Brief History of the Middle East

The Middle East. Tim Marshall explains why it is the way it is, in his wonderful book, Prisoners of Geography:

“The middle of what? East of where? The region’s very name is based on a European view of the world, and it is a European view of the region that shaped it.”

The Arabian desert and scrubland is the dominant feature of the entire region. Ergo, people have lived on the periphery of that region for centuries. Until, that is, the Europeans came along and created nation states and legally fixed borders.

But why did Europe get involved at all? It wasn’t like oil was either known of or needed back then. Aha, it started as the collapse of the Ottoman Empire looked imminent. In 1916, while World War I was ongoing, the British and French drew up a map on how they’d divide the region (and thus the Ottoman Empire) if they won the war. The line is called the Sykes-Picot line: north of it would be French control, south of it would be British control. Since then, “Sykes-Picot” has become shorthand for all subsequent decisions on how to divide that area, including multiple “betrayed promises given to tribal leaders”. So you realize, before Sykes-Picot (in this wider sense of the term), these nations did not exist: Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Israel and Palestine!

A bunch of Europeans just created new nations, without bothering about the known incompatibility of Shias, Sunnis or Kurds, let alone tribal rivalries. And many of these groups have never recognized the others as even belonging to the same religion for centuries. And so, till present day, these countries have been “ruled by leaders who tended to favour whichever branch of Islam (and tribe) they themselves came from”. The other groups never accepted these rulers, and the only way these nations remained in one piece was, yes, via brute force.

Iraq is a prime example of this: it is Shia majority, and the holy sites of Shia’ism (Najaf and Karbala) are in the country. Yet, it was ruled by Sunni rulers, all the way until Saddam. The country, be definition, was an “unholy mess”, as Marshall puts it. The Kurds didn’t fit into Iraq either, and they were treated just as brutally as the Shias.

No wonder then that when Saddam was toppled, the country fell apart: the Shia got control being the democratic majority, and some fraction of the now persecuted Sunni’s formed or joined ISIS. The Kurds tried to carve out a separate nation up north, and Turkey, with its own sizable Kurdish population, risks the south of Turkey joining the north of Iraq to form a new nation: Kurdistan.

In other cases, the British and/or French rewarded tribes who had fought against the Ottoman Empire in World War I. With typical arrogance and ignorance, decided that one such artificial country could have two “rewarded” tribes ruling different areas. Inevitably, that region later subsequently split into two countries: modern day Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Or take Lebanon: it was created as a Christian majority country by the French who had allied themselves with Arab-Christians in World War I. Once the Palestinian exodus from Israel started, the demographics of Lebanon began to change. The higher birth rate of Muslims compared to Christians only compounded the problem. For decades, Lebanon is synonymous with civil war.

Syria is another country with sizable minorities. It was also ruled by a family that, like everyone else in the region, affiliated itself more by tribal loyalty than any sense of nationhood. No wonder it was always a bomb waiting to explode.

The West, with its continued ignorance of the factions within Islam and demographics, doesn’t get that ISIS being a Sunni organization will be fought to the death if it tries to move beyond half of Iraq, because from that point onwards Iran and Iraq are both Shia majority. Even now, Western leaders pass ignorant remarks like Iran aligning with ISIS, or earlier with the Sunni-only Al Qaeda!

Ironically, the only “natural” country in the region is the country the West hates: Iran. It was always a logical entity that existed for centuries by the name of Persia, its demographics had settled accordingly, and it has natural mountain, swamp and river borders with its neighbours.

All of which is why Marshall is bang on target in his assessment:

“The magnitude of what is going on… has finally enabled at least some observers to understand the problems of the region are not down to the existence of Israel.”