Middle East #2: Between the World Wars

With World War I over, and the end of the Ottoman empire, all promises began to get broken. All the actors (Britain, France, Arabs, and Jews) felt betrayed and angry with everyone else, writes James Barr in A Line in the Sand.

 

And yet, each group had to work with whichever set happened to align with their interests at that moment. Britain needed Palestine under its control for two reasons: (1) It was strategically located wrt the Suez, Britain’s must-have route to its Asian colonies; and (2) It needed a port for the export of Iraqi oil to Britain. In this regard, they were OK with either British or Jewish control of Palestine. But of course, that was unacceptable to the Arabs. Whose fury was stoked by the French.

 

France, on the other hand, wanted Syria and (modern day) Lebanon under its control for historical reasons as well as a safe route for the Iraqi oil flow to France. The Arabs obviously were not OK with such a setup. A sentiment (and consequent rebellions) the British were quite happy to support.

 

But even as they mistrusted each other and fuelled trouble in the others’ “territories”, both Britain and France knew that too much Arab success was dangerous. It would inevitably spread the demand for independent Arab lands across both British and French controlled areas. Additionally, if either Britain or France was forced to withdraw from some regions, the other party would have to move in. Why? To prevent Arab self-rule in the vacated area from becoming the catalyst for independence in other regions. You can see how dangerous things were – it was like the Goldilocks problem of trying to keep the other side unstable, but not pushing too far to cause them to lose altogether.

 

Yet, brute force wasn’t enough to maintain control over their respective areas. Hence both Britain and France tried to enlist some regional leaders to their side. But of course, in typical colonialist fashion, they wanted that leader to be someone they could “control”. The easiest way for that was to ensure the man they picked was someone not exactly from that region but from some neighbouring region, or as in Iraq’s case, someone from the minority religion (Sunni instead of Shia). All such choices would add to internal strife within the respective regions, amongst the Arabs themselves.

 

Things were even more complicated. An additional reason Britain wanted Arab oil was that it served as a counterweight against their dependence on American oil. That resulted in the US having too much control over Britain. The US, on the other hand, as the largest oil producer at the time, didn’t want an over-supply of Arab oil to bring down prices that would affect American companies. And so the US inserted itself into the area, not militarily, but by muscling in a stake in the oil company operating in the region, the Turkish Petroleum Company. That way, they could regulate (to some extent) the extraction amount, the rate of flow, and the route the oil would take to Europe (via French controlled regions or British controlled regions).

 

As the Nazis began to rise, Hitler’s anti-Semitism drove Jews even more numbers to Palestine. This added fuel to the fire. The Arabs were furious with the changing demographic. When Arab revolts began to grow, Britain was quite happy to enlist the Jews to put the revolts down. Jewish excesses in turn would drive Arab hatred towards Jews to even greater heights.

 

Finally, as Hitler’s belligerence made another European war look increasingly inevitable, Britain realized it would need to move more troops home, and away from the Middle East. So they had to hand Arabs greater control over the region. Palestine was now a thorn – the Arabs insisted it too should come under their control. And so a cynical Britain decided to side with the Arabs. Sure, the Jews would feel betrayed, but hey, with Hitler’s increased anti-Semitism, what choice would the Jews have but to stick with the British in Europe?

 

This then was the configuration of the Middle East on the cusp of World War II.