Here is a question for historians, pan Arabists, ethno-sectarian dogmatists and die-hard nationalists: What if the infamous Sykes-Picot agreement to divide the historical-geographical Levant never happened in the wake of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the last century? How would the political map of most of most of the Near East look like today if France and Great Britain opted to leave Levant and its peoples to their fate? These are academic questions that are open for long and futile discussions. No one really knows what trajectory history would have taken if the multitude of ethnic and religious groups emerging from the yoke of centuries of centralised and often authoritarian rule by the Ottoman Sultans were left to decide their own fate. One thing is almost certain: the ebb and flow of religious and ethnic tides would have changed political borders of this region many times over.
This is not an ode to that notorious colonial deal that created the countries that make up the century-old map of the Middle East. The nation-state concept, a product of 19th century European nationalism which went through many decades of evolution, was forced upon the peoples of the multicultural Levant. Before that the Levant was divided into subservient provinces that were part of a militarised empire ruled directly by a sultan or a caliph, often with self-proclaimed religious authority, under a vague and often crude notion of an Umma or nation.
A number of Arab scholars and aspiring leaders, who studied in the West or were influenced by it at the beginning of the 20th century embraced the concept of the nation-state and dreamed of a greater Arab republic, or in the case of the Sharif of Mecca an Arab kingdom, that would occupy most of the Levant (the Fertile Crescent) or a Greater Syria encompassing modern-day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine.
The creation of Israel in the 1940s in the heart of Greater Syria derailed plans for a united Arab republic/kingdom at a time when pan Arabism weighed down religious and ethnic aspirations of secession. The challenge posed by Israel gave birth to Nasserism in the mid-1950s; a utopian dream of uniting all Arabs, from the Arabian Gulf to the Atlantic Ocean, and doing away with so-called “artificial borders”. Egypt’s Jamal Abdul Nasser supported republican revolutionary movements against pro-western conservative monarchies; thus ushering in a period of military coups in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen.
The Baath, or Arab Resurrection, became both a rival to Nasserism and a part of the larger mainstream Pan Arab nationalist movement. Both movements underlined the common Arab cultural (language and to a lesser degree religion) bond that ties millions from Morocco to Oman. Both claimed to be aiming at building a democratic and secular society. Recent history shows how both have failed miserably to achieve either objective.
Nasserism received a fatal blow following the catastrophic defeat of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. From then onward Arab nationalists would be on the defensive as post-colonial Arab-nation states would bolster their narrower nationalist identities and deepen the practice of a centralised and hegemonic rule. It is during this period of the 1970s and ‘80s that religious and ethnics divides began to surface in more than one Arab country. Lebanon was engulfed in a bloody civil and sectarian war and the Iraqi Kurds were revolting once again against the direct Baghdad rule.
Sudan’s civil war, which began in the 1950s, had come to an awkward pause in 1972 only to reignite in 1983. The African tribes of southern Sudan, who are non-Arabs and a mixture of Christians and animists, were leading a vicious struggle for separation. Troubled South Yemen had gained independence in 1967 but had gone through turbulent events and a brief civil war before it was forced into unification with North Yemen in 1990. But secessionist sentiments by the South continued to boil over and Yemen’s current plight had only stoked the fires of political divorce from the North.
Algeria had to battle with the growing nationalist ambitions of its indigenous Berbers, while Morocco is struggling to reach a settlement to the Western Sahara conflict. Libya’s debacle following the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 has revived calls by tribes in the Benghazi region to cede from the rest of the country. Today Libya is already divided into semi-independent regions along rival tribal lines.
And the bloody Syrian civil war has triggered waves of ethnic and sectarian tensions that pitted Sunnis against Shiites and Kurds against Arabs and radical Islamist jihadists against minorities. Syrian Kurds are now demanding self-rule within a post-war federal Syria.
But the biggest secession event today in the region, apart from the 2011 independence of South Sudan, is that of Iraqi Kurds; a challenge not only to a united Iraq but for Turkey, Iran and Syria as well. The balkanisation of the Levant, as we have known it since the implementation of Sykes-Picot, is a realistic scenario as nation-states struggle to remain whole amid various social, cultural, political and economic challenges. It is ironic that those who loathe that colonial entente most, anguishing over a missed opportunity to unite the Arabs under one state, now lament the fact that we could be seeing a disintegration of countries like Iraq and Syria — the very product of that agreement.
But those who defend the greater grouping of nations under one umbrella; the European Union (EU) being the brightest example tend to forget that even such unions are hardly perfect. The EU has been jolted by the Brexit vote last year and the rise of ultra-nationalist and Eurosceptic Far Right parties in countries like Germany, France and the Netherlands is a real threat to the future of a united Europe. The latest Catalonia move to cede from Spain is a reminder that even seemingly stable and deeply rooted nation-states are not immune to ethnic and religious separatist tendencies.
The Arab world and the Levant in particular are going through seismic transformations that have been brewing for decades but were allowed to explode in the past two decades — following the invasion of Iraq and the eruption of the so-called Arab Spring. Whether it is the radical jihadist phenomenon — those who believe in a united, pure and cohesive Sunni Umma — or nationalist and religious separatists who seek their own independent entities, the process of the unmaking of a region that was created as a result of the Sykes-Picot is already in motion. Nation-states that wish to have a chance to overcome this existential challenge must embrace a more open, decentralised and democratic system of government. Those that resist will most likely find themselves on a short list of countries whose sovereignty and geographic and political unity will be tested in the coming few years!
Osama Al Sharif is a journalist and political commentator based in Amman.
