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Ed Webb

Will Syria War Mean End of Sykes-Picot? - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...s-breakup-levant-mandates.html

MENA history borders politics war Syria Iraq Palestine Israel Jordan Ottomans colonialism imperialism

shared by Ed Webb on 20 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • The Entente powers defeated the Central powers, the latter comprising first and foremost Germany but also, importantly for the future of the Middle East, the Ottoman empire, which ostensibly controlled the Levant — what today comprises most of what we know as Syria, Jordan, Israel, Palestine and Iraq. The Entente victory essentially allowed for the implementation of Sykes-Picot.
  • various Western-dominated conferences solidified the main components of Sykes-Picot into the mandate system, which was officially meant as a mechanism of transition for Middle Eastern peoples and their allotted territories toward independence, but in reality it just replaced Ottoman suzerainty with that of British and French colonial control. What emerged were largely artificial constructions that reflected British and French competition and imperial (mostly geostrategic and oil pipeline) interests rather than the natural ethnic, religious, economic and geographic contours of the region itself. It was to all intents and purposes the imposition of the Western-based Westphalian nation-state system onto the Middle East. Centuries of pre-existing orientations were cast aside.
  • for the most part the Ottomans, despite the stresses and strains that confronted them in the 1700s and 1800s leading up to the Great War, bargained and negotiated their way with local powers to produce relative stability
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • alien Western political, economic and even sociocultural constructs were superimposed on most of the inhabitants of these new countries
  • It took the United States more than 100 years to become a somewhat stable, prosperous country, and this was accomplished despite a horrific civil war but also while separated by oceans from much of the rest of the world — not on the doorstep of Europe endlessly fighting balance-of-power wars, — and sitting on highly coveted ground consisting of two-thirds of a new source of energy that would power the 20th century.
  • what kept these artificial creations together was the on-the-ground military presence of the British, French and eventually the Americans. And when one of these three was not present, military dictatorship filled the void that emerged from colonialism, political immaturity, imperialist machination and the lack of a national identity
  • events of the past decade in the post-Cold War world altered this equation. The military dictatorships have been removed or are under siege, first with the US-led ouster of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003 and culminating with the events of the so-called Arab Spring of 2011. We seem to be witnessing much of the Levant returning to its constituent parts, where the nation-state as a unit of analysis may no longer be valid. Iraq is once again on the verge of breaking down following the removal of US troops.
  • We may be witness to a generation-long process that will remap much of the Middle East. Perhaps outside powers will once again intervene to enforce new borders. If they do, will they get it right this time? Perhaps the indigenous peoples will continue to write their own history … and their own borders. Maybe all of this is inevitable no matter what regional or international powers decide to do
Ed Webb

Lessons from the destruction of Iraq's marshes - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...e-destruction-of-iraqs-marshes

Iraq ecology environment empire develpment sectarianism marshes saddam

shared by Ed Webb on 26 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • officials were constantly disappointed by the ingratitude of the ma’dan for the gift of state-initiated modernization
  • The marsh ecology itself was identified as an enemy to be overcome
  • the actual conduct of counterinsurgency remained anchored in developmental discourse. Iraqi officials justified the construction of new diversionary canals as necessary for agricultural expansion
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  • Similar stories could be told about British and German uses of concentrations camps and “hunger wars” in southern Africa, Soviet eradication of the herds of Kazakh nomads, American defoliation of Vietnamese rice paddies and Portuguese attempts to defeat insurgency by building a dam in Mozambique. Third World states have since adopted similar tactics, as in Guatemala’s genocidal 1982 “beans and bullets” campaign in the central highlands. The logic of ecological intervention continues to influence counterinsurgency today.
  • The destruction of the marshes did not begin in 1991, or even in 1980, but a century earlier. For millennia, the marshes had stood out as a stateless zone, comparable to what James Scott describes of upland southeast Asia. Hydrologically incorrigible and physically impenetrable, the area was a natural haven for escaped slaves, dissenters and brigands. At the turn of the 20th century though, the Ottomans and British began using advanced cartographic technologies and steamship navigation to assert mastery over the marshes and encourage the transition from peripatetic tribalism into modern citizenship based on settled agriculture. “Reclaiming” the marshes for agriculture was a cornerstone of development policies in Iraq.
  • Development and counterinsurgency are thus often linked, both tactically and doctrinally.
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