A Peace to End all Peace (55 page)

The immensely complicated question of succession to the throne arose at the same time as the Greek elections. The results were astonishing. Against almost all expectations the supposedly popular Venizelos was defeated. Brought back into power were the pro-German, anti-Allied leaders whom Venizelos and the French had deposed and exiled during the war.

Constantine I, Alexander’s father, forced off the throne in 1917, was once again king. Back from French-imposed exile, Demetrios Gounaris, the bitter enemy of Venizelos and of the Allies, controlled the government. Constantine and his ministers were eager to press forward in Turkey. But for anyone on the Allied side who wanted to abandon the complexities of the Asia Minor involvement, the turn-about in Greece provided the perfect occasion for doing so. The French and the Italians took advantage of the situation by withdrawing their support from Greece and, by implication, from the Treaty of Sèvres. Both countries had been increasingly unhappy with Lloyd George’s venturesome policy. France, in particular, had felt constrained only by a personal commitment to Venizelos, from which his defeat at the polls released her. Thereafter both Italy and France looked increasingly to a future Kemalist government of Turkey as a source of financial concessions and advantages.

In Britain, Churchill and the War Office argued in favor of concessions to Kemal in order to detach him from Bolshevik Russia. Indeed Churchill urged making a peace with Kemal that would re-create that “Turkish barrier to Russian ambitions” that had been the traditional British policy during the Great Game.
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But Lloyd George resisted all such proposals.
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Massive unemployment and other severe economic and social problems in Britain—as well as problems in Egypt, Afghanistan, Arabia, and elsewhere in the Middle East—still did not cause Lloyd George to conclude (as Churchill had concluded) that Britain could not afford to devote resources to coercing Turkey.

In an apparent effort to settle matters, however, the Allies convened a round-table conference in London to which a Kemalist delegation was invited. The conference was scheduled to meet in London, and its first full session fell on 21 February 1921. The new Greek government agreed to attend the conference, but before the conference convened the Greek army’s high command ordered a probe of Kemal’s defenses. Evidently thinking in terms of a military rather than a negotiated settlement, the Greek commander-in-chief sent forward a reconnaissance force toward the Kemalist lines in the interior. Moving over difficult, broken, high ground in harsh winter weather, the Greeks met and were repulsed by a Turkish force under the command of Kemal’s colleague, Ismet, near a little village called Inonu. For the Turks the outcome was a portent of victories to come. The Greeks, however, came away from the engagement with the impression that they had tested the fighting qualities of the Turks and had found that the Turkish defenses were vulnerable.

At the London conference in February, little progress was made toward resolving the dispute about Anatolia’s fate. The Greeks had made up their minds in advance that they were prepared to go to war in order to win a total victory. The Kemalist Turks, moreover, were not willing to let Greece retain the Smyrna enclave; yet any Greek government would have raised domestic political difficulties for itself by surrendering it. Venizelos—out of office, but still active—had already told Lloyd George that if King Constantine’s government abandoned Smyrna, Venizelist leaders in Greek Anatolia would proclaim Smyrna an independent republic and would carry on the war against the Turks. “Hellenism,” he wrote to the British Prime Minister, “is a force much broader than the confines of the Greek Kingdom, and…if the latter does not wish or is unable to hold Smyrna with its surrounding district, it is possible for Hellenism in Turkey itself to undertake this duty, provided the allies, or to speak more precisely England, are disposed to support this task…”
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In guarded terms, Lloyd George indicated that he might be disposed to tender such support.
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The London conference achieved nothing; neither side was willing to compromise. The Kemalist delegation was encouraged, by the eagerness of France and Italy to negotiate separately with it, to believe that it need not moderate its demands. Similarly, the Greeks were encouraged to remain intransigent by the anti-Turkish enthusiasm of the British Prime Minister. Lloyd George was convinced that Venizelos had been profoundly right in observing that “the most important result for humanity of the great war was not the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire nor the limitation of the German, but the disappearance of the Turkish Empire.”
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But victory over Ottoman resistance forces continued to elude the Prime Minister. In Turkey itself, Kemal still defied the Allies, while to the south—in Syria—Ottoman officers, officials, and notables centered in Damascus also proclaimed Arab defiance of the Allies.

