100 years of Violence - How World War I created the spark for Todays Middle East Bloodshed The Great War, as it came to be known, lasted four years, from 1914 to 1918. But its aftereffects haunted Europe and the rest of the world through the 20th century—and are still felt in our own times. The war resulted in the collapse of two Big empires, Romanov [Russian] empire, the and the Ottoman Empire. The British gradually conquer what became Palestine, and what is called Mesopotamia, at the time but becomes the state of Iraq. Those are areas that are hugely controversial all through the 20th century and remain so now. The so-called European Civil War, a term used to describe the period of bloody violence that racked Europe from 1914 onwards, came to an end in 1945. The Cold War ceased in 1990. But the tensions unleashed on the Arab world by World War I remain as acute as ever. Essentially, the Middle East finds itself in the same situation now as Europe did following the 1919 Treaty of Versailles: standing before a map that disregards the regions ethnic and confessional realities. In Asia, Africa & Europe following the bloodletting of World War II, most peoples have largely come to accept the borders that history has forced upon them. But not in the Middle East. The states that were founded in the region after 1914, and the borders that were drawn then, are still seen as illegitimate by many of their own citizens and by their neighbors. Only two countries in the broader region -- Egypt(Sunni) and Iran(Shia) -- possess such a long and uninterrupted history that their state integrity can hardly be shaken, even by a difficult crisis. Two others continue to stand on the foundation erected by their founders: The Turkish Republic of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, finally united by Abd al-Asis Ibn Saud in 1932. These four countries surround the core of the Middle East. The so called children of England and France: Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Israel and Palestine, are the other countries. It is these regions, south of present-day Turkey, that became the focus of the Middle Eastern battles in World War I. The protagonists of World War I were not fully aware yet that the Ottoman Empires backyard was sitting atop the largest oil reserves in the world. Had they known, the fighting in the Middle East would likely have been even more violent and brutal than it was. At the time, however, the war aims of the two sides were determined by a world order that would dissolve within the next four years: Great Britain wanted to open a shipping route to its ally Russia and to secure its connection to India via the Suez Canal and the Persian Gulf. The German Empire wanted to prevent exactly that.
Posted on: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 09:30:00 +0000
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