Legacy¶
Core Argument¶
The frontiers of the modern Arab world were drawn by the secret Sykes-Picot agreement of May 1916, a sordid deal between British and French imperialism to carve up the Ottoman Empire. Oil was the decisive factor: Britain secured control over parts of Iraq, the Shatt Al-Arab for Indian trade, and the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which fuelled the Royal Navy. To mask these machinations, Britain provoked an Arab revolt against the Turks with vague promises and bribes, yet the rebellion was militarily insignificant. The British spent £11 million on it, but the Bedouins refused to attack Turkish regulars. Meanwhile, the British Mesopotamian campaign was a catastrophe: General Townshend’s force of 12,000 was trapped at Kut al-Amara, surrendering 13,000 men in April 1916—the largest surrender in British history. Even in prisoner-of-war camps, the class divisions of society persisted.
The Sykes-Picot deal allocated Russia Constantinople, Britain Basra and southern Iraq, France Syria and Lebanon, and Palestine as an ‘international territory’. Britain had promised Palestine to both Arabs and Jews, but neither received what they were promised. In a secret session of the House of Commons on 10 May 1917, Prime Minister Lloyd George bluntly stated that physical possession was all that mattered, denying France the position promised by Sykes-Picot. He told the British ambassador to France: “We shall be there by conquest and shall remain.” As predicted, Britain pocketed Palestine and a huge slice of former Ottoman Arab territories; France got most of what remained. Mosul was initially apportioned to France but later handed to Britain and joined to future Iraq. The Jews received a slice of Palestine, not the promised homeland. Kurdish claims for a state were completely ignored, and they were split between Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran. Syria was handed to France to keep them quiet; France also controlled Greater Lebanon, a recipe for future instability given its mixture of faiths and ethnic groups.
After the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks published the Sykes-Picot agreement on 24 November 1917. Lenin called it “the agreement of colonial thieves.” By dividing the region into artificial states cutting across ethnic and religious boundaries, the agreement guaranteed future wars and conflicts. The bloody conflicts between Arabs and Jews, and Greeks and Turks, trace back to these dirty deals, leaving a poisonous legacy of imperialist crimes.