A Partial History of the Middle East and ISIS, or Those Who Fail to Study History Are Doomed to Repeat It
My American-born father was mostly Armenian, with a bit of Syrian mixed in via my great-grandmother. His Armenian father, my Grandpa Sam (Simon), died before I was born. What I know of Grandpa Sam was revealed to me gradually, in bits and pieces, by various family members. He came to America as an orphan. His ship manifest says he came from a place called Harpoot. He was a quiet and sweet man. He died of a heart attack at age 54. And then, when I was a teenager in the 1960's, my Auntie Cyrina revealed the whole truth: Simon's entire family had been massacred in the 1890's by Turks when he was a small child in Armenia. That was the first time that I had heard of the Armenian Genocide.
In April, 100 years after the 2015 massacre of over 1 million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks, articles were written, books published and stories aired about the tragedy. Several friends, knowing I was of Armenian heritage, told me about the horrible things they had heard and read, things they had never known before. One of them had heard a public radio segment with Eugene Rogan, author of The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East. He includes a chapter in his book, The Annihilation of the Armenians. Being both Armenian and having an interest in World War I, I bought the book. And now I believe than anyone who wants to better understand the Middle East should read it because I learned about so much more than the Armenian massacres and World War I.
My original intent was to write one diary about the Armenian Genocide, the history of the Middle East, and the pan-Islamic state that is the goal of ISIL (ISIS). Reading The Fall of the Ottomans was a serious education about all three issues. However, for the sake of relative brevity, I will focus on the Middle East and ISIL.
Yes, there were things I knew before I read the book just from paying attention to the news during my adult life. Western countries drew the current national borders in order to exploit resources, especially oil, with no regard to who would have to live there together. The enemy of my enemy is my friend in the Middle East. For example, we provided weapons to Saddam Hussein and Iraq when they were fighting Iran in the 1980’s, during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. And this is just recent history - and the tip of the iceberg.
Upon reading the book, one gets a greater sense of the thousands of years of history, culture and customs that have led to what exists today. For example, the whole concept of “country” is relatively new in many parts of the world, including the Middle East. Allow me to use my own heritage as an example.
I was always told that my Syrian great-grandmother came here from Beirut, Lebanon. Lo and behold, Lebanon wasn’t a “country” in the 1890’s when she left Beirut for America. It was in fact part of what was a large Syrian section of the Ottoman Empire, as were what are now the countries of Lebanon, Jordan and Israel. That is why Mama was Syrian, not Lebanese.
The Eastern Mediterranean (the Levant, the “L” in ISIL), Middle East, Northern Africa, Balkans, Caucasus and Western Asia were historically controlled by various empires. In fact, there was even an Armenian Empire for a few hundred years in the first millennium, extending across modern Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. For several hundred years, until the end of World War I, this area was controlled by the Ottoman Empire.
Within the Ottoman Empire, there were provinces, kingdoms, tribes, nomads and millets, conclaves of non-Muslims such as members of various Christian sects and Jews. But there were no “countries” per se. Overseeing this was the Ottoman Sultan, both emperor and religious leader. He held the religious office of caliph, the leader of the global Muslim community, or caliphate (p. 47).
In other words, historically, there was an Pan-Islamic state, or caliphate, which stretched across huge parts of the Levant, including Iraq and Syria. This caliphate existed for hundreds of years and ended around 1920, after World War I. The “countries” that exist today have their roots in a French and British secret agreement made in late 1915. It was called the Sykes-Picot Agreement, after the British and French officials who drafted it. (p.285-287)
It’s worth reading this whole book to learn about Sykes-Picot. The French and British split into two zones of “influence” a huge swath of the world that included the Levant, Eqypt, the Arab Peninsula and Mesopotamia (Iraq). They neglected to share this information with the Arab tribes who fought with them and had been promised Arab independence after the war. (Warning: You may have an insatiable desire to watch Lawrence of Arabia after reading this book.)
