Inside Syria: The Backstory of Their Civil War and What the World Can Expect Read Online Free PDF Page B

installed their troops in the Middle East. That combination of domestic and international events relegated the United States to a secondary role in the region until after World War II.
    At the end of World War I, while imperial powers feuded among themselves, Arabs were busy exercising their independence. The General Syrian Congress elected Emir Faisal king of the Arab nation with its headquarters in Damascus. The Arabs had governed their newly liberated land—but by 1919 the colonial powers were ready to divvy up the colonial spoils. The results were bloody indeed.
    On November 21, 1919, French general Henri Gouraud landed in Beirut as head of the French Army of the Levant. He had already become famous in 1894 for putting down an anticolonial uprising in French Sudan. He lost an arm fighting in World War I. He wore a crisp uniform and Van Dyke beard and mustache. General Gouraud quickly set about conquering inland Syria, extending French colonial rule. It wasn't easy. Faisal's government controlled Syria and part of Lebanon while Britain controlled Iraq, Jordan, and Palestine. In early 1920, the British decided to pull back their troops, conceding the eventual control of Damascus and Lebanon to France.
    Faisal hoped to cut a deal with French prime minister Georges Clemenceau to keep himself in power, but Syrian nationalists opposed him. Faisal's government prohibited the French military from using rail lines in Aleppo and other regions under his control. Anti-French nationalists blew up other rail lines. The anticolonial war was on.
    The Arab forces were weak politically, economically, and militarily. They lacked a stable source of income and fought without heavy weapons. On July 25, 1920, French troops entered Damascus. Faisal fled to Palestine, then controlled by the British. General Gouraud installed himself as the military and political leader of the French mandate. But first, with colonial swagger, he entered the old city of Damascus to visit the tomb of the Arab leader who had driven out the Crusaders.
    â€œSaladin, we're back,” he said. 14
    Faisal's forces were defeated because of the overwhelming French military superiority but also because Arab nationalism was still in its infancy. Many Arabs identified with their tribe, ethnic group, or region more than with their newly emerging nation states. Various ideologies competed for support on the Arab street. Pan-Arabists called for a single Arab nation made up of people from throughout the region. A few Islamists called for a unified Muslim emirate, and still other nationalists wanted to build independent countries.
    Arabs included people from the Arabian peninsula, Palestine,Mount Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and North Africa, and they often fought among themselves. “They were very disunited,” political scientist Elie El-Hindy told me in an interview. “The people of the Near East, they had so many diverging opinions about who they were and what was their nationalism.” 15
    France and Britain took advantage of the disunity. Both powers “did not care what people thought,” said El-Hindy. “They did not care about the best interest of these people. They simply cared about their division. They applied it by force. They [the French] had to bomb Damascus to make Faisal move out.”
    By 1920, the colonial powers had seemingly resolved their differences over how to divvy up the Middle East. On August 10, they signed the Treaty of Sevres, which allocated Lebanon and Syria to France and the rest of the Arab areas to Britain. France was also given control over Hatay Province in what is today southwestern Turkey, along the Syrian border.
    But Turkish military officers under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk rejected the Treaty of Sevres on the grounds that it gave too much land to the colonial powers. Ataturk led a military campaign that took back territory and established the Republic of Turkey.
    The Treaty of Lausanne, which took effect August 6, 1924,