Since the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War in early 2011, opposition activist groups estimate that as of March 2020, the total number of deaths due to the war are between 384,000 and 586,000. The group, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, further estimates that over 22,000 children and over 13,000 women have lost their lives. By 2017, the number of internally displaced persons, or those needing humanitarian need, stood at around 7 million. (United Nations Commissioner for Refugees)
A root cause of this tragedy can be traced back to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the subsequent peace treaties that were ratified by the Allies. The League of Nations Mandates that were created following WWI and the consequent partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, resulted in large swathes of Arab territory coming under Mandatory French or British rule.
This resulted in a growth in Arab nationalism and many Arabs in the region were further angered by what they perceived to be Britain’s duplicity. Instead of achieving Arab independence, as had been promised by Britain in return for helping to defeat the Ottomans, Arab lands had been carved up and placed under foreign rule with a ‘puppet sovereign’ from a different tribe being placed on the ‘throne’.
While elements of Arab nationalism can be traced back to calls for independence during the Ottoman period, the ideology gained force at the time of the mandates and spread across the Arab world. The declaration of the State of Israel in 1948, resulting in the displacement of an estimated 711,000 Palestinians (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine), further strengthened the resolve of the Arab peoples to preserve and protect Arab identity and fight for sovereignty.
Arab nationalism suffered a severe blow in June 1967 during the Six Day War between Israel and an allied army of Egyptian, Syrian, Jordanian, Iraqi and Lebanese forces. Against all odds, Israel defeated the Arabs and annexed the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt, the West Bank from Jordan and the Golan Heights from Syria. These annexations led to the further displacement of Palestinians, with hundreds of thousands fleeing from the West Bank into Jordan, from the Gaza Strip into Egypt and from the Golan Heights into Syria.
The influx of refugees into neighbouring countries following the Six Day War only added to the refugee problem that had been created by the displacement of refugees in 1948 and the Arab/Israeli war of 1958. The overcrowded refugee camps, particularly in Lebanon, have always been a natural breeding ground for discontent and the nurture of insurgency groups. These camps still exist and the refugee problem facing Lebanon is more critical than ever. With almost 2 million refugees from Syria and surrounding countries, in addition to the Palestinian refugees, Lebanon has become the country hosting the largest number of refugees per capita. (UNHCR statistics)
The recent mass exodus of refugees flooding into Europe from Syria, Iraq and other war-torn countries, has led to a debate on immigration and also influenced the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union.
Apart from the continuing refugee problem, the dispute over territory between Israel and the Palestinians has still not been resolved. Both sides claim territorial rights. While Israel may appeal to Biblical tradition, both Israel and the Palestinians base their claims on the various documents and treaties of the post Ottoman period, the most significant being the Balfour Declaration and the Sykes-Picot Agreement.
Crucially however those Palestinians who have remained in Israel, the West Bank or the Gaza Strip see themselves as living under an illegal occupation. This is a view that is shared across the Muslim world in general and the Arab world in particular. The plight of the Palestinians is like a running sore. Until it is healed it continues to infect relations between many Muslim countries and the West, which by and large is perceived to support Israel.
Gamal Abdel Nasser, President of Egypt (1956-1970), had hoped to unite the Arabs of the region as peoples sharing a common language and culture, known as Pan-Arabism. However, after the Six Day War and defeat of the allied Arab forces his hopes were dashed. Equally, nationalism espoused by individual Arab states, was not succeeding. With the failure of pan Arabism and nationalism, which were both secular movements, people now turned to the religion of Islam, or Islamism, as a way forward.
Strands of Islamism can be detected throughout Islamic history. However, the current phenomenon can be traced to the doctrines of Wahhabism and Salafism that took root in Saudi Arabia in the 18th Century. In the early 20th Century, nationalists living under British and French mandates, as well as those opposed to the British presence in Egypt, for example the Muslim Brotherhood, gradually turned to Islamism. With the suppression and imprisonment of members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the middle of the 20thCentury, and other activists opposed to the State of Israel, some of the leading thinkers and advocates of Islamism sought refuge in Saudi Arabia.
One such was Abdullah Yusuf Azzam who left Palestine to take up a teaching post at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah where he taught that militant Jihad was an obligatory duty of all Muslims. Azzam was teaching at the university during the late 1970s when Osama bin Laden, one of the founders of Al Qaeda, happened to be a student at the same university. It is quite likely that this is when Bin Laden first came under the influence of Azzam and his militant views.
