Great article! I am left wondering over and over again what needs to be done to get the plight of the Kurdish people for achieving self determination real international support.
With violent opposition by Turkey and Syria the inly possible solution would be a state in Kurdish Syria and Iraq while giving up on Turkish and Iranian Kurdistan. But very unlikely. And with a soon to be Islamic Syria- that also means more anti-Kurdish violence.
I do not believe the British double-crossed the Sherif and his sons. Quite the opposite, for the Hashemites double dealt with the Turks almost up to the fall of Damascus, which was won by Australian troops, who subsequently withdrew to allow the fiction to enter the historical record that Arab forces conquered Damascus. David Lean's farcical Lawrence of Arabia helped prolong this lie. The Saudis won in the Arabian peninsula because they were better organized than the inept and duplicitous Hashemites, who continue their sorry tale of misrule. But the rest of the article is right about the incompatibility of tribal Arab society and a modern nation state. The work of the late Elie Kedourie is crucial to understanding this. One of his best articles was Iraq; A Retrospective, covering the sorry history of that country up to 1958.
TE Lawrence did quite a but of fabulous story telling of his own. You might like to take a look at Fromkin's The Peace to End All Peace about the way the modern Middle East came into being. That's where I read how the Sharifians took the British to the cleaners for at least 11 million pound sterling.
Great article! I am left wondering over and over again what needs to be done to get the plight of the Kurdish people for achieving self determination real international support.
With violent opposition by Turkey and Syria the inly possible solution would be a state in Kurdish Syria and Iraq while giving up on Turkish and Iranian Kurdistan. But very unlikely. And with a soon to be Islamic Syria- that also means more anti-Kurdish violence.
I do not believe the British double-crossed the Sherif and his sons. Quite the opposite, for the Hashemites double dealt with the Turks almost up to the fall of Damascus, which was won by Australian troops, who subsequently withdrew to allow the fiction to enter the historical record that Arab forces conquered Damascus. David Lean's farcical Lawrence of Arabia helped prolong this lie. The Saudis won in the Arabian peninsula because they were better organized than the inept and duplicitous Hashemites, who continue their sorry tale of misrule. But the rest of the article is right about the incompatibility of tribal Arab society and a modern nation state. The work of the late Elie Kedourie is crucial to understanding this. One of his best articles was Iraq; A Retrospective, covering the sorry history of that country up to 1958.
Read TE Lawrence. His book. Not the movie
TE Lawrence did quite a but of fabulous story telling of his own. You might like to take a look at Fromkin's The Peace to End All Peace about the way the modern Middle East came into being. That's where I read how the Sharifians took the British to the cleaners for at least 11 million pound sterling.