I

The nominal ruler of Syria was Feisal, the prince from Mecca who had led the Arab striking force on the right flank of the Allied armies in the Palestine and Syrian campaigns. Pending negotiation of a peace settlement, General Allenby—commencing in the autumn of 1918—had allowed Feisal to administer Syria’s affairs from the capital city of Damascus. Feisal himself spent much of 1919 in Europe negotiating with the Allies; he entrusted the administration of Syria to others.

As the metropolis of the Arabic-speaking areas that Britain had left provisionally independent, the ancient oasis town of Damascus was a center upon which discontented Arab political and military figures from many parts of the former Ottoman Empire converged.
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Carelessly administered in Feisal’s name by feuding rivals, it was in a state of continuous unrest throughout 1919 and 1920, as traditional ruling families battled against the ambitions of adventurous newcomers, while militants of the principal political clubs divided largely along regional lines.

A General Syrian Congress was called into being by Feisal and assembled 6 June 1919. Feisal, aware that he was a foreigner in Damascus and mindful of the principles proclaimed by Woodrow Wilson, summoned the congress to endorse the demands he planned to present at the Peace Conference and to prove to the conference that he was the authentic spokesman for the peoples of the Syrian provinces. Feisal had not yet recognized the necessity of placing control of the Syrian General Congress in the hands of men who would be prepared to endorse the extensive concessions that, in the nature of international politics, he would be obliged to make at the Peace Conference in Paris.

The old-guard traditional ruling families in Syria were among those whose loyalty to the Ottoman Empire had remained unshaken throughout the war. They had remained hostile to Feisal, the Allies, and the militant Arab nationalist clubs; yet they won congressional seats in Damascus and in the other principal inland towns of Homs, Hama, and Aleppo. Nonetheless the radical nationalist clubs succeeded in winning control of the General Syrian Congress, in part by making deals with some elements in the conservative old-guard.
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Of the three main nationalist clubs, one—al-’Ahd, the organization of Arabic officers in the Ottoman army—was dominated by members from the Mesopotamian provinces, whose chief interest was in the future of their own provinces. Another, the Arab Club, was dominated by members from the Palestinian area and was set up as an anti-Zionist organization devoted to forcing Feisal to abandon his commitment to Zionism. Several members of the Executive Committee of the Arab Club occupied important positions in Feisal’s administration, even though the Palestinians had largely remained pro-Ottoman and anti-Feisal throughout the war. Palestinians also achieved leadership positions in the broad-based Istiqlal Party, established by the third and most prominent of the nationalist clubs, al-Fatat.

The orientation of the General Syrian Congress was revealed as soon as it met in mid-1919, by its call for a completely independent Greater Syria that would include all of the area that is occupied today by Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel. To Feisal, who hoped for an American or British Mandatory regime and for American, British, and Zionist support against the demands of France, it appeared that matters were passing out of his control and that he would have to take steps “to take steam out of the Syrian Congress.”
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However, he was obliged to remove himself from the scene in order to attend negotiations with the Great Powers in Europe.

At the end of the negotiations in Europe in 1919, Feisal succeeded in reaching the secret understanding described earlier with the French Premier, Clemenceau. Their agreement allowed Feisal to reign over an independent Syria over which France would exercise only a loose trusteeship.
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From the point of view of Clemenceau, these were generous terms: no other French politician would have agreed to let Arab Syria retain a certain measure of independence or offered to let the pro-British Feisal remain in Damascus—let alone as Syria’s monarch. When Clemenceau fell from power in January 1920, the strong colonialist bloc in the newly elected French Parliament certainly might have balked at honoring such terms. Feisal’s only hope was the French would feel themselves bound by the secret agreement once they learned of its existence—so long as the Syrian Arabs were willing to be bound by it too. But when Feisal returned from Europe to Syria on 14 January 1920, he found that Arab nationalists were unwilling to accept any role at all for France in guiding Syria’s affairs. In vain, Feisal warned a committee of one of the Arab nationalist societies in Damascus that to reject his agreement with Clemenceau meant war with France; but the committee replied that “We are ready to declare war on both England and France.”
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Later in January, with militant Arab nationalists in control, the General Syrian Congress voted down the terms of the Feisal—Clemenceau agreement.

