A
common theme running through much of the leading commentary on the
Syrian crisis is the idea that the principal borders of the modern
Middle East, created by the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, are about to be
fundamentally altered if not erased completely. In mid-March, Turkish
Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu gave a university speech in which he
said that the political order in the Middle East created by the
Sykes-Picot Agreement was coming to an end. He envisioned Turkey's
influence returning to those areas which were once under its sovereignty
but were lost to the European colonial powers.
It seems that everyone
is talking about the end of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. In mid-May, David
Ignatius of The Washington Post warned the Russians that they would
suffer most from "the dissolution of the Sykes-Picot boundaries in the
Middle East." At the same time, Elliot Abrams, who served as the deputy
national security adviser under former U.S. President George W. Bush
wrote about "the unraveling" of the Sykes-Picot agreement.
Several weeks earlier, one of France's leading commentators in the
Middle East, Antoine Basbous, wrote in Le Figaro on April 21 that the
"artificial boundaries" established by Sykes-Picot were about to receive
their final blow from what he called "the Arab tsunami and its
aftershocks."
It is difficult to
exaggerate the importance of this change should it transpire. In October
1916, during World War I, Sir Mark Sykes, representing Britain, and
Charles Francois Georges-Picot, representing France, reached a secret
understanding dividing the Asian territories of the Ottoman Empire into
spheres of influence that would be dominated by both countries. When the
League of Nations established mandates over the former Ottoman
territories that the allies subsequently captured, the mandate for Syria
and Lebanon went to France while the mandate for Iraq went to Britain.
These mandatory regimes in the years that followed led to the
empowerment of the Alawite minority over the Sunni majority in Syria and
the establishment of the domination of the Sunni minority in Iraq over
the Shiites.
The Sykes-Picot
Agreement also separated what would become British mandatory Palestine,
which had been known among its Arab residents prior to WWI as Surya
al-Janubiyya (Southern Syria) from French mandatory Syria to its north.
In 1916, Russia, still under the Czar, supported the Sykes-Picot
agreement in exchange for its territorial demands being recognized by
the British and the French in what became Turkey. Thus the borders of at
least five Middle Eastern states would eventually be determined by the
original Sykes-Picot Agreement.
Presently, the Middle
Eastern border that most observers are focusing on is the 600 kilometer
(370 mile) border separating Syria from Iraq. On the Syrian side,
important newspapers, like the Financial Times, have been writing this
week about the "disintegration of Syria." Similarly, The New York Times
asserted that the Syrian state is "breaking up." It suggested that at
least three different Syrias are now emerging: one loyal to the regime
of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, another loyal to the opposition,
and a Kurdish Syria with ties to Northern Iraq and Kurdish groups in
Turkey.
Particularly
accelerating the demise of the Sykes-Picot borders are events on the
Iraqi side of the border. Incidents during the last year point in the
direction of the eventual breakup of the Iraqi state. This coming
September, a new pipeline carrying Kurdish oil through Turkey, will link
Iraqi Kurdistan to its Turkish market instead of to the rest of Iraq.
This development is seen in the West as the first step toward the
independence of Kurdistan. Indeed, the Kurds are cutting separate deals
with international oil companies and circumventing the central Iraqi
government in Baghdad. A spokesman for U.S. President Barack Obama's
National Security Council has stated on the record that the U.S. opposes
oil exports from any part of Iraq "without the appropriate approval of
the Iraqi federal government." Washington opposes Kurdish economic
initiatives that could lead to the dissolution of Iraq into at least
three states: Kurdish, Shiite, and Sunni.
Kurdistan may be ready
to become independent. What about the rest? The Shiite areas of Iraq
south of Baghdad to the Kuwaiti border will be dominated one way or
another by Iran. But what will happen to the Sunni sectors of Iraq, like
the al-Anbar Province? In the last year, the Sunni Arab tribes in Iraq
that span the Syrian-Iraqi border have joined the war against the Assad
regime. Tribes like the Shammar, who migrated from the Arabian Peninsula
to the Jazira plain between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in the 17th
century, have been regularly crossing the Iraqi-Syrian border back and
forth for many years.
The prospect that their
Sunni cousins in Syria will eventually defeat the Assad regime, or at
least take over part of the Syrian state, has energized the Sunni Arabs
of Iraq, who felt previously that the 2003 Iraq War had lead to the
defeat of their Sunni-dominated regime under Saddam Hussein and a
victory for Iraq's Shiite majority. Now, they sense they can take back
their autonomy from Baghdad.
Former U.S. Ambassador
to Iraq Ryan Crocker (serving between 2007 and 2009) wrote in The
Washington Post on May 1 that al-Qaida-Iraq has re-established itself in
areas in which it was defeated by U.S. and Iraqi forces over the last
five years. It should come as no surprise that Crocker defines the
leading jihadist force fighting Assad's army, Jabhat al-Nusra, as a
front group for al-Qaida in Iraq. In March, the executions of eleven
Syrian soldiers in a public square in the town of al-Raqqa, inside
northern Syria, were carried out under the flag of Iraqi al-Qaida. The
old Sykes-Picot border was clearly meaningless for affiliates of
al-Qaida. An Iraqi commentator noted that since 2011, there have been
religious calls for erasing the old Iraqi-Syrian border and unifying the
Sunni regions on both sides.
Should the
fragmentation of Syria combine with the Balkanization of Iraq, what will
the Middle East look like? The Sunni Arabs are the likely candidates to
look for mergers with their neighbors. If they are politically
dominated by the same branch of al-Qaida, then the emergence of a new
Afghanistan in the heart of the Arab world might be the result. If more
moderate forces among the Iraqi Sunnis emerge, then it should not be
ruled out that they might consider some federal ties with their western
Sunni neighbor, Jordan, which would give them an outlet to the Red Sea.
But however the political systems in Syria and Iraq evolve, it is clear that the map of the Middle East is likely to be very different from the map that the colonial powers fixed during World War I and which has endured for roughly 97 years since British and French officials first put it on paper. The only boundary in the Middle East that Western diplomats have become rigidly obsessed with, despite the far more profound changes that are occurring across the region, is not even formally an international border under international law, but only an armistice line from 1949 -- what is inappropriately called the 1967 border. While a solution to this territorial dispute must be addressed, the final borders drawn between Israel and it's neighbors will have to take into account the current dramatic strategic shifts.
But however the political systems in Syria and Iraq evolve, it is clear that the map of the Middle East is likely to be very different from the map that the colonial powers fixed during World War I and which has endured for roughly 97 years since British and French officials first put it on paper. The only boundary in the Middle East that Western diplomats have become rigidly obsessed with, despite the far more profound changes that are occurring across the region, is not even formally an international border under international law, but only an armistice line from 1949 -- what is inappropriately called the 1967 border. While a solution to this territorial dispute must be addressed, the final borders drawn between Israel and it's neighbors will have to take into account the current dramatic strategic shifts.
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