Is dividing the divided a sign of success or failure? Sykes-Picot centenary -2-

Written by Nasser Kandil,

The assessment of the strategic moment of the new division projects, and what they represent of offensive project that is resulting from the sources of the emerging force that is carried and possessed by the Western project, or what they represent of defensive projects that are resulting from the starting of the demise of that project through knowing its points of weakness and the failure of its policies are depending on estimating whether the attempt to divide the entities which resulted from Sykes Picot Agreement and then turn into homelands for their people have the feature of the national country, thus it is the sign of the satisfaction of the owners of the foreign hegemony project on the countries of the Levant toward what they have done hundred years ago, and their intention to move a further step forward to ensure more of fragmentation and domination, or whether the choice of dividing the divided is an outcome of certainty and estimation of the inability to bear the consequences of the failure of Sykes Picot formula by protecting the western interests and achieving the goals which were set for it, and thus the attempt to search for alternatives that are more effective to achieve these goals.

It is clear that at least three decisive goals were desired to be achieved from Sykes Picot formula. The first goal is the structure of the divisional agreement of the natural and historic Syria through what this division may lead to, and how it affects the unity with political, economic, military, strategic, and geopolitical consequences. The birth of a political entity that unites the nations and the capacities of this geographical, economic, and demographic term means the birth of  a pulling force in all the Middle East that changes its destination, status, and role in the world, moreover it imposes a new qualitative rhythm on the world, but it is certain that there is no place with  a unified Syrian entity from the borders of Turkey and the borders of Iran to the Mediterranean Sea, the borders of Egypt and the Saudi Desert for a settling  project in Palestine but rather a dynamic liberation that will produce most comprehensive unity and will build giant economic and strategic force that deals with the capacities of the superpowers, while the second goal is  to prevent the birth of strong coherent countries that have a rising capable project among the entities that are resulting from the division which is included in the Agreement,  because the rising of a county of such kind will attract its neighborhoods, elites, and its nations, and makes it a country that is capable of the leadership even across the borders, if the attempt of affecting it toward the unitary project was ineffective, thus the bet on the fragile demographic balances which were adopted in the structure of the entities in order to be the sectarian and ethnical tribalism in the state of a permanent a awakening against any national, civil, or toward a state sense will fall. The civil war is always a live coal under ashes. The third goal is related organically with the function of division which was carried by Sykes Picot in ensuring the security of the newborn entity on the Palestinian territories by preventing the development of a confrontation against it, and preventing any opportunities to make its security expose to risk, and the bet on the contradictions of the entities which were born from the division and from the contradictions of their internal components to form allies for this entity, and its success in managing their conflicts, and the turning by the force of this equation to the ruling decisive force in the Middle East after the withdrawal of the foreign armies.

A century for Sykes Picot says that the division and the emergence of new entities have succeeded in launching the national identities for the owners of these entities, but they do not succeed in killing the unitary national spirit which remained emerging through the formation and the growth of cross-borders parties, most notably the two major parties and their prominent role in the forties and fifties of the last century, after the exit of the colonialist are the Arab Socialist Baath Party and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, in addition to the emergence of intellectual and political reconciliations among many elites in the entities which resulting from the division between the patriotic identity and the national identity, and the emergence of popular movements that are affected and interacting with the national calls which come across the borders especially what the experience of Gamal Abdul Nasser has influenced in the sixties, as well as the experience of the Palestinian resistance in the seventies, and what has become inclusive with the logic of emerging the major entities in the year with the birth of the European Unity from the need of the region’s entities to integrate even in cross-borders formulas if not having control over them, toward the call of the Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad for the system of the five seas for a security economic assembly for the countries which overlook the Black, Red, and the Mediterranean Seas, the Gulf, and Caspian Sea where the divisional formula of Sykes Picot seems to be expire,  however its overcoming is matter of time, forward otherwise backward if that is possible.

The failure in preventing the birth of the concept of the strong civil state which is cross-components and cross- tribalism, and which is able to present an active example has appeared by the force that transcends the power of weakness which the formula of division has descended to in weakening the idea of unity, Syria has succeeded as an entity in turning into a pivotal country in the events of the Middle East since the seventies in leading the war of October against Israel, but the danger here is in the consequences of Sykes Picot which were developed as a national cross-borders center which the eyes of the Lebanese, Iraqis, Palestinians, Kuwaitis, and the Jordanians in there are aspiring to in their ordeals and sufferings, when the Jordanians suffered from the wheat and water crises they looked for Syria, and when the Kuwaitis were threatened in Iraq in their entity they resorted to Syria, but when Iraq was invaded the Iraqis have found a second home in Syria, while the Lebanese in their diversity of their choices and components they aspired to Syria as a savior, supporter and a shelter, while the Palestinians were not treated in any Arab country as they are treated in Syria, because their cause did not find an importance as it got in Syria. Syria succeeded as a country with modest natural and economic capacities to build an economic social example that is able to ensure the self-sufficiency and the relaxation from the burden of debts, providing the education and the medical care for free, providing modern infrastructures, forming strong army that is able to stick to civil modern example of the country and to keep the principles that transcend the considerations of an entity in favor of the considerations of a nation especially reading the concept of the national security and its approach.

In the third dimension of the function of Sykes Picot, the failure was more effective, the security of Israel which excelled in two sequent decades has been affected seriously in the seventies in the war of October through challenging the army of the entity by the first Arab army in the ability to wage a war, but after Camp David and the invasion of Lebanon the Lebanese resistance has emerged with the support, assistance, and auspices of Syria. The victory of the Iranian Revolution constituted an opportunity that compensated the absence of Egypt for supporting the resistance and Syria together, and forming an axis of power which has become with the victories of the resistance a source of the existential threat for the entity which is supposed that the function of Sykes Picot is providing a secure background for its survival and continuity. But the resounding security of Israel in the war of July 2006 was a decisive station in measuring the success and the failure in the ability of Sykes Picot to achieve its goals especially with the stability of the vitality of the Palestinian people, its sacrifices, and its continuation the path of resistance with different names and forms that are able to inspire the region’s nations and igniting them to streets with cross-divisions unified national identity.

According to the Meeting which the Atlantic alliance hold in Frankfurt in November 2010 under the slogan of putting a new strategy, the instability in the Middle East and what it represents of threats against the interests of the countries of the Atlantic alliance and the security of Israel have paved the way for searching for alternatives of Sykes Picot, and according to this meeting a committee of wise men headed by the Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to set these alternatives. From the options of this committee was the project of Bernard Lewis by dividing the divided and  resorting to the demography’s lines in drawing the geography, so did this project succeed? And does it have the conditions of success? The most important is does it ensure the interests which Sykes Picot has failed in their ensuring, does it kill the spirit which Sykes Picot failed in its killing, or will this spirit kill and win? But most importantly what about what is said that the new division starting from Syria which deserved the war because it constituted through its advancement the death of Sykes Picot is having a degree of the Russian acceptance?

Translated by Lina Shehadeh,