The “Clean Break” policy document outlined these goals: 1) Ending Yasser Arafat’s and the Palestinian Authority’s political influence, by blaming them for acts of Palestinian terrorism 2) Inducing the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. 3) Launching war against Syria after Saddam’s regime is disposed of 4) Followed by military action against Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.

“Clean Break” was also in direct opposition to the Oslo Accords, to which Netanyahu was very much itching to obliterate. The Oslo II Accord was signed just the year before, on September 28th 1995, in Taba, Egypt.

During the Oslo Accord peace process, Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu accused Rabin’s government of being “removed from Jewish tradition…and Jewish values.” Rallies organised by the Likud and other right-wing fundamentalist groups featured depictions of Rabin in a Nazi SS uniform or in the crosshairs of a gun. In July 1995, Netanyahu went so far as to lead a mock funeral procession for Rabin, featuring a coffin and hangman’s noose.

The Oslo Accords was the initiation of a process which was to lead to a peace treaty based on the United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, and at fulfilling the “right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.” If such a peace treaty were to occur, with the United States backing, it would have prevented much of the mayhem that has occurred since. However, the central person to ensuring this process, Yitzak Rabin, was assassinated just a month and a half after the signing of the Oslo II Accord, on November 4th, 1995. Netanyahu became prime minister of Israel seven months later. “Clean Break” was produced the following year.

On November 6th, 2000 in the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, Israeli Justice Minister Yossi Beilin, who was the chief negotiator of the Oslo peace accords, warned those Israelis who argued that it were impossible to make peace with the Palestinians:

“Zionism was founded in order to save Jews from persecution and anti-Semitism, and not in order to offer them a Jewish Sparta or – God forbid  – a new Massada.”

On Oct. 5, 2003, for the first time in 30 years, Israel launched bombing raids against Syria, targeting a purported “Palestinian terrorist camp” inside Syrian territory. Washington stood by and did nothing to prevent further escalation.

“Clean Break” was officially launched in March 2003 with the war against Iraq, under the pretence of “The War on Terror”. The real agenda was a western backed list of regime changes in the Middle East to fit the plans of the United Kingdom, the U.S. and Israel. However, the affair is much more complicated than that with each player holding their own “idea” of what the “plan” is. Before we can fully appreciate such a scope, we must first understand what was Sykes-Picot and how did it shape today’s world mayhem.

Arabian Nights

WWI was to officially start July 28th 1914, almost immediately following the Balkan wars (1912-1913) which had greatly weakened the Ottoman Empire. Never one to miss an opportunity when smelling fresh blood, the British were very keen on acquiring what they saw as strategic territories for the taking under the justification of being in war-time, which in the language of geopolitics translates to “the right to plunder anything one can get their hands on”.

The brilliance of Britain’s plan to garner these new territories was not to fight the Ottoman Empire directly but rather, to invoke an internal rebellion from within. These Arab territories would be encouraged by Britain to rebel for their independence from the Ottoman Empire and that Britain would support them in this cause. These Arab territories were thus led to believe that they were fighting for their own freedom when, in fact, they were fighting for British and secondarily French colonial interests.

In order for all Arab leaders to sign on to the idea of rebelling against the Ottoman Sultan, there needed to be a viable leader that was Arab, for they certainly would not agree to rebel at the behest of Britain. Lord Kitchener, the butcher of Sudan, was to be at the helm of this operation as Britain’s Minister of War. Kitchener’s choice for Arab leadership was the scion of the Hashemite dynasty, Hussein ibn Ali, known as the Sherif of Mecca who ruled the region of Hejaz under the Ottoman Sultan. Hardinge of the British India Office disagreed with this choice and wanted Wahhabite Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud instead, however, Lord Kitchener overruled this stating that their intelligence revealed that more Arabs would follow Hussein.

Since the Young Turk Revolution which seized power of the Ottoman government in 1908, Hussein was very aware that his dynasty was in no way guaranteed and thus he was open to Britain’s invitation to crown him King of the Arab kingdom.

Kitchener wrote to one of Hussein’s sons, Abdallah, as reassurance of Britain’s support: “If the Arab nation assist England in this war that has been forced upon us by Turkey, England will guarantee that no internal intervention take place in Arabia, and will give Arabs every assistance against foreign aggression.”

Sir Henry McMahon who was the British High Commissioner to Egypt, would have several correspondences with Sherif Hussein between July 1915 to March 1916 to convince Hussein to lead the rebellion for the “independence” of the Arab states.

However, in a private letter to India’s Viceroy Charles Hardinge sent on December 4th, 1915, McMahon expressed a rather different view of what the future of Arabia would be, contrary to what he had led Sherif Hussein to believe:

“[I do not take] the idea of a future strong united independent Arab State … too seriously … the conditions of Arabia do not and will not for a very long time to come, lend themselves to such a thing.”

Such a view meant that Arabia would be subject to Britain’s heavy handed “advising” in all its affairs, whether it sought it or not.

In the meantime, Sherif Hussein was receiving dispatches issued by the British Cairo office to the effect that the Arabs of Palestine, Syria, and Mesopotamia (Iraq) would be given independence guaranteed by Britain, if they rose up against the Ottoman Empire.

The French were understandably suspicious of Britain’s plans for these Arab territories. The French viewed Palestine, Lebanon and Syria as intrinsically belonging to France, based on French conquests during the Crusades and their “protection” of the Catholic populations in the region. Hussein was adamant that Beirut and Aleppo were to be given independence and completely rejected French presence in Arabia. Britain was also not content to give the French all the concessions they demanded as their “intrinsic” colonial rights.

