Lines in the Sand -- Orientalism and After

Orientalism

In 1978, Edward Said wrote his post-colonial study, "Orientalism," in which he exposed the subtle and Eurocentric prejudice against Arabo-Islamic peoples and culture. He posited that Western attitudes and discourse were derogatory and patronizing, viewing Arabia as a passive background upon which tales of exploration, linguistic scholarship, and imperialism could dominate, control, and restructure the Orient.

Zionism especially could also be viewed in a poststructuralist way as a confluence of Orientalism, Anti-Semitism, and Imperialism. Simply put, Orientalism was a archetype resulting from the childhood influences of the Bible and the 1001 Nights.

"Orientalism,' published as literary criticism, established Said's intellectual credentials, allowing him to bypass the normal Zionist sentries in a sensitive field and opening the way for his publishing his pro-Palestinian polemics. It should also be noted, he founded and supported an orchestra, together with the great David Barenboim, in which Israeli and Palestinian young people could play and make peace, "The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra."

To quote Edward Fitzgerald, an Orientalist, "The moving finger, having writ, moves on..."

Looking at the present collapse of the Sykes-Picot arrangement and the changes occurring in the Middle East, a Eurocentric term, agreed, I felt the need to update my own world view...

A Fit of Absentmindedness

When Harold Macmillan made his "Winds of Change" speech in 1960, referring to the retreat from Empire, the UN Mandate for British control of Iraq, Palestine, and Jordan had expired long ago and the control of Aden in Yemen and the maritime truce that bound the mini-states of the lower Gulf had another decade to run.

At its furthest extent, Britain had controlled the political affairs of Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Bahrain, The Trucial States, Oman, South Yemen, Sudan, Egypt, Palestine, and Iraq -- and had considerable influence in what was to become Saudi Arabia. But how had this happened? John Seeley had written, "The Empire was acquired in a fit of absentmindedness," but there was steely purpose in its acquisition. The East India Company had evolved into civil administration of many of the Indian states. Aden had been acquired as a supply station and control of the Bab el Mandab, Suez as the fast link to the East, the Trucial States as a means to suppress piracy, and Cyprus to control the approaches to Suez...then in 1912, Anglo-Iranian, later BP, in answer to the need to convert the navy to oil, dominated commercial and military affairs at the head of the Gulf.

Britain's position, for over 150 years was based on the Navy's dominance of the sea-lanes; its control of the "choke-points" of Gibraltar, Suez, Aden, and Singapore; and maintaining the balance of power in Europe. The strategy had worked very well since the destruction of the French fleet at Trafalgar in 1805. Britain "ruled the waves" or, as one wit put it, "waived the rules."

Arabia was part of that strategy. At first it was an accommodation with the Ottoman empire and, since direct control was impossible other then at points on the coastal littoral, Britain attempted to influence the tribes and local rulers for two main reasons -- to maintain a safe connection with India and to deny the Russians access to a warm water port.

Since Christian missionaries were out of the question, intelligence and influence had to be won by Arabists and explorers. It was haphazard at most. The Foreign Office and the India Office would often be in conflict with each other, but the overall intent was successful until the denouement of the Great War in which the Turkish empire was divided up by the Sykes-Picot agreement and northern Arabia divided between the British and French.

The British colonial experience in Arabia consisted of three phases -- initial footfall, empire, and recession. Curiously, English women were often key to success at every stage, being able to go where men were unable and to influence where they were not.

Footfall

Lady Anne Blunt, daughter of Ada, Countess Lovelace and Granddaughter of Lord Byron was a gifted child found an early interest in history and was fluent in Arabic. She had studied drawing with Ruskin, but her passion was horses.

With her husband, Wilfred Scrawen Blunt, she adventured in 1860 from Damascus, south through Druze territory to the territory of the Ruwallah and, from there, south across the great, red Nafud desert to Nejd, Jebal Shammar and the city of Hail. There she spent time researching and buying Arab stallions to replenish her stud farm at Crabbet Park, making a significant contribution to the English Thoroughbred stock.

While enjoying the hospitality of Mohammed Ibn Rashid, head of the Rashidi and the Shammari tribes, she researched and documented the relationship of the tribes of the area of what is now Syria, Northern Saudi Arabia, and the tribes of the Euphrates -- modern day Iraq. Her work proved useful to others who came later, such as Gertrude Bell.

Her journey was far reaching, travelling in a wide arc from Damascus south to Hail, then onto Baghdad and back via Palmyra.  Her notes corroborated the idiosyncratic jottings of William Palgrave the Jesuit, who preceded her to the Nejd, and were strategically far more significant than Burton's visit to Mecca in 1851 or Burkhardt's notes of the Nabbatean capital of Petra in 1811.

