Syria: A Short History/18
WAR, OPPRESSION AND PESTILENCE
One bright July day in 1908 the world was startled by the
news that the long tyrannical rule of Abd-al-Hamid was
approaching its end. A coup staged by officers in his own
army had been successful. It was the work of the Com-
mittee of Union and Progress, the striking arm of a secretly
organized society, known as the Young Turks, which had
had its inception years before at Geneva through the activity
of students and youthful reformers and was later moved to
Paris. It aimed at a constitution with an elective parliament
and the building up of a homogeneous democratic state.
Wily Abd-al-Hamid reacted favourably, restored the parlia-
ment of 1876, ordered the abolition of espionage and censor-
ship and the release of all political prisoners. A wave of
jubilation spread over the Arab world. In Damascus,
Beirut, Aleppo, Jerusalem and other towns the new measures
were hailed with fireworks, bonfires and eloquent orations.
It was the dawn of a new day. Ottoman Utopia lurked
round the corner. Syria sent delegates to the parliament.
Its nationalists founded in Constantinople the Arab-Ottoman
fraternity to promote the new cause. But the sultan had no
more intention of preserving this democratic paraphernalia
of 1908 than that of 1876. The early constitution had been
drafted by one of the most liberal-minded Turks of his day,
Midhat Pasha, then grand vizir and later governor of Syria.
Caught staging with reactionaries a counter-revolution in
April 1909, Abd-al-Hamid was replaced by his doddering
brother, Muhammad Rashad. Authority lodged in the
hands of a military triumvirate of the committee.
With more zeal than experience the new regime em- barked upon a policy of centralization of power, Ottomanization of the diversified elements of the empire and repression of all non-Turkish nationalism. To this end they prohibited all societies formed by non-Turkish groups. Arab nationalists were driven underground. Impetus was given to the de- centralist and the separatist wings around them. A group of Syro-Palestinian and Lebanese students and emigrants in Paris organized the Young Arab Society aiming at securing Arab independence from Turkish rule. But the Arab Congress which it sponsored there in 1913, and which was attended by twenty-four delegates from Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, including two Lebanese from New York, called simply for home rule and the recognition of Arabic as the official language. It also warned against meddling by European powers. Secret societies mushroomed in Damascus, Baghdad and Cairo. Arab officers in the Turkish army formed their own cells. Lack of communication facilities made it difficult to co-ordinate or integrate the work of the separate organiza- tions. With these developments the Young Turks were unable to cope. Their domestic troubles were complicated by foreign ones of even more serious nature. When war broke out in August 191 4 the Constantinople regime cast its lot with the Central Powers.
Late in that year Jamal Pasha, a member of the trium- virate, arrived at Damascus as governor-general of Syria- Lebanon- Palestine and commander-in-chief of the fourth Ottoman army. The area was considered dangerously anti- Ottoman with strong pro-Arab leanings and with the Christians of Lebanon entertaining pro-French sympathies. Jamal lost no time in abolishing Lebanon's autonomy and launching a policy of intimidation, deportation, torture and suppression of all nationalist activity. He inaugurated a reign of terror before which earlier ones paled and earned the sobriquet al-Saffah (bloodshedder) . At Alayh, c bride of Lebanese summer resorts', he instituted the following summer a military court which summarily sentenced, even condemned to death, suspects and nationalist leaders. Those sentenced to death were hanged in public squares in Damascus and Beirut. Membership in one of those societies on the black list ; charges proffered by personal enemies or jealous rivals ; sympathy with the French as revealed by the seized archives of the Beirut consulate; and above all, espousal of the Arab cause upheld by al-Sharif Husayn of Mecca — any of these was enough to bring the alleged criminal before the military tribunal. The Sharif in 191 6 unfurled the banner of rebellion against the Young Turks, declared himself 'king of the Arabs' and entered into secret communication with Arab nationalists outside Hejaz. On May 6 of that year Jamal sent fourteen Moslems and Christians in Beirut and seven in Damascus to the gallows. The day is still commemorated as 'martyrs' day' in both cities, and the sites are called 'martyrs' squares'.
