‘Martyrs’ blood delineates better state borders

The territorial integrity of many Arab states is in danger following the recent semi-collapse of the May 1916 British-French Sykes Picot borderlines in Syria and Iraq.

Arab nationalists always rejected the Sykes Picot agreements to divide Asia Minor into Anglo French spheres of influence, denying the Arab people the right to freedom and independence.

Both the Syrian and the Iraqi Bath Party condemned as a betrayal what the Bolsheviks exposed of British plans to divide the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire into areas under their control.

Islamic intellectual leaders considered the Sykes Picot agreements an act of treason perpetrated by the British who had committed themselves to Arab independence in exchange for Arab participation in the war against the Ottoman Turks during World War I.

Many Arab revolutionaries, including president Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, called for an abrogation of the Sykes-Picot borders and appealed to the masses to join in unity, one state that would extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Gulf.

The emergence of Daesh in Iraq and Syria shows how fragile and untenable the old borderlines are.

The British did not realise, following World War I, that the Kurds, 33 million people, cannot forever live split among Iran, Turkey, Syria and Iraq, and must eventually have a state of their own.

The territorial integrity of Iraq has become a pipe dream following the recent massacres between Shiites and Sunnis, in a way reminding us of the 2006 sectarian war. Ipso facto, the Sunni state will be as independent as the Kurdish state in Irbil.

The concept of a cohesive Iraqi society evaporated when the Baghdad government asked the Iranian Basig militia to fight in Anbar.

An equally tragic case can be seen in Syria, where the ethnic mosaic used to be a source of strength and pride. But the societal cohesiveness had vanished since March 2011, a period of time during which nearly 210,000 Syrians were killed and millions displaced.

Any peaceful solution will require a state for the Sunnis and another for the Alawites along the coast of Latakia and the mountains of Qerdaha.

The Alawites used to have a state of their own 80 years ago, Hatai, but it was incorporated into Turkey, as a bribe by the French mandatory powers to appease the new ruler Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

It is not in Washington’s interests to dismantle the structure of Arab states, but the martyrs’ blood delineates better state borders.