Unable to persuade the nationalists to follow his policy of conciliating France—unable, in other words, to lead the nationalists—Feisal seemingly changed course and began to talk as though he meant to follow them. In February he was reported to be speaking of winning full Arab independence from France “by the sword.”
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But this appears to have been mere demagoguery, designed to rival that of the nationalists in bidding for popular support. For under cover of his violent rhetoric, Feisal reached out to the only significant indigenous force that could be induced to support his policy of compromise with France: his former enemies, the conservative, traditional ruling families of Damascus and the inland towns, who had supported the Ottoman Empire in the world war against the Allies and Feisal. Feisal persuaded them to form a new political party—the National Party—which espoused in public the independence of a Greater Syria, but in private was prepared to accept the Feisal-Clemenceau agreement and a French presence. The National Party did not in fact insist on full and immediate independence for Syria and was also prepared to recognize a Jewish National Home in Palestine.
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Rushing to head off the National Party by acting before it could organize its forces, the militant nationalist clubs called the General Congress back into session. The second Syrian General Congress convened in early March 1920, and immediately passed a resolution proclaiming Syria to be completely independent within her “natural” boundaries, including Lebanon and Palestine, under the kingship of Feisal as constitutional monarch.
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At the same time an Arab delegation in Palestine confronted the British military governor with a resolution opposing Zionism and petitioning to become part of an independent Syria; while a group of Mesopotamians met to proclaim the independence of their provinces—Basra and Baghdad—under the kingship of Feisal’s brother, Abdullah.
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Thus early in 1920, within weeks after the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies in Constantinople had publicly defied the Allies and declared the independence of the Turkish-speaking part of the empire, the Arabic-speaking part seemed to be following the same course.

General Allenby, thoroughly alarmed, warned his superiors that if Britain and France “persist in their attitude of declaring null and void the action of Feisal and Syrian Congress, I feel certain that war must ensue. If hostilities arise, the Arabs will regard both French and English as their enemies, and we shall be dragged by the French into a war which is against our own interests and for which we are ill-prepared.”
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Britain blamed France for this. Lord Curzon summoned the French ambassador to the Foreign Office to point out the mistakes France had made, and to place on record his opinion that the dire turn of events was entirely France’s fault.
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The French and, even more so, the British were startled by the Damascus proclamations; and cautioned Feisal that grave consequences would follow any attempt to carry them into effect.
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Yet, carried away by a congress that he could not control, Feisal not only allowed his followers to carry on guerrilla attacks against the French and Christians on the coast,
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but moved to establish support for Kemalist Turkey, which was successfully inflicting defeats on the French in Cilicia, above the frontier. Feisal and his partisans denied France the use of the Aleppo railroad line, cutting off reinforcements by land and obliging the French to supply their beleaguered garrison in Cilicia by sea instead.
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But the Syrian nationalists failed to realize how much their position and Feisal’s had depended on British support; their proclamations, attacking British claims to govern Mesopotamia and Palestine, effectively forced Britain back into the arms of France, and briefly restored the alliance of the two European powers in the Middle East. Even Lloyd George, whose initial reaction was glee at the news that France was being defied, saw no alternative but to reach agreement with the French. The policies of Lloyd George and the armies of Allenby had formed the shield behind which the Syrians had been allowed to indulge in provocative politics with impunity. Once the shield was withdrawn, the French government—as its colonialist group quickly saw—was free to act.

