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Roots of the Present
Conflict
It has been said that the roots of WW2 were planted
20 years earlier at the Versailles Peace Conference of 1919, which
was supposed to establish a lasting World peace following the horrors
of WW1. The victorious Allies chose to impose humiliating terms
& conditions on the defeated German people which were virtually
impossible for them to bear, & thus laid the foundation for
an even greater & more terrible conflict in the future. Similarly,
the origins of the Gulf War in 1991 and the current war after the
invasion of the same country by the US in 2003, can be found in
various treaties & policies that were arbitrarily imposed on
the Persian Gulf region by foreign powers decades earlier. So, to
have any clear understanding of why things are the way they are
today in the Middle East, knowledge of the history of the area is
very important.
The Middle East was a center of civilization while Europeans were
still living in mud huts. But for most Arabs, their history begins
in the 7th century with the rise of the charismatic prophet Mohammed,
the founder of Islam. He had no quarrel with Christians or Jews,
but after being rebuffed by both religions, he established his own
religion with Mecca as his holy city & built up a following
amongst militant Arab tribesmen. Islam's rapid spread from the Middle
East to North Africa, Spain, Turkey, India & the border of China
is considered to be the most amazing story of conquest in history.
Arabic cities such as Baghdad & Alexandria became centers of
learning, & Arabic became the language of educated men throughout
the World.
Arab World domination & unity ended in the 10th century when
the Arab nations came under attack from Turkish Muslims in the North,
& the Christian crusaders. Over the next several centuries the
Ottoman Turks, who were Sunni Muslims, gradually succeeded in conquering
most of the area, ruling it until 1918 when their empire collapsed
following WWI.
Up until this time, European influence in the region had been minimal.
In the mid-1800s, the British & French brought their influences
to the Middle East, establishing various colonies & building
the Suez Canal, thus eliminating the long rough sea journey around
the Cape of Good Hope.
However, the discovery of vast reserves of oil in the region, particularly
around the Persian Gulf, was to drastically change that. Oil was
first discovered in present-day Iran in 1908, & an early clue
to its future importance came about 1910 when the British Navy,
the most powerful of its day, made the fateful decision to convert
all its warships from coal-burning to oil burning. Just a few years
later, the Allied victory in WW1 left no doubt that oil was going
to be the fuel that would power the industrialized economies of
the West in the 1900s. As Lord Curzon, then British foreign secretary,
put it, The Allies floated to victory on a sea of oil." In
a matter of a few years, securing a cheap, reliable source of oil
became a major foreign policy objective of the European powers,
& since that time, sad to say, Western interference in the affairs
of the Middle East has been continual, with often disastrous results.
When WWI broke out in 1914, the Turkish Ottoman Empire, which still
controlled most of the Middle East & was in an advanced state
of decay, sided with Germany against Britain, France & their
Allies. During the war, the British & French, aided by Arab
tribesmen, drove the Turks out of much of the region. It was at
this time that the first of many deceptive agreements with the Arab
leaders was made, & they planted the seeds of animosity &
distrust of the West that would later grow to full bloom.
In order to enlist the aid of the Arabs, Britain promised them that
if they helped the Allies drive the Turks out, they could have their
independence after the war. However, at the same time, unbeknownst
to the Arabs, in 1916 Britain & France established the Sykes-Picot
Agreement in which they secretly agreed to divide up the postwar
Middle East into three zones of influence--French, British &
Russian. To further complicate matters, this was followed in 1917
by another secret pact between the British & the leaders of
the new Jewish Zionist movement. This was known as the Balfour Declaration,
& in it the British agreed to view with favor the establishment
in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." This
agreement, which was concluded without the knowledge of the Arab
Palestinians, was considered by the Zionists to be a virtual invitation
to take over Palestine, & it set the stage for a massive influx
of Jews after the war. This eventually led to the creation of the
State of Israel in 1948, five Arab-Israeli wars & the forcible
dislocation of millions of Palestinians. In a few short years, the
European colonial powers had, through their duplicity, shortsightedness
& greed, laid the foundation for a conflict that was to plague
the region & the entire World for the remainder of the 20th
century and continuing into the new millennium.
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