Damascus October 3rd 1918 for over two
years the Arab revolt has struck Ottoman
interests in Western Arabia they've
rallied tribes hit railways over and
over
blown up 25 bridges in a single
operation cut communications and seized
a lightly defended port city on the Red
Sea though never rallying more than
50,000 they tied down huge numbers of
Ottoman troops and when the British
marched into Palestine the air of a
regulars held their right flank
then when the Ottomans broke they rode
for their great price now Faisal the
revolts military leader parades into the
most important of cities Damascus the
one where he'll create a government for
his Arab nation locals welcomed him days
before a Syrian Parliament convened to
declare Syria an Arab state loyal to
sheriff Hussein with ISIL as its head of
state but then a British general tells
Faisal to stop the celebration Damascus
you see belonged to the French
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faisal was no fool he had known well
before 1918 that the British had been
engaging in double-dealing in fact he
had engaged in a bit of his own feeling
out the Ottomans on whether they would
support his claim to an Arab Kingdom
with him as a monarch if he switched
sides but by 1917 he knew heck everyone
knew that many of the lands in his
theoretical Arab state had already been
claimed by the British or promised to
the French in fact the British had
promised Palestine to no less than three
parties in 1917 British Foreign
Secretary Arthur Balfour had made a
public announcements that the British
government supported a national home for
the Jewish people in Palestine the point
was to convince American Jews to
pressure Washington which was dragging
its feet on getting troops to the front
to speed up their support then on the
other side of the map they hoped the
Bolshevik leadership now in power in
Russia who had decided to pull out of
the war would instead get back into the
fight but the British made a critical
mistake
they'd assumed that Zionism the idea of
founding a Jewish state in Palestine in
order to create a safe place for Jews to
govern themselves was universally
popular among the Jewish Diaspora in
actuality it was really only popular
among the Zionist faction that had been
lobbying the British most Jewish
Americans favored assimilation to their
new country rather than resettlement and
then in Russia well sure a few leading
Bolsheviks were Jewish but it was only
around a half-dozen not to mention they
considered Zionism a capitalist plot and
their communist ideology was
anti-colonialism so instead of getting
back into the war to show the duplicity
of the ruling class the Bolsheviks
opened the Russian archive and published
every secret allied treaty that had ever
been forwarded to Russia including
sykes-picot whoops British diplomats
rushed to Hussein telling him that
sykes-picot was dubbed you know not
really a formal treaty per se they'd
still totally honor their agreement to
found an Arab state oh and the Balfour
Declaration didn't mean the British
supported an independent Jewish state
just you know area of sorts I mean they
were already Jewish settlements in
Palestine right there had been for years
under the Ottomans you know guys
Mark Sykes even drew up a document
stating
that any future occupation of former
Ottoman territories would only happen by
the consent of the population still the
British message to Hussein and Faisal
was clear listen yes we've made a lot of
promises to a lot of people but once the
war is over we'll have a big conference
and work it all out okay that conference
would happen in 1919 in Versailles it
would last over a year and it wasn't
until the sweltering days of summer that
the division of the Ottoman Empire came
to the table but by that time the four
Allies dictating the conference Britain
France the United States and Italy we're
arguing over who got what in the Middle
East faisal attended the conference with
Lawrence as his advocate Lawrence had
even in the past drawn maps suggesting
where different Arab states should go
though a word about that there's this
modern idea that if the conference
simply listened to Lawrence everything
would have turned out all right that's
probably not true and is a bit of a
dodge to cover the fact that no local
people were consulted in the division of
the region in fact even Lawrence's own
Maps had question marks all over them
but it's true that negotiators weren't
listening to outside advice and inter
Ally commission meant to gauge the
region's feelings about independence
became an exclusively American effort
when all other allies pulled out
meanwhile colonial official and Middle
East expert Gertrude Bell travelled
Arabia writing a report on local
feelings about self-determination or
