Fallujah, Before and After
Juan Cole at Informed Comment writes about the aftermath of Fallujah. Among other items, there were many civilian casualties, the insurgency is spreading out across Iraq, and Bush’s much beloved January elections are thrown into serious doubt. The professor also wrote:
Most Americans do not realize that Fallujah is celebrated in Iraqi history and poetry for its defiance of the British in the Great Rebellion of 1920. The 1920 revolution against the British is key to modern Iraqi history. One of the guerrilla groups taking hostages named itself the “1920 Revolution Brigades.” Western journalists who don’t know Iraqi history have routinely mistranslated the name of this group.
I touched on this a bit last week in “It’s Armistice Day, Dammit!” In the aftermath of World War I …
The map of the Middle East changed also. The former Turkish territories of Syria and Lebanon were acquired by France. Britain took charge of Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Palestine, out of which the Brits planned to carve a Jewish National Home. Britain retained oversight of the rulers of Kuwait, an arrangement that dated from 1899. Afghanistan, on the other hand, declared its independence from Britain. By treaty, the Kurds were given autonomy from the Turks with a right to secede from Turkey. But the Kurds found no friends in the international community to help them, and by 1923 the Turks had retaken Kurdistan.
After World War I, Britain and France both had grandiose ideas about how they could make the Middle East (and its oil) friendly to western interests. In short €“ they failed. It€™s all complicated, but for now just be aware that much of the political map of the Middle East today came about because of the various meddlings of Britain and France. And many people of the Middle East engaged in long and messy resistance to get rid of the European meddlers.
Long before €œPresident€ Bush decided to invade Iraq to make it safe for democracy, the people of the Middle East had had it up to here with non-Muslim imperialists trying to run their countries and take their oil.
Professor Cole links to this In These Times article that explains some of the details I didn’t go into last week. The more you know, the more you realize how absurd it was for anyone to think that the simple, happy peasants of Iraq would welcome conquering Americans with flowers and good will. The real simpletons are the fools in charge of our foreign policy.
And if you aren’t into reading about history, go to your neighborhood video store and check out a copy of Lawrence of Arabia. It’s at least a hint.
November 15th, 2004 at 9:21 am
Fallujah will fall, yes. But many more Fallujah’s will be born in its stead.
November 15th, 2004 at 11:05 am
So Falloojeh was a sign of resistance at the time of the Caliphate’s break up. Hmm.
November 15th, 2004 at 12:03 pm
Floojah once, shame on you.
November 15th, 2004 at 1:04 pm
One trick not to overlook is that the Ottoman’s may have had Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey, et cetera, but that the modern borders did not exist then.
The 1900 map at euratlas dot com illustrates this well.
Now, since the “new” borders are totally arbitrary, and ineffective, what would/should new borders look like?
I’ve known for a while myself, but am open to new ideas.
November 15th, 2004 at 1:09 pm
The quick link to the relevant portion of the map is here.
Iraq included, for example, the Villayets of Basra, Baghdad and Mosul.
And the borders that the Ottoman imposed? Probably pretty arbitrary, also.
November 15th, 2004 at 2:19 pm
The new borders will look similar to the ones we created after defeating North Vietnam.