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The May 1916 Sykes-Picot
Agreement between the governments of the United Kingdom and France, with
the ascent of Russia divided the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire outside
the Arabian Peninsula – essentially Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan
– into future British and French control or influence.
Kamal
Salibi, an eminent Lebanese scholar, professor and prolific writer who
passed away last September, was regarded as one of the foremost historians of
the Middle East. He was a lifetime bachelor who devoted his life to books. His
many works include A
House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered (1988).
Wind forward to today’s edition of the Beirut daily as-Safir and the editorial of its publisher
and founder Talal
Salman titled: “A House of Many Mansions in All the Sykes-Picot (presumed)
States.”
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| The late Kamal Salibi (Photo from The Independent) |
Salman
writes:
Historian Kamal Salibi was not expressing a personal
opinion on Lebanon’s political entity, its confessional makeup or the
international backdrops of power struggles over the region when he wrote his
book “A House of Many Mansions.”
In effect, he was forewarning of a risk we come up
against today. The novelty is that Salibi’s metaphor is now apt to envelop the
whole Arab Mashreq and may
yet engulf other parts of the Arab Maghreb.
Where Lebanon is concerned, its current grim
political, economic and security realities surpass anything the brilliant
Salibi could have imagined.
Lebanon now is an archipelago of pseudo-islands akin
to confessional and sectarian mini-states portioning out the small country’s territory
and institutions. Each has carved up a de facto entity.
The political, judicial and security decisions of the
central “state” are subject to these entities’ whims. The “state” would
withdraw or deploy the army at the request of this or that entity after tough negotiations
with its opposite.
Court rulings would be frozen, doctored or amended
and the while judiciary paralyzed pending a “consensual” agreement within one
sect or among several.
The “state” does not have a single all-inclusive
national institution anymore. Each executive political, economic or security apparatus
of government has its counterpart. When an opposite number is not found, it is
created.
International highways in Lebanon are not always
passable. They have fixed, at time movable, “border” crossings. The airport is
always open for traffic but not so the airport road, which has its guards and
controls.
The highway to North Lebanon has its crossings.
Pre-Tripoli is one thing, inside Tripoli is another and past Tripoli is a
totally different ballgame.
The highway to South Lebanon has a single crossing –
in Sidon. A second is looming.
The highway to the Bekaa has a multitude of crossings
that open or close on demand. The army is not sent to secure them before
acceding to demands that cancel its duty and role.
Happenings outside the Lebanese “entity” – chiefly in
Syria now, in Iraq before and maybe in Jordan later – evoke some memories of
Sykes-Picot.
Does the earthquake that ravaged Syria’s regime and
opposition fall in Lebanon’s fault zone or herald a post-Saddam Iraq?
Much as Iraq, which is no more “whole” after the evacuation
of U.S. troops, it is unlikely Syria would emerge from its bloody predicament
as a unified state entity after the breaking into pieces of the Syrian people’s
unity.
Iraq now is a hodgepodge of regions and entities. Its
Kurds chose self-rule and distanced themselves from the intra-Arab Sunnite-Shiite
faceoff.
In Syria, the bloody and open-ended clash between the
regime and its opponents has provoked calls – previously suppressed – for a
sectarian redress. At the same time, Kurds and Turkmen are reminding of their
ethnic rights.
In Iraq, there are borders and armed protection of boundaries
between ethnic minorities.
The struggle in Syria could follow the same pattern.
There are already signs showing in the north and perhaps the east.
There’s “A House of Many Mansions” in each of the
Sykes-Picot states!