Enter Sykes and Picot.

Sykes-Picot: the Gentlemen’s Etiquette on Backstabbing

Francois Georges Picot was sent to negotiate with the British on November 23rd, 1915. He was chosen for this role due to his policy outlook of the “Syrian party” in France, which asserted that Syria and Palestine (which they considered a single country) were French property, for historical, economic, and cultural reasons. Approximately six months later, the top secret terms of the agreement were signed on May 16th, 1916. The map showcases the agreed upon ‘carving up’ of these Arab territories, to be the new jewels of Britain and France.

Notice Palestine is marked as an international zone in yellow. Palestine was recognised as something neither country was willing to forfeit to the other. And thus, according to the gentlemen’s etiquette, meant that one would simply have to take it while the other wasn’t looking, which is exactly what happened.

In 1916, Sir Mark Sykes created the Arab Bureau whose headquarters would be in Cairo, Egypt (which was under British rule), as a branch of British Intelligence and under the direction of Lord Kitchener. Among the notable members of the Arab Bureau was T.E. Lawrence, better known as “Lawrence of Arabia”. The raison d’être of the Arab Bureau was to exact British control over Arabia via British Egypt.

The Arab revolt, led under the façade of King Hussein, was launched in Hejaz in early June 1916, however, the hundreds of thousands of Arabs the British were expecting to defect from the Ottoman army and join the revolt…did not show up. Instead, British aircraft and ships were deployed, along with Muslim troops from British Egypt and elsewhere in the Empire. As the revolt continued to show its weaknesses and lack of support by the Arabs themselves, to such a point that Britain was starting to despair of its success, T.E. Lawrence (who was known as “the man with the gold”), organised a confederation of Bedouin tribal chiefs to fight alongside the British forces in the Palestine and Syria campaigns.

In 1917, War Minister Lloyd George ordered troops from British Egypt to invade Palestine, expressing his wish to General Allenby that Jerusalem be taken by Christmas. Obligingly, on December 11th 1917, Allenby walked into Jerusalem through the Jaffa Gate and declared martial law over the city (see picture). Allenby explained to Picot, that Jerusalem would remain under British military administration, for some time.

The British India Office invaded Mesopotamia and took Baghdad on March 11th, 1917. The southern province of Basra, largely Shi’ite, was to be British, while the ancient capital of Baghdad was to be under some form of British protectorate.

After the British conquests of Palestine and Mesopotamia, Syria would be taken by September 1918 by British led forces and Damascus would ultimately, after a bit of squabbling, be left under French control or “advisory”.

The final settlement for allocation of territories was established in 1920 with the Treaty of Sevres which stipulated that Syria and Lebanon were to go to France, and that Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Palestine would be under British control with Arabia (Hejaz) being officially “independent” but ruled by British puppet monarchs. Britain was also granted continued influence over Egypt, Cyprus and the Persian Gulf coast.

Faisal, the son of Hussein ibn Ali and who had been under the “tutelage” of T.E. Lawrence this whole time, was proclaimed King of Iraq, after his failed attempt as King over Greater Syria before the French chased him out with their military, recognising that he represented British interests.

As for Persia (Iran), the British established their control through the infamous Anglo-Persian Agreement of 1919, with Ahmed Shah.

In 1926 the Mosul Treaty was signed where Iraq got nominal control over the oil region and the interests were divvied up among British (52.5%), French (21.25%) and American (21.25%) oil companies.

As far as central Arabia was concerned, Hussein laid claim to the title Caliph in 1924, which his rival Wahhabite Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud rejected and declared war, defeating the Hashemites. Hussein abdicated and ibn Saud, the favourite of the British India Office, was proclaimed King of Hejaz and Najd in 1926, which led to the founding of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The Fate of Palestine

While the British were promising Arab rule and independence to the Hashemite Hussein and his sons, the British were simultaneously promising a homeland in Palestine to the Jews. In the Balfour Declaration of November 2nd, 1917 the following was declared:

“His majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object…”

Britain received the mandate over Palestine from the League of Nations in July 1922.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s violent confrontations between Jews and Arabs took place in Palestine costing hundreds of lives. In 1936 a major Arab revolt occurred over 7 months, until diplomatic efforts involving other Arab countries led to a ceasefire. In 1937, a British Royal Commission of Inquiry headed by William Peel concluded that Palestine had two distinct societies with irreconcilable political demands, thus making it necessary to partition the land.

The Arab Higher Committee refused Peel’s “prescription” and the revolt broke out again. This time, Britain responded with a devastatingly heavy hand. Roughly 5,000 Arabs were killed by the British armed forces and police. Following the riots, the British mandate government dissolved the Arab Higher Committee and declared it an illegal body.

In response to the revolt, the British government issued the White Paper of 1939, which stated that Palestine should be a bi-national state, inhabited by both Arabs and Jews. Due to the international unpopularity of the mandate including within Britain itself, it was organised such that the United Nations would take responsibility for the British initiative and adopted the resolution to partition Palestine on November 29th, 1947. Britain would announce its termination of its Mandate for Palestine on May 15th, 1948 after the State of Israel declared its independence on May 14th, 1948.

A New Strategy for Securing Whose Realm?