people's interest in choosing their own
government her conclusions were
disregarded
despite faisal making overtures to
zionist representatives proposing
support for a Jewish state in return for
an Arab one Faisal and anyone from the
region were increasingly shut out and
Mark Sykes might have been in the room
to repeat his declaration about Native
governments needing to give consent to
be governed but he was dead taken as the
1918 flu pandemic burned through the
conference the United States would be
the sole advocate of self-determination
but their case was undercut by Woodrow
Wilson leaving due to illness possibly
also the 1918 flu and in response to his
exclusion faisal went back to damascus
and called a syrian national congress
inviting representatives from all parts
of Greater Syria which included lands
now in Syria Lebanon Jordan Palestine
and Israel there were disagreements
arguments divisions particularly over
Faisal overtures
- Zionists at the Paris conference but
one thing United them Syria could not be
divided and the regions known as
Palestine and Lebanon were an
indivisible part of Syria so they wrote
a report and presented it to the
American Commission but even as they did
so this very division was taking place
in Paris France and Britain would divide
the region between them
not quite along the sykes-picot line but
something close to it the region would
be governed by mandates British and
French caretaker governments who would
oversee and control local governments
until they were ready for
self-government sykes-picot it was
decided did not conflict with British
promises to Hussein and the independent
Arab state could be in the zone of
influence now if that doesn't sound like
an independent state that's because it
wasn't the mandate system was a way to
practice colonialism by treaty a way for
the British and French to control the
region's economy and politics that would
be palatable at home oh and uh what
about the borders you guessed it they'd
figure that out later
in response in March of 1920 the Syrian
National Congress proclaimed that they
had formed the Arab Kingdom of Syria
with Faisal as its monarch and head of
government they named a prime minister
and said they would defend their state
from any French incursion this
declaration hung over the San Remo
conference in April where the Allies
gathered to draw the borders of their
new mandates and to go into the
specifics of every decision would take
an entire series on its own and many of
them such as separate Kurdish in
Armenian states acknowledging the
Ottomans wartime campaigns of repression
displacement and genocide would quickly
be undone by the Turkish civil war
Palestine would be under a British
Mandate including provisions for a
Jewish homeland that did not prejudice
the rights and protections of those
already living there Transjordan just
beside Palestine was British and a new
nation called Iraq would be formed by
merging three separate and very
different Ottoman provinces in
Mesopotamia Basra in the South was
connected to the Persian Gulf and India
trade Baghdad in the center who was
agricultural and had economic links with
Iran and Missoula in the North was
oil-rich and mountainous with links to
both Turkey and Syria in fact Missoula
had traditionally been considered part
of Syria but the British had taken it in
the war and weren't giving it up so into
Iraq it
and that combining would have
consequences there were internal
sectarian and ethnic divisions with 20%
of the population being Kurdish of
people whose lands were now split
between Iraq Syria and Turkey
in addition Iraq would only have 36
miles of coastline and no deep water to
export its oil all the good ports you
see were in its smaller southernly
neighbor Kuwait I think that's what you
could call foreshadowing France by
contrast would have mandates over Syria
and a separated Lebanon where many
Lebanese Christians lived the French
also insisted that the British agree
that the territory held by Faisal his
kingdom of Syria was illegitimate and
unrecognized when Faisal heard about
this agreement he rushed to dispatch
cables to French representatives in
Lebanon he was willing to negotiate
he even appealed to the United States to
make it a protectorate the French
declined so did the United States and
Faisal zs-- British allies had pulled
out the previous year then on July 24th
1920 scattered Faisal Army occupied
Damascus and sent him into exile in
Britain the Arab kingdom of Syria
proclaimed with such hope and March had
lasted a hundred and thirty-nine days
but in time Faisal would be a king again
legendary thanks to our patrons Ahmed
Zayat Turk Alesia bramble Casey Musa
Dominic Valenciana Gunnar Clovis Kyle
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