By way of preparation for the ill-conceived attack on the Suez Canal Jamal imposed military conscription, requisi- tioned beasts of burden and summoned the populace to provision his troops at a time when they could hardly provision themselves. The Allied blockade by sea and land was becoming tighter and its effects were beginning to tell. The entire area became a paradise for all kinds of disease germs — malaria, typhus, typhoid and dysentery. Con- taminated soldiers spread all sorts of maladies. A plague of locusts in the spring of 19 15 veiled the sun and added its quota to the economic misery. Whatever drugs were avail- able were hardly enough to meet the military demands. Evidence goes to show that in the case of Lebanon a deliberate effort was made to starve and decimate the people. About a hundred thousand are estimated to have been lost out of its four hundred and fifty thousand population. But for remittances and aid from the United States, some of which was side-tracked by local authorities, casualties would have been heavier.
While the people were passing through these agonizing experiences the Allied Powers were planning the parcelling out of their lands among themselves. The secret Sykes-Picot agreement of May 1916, whose contents were first divulged by the Bolsheviks in Russia, divided the Fertile Crescent between Britain and France. In October of the preceding year Henry McMahon, British high commissioner in Cairo, recognized in the name of Great Britain the independence of the Arabs within certain boundaries defined by the Sharif to include the Fertile Crescent and accepted with certain vague reservations. The Sharif had assumed the leadership of the Pan-Arab movement. On November 2, 191 7, Lord Balfour made his famous declaration that the British Government c views with favour the establishment of a national home in Palestine for the Jewish people 5 — whatever that may mean. Seven days later a joint Anglo- French declaration, emanating from the general head- quarters of their expeditionary force at Cairo, assured the people that the goal envisaged by these two powers was 'the complete and final liberation of the peoples who have for so long been oppressed by the Turks, and the setting up of national governments and administrations that shall derive their authority from the free exercise of the initiative and choice of the indigenous populations'. These promises echoed the doctrine of self-determination previously enun- ciated by President Woodrow Wilson and his insistence that the post-war settlement should be based upon 'the free acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately concerned 5 . By Armistice Day, November 11, 19 18, Allied troops under General Allenby, supported by Arab troops under Faysal, son of King Husayn, had occupied Syria- Lebanon- Palestine. In pursuance of their newly enunciated doctrine of self-determination the Allied leaders at the Peace Conference of Versailles in 19 19, where Faysal repre- sented his father in arguing the Arab case, agreed to send a commission to Syria. But only the United States sent its King- Crane Commission, England, France and Italy having failed to act. In its report, which was not made public until 1922, the commission declared that the consensus of opinion in Syria insisted on independence, repudiating the mandate form of tutelage but overwhelmingly favouring assistance provided by the United States or, failing that, by Great Britain, but not by France. Lebanon by a majority also favoured independence, called for a Greater Lebanon from Tripoli to Tyre, unrelated to Syria and receiving assistance from France. On Palestine the commission recommended that the Zionist programme be reduced, Jewish immigration limited and the idea of converting Palestine into a Jewish commonwealth abandoned.
By then the San Remo (Italy) conference had partitioned the Ottoman empire (April ig2o), giving France the mandate over Syria and Lebanon and Great Britain the mandate over Palestine and Iraq. The dream of Arab unity was shattered. Four months later Turkey signed the treaty of S&vres (France) renouncing all rights to the man- dated territory. The mandate institution was a novel one in political relations generally ascribed to the initiative of General Smuts of South Africa and President Wilson. All four mandates — Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq — were classified as class A under the League of Nations. The covenant acknowledged these communities as having reached a stage of development where their existence as 'independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone'. Further, the covenant reiterated the Wilsonian doctrine that the wishes of the people concerned were to be a principal consideration.