Despite what its title would have you believe, “Clean Break” is neither a “new strategy” nor meant for “securing” anything. It is also not the brainchild of fanatical neo-conservatives: Dick Cheney and Richard Perle, nor even that of crazed end-of-days fundamentalist Benjamin Netanyahu, but rather has the very distinct and lingering odour of the British Empire.

“Clean Break” is a continuation of Britain’s geopolitical game, and just as it used France during the Sykes-Picot days it is using the United States and Israel. The role Israel has found itself playing in the Middle East could not exist if it were not for over 30 years of direct British occupation in Palestine and its direct responsibility for the construction of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which set a course for destruction and endless war in this region long before Israel ever existed.

It was also Britain who officially launched operation “Clean Break” by directly and fraudulently instigating an illegal war against Iraq to which the Chilcot Inquiry, aka Iraq Inquiry, released 7 years later, attests to. This was done by the dubious reporting by British Intelligence setting the pretext for the U.S.’ ultimate invasion into Iraq based off of fraudulent and forged evidence provided by GCHQ, unleashing the “War on Terror”, aka “Clean Break” outline for regime change in the Middle East.

In addition, the Libyan invasion in 2011 was also found to be unlawfully instigated by Britain. In a report published by the British Foreign Affairs Committee in September 2016, it was concluded that it was “the UK and France in March 2011 which led the international community to support an intervention in Libya to protect civilians from forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi”. The report concluded that the Libyan intervention was based on false pretence provided by British Intelligence and recklessly promoted by the British government.

If this were not enough, British Intelligence has also been caught behind the orchestrations of Russia-Gate and the Skripal affair.

Therefore, though the U.S. and Israeli military have done a good job at stealing the show, and though they certainly believe themselves to be the head of the show, the reality is that this age of empire is distinctly British and anyone who plays into this game will ultimately be playing for said interests, whether they are aware of it or not.

A Shift in Attitude towards Current Borders

Kosovo and Israel came into being after the West determined that they were victims of genocide and thus needed some form of segregation for protection, thus granting them their own ethno-state. Whether you agree with this decision or the nuances of the situations that caused does no matter, the fact is that genocide (real, perceived or other) can be grounds for borders to be redrawn and even new states to be created. There are exceptions to this like Rwanda, but genocide recognition is a very “usable resource” for certain political objectives that require redrawing maps.

Mount Ararat is of sacred significance to the Armenians and it (along with a lot of their former lands) lies on the current territory of Turkey. Although this is unlikely to happen, the West could in theory, demand that Ankara give all of that territory back to “its victims”. Armenia is no longer part of Russia so growing it to shrink the Turks could be a very viable plan from a Beltway standpoint.

If there is enough political will the “International Community” could demand that the Turks recognize a sovereign Kurdistan on their territory as the Kurds have also been under what they themselves see as repression or even genocide by Turkey. We have heard for years that the Kurds need their own home, well why not make it in Eastern Turkey as a form of punishment?

After the dismantling of the Soviet Union it is possible to believe that Washington will be in favor of cutting up any enemy territory as much as possible to neuter them. Erdogan’s path to Making Turkey Great Again could be completely blocked off by some sort of genocide inspired recognition of new borders for repressed groups in Turkey. This would in all likelihood lead to a civil war, which would keep Turkey locked in its “regional power” status for a few generations.

Removal from NATO then war in Cyprus

The New York Times described the anger towards Turkey in Washington very well…

But ties between the countries have become strained. Outraged by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s incursion into northern Syria in October and his purchase of a Russian missile defense system, the Foreign Relations Committee mobilized this week to advance a package of sanctions targeting Turkey.

They forgot to mention that any rogue nation pursuing its own goals in NATO is not going to last forever as a member and the recognition of the Armenian Genocide could serve as yet another excuse to boot the Turks out of the alliance. And Erdogan closing American bases out of spite certainly won’t help.

It is easy to imagine that at some point in the near future Turkey will be removed from NATO, however the day that happens one powder keg in Europe will dry out again – Cyprus. Besides British presence/interests on the island the only thing keeping Cyprus from devolving back into war is NATO. Both Greece and Turkey are technically on the same side now (and were during the Cold War) which is why the Cyprus question has been kept so quiet since the 1970’s.

But the moment Turkey becomes an official member of the “Axis of Evil” Greece will push hard and maybe even provoke war to get their island back or at least make sure that it comes under the exclusive rule of ethnic Greeks.

There is a very strong sentiment on the southern part of the island for reunification, which would see Turkish removal from NATO as their best chance in decades to make change. The Greeks/Ethnic Greek Cypriots could very likely provoke Non-NATO Turkey causing it to have to deal with nuclear titan America. This would be a losing battle for Ankara and a massive victory for the Greeks via American muscle.

Genocide Recognition Blowback

The non-English speaking world is absolutely dismal at PR so it is unlikely that Erdogan’s threat to recognize the genocide of the Native Americans will get any traction. But then again the world is changing and the West’s immunity to criticism thanks to Mainstream Media/Hollywood and controlling big international institutions is slowly starting to wane. There are many nations who have had the “bad regime” finger pointed at them from Washington (Russia + China especially) who would be very motivated to push forward with recognizing this issue for their own gain.

Can anyone today punish America for anything it has done to people in and outside of its borders? No. But that doesn’t mean that this will last forever. If enough of the non-Western World hypes this genocide then it may actually get some political traction. Which would be very dangerous for Washington as literally anywhere inside the Continental 48 States could be technically be “returned to the victims of genocide”. Not to say that this would happen immediately but it would justify and embolden certain groups to take action, maybe even violent action.