France’s main concern was to detach the Syrians from their dangerous alliance with the forces of Kemalist Turkey. Robert de Caix, the leading propagandist of the colonialist society the Comité de l’Asie Française, who had become France’s chief political representative in Syria, led a delegation to Angora on 20 May 1920 to negotiate an armistice with Kemal in person. He succeeded in patching up a temporary truce. This, together with an agreement with the British, paved the way for France to take military action.

On 27 May 1920 Paris ordered its commander in Beirut, General Gouraud, to prepare to take the field against Feisal. On Bastille Day 1920, General Gouraud, pushed by Paris, sent an ultimatum to Feisal, setting forth terms that he could not have expected the Arab leader to accept, including the disbanding of the Arab army. But Feisal, evidently losing his nerve, agreed to the French terms, whereupon the mobs of Damascus rioted against him. General Gouraud, under orders from Paris, took the position that the reply Feisal had sent him—abject though it was—was nonetheless unsatisfactory. Feisal rushed to send another, offering unconditional surrender, but Gouraud was prevailed upon by de Caix to reply that it was too late, and to order his troops to march on Damascus.

The French had few troops available for the campaign, and meanwhile the breakdown of their truce with Kemal suddenly exposed them to dangers on both sides: Kemal to the north, Feisal to the east. The French appeared to be trapped between enemies on two fronts, but they were in luck, for they met with no effective resistance from the Syrians. The largely Senegalese troops of France’s Army of the Levant advanced through twisting gorges in which a competent opponent would have ambushed them; but unaccountably, Feisal’s partisans waited until the Senegalese emerged before challenging them.
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At that point, a French air squadron appeared overhead, and the defenders of Damascus panicked, turned, and fled, offering no resistance.
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On 26 July 1920 the French occupied Damascus; on 27 July they ordered Feisal into exile; and on 28 July he left. The French Prime Minister proclaimed that Syria henceforth would be held by France: “The whole of it, and forever.”
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The French authorities went ahead to divide Syria into sub-units. One of these, Great Lebanon, was the forerunner of the country today called Lebanon. The Great Lebanon proclaimed by General Gouraud on 1 August 1920 also corresponded roughly to the area of direct rule promised to France in the Sykes-Picot Agreement. In addition to the old Turkish canton of Lebanon—in which France’s Maronite Christian protégés as well as their traditional enemies, the Druses, were centered—Great Lebanon included the coastal cities of Beirut, Tripoli, Sidon, and Tyre, as well as the long Bekaa valley which covered a considerable area in the interior of the country. None of these territorial additions—Beirut, Tripoli, Sidon, Tyre, or the Bekaa—had fallen within the canton of Lebanon, where Christian power was based; indeed they brought with them large Sunni and Shi’ite Moslem populations.

Whether this expansion of Lebanon—which was to lead to so much bloodshed in the 1970s and 1980s, as various groups attacked the leading position of the Maronite minority in what had become a predominantly Moslem country—was the result of Maronite Christian or of French political pressure cannot be determined.
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Many hands pushed General Gouraud toward his decision. At the time its risks were not fully appreciated.

II

The ease with which the occupation of Damascus had been effected seemed to expose the pretensions of Feisal and Arab nationalism as shams that had been invented by Britain in order to cheat France out of her claim to Syria. Whenever there were local uprisings in Syria—and there were disturbances from time to time throughout the life of the French Mandate—it was natural for the French to blame them on the British, and they did so.
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Lloyd George, who had lost France’s good will by attempting to withhold Syria, did not regain that good will by changing his policy so as to let France have her.

Having withdrawn his troops in 1919, Lloyd George had in fact lost control of events in Syria at least as much as he had in the interior of Anatolia, in the deserts of Arabia, in the mountains of Afghanistan, and in the peasant villages of Egypt. In Syria the result was that the British were blamed on all sides. The French blamed them for putting Feisal up and the Arabs blamed them for letting Feisal down.