Empire 

When Gertrude Bell died in July 1926, her funeral was attended by King Feisal of Iraq. She had been "his eyes," his Al Katun. Almost single-handedly she had negotiated a consensus of the Sunni, Shi'ia, Kurds, and Jews of Iraq to accept the Hashemite monarch, descendant of the Prophet. She had drawn the lines in the sand that defined Mesopotamia and created the Bagdad museum. She had died of an overdose and was buried in the British Cemetery in Baghdad. Her influence was so great that, even today, the Arabs remember her with affection.

Gertrude Bell was born in 1868 to a rich entrepreneurial family in County Durham, England. Her mother died when she was three and she became close to her father. She studied History in London's Queens College and Lady Margaret Hall in Oxford and, by the time she joined the Arab Bureau in Cario in 1915, she spoke Arabic and Persian fluently and could hold a conversation in Turkish.

She had met T.E. Lawrence at Carchemish on the Euphrates where he worked as an archeologist and agent and had taken him under her wing. They saw eye to eye on most things, except her decision to include the Kurds in the Iraq state. Lawrence was not a supporter of Sykes/Picot. But Gertrude prevailed, using her skills to bring all parties in Iraq, including the more than twenty thousand Jews of Baghdad, to agreement.

Feisal was the elder son of the Hashemite dynasty that, exhorted by Lawrence, had destroyed the Hijaz railway that supplied the Turkish garrisons of Western Arabia, taken Aqaba on the Red sea thus holding the flank of the British forces in Gaza, and were first of the allies to reach Damascus. Feisal was made king of Syria, while his brother, Abdullah, was given Jordan. Gertrude was key to these arrangements and, after Feisal fell out with the French, she arranged for him to lead Iraq.

It was empire writ large. Gertrude was the kingmaker. She was the most influential Engishwoman of her day.

 

Recession

In every scheme are set the seeds of its destruction. Abdullah of Jordan was assasinated because of his desire to make peace in 1948 -- his British trained, Arab Legion had proven the only Arab force capable of besting the Israelis. Feisal of Iraq died of old age, but his son, Feisal II, lasted only a few months in office before he was swept away by the revolution from which Saddam Hussein emerged.

The British were a spent force in 1947.  They withdrew from Palestine, leaving the Zionist Palmach and indigenous Arabs to fight it out. After various rearguard actions, they also withdrew from Oman, the Trucial States (which became the United Arab Emirates), and Yemen in 1967.

It was in Yemen that a curious, but important episode took place in 1941 during WWII. The Yemenis had always been lukewarm towards the British. Aden, the base, was a coastal town with little influence over the hinterland. The Yemenis of the North had not joined the Arab Revolt in 1917 and were flirting with the idea of throwing in their lot with the Italians who had just overrun Abyssinia. The British were in a fix, backs to the wall. France had fallen and the Battle of Britain was on.

Enter Freya Stark, British agent, armed with her quick wit and a movie projector.

She had spent the previous few years wandering about Marib and the Hadramaut valley. Now she had to face the Imam Ahmed bin Yahya, the leader of Yemen. Their conversation centered on the recent Italian successes. The Imam stated at one point that the Mediterranean had become an Italian lake to which Freya replied, "But the British at Gibraltar and Suez control the entrances and exits!" Then, to follow up, she showed Mickey Mouse movies to the Imam and his family. It was a great sucess, especially the personal touch, and spared the British more pressure.

But it was a success against an ebbing tide. After WWII, it was thirty years and it was all gone. India in 1948, Yemen in 57, the Gulf in 71.

And for the Future?

It seems that Sykes/Picot is dead. Lebanon, the enclave of Syria the French carved out for themselves, is a deeply fractured country dependant on what happens in Syria where a gigantic Sunni-Shi'ia struggle is taking place. That struggle is shadowed in Iraq where the Kurds are defining their own nationality so long denied them since 1920.

Egypt, the most populous country, is undergoing a deep restructuring of its politics in which people are redefining what it means to be an Egyptian, and it's all good. Israel is refusing to countenace a two-state solution to the "Palestinian" problem and, from current reports, wishes to pursue its manifest destiny by declaring "Jordan is Palestine.' 

Yemen, nominally unified North and South, is a failed state, with Shi'ia rebellions in the north, AlQueda in Marib and the Hadramaut, and a steady stream of Somali refugees entering to escape the misery of their own land.

Said's polemic, "Orientalism," bought the colonial attitude to a nominal close, but there was no world view to replace it save Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations," a scarcely warmed-over essay-sized restatement of part of Toynbee's "Study of History."

The game is not yet over. Russia has their warm-water port at Latakia. America has tried Iraq for size and, being bitten, is loathe to try again in Syria or elsewhere. The major local players, Egypt and Turkey, are distracted with internal issues, while Iran seems to be hoping to maintain influence in the Levant, AlHasa/Bahrain, and Yemen/Oman without risking too much --- probably why they are willing to accept a compromise over nuclear issues.

The times, they are a changing...and there's no certain philosophy to describe it. We are, like the Arabs, rendered inchoate as before the advent of Edward Said. Is there a one eyed man, or woman, in this blinded country of ours who would be king?