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The dramatic developments in Iraq where Sunni militants have overrun large swathes of territory with the aim to establish a regional caliphate are linked to a nearly century-old secret accord between the British and French to arbitrarily divide the Ottoman empire.
In 1916, three years before World War I came to an end, the then French high commissioner in Levant, Francois Georges-Picot, and British diplomat, Sir Mark Sykes, met secretly in London to craft out a plan to divide the Ottoman Middle East empire. The Russians were kept in the loop and the geostrategic requirements of the French and British empires were kept in consideration in advance by way of “territorial bookings”.
The Sykes-Picot talks were taking place in the background of British promises to Sharif Hussein, the Emir of Mecca, on creation of an independent Arab state in return for his siding with the Allies. The Sykes-Picot plan planned for an independent Arab state or an Arab confederation. The agreement proceeded to divide the Ottoman Middle Eastern empire into French and British zones of influence with Britain and France having exclusive rights to establish direct or indirect control or administration in their respective zones as they may arrange with the prospective Arab state.
Like all classical colonial border drawing attempts, the Sykes-Picot agreement came out with a border defined exclusively by British and French interests. As a true predecessor to the Durand and Radcliffe lines in South Asia, Sykes remarked: “I should like to draw a line from the ‘e’ in Acre to the last ‘k’ in Kirkuk.” But the distinguishing feature of the Sykes-Picot plan was that ultimately its very basis, namely the creation of an Arab Confederation, was never executed while the rest of its provisions were applied in full.
So it cobbled up an artificial state of Iraq with a Shia-Sunni ethnic mix under the British zone, while placing parts of northern Iraq, including Mosul, Syria and Lebanon under the French zone. The dividing line ran from Kirkuk in the northwest up to Gaza through the Syrian Desert. Later, Mosul was also transferred to the British by the French under an understanding which sought to modify the Sykes-Picot agreement.
The Sykes-Picot plan has always been a fragile one with regard to Iraq, given the ethnic mix it created knowingly or unknowingly. It became particularly so in the light of pan-Islamic movements like Khilafat, which got triggered even before it was ratified by the League of Nations and more so after the Iranian Shiite revolution in 1979. Saddam Hussein’s iron-hand policies had forcibly held it together.
But the falling apart of the Sykes-Picot plan came in a way that its planners would never have contemplated. Over the last few days we have been witnessing a complete disruption of the agreement with Sunni jihadist organization Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) drawing a horizontal cross line through the slanted vertical division contemplated by Sykes and Picot. ISIS does not want to create an Arab state of the kind discussed by the British with Sharif Hussein of Mecca but an orthodox ethnic Sunni Caliphate with medieval laws.
Amazingly, these developments in Iraq and Syria are more or less in conformity with “Project for the New Middle East” published in the US Armed Forces Journal in 2006. In complete contradiction to the Sykes-Picot plan and in surprising conformity with “The New Project” map, ISIS stands at the outskirts of Baghdad with Mosul in its control, and with the territory of its “Sunni Caliphate” spreading deep into northern Syria up to Aleppo, while Kurds are in control of Kirkuk. The New Project Map shows Hama, Homs and Aleppo with Syria, and the Syrians have been able to recover these cities from ISIS with the US stopping short of attacking the Bashar al-Assad regime!
Policy stance of the Barack Obama administration so far indicates that the US would go for air intervention to prevent the fall of Baghdad, but it does not have the military appetite to completely reverse the existing situation and bring Iraq into its previous shape. Washington has gone as far as to seek that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki step down as a pre-condition for air intervention and is laying stress on the government in Baghdad to be more “inclusive”. At the same time it has showed subjective readiness to work with Iran to check the advance of ISIS beyond a point.
All this translates into the inference that ISIS’s Sunni State is there to stay for now, with conflict raging from the outskirts of Aleppo to Bahgdad with Mosul in its hands. Saudi Arabia also seems to be in favour of that, particularly because it is not comfortable with easing of tensions between the West, and an increasingly stronger Iran. Riyadh has warned the US, UK as well as Iran against meddling in Iraq while Saudi donors continue to support the ISIS financially.
In the current geopolitical scenario, a strong and predominantly Shia regime is highly distasteful to Saudi Arabia and it seems ready to take the risk of tolerating the ISIS near its borders. The ISIS is an ultra-extremist Al-Qaeda splinter. The Saudis have gone as far as to team up with Russian President Vladimir Putin to deal with the situation.
The tolerance of an ISIS ruled de facto state by the West will signal the changing nature and a winding up of the War on Terror. With Obama refusing any US combat boots on the ground and instead betting for limited and maybe irregular air intervention in Iraq as well as Syria signifies that for now we are back to Clinton days. However, the US will have to factor in the possibility of ISIS expanding its influence into Jordan, Lebanon and even Palestine, about which it has its own ambitious plans.
This new order in the Middle East will have far reaching implications -- from South Asia to North Africa. On one hand it will embolden groups like the Afghan Taliban and Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in the wake of impending US withdrawal from Afghanistan, while on the other it will make things difficult for Iran which now faces the prospect of Sunni extremists getting stronger on its east as well as west flank. There has already been a marked increase in violence against Shias along Iran’s eastern border with Afghanistan and Pakistan, and anti-Shia violence is likely to increase in the coming days inside Pakistan with the ISIS releasing videos claiming that it is gathering support inside Pakistan.
This situation will put more pressure on the Hassan Rouhani regime which will like to go the extra mile to save Iran from being hemmed in between Sunni extremists from both sides. Additionally, Iran has the continuing responsibility of sustaining the Assad regime in Syria and saving Iraq’s Shiite holy sites from an ISIS onslaught, which may end up stretching its energies a lot.
In South Asia, taking inspiration from the ISIS success, groups like TTP may try to intensify their efforts to undo the Durand Line. Moreover, Al-Qaeda’s leadership based in Pakistan is likely to adopt a more hawkish stance, and will be forced to unveil a broader geo-political roadmap for its affiliates to retain its position as an umbrella ideological organization. This will in turn worsen the security situation in the Indian sub-continent. The successful carving out of an extremist Sunni state ruled by the ultra-violent ISIS will also increase instability in North African states, already marred by indigenous jihadist movements, and which in turn will increase the terrorist threat to Europe.
So, the new order in the Middle East is not an isolated event but is likely to have far-reaching implications for the geo-political and security environment from North Africa to South Asia, and will require recasting of policies by various players.
Divya Kumar Soti is an independent strategic affairs analyst based in India.
By Special Arrangement with : South Asia Monitor (http://www.southasiamonitor.org)