It is possible to draw a straight line from Osama bin Laden to Daesh. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979 Bin Laden volunteered, along with hundreds of other young Saudis, to support their Muslim brothers in the fight against the Russians. By 1988 he had gathered a band of followers together who became known as Al Qaeda (‘the Base’). During this same period, the West was providing him with arms.
When the Soviets left Afghanistan in 1989 Bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia where he was greeted as a hero. He toured the country giving speeches about the injustices suffered by Muslims around the world: Palestinians under the Israelis, the Chechens under the Soviets and the Bosnians at the hands of the Serbs. In 1990, Bin Laden offered to lead his ‘Afghan army’ against Saddam Hussein following the invasion of Kuwait. However, the Saudi Monarchy
Following the New York attack on the Twin Towers on 11th September 2001, Bin Laden was the key suspect. Ten years later, in May 2011, United States Intelligence Forces tracked him down in Pakistan and shot him dead. Although Bin Laden had been executed, the Al Qaeda ideology remained alive and well. Indeed, it became even more of a threat as Al Qaeda members dispersed to all parts of the world.
The search for Bin Laden started in Afghanistan but the war against terror very quickly moved to Iraq. When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 on the grounds that Saddam Hussein was harbouring weapons of mass destruction, many Al Qaeda operatives travelled there to fight the invading and occupying Western forces. They were known as Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). In 2006 AQI merged with other Sunni militant groups to form the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI).
Soon after the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, began sending Al Qaeda fighters across the border into Syria where they formed the Al Nusra Front with an affiliation to Al Qaeda. In April 2013, Al Nusra merged with the Islamic State of Iraq becoming known as ‘The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). The following year, in June 2014, Al-Qaeda broke with ISIS, who now called itself the ‘Islamic State’ (IS) with Al Baghdadi as Caliph. Since the majority of Muslims don’t recognise the legitimacy of the ‘Islamic State’ the organisation is more commonly referred to by the derogatory term Daesh.
A few points are worth mentioning here. First, before the West’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, there was no obvious Al Qaeda presence in the country. As mentioned above, Bin Laden’s protégés went to Iraq after the US invasion in order to fight the Americans. The United States and her allies not only toppled Saddam Hussein but also disbanded Iraq’s military forces and destroyed the country’s infrastructure. Consequently, Al Qaeda and its successor Daesh filled the vacuum. Furthermore, displaced Iraqi army officers joined the ranks of Daesh and weapons captured from the Western forces were added to its arsenal.
Second, the fact that Daesh is far more extreme than Al Qaeda and has been criticised by mainstream Muslims as being un-Islamic, has not deterred many hundreds of young men and women from around the world travelling to Syria to join the terror group. These recruits are being indoctrinated into the hard-line ideology that was propounded by Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, friend and mentor to Bin Laden. Perhaps more importantly, their commitment to militant Jihadis fed on the plight of the Palestinians and injustices of the post Ottoman peace treaties that robbed the Arab Muslims of their land. Indeed, one of the stated aims of Daesh is to restore the Ottoman Caliphate under a new Caliph.
Thirdly, it is relatively easy for members of Daesh to cross the border from Iraq into Syria and neighbouring countries. Cells now exist across the Levant and Southern Turkey, with a large presence in Libya. This ease of movement is not surprising when we consider that for centuries the region was all part of the Ottoman Empire. Countries such as Iraq, Syria and Libya are less than a hundred years old. The borders that were put in place in the post Ottoman period are meaningless to many of the tribal peoples of the region. The British and French discovered this during the mandate period when both sides accused the other of harbouring terrorists.
The final few words must be given to the Republic of Turkey, a state that was created out of the rump of the dying Empire. Kemal Ataturk, who became the first President, was convinced that the Ottomans had fallen behind the West largely because of their ‘backward’ religion of Islam. He was determined therefore that the new Republic would be based on secular values. In this he has been largely successful but in recent years Turkey has witnessed resurgence of Islamic observance, evidenced by an increase in the wearing of the hijab and the building of mosques. It has even been suggested that the current President aspires to reinstate the Caliphate with himself as Caliph.
Turkey has come a long way since 1923 but the country is still haunted by the ghost of the Armenian tragedy and the problem of how to deal with the Kurds, both issues that were exacerbated by the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The refugee crisis that we are witnessing today can be traced back to the post-Ottoman period. It is a crisis that has threatened the stability of Europe and the survival of the European Union.
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This article is taken from the Epilogue to the publication: The Ottoman Empire
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