Something Big is Coming towards Turkey

The recognition of the Armenian Genocide is no simple coincidence, it is happening now for a reason and the effects of this decision will be seen in the next few months/years. Washington may feel it is time to contain today’s rogue Turkey which was such a wonderful vassal assistant against the Russians during the Cold War. Things happen for a reason but they rarely do for one clear singular reason, so the Turks need to crack open their energy drinks and get their best think tanks playing out scenarios because a storm is coming from the halls of power in DC.

To appreciate the survival of Eastern Christianity, a historical perspective dominated by two tragic developments, massacres and immigration, sheds light on its present status and future hope. Over the last hundred years, 1915-2015, Eastern Christians have suffered five massacres:

1. In 1915, and thereafter, the Ottoman massacre of Christians, also known as the Armenian genocide, in which 1.5 million Armenians – and several hundreds of thousands of Syriac and Assyrian Christians – were brutally massacred, which created a collective martyrdom memory, internalized and everlasting. My Syriac Orthodox paternal grandfather Elia was slaughtered along with two of his sons who disappeared. I will never forget the sight of my grandmother’s eyes fixed intently on our house door whenever there was a knock on the door hoping to see her children at the door front; until her final breath.
2. In 1933, Iraqi Assyrians were massacred and many of the survivors escaped to Syria and settled in the presently troubled North East Syria. They suffered a second slaughter during this decade at the hands of ISIS and other extremist terrorist groups
3. In the 1970’s, Christians suffered bloody onslaughts during the Lebanese civil war.
4. In the 2003 American invasion of Iraq, Christians were victims of violent onslaughts and many escaped to Syria and Lebanon.
5. In the present decade, amidst the ill-named “Arab Spring”, Eastern Christians have suffered death, destruction and kidnapping. Two Aleppian Archbishops, Syriac Orthodox Youhanna Ibrahim and Greek Orthodox Paul Yazigi, were kidnapped in April, 2013, while on a humanitarian mission, and their fate still unknown, dead or alive.

Five massacres of Eastern Christians in one hundred years equates to a Christian massacre every twenty years. This means that every Eastern Christian was either a martyr, a witness of martyrdom or a future martyr. Eastern Christians psychological makeup and mental attitude are a reflection of these massacres. They feel insecure, hopeless and abandoned. Should they sit and wait as future martyrs until their turn arrives or make a run for it to the Christian West – enter the predicament of immigration.

Some personal reflections of observations of Eastern Christians, with Syria as a case study, where Christian sects flourished, particularly in Aleppo, a historic hub of Christianity in the Fertile Crescent and in the ‘Christian Valley’ – or Wadi al-Nasara, a bastion of Christianity in western Syria. When I raise the subject of the survival of Eastern Christianity with Christians in Syria, the first thing that comes to their mind is the notion of a ‘plan’ to empty the region from Christians. I push to get some evidence to substantiate their belief of a ‘plan’ and the sources behind it. Some say it is the Islamists, others say it is Israel, still others say it is the Christian West who supported the Syrian uprising and called for the downfall of President Al Assad which created a feeling of uncertainty, insecurity and despair among Christians and the belief that they have no future in the region. The second source behind the ‘plan’, although indirectly, is the information Eastern Christians have acquired about the life the Christian West is providing Christian immigrants: Security, residence, welfare, health care, education and above all a hopeful future for their children; none of which is available in the homeland. The life Western Christians provide Eastern Christian immigrants is an irresistible inducement to immigrate, thus the ‘plan’ to empty the Homeland of Christianity from Christians.

The survival of Eastern Christianity is relatively important to Western Christians; and their financial support and sympathetic sentiments expressed in the Budapest testify to that. Aid is coming from the Christian West; it is needed and appreciated and has been very helpful to the well-being of many needy Syrians of different religious faiths. However, it is not sufficient to make a difference in the long run, for it covers mostly nutritional, rental and some daily needs, but not infrastructure and constructional needs which means the aid is only for temporary, not permanent survival. The aid comes mostly from Western Christian and International humanitarian and charity organizations; some limited aid comes from Western Christian states. Unfortunately, the same Western Christian states and their regional allies also provide financial and military aid to extremist groups, many of which target and kill Christians.

It should be noted that the continued existence of Eastern Christianity in Syria is due to the continued existence of a sovereign Syria, thanks to the Syrian people, the leadership, the institutions and of course Syria’s allies. Nevertheless, insecurity and instability, among other factors, coupled with the availability of immigration routes – whether legally or illegally- has accentuated the erosion of Syria’s Christian population. Eastern Christianity will continue to dwindle. However, one hopes for some positive developments towards Christians to slow down the hemorrhage. Unfortunately, that is just wishful thinking.

According to longtime friend, Archbishop Boutros Marayati, the Armenian Catholic Archbishop of Aleppo, “The Christians are afraid, with every new outbreak of violence, many families are deciding to emigrate.” The Archbishop was referring to the murdered Father Hovsep Bedoyan, parish priest of the Armenian Catholic parishes of Saint Jo in Qamishli, on November 11^th, 2019. The Archbishop recounts: Father Bedoyan was traveling by car to Deir ez-Zor, accompanied by his father, Ibrahim Bedoyan, a deacon and a layperson. The mission, according to the Archbishop: “We are trying to rebuild the church and the houses of the Christians who used to live there, so that they can return to the city.” The Archbishop continues, “What we do known is that Father Hovsep was dressed in his priestly attire… his car was clearly marked with the words ‘Armenian Catholic Church’.” The Archbishop notes that “shortly before they arrived at Deir ez-Zor, two armed men on a motorcycle overtook their car and opened fire.” The father of the Priest was killed, father Hovsep died outside the hospital in Hasake and the deacon was wounded. No amount of Western Christian aid can undo such damage.

Every targeted shooting of Christians in Syria perpetuates this vicious and catastrophic cycle of erosion of an historically important Eastern Christianity culture. In conclusion, unless the world acts immediately, the followers of Jesus Christ move further down the path of becoming a memory.

Pepe ESCOBAR

What is happening in Syria, following yet another Russia-brokered deal, is a massive geopolitical game-changer. I’ve tried to summarize it in a single paragraph this way:

“It’s a quadruple win. The U.S. performs a face saving withdrawal, which Trump can sell as avoiding a conflict with NATO ally Turkey. Turkey has the guarantee – by the Russians – that the Syrian Army will be in control of the Turkish-Syrian border. Russia prevents a war escalation and keeps the Russia-Iran-Turkey peace process alive.  And Syria will eventually regain control of the entire northeast.”

Syria may be the biggest defeat for the CIA since Vietnam.

Yet that hardly begins to tell the whole story.

Allow me to briefly sketch in broad historical strokes how we got here.

It began with an intuition I felt last month at the tri-border point of Lebanon, Syria and Occupied Palestine; followed by a subsequent series of conversations in Beirut with first-class Lebanese, Syrian, Iranian, Russian, French and Italian analysts; all resting on my travels in Syria since the 1990s; with a mix of selected bibliography in French available at Antoine’s in Beirut thrown in.

The Vilayets

Let’s start in the 19^thcentury when Syria consisted of six vilayets — Ottoman provinces — without counting Mount Lebanon, which had a special status since 1861 to the benefit of Maronite Christians and Jerusalem, which was a sanjak (administrative division) of Istanbul.

The vilayets did not define the extremely complex Syrian identity: for instance, Armenians were the majority in the vilayet of Maras, Kurds in Diyarbakir – both now part of Turkey in southern Anatolia – and the vilayets of Aleppo and Damascus were both Sunni Arab.

Nineteenth century Ottoman Syria was the epitome of cosmopolitanism. There were no interior borders or walls. Everything was inter-dependent.

Ethnic groups in the Balkans and Asia Minor, early 20th Century, Historical Atlas, 1911.

Then the Europeans, profiting from World War I, intervened. France got the Syrian-Lebanese littoral, and later the vilayets of Maras and Mosul (today in Iraq). Palestine was separated from Cham (the “Levant”), to be internationalized. The vilayet of Damascus was cut in half: France got the north, the Brits got the south. Separation between Syria and the mostly Christian Lebanese lands came later.

There was always the complex question of the Syria-Iraq border. Since antiquity, the Euphrates acted as a barrier, for instance between the Cham of the Umayyads and their fierce competitors on the other side of the river, the Mesopotamian Abbasids.

James Barr, in his splendid “A Line in the Sand,” notes, correctly, that the Sykes-Picot agreement imposed on the Middle East the European conception of territory: their “line in the sand” codified a delimited separation between nation-states. The problem is, there were no nation-states in region in the early 20^thcentury.

The birth of Syria as we know it was a work in progress, involving the Europeans, the Hashemite dynasty, nationalist Syrians invested in building a Greater Syria including Lebanon, and the Maronites of Mount Lebanon. An important factor is that few in the region lamented losing dependence on Hashemite Medina, and except the Turks, the loss of the vilayet of Mosul in what became Iraq after World War I.

In 1925, Sunnis became the de facto prominent power in Syria, as the French unified Aleppo and Damascus. During the 1920s France also established the borders of eastern Syria. And the Treaty of Lausanne, in 1923, forced the Turks to give up all Ottoman holdings but didn’t keep them out of the game.

Turkish borders according to the Treaty of Lausanne, 1923.

The Turks soon started to encroach on the French mandate, and began blocking the dream of Kurdish autonomy. France in the end gave in: the Turkish-Syrian border would parallel the route of the fabledBagdadbahn — the Berlin-Baghdad railway.

In the 1930s France gave in even more: the sanjak of Alexandretta (today’s Iskenderun, in Hatay province, Turkey), was finally annexed by Turkey in 1939 when only 40 percent of the population was Turkish.

The annexation led to the exile of tens of thousands of Armenians. It was a tremendous blow for Syrian nationalists. And it was a disaster for Aleppo, which lost its corridor to the Eastern Mediterranean.

Turkish forces under entered Alexandretta on July 5, 1938.

This emergent Syria — out of conflicting Turkish, French, British and myriad local interests —obviously could not, and did not, please any community. Still, the heart of the nation configured what was described as “useful Syria.” No less than 60 percent of the nation was — and remains — practically void.Yet, geopolitically, that translates into “strategic depth” — the heart of the matter in the current war.To the eastern steppes, Syria was all about Bedouin tribes. To the north, it was all about the Turkish-Kurdish clash. And to the south, the border was a mirage in the desert, only drawn with the advent of Transjordan. Only the western front, with Lebanon, was established, and consolidated after WWII.

From Hafez to Bashar

Starting in 1963, the Baath party, secular and nationalist, took over Syria, finally consolidating its power in 1970 with Hafez al-Assad, who instead of just relying on his Alawite minority, built a humongous, hyper-centralized state machinery mixed with a police state. The key actors who refused to play the game were the Muslim Brotherhood, all the way to being massacred during the hardcore 1982 Hama repression.

Secularism and a police state: that’s how the fragile Syrian mosaic was preserved. But already in the 1970s major fractures were emerging: between major cities and a very poor periphery; between the “useful” west and the Bedouin east; between Arabs and Kurds. But the urban elites never repudiated the iron will of Damascus: cronyism, after all, was quite profitable.

Damascus interfered heavily with the Lebanese civil war since 1976 at the invitation of the Arab League as a “peacekeeping force.” In Hafez al-Assad’s logic, stressing the Arab identity of Lebanon was essential to recover Greater Syria. But Syrian control over Lebanon started to unravel in 2005, after the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, very close to Saudi Arabia, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) eventually left.

Bashar al-Assad had taken power in 2000. Unlike his father, he bet on the Alawites to run the state machinery, preventing the possibility of a coup but completely alienating himself from the poor, Syrian on the street.

What the West defined as the Arab Spring, began in Syria in March 2011; it was a revolt against the Alawites as much  as a revolt against Damascus. Totally instrumentalized by the foreign interests, the revolt sprang up in extremely poor, dejected Sunni peripheries: Deraa in the south, the deserted east, and the suburbs of Damascus and Aleppo.

Protest in Damascus, April 24, 2011. (syriana2011/Flickr)

What was not understood in the West is that this “beggars banquet” was not against the Syrian nation, but against a “regime.” Jabhat al-Nusra, in a P.R. exercise, even broke its official link with al-Qaeda and changed its denomination to Fatah al-Cham and then Hayat Tahrir al-Cham (“Organization for the Liberation of the Levant”). Only ISIS/Daesh said they were fighting for the end of Sykes-Picot.

By 2014, the perpetually moving battlefield was more or less established: Damascus against both Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS/Daesh, with a wobbly role for the Kurds in the northeast, obsessed in preserving the cantons of Afrin, Kobane and Qamichli.

But the key point is that each katiba (“combat group”), each neighborhood, each village, and in fact each combatant was in-and-out of allegiances non-stop. That yielded a dizzying nebulae of jihadis, criminals, mercenaries, some linked to al-Qaeda, some to Daesh, some trained by the Americans, some just making a quick buck.

For instance Salafis — lavishly financed by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait — especially Jaish al-Islam, even struck alliances with the PYD Kurds in Syria and the jihadis of Hayat Tahrir al-Cham (the remixed, 30,000-strong  al-Qaeda in Syria). Meanwhile, the PYD Kurds (an emanation of the Turkish Kurds’ PKK, which Ankara consider “terrorists”) profited from this unholy mess — plus a deliberate ambiguity by Damascus – to try to create their autonomous Rojava.

A demonstration in the city of Afrin in support of the YPG against the Turkish invasion of Afrin, Jan. 19, 2018. (Voice of America Kurdish, Wikimedia Commons)

That Turkish Strategic Depth

Turkey was all in. Turbo-charged by the neo-Ottoman politics of former Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, the logic was to reconquer parts of the Ottoman empire, and get rid of Assad because he had helped PKK Kurdish rebels in Turkey.

Davutoglu’s Strategik Derinlik (“Strategic Depth’), published in 2001, had been a smash hit in Turkey, reclaiming the glory of eight centuries of an sprawling empire, compared to puny 911 kilometers of borders fixed by the French and the Kemalists. Bilad al Cham, the Ottoman province congregating Lebanon, historical Palestine, Jordan and Syria, remained a powerful magnet in both the Syrian and Turkish unconscious.

No wonder Turkey’s Recep Erdogan was fired up: in 2012 he even boasted he was getting ready to pray in the Umayyad mosque in Damascus, post-regime change, of course. He has been gunning for a safe zone inside the Syrian border — actually a Turkish enclave — since 2014. To get it, he has used a whole bag of nasty players — from militias close to the Muslim Brotherhood to hardcore Turkmen gangs.

With the establishment of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), for the first time Turkey allowed foreign weaponized groups to operate on its own territory. A training camp was set up in 2011 in the sanjakof Alexandretta. The Syrian National Council was also created in Istanbul – a bunch of non-entities from the diaspora who had not been in Syria for decades.

Ankara enabled a de facto Jihad Highway — with people from Central Asia, Caucasus, Maghreb, Pakistan, Xinjiang, all points north in Europe being smuggled back and forth at will. In 2015, Ankara, Riyadh and Doha set up the dreaded Jaish al-Fath (“Army of Conquest”), which included Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Qaeda).

At the same time, Ankara maintained an extremely ambiguous relationship with ISIS/Daesh, buying its smuggled oil, treating jihadis in Turkish hospitals, and paying zero attention to jihad intel collected and developed on Turkish territory. For at least five years, the MIT — Turkish intelligence – provided political and logistic background to the Syrian opposition while weaponizing a galaxy of Salafis. After all, Ankara believed that ISIS/Daesh only existed because of the “evil” deployed by the Assad regime.

The Russian Factor

Russian President Vladiimir Putin meeting with President of Turkey Recep Erdogan; Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov standing in background, Ankara, Dec. 1, 2014 Ankara. (Kremlin)

Raqqa, bombed to rubble by the Pentagon, may have been taken by the SDF, but Deir ez-Zor was taken by Damascus’s Syrian Arab Army. The ultimate American aim was to consistently keep the north of the Euphrates under U.S. power, via their proxies, the SDF and the Kurdish PYD/YPG. That American dream is now over, lamented by imperial Democrats and Republicans alike.

The CIA will be after Trump’s scalp till Kingdom Come.

Kurdish Dream Over

Talk about a cultural misunderstanding. As much as the Syrian Kurds believed U.S. protection amounted to an endorsement of their independence dreams, Americans never seemed to understand that throughout the “Greater Middle East” you cannot buy a tribe. At best, you can rent them. And they use you according to their interests. I’ve seen it from Afghanistan to Iraq’s Anbar province.

The Kurdish dream of a contiguous, autonomous territory from Qamichli to Manbij is over. Sunni Arabs living in this perimeter will resist any Kurdish attempt at dominance.

The Syrian PYD was founded in 2005 by PKK militants. In 2011, Syrians from the PKK came from Qandil – the PKK base in northern Iraq – to build the YPG militia for the PYD. In predominantly Arab zones, Syrian Kurds are in charge of governing because for them Arabs are seen as a bunch of barbarians, incapable of building their “democratic, socialist, ecological and multi-communitarian” society.

Kurdish PKK guerillas In Kirkuk, Iraq. (Kurdishstruggle via Flickr)

East of Deir ez-Zor, the PYD/YPG already had to say goodbye to the region that is responsible for 50 percent of Syria’s oil production. Damascus and the SAA now have the upper hand. What’s left for the PYD/YPG is to resign themselves to Damascus’s and Russian protection against Turkey, and the chance of exercising sovereignty in exclusively Kurdish territories.

Ignorance of the West

The West, with typical Orientalist haughtiness, never understood that Alawites, Christians, Ismailis and Druze in Syria would always privilege Damascus for protection compared to an “opposition” monopolized by hardcore Islamists, if not jihadis.  The West also did not understand that the government in Damascus, for survival, could always count on formidable Baath party networks plus the dreaded mukhabarat — the intel services.

Rebuilding Syria

The reconstruction of Syria may cost as much as $200 billion. Damascus has already made it very clear that the U.S. and the EU are not welcome. China will be in the forefront, along with Russia and Iran; this will be a project strictly following the Eurasia integration playbook — with the Chinese aiming to revive Syria’s strategic positioning in the Ancient Silk Road.

As for Erdogan, distrusted by virtually everyone, and a tad less neo-Ottoman than in the recent past, he now seems to have finally understood that Bashar al-Assad “won’t go,” and he must live with it. Ankara is bound to remain imvolved with Tehran and Moscow, in finding a comprehensive, constitutional solution for the Syrian tragedy through the former “Astana process”, later developed in Ankara.

The war may not have been totally won, of course. But against all odds, it’s clear a unified, sovereign Syrian nation is bound to prevail over every perverted strand of geopolitical molotov cocktails concocted in sinister NATO/GCC labs. History will eventually tell us that, as an example to the whole Global South, this will remain the ultimate game-changer.

consortiumnews.com

Syria, uncomfortably and vulnerably, finds itself sandwiched between the Ottoman hammer to the North and the Israeli anvil to the South. Both power houses are, hostile, expansionist and occupy Syrian territory. When one thinks of a ‘safe zone’ along the Syrian-Turkish border on the Syrian side, one is reminded of the American-Mexican border. Both borders face a similar security situation: one state faces security threats emanating from the neighboring state.

The American-Mexican border has long been a source of security concerns in Washington due to the influx of illegal Latin American immigrants, known pejoratively as the ‘wet backs’ – as they would get wet crossing the Rio Grande River to US mainland. To deal with border security, Trump did not consider establishing a ‘safe zone’ on the Mexican side of the border, for such a zone would have to be occupied and ruled by the American military, in violation of international law and Mexico’s sovereign and territorial integrity. Instead, Trump decided to build a wall on the American side of the border to alleviate the security threat.

Similarly, Erdogan views the concentration of anti-Turkish armed Kurds, whom he considers terrorists, on the Syrian side of the Syrian-Turkish border, a threat to Turkey’s national security. However, he does not think a wall is good enough to deal with the Kurdish threat. He opted, ironically with Trump’s blessings and partnership, to establish a 400 kilometers long – and at the moment still undecided depth – ‘safe zone’, on the Syrian side of the border, East of the Euphrates to the Iraqi border, in violation of international law and Syrian sovereignty and territorial integrity. Erdogan’s insistence on having Turkish boots in the zone, in Syria, is a military occupation. A similar process West of the Euphrates covering the remaining segment of the Syrian-Turkish border, according to Erdogan, will eventually complete 800 kilometers long ‘Ottoman Belt’.

Erdogan is determined and impatient to have the zone established and have Turkish boots on the ground. Recently, in a speech in Istanbul, he said “We don’t have much time or patience regarding the security zone which will be established along our complete border, East of the Euphrates, in a few weeks. If our soldiers don’t start actual control of the area, there will not be any option except the implementation of our plans.” Erdogan choosing the zone rather than the wall raises a serious question about Erdogan’s real and ultimate intention and plans. If it is not the wall, it is not security; if it is the zone, it is occupation, similar to the Northern Cyprus precedent.

Erdogan has three objectives regarding the establishment of a safe zone; two declared short range and a third undeclared long range. The first objective is security; the withdrawal of the armed Kurdish groups from the zone, a process which appears to have started. The second objective is resettling the Turkey-based Syrian refugees in the zone. The third and insidious objective is potentially reclaiming Syrian territory which was occupied by the Ottomans for 400 years, until the end of World War I. It should be noted that the 800 kilometers Syrian-Turkish border was based on the Sykes-Picot Agreement and drawn after WWI and the demise of the Ottoman Empire; it is not a historic nor natural border. A substantial part of the border is the Orient Express rail track, built by German Christians to be the border between two antagonistic Muslim states and not to the liking of either.

Erdogan is using a double strategy in dealing with the great powers to implement his three objectives. With Europe, it is blackmail. He either gets European support, or he will facilitate shipping hundreds of thousands of refugees to Europe. With Washington and Moscow, it is ‘the other woman’. I recall the Israeli-Palestinian and the Israeli-Syrian peace negotiations in the early 1990s. Whenever the Israelis didn’t get their way in one track, they would hint of reverting to the other track; so is the case with Erdogan vis-a-vis Washington and Moscow.

As for southern Syria, although Netanyahu and Erdogan overtly appear antagonist, they in fact share one common objective which is to squeeze and occupy Syrian territory. In the pursuit of their objectives, both rely on questionable historical claims and power differential between Syria on the one hand and Turkey and Israel on the other. Netanyahu’s annexation of the occupied Golan on the basis of questionable historical claims and Trump’s blessings is not objectionable to Erdogan despite his pretentious public protestations. The Ottomans occupied Syria for 400 years and Netanyahu claims the Golan historically belongs to Israel. Both Turkey and Israel have ‘recovered’ part of what they believe was theirs; Turkey ‘recovered’ Syrian Alexandretta district in 1939 and Israel ‘recovered’ two thirds of the Syrian Golan in the 1967 War and one assumes that both would like to ‘recover’ more.

There is an old Arab proverb: The camel’s nose is in the tent. Turkish tanks and soldiers are in northern Syria; Israeli military and settlements are in the Golan. The ultimate irony is that Syria, the eternal, the cradle of civilization and the home of the three monotheistic religions, has become a prey to the Ottoman and Israeli empires. What a travesty; a treachery. However, take note, Syria is not a pushover, nor is it alone.

Sam SWEENEY

The life of Hanna Danho’s grandfather is a small tile in a much larger mosaic: the tragedy that Syriac, Assyrian, and Chaldean Christians have lived through over the last century.

In 1895 and 1896, 20 years before the larger genocide against Christians carried out in the Ottoman Empire, a smaller persecution began, often called the Hamidian massacres after the Ottoman emperor at the time, Abdul Hamid II. Danho’s grandfather was a small child living in the village of Habab in the mountains of Tur Abdin that are now in southeast Turkey. Residents of Habab, like their neighbors in other villages, fled the area for Sinjar in modern Iraq. Along the way, the elder Danho and his brother got lost, and were picked up by a local Kurd near the town of Qahtaniyah, now in northeast Syria. The children were delivered to the mukhtar, a local official, who was also a Kurd. When the people of Habab were at last able to return home to the mountains, the mukhtar sent one of his men to the boys’ village to see if his family was there. They were, and the mukhtar then sent the boys home, an act of kindness that the elder Danho never forgot. Little did he know, however, that the same mukhtar would play a role in his life when tragedy once again struck the Syriac Christian population two decades later.

Most are aware of the Armenian Genocide of 1915-16, in which at least a million Armenian Christians were killed by the Ottoman government. The world knows about those horrors thanks to the massive efforts within the Armenian community worldwide to bring awareness to the issue and demand recognition for the tragedy that beset their people. Not as well known, however, is the massacre of Assyrian, Syriac, and Chaldean Christians during the same period, which claimed between 170,000 and 275,000 lives, depending on the estimate. As the Ottoman government set out to eliminate their empire’s Christian population—Armenian, Assyrian, Syriac, Chaldean, and Greek alike—Hanna Danho’s grandfather once again found his entire village in danger, 20 years after they first fled.

Locals in Habab fled, but some decided to take up arms and defend themselves, including the elder Danho, now a young man in his 20s. Those resisting ended up in Ain Warda, called Gulgoze in Turkish, where they tried to resist. The local Kurdish-led Ottoman forces, however, broke the resistance, and Danho fled, this time with his brother and sister. They initially headed once again towards Sinjar, but his sister stopped walking at one point along the way, saying she could not continue without water. One of the brothers ran to a nearby stream. He returned with water and she began to drink, then suddenly she died on the spot. Danho and his brother changed their route, and eventually made it back to the same village where 20 years before the local Kurdish mukhtar had kept them safe. The mukhtarremembered them, and went even further out of his way to ease their suffering: he gave them both land in the village of Girshamo, where Hanna Danho still farms today.

Girshamo always had a Syriac population, but before the genocide of 1915, the area was mostly farmed by those living in the Tur Abdin mountains now in Turkey, like Danho’s grandfather’s village of Habab. They would come down to plant and harvest, and spend the rest of the year up in the mountain. After World War I, however, the modern boundary was drawn between Turkey and Syria, and the small Syriac community that had survived the massacres found itself divided between those in Turkey and those in Syria. Syriac villages on the Syrian side of the boundary grew significantly, populated by those who’d fled from the genocide in Turkey.

Today