Needless to say, Sykes-Picot created a great deal of resentment among the people who lived in the area once they found out about it AFTER the war. Rogan quotes Palestinian historian George Antonius writing about the subject in 1938:
“The Sykes-Picot Agreement is a shocking document. It is not only the product of greed at its worst, that is to say, of greed allied to suspicion and so leading to stupidity: it also stands out as a startling piece of double-dealing.” (p. 285)
Does Sykes-Picot sound familiar? In 2014, “a militia calling itself the Islamic State [ISIL] tweeted to its followers that is was ‘smashing Sykes-Picot’ when it declared a caliphate in territory spanning northern Syria and Iraq.” (p. 405-406) So, a major goal of ISIL is to undo the spheres of influence (and later the national borders) created by the French and British 100 years ago.
How many Americans actually know what the “smashing” of Sykes-Picot means? Well, now there is at least one more - and perhaps you, if you didn’t know before now.
I do not approve of ISIL’s tactics, nor do I think that their members are all faithful Muslims. ISIL includes a number of disgruntled, sectarian Sunnis who were unceremoniously kicked out of the Iraqi government and army by Emporor J. Paul Bremer. All groups of people, be they French, British, American, or Arab, who go out building empires by taking other people’s land ultimately use violence to get what they want. ISIL is no different.
And they, like we, will find out that there are still people who live in their sphere of influence who don’t really like the countries, or caliphates, they get forced into by outsiders. Let’s talk about the Kurds, since a number of Americans have this hero-worship thing going on with them. Kurdish people today live in northern Iraq, southeastern Turkey and other adjacent areas. This is their traditional tribal area. We spent a great deal of effort in 2003 assuaging Turkey’s fears that the newly freed Iraqi Kurds would not try to take their predominantly Kurdish areas away from them and form a new Kurdistan if we overthrew Saddam Hussein.
Because the Kurds seem to be about the only Iraqi group committed to fighting ISIL, many Americans want to arm them with “made-in-America” military weapons, forgetting that technically they are Iraqi citizens. They are also forgetting (if they even knew) that many Kurds would like to make a country out of their traditional tribal lands, which include parts of Iraq AND Turkey. Sure, let’s help them create their own army, and then act shocked when they try to take away parts of Turkey and Iraq to create their own country.
By the way, since Sam’s family was massacred in the 1890’s near Harpoot, they were probably killed by Kurdish tribesmen who were supporting Sultan Abdulhamid II, not by Turkish Ottomans. (p. 12) Page 12 socked me in the gut because it was the first time I read any actual history of the 1890’s massacre in "Harput," an alternate spelling of Harpoot. It put the Kurds in a slightly different light for me. They haven’t always been our friends. See above. And they are not now my enemies.
And I, myself part Syrian, cannot even begin to comprehend the tragedy and complexity of modern day Syria. There are no easy answers, no easy solutions, to what is happening there. If there is a solution for what is happening in the Middle East other than World War III, I do not know what it is.
Certainly, ignorance of the past leads many Americans to think that if we just send enough troops there, it will solve everything. Since reading The Fall of the Ottomans, every time a Republican presidential candidate says that putting “boots on the ground” will destroy ISIL, I would like to hit him over the head (figuratively, of course) with this 500-page book and say, “Read this! Do you really think it’s that easy? Do you really think you’re going to change 1,000 years of history, tradition and culture if we just put enough 'boots on the ground?'"
And what will these “boots” (it’s so much nicer than saying American citizens) be trying to accomplish? Will they be trying to destroy the desire of many Muslims to have a Pan-Islamic nation or caliphate once again? Not a chance. Will they be trying to keep all of these various tribes and peoples neatly contained in their Western-created countries? That would defy the history of the region.
Republicans are fond of saying that President Obama has no strategy for the Middle East. I disagree. I think he has the Colin Powell strategy for the Middle East: “If you break it, you buy it.” I think President Obama has a much greater appreciation for the complexities we would face as a result of another war - a war that would cross over internationally recognized borders - than all of the Republican candidates put together. In fact, even his use of “ISIL” instead of “ISIS” reflects the fact that ISIL doesn’t really recognize the countries of Iraq (the “I”) and Syria (the “S”).
I picked up The Fall of the Ottomans to learn more about the Armenian Genocide. I did, and on a much more personal level than I had expected. But when I put the book down, I felt I understood the Middle East in a way I had never understood it before. World War I had been at or near the top of my “Stupidest War of All Time” list. That was even before I had read the history of that war in the Middle East. To forget the lessons of that war while trying to effectively deal with ISIL the Middle East is a fool’s errand. Because those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it.