ISIS: The Spoils of the “Great Loot” in the Middle East [View all]

[malaise]

http://fpif.org/isis-spoils-great-loot-middle-east/


A 19th-century cartoon skewers British imperialism in the Middle East. The current tumult in the region today is a direct result of the arbitrary boundaries and divide-and-rule tactics employed by the imperial British and French. (Image: Middle East Cartoon History)
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Adding yet more warfare to the current crisis in the Middle East will perpetuate exactly what the imperial powers set out to do: tear an entire region of the world asunder.
It was a curious comment by the oddball but unarguably brilliant British agent and scholar, Thomas Edward Lawrence. The time was World War I, and England and France were locked in a death match with the Triple Alliance, of which Ottoman Turkey was a prominent member. But it was nonetheless true, and no less now than then. In the Middle East, to paraphrase William Faulkner, history is not the past; it’s the present.

In his 1915 letter, Lawrence was describing French machinations over Syria, but he could just as well have been commenting on England’s designs in the region, which Allied leaders in World War I came to call “The Great Loot”—the imperial vivisection of the Middle East.

As Iraq tumbles into a yet another civil war, it is important to remember how all this came about, and why adding yet more warfare to the current crisis will perpetuate exactly what the “Great Loot” set out to do: tear an entire region of the world asunder.

Divide and Conquer

There is a scorecard here filled with names, but they are not just George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice—though the latter helped mightily to fuel the latest explosion.

They are names most people have never heard of, like Sixth Baronet of Sledmere Mark Sykes and French diplomat Francois Georges-Picot. In 1915, these two mid-level diplomats created a secret plan to divvy up the Middle East. Almost a century later that imperial map not only defines the region and most of the players, but continues to spin out tragedy after tragedy, like some grotesque, historical Groundhog Day.

In 1915, the imperial powers’ major goal in the Middle East was to smother any expression of Arab nationalism and prevent any unified resistance to the designs of Paris and London. France wanted Greater Syria, Britain control of the land bridges to India. The competition was so intense that even while hundreds of thousands of French and British troops were dying on the Western Front, their secret services were blackguarding one another from Samarra to Medina, maneuvering for position for when the Ottoman Empire finally collapsed.
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None of this looting has anything to do with religion - it's about stealing resources - it has always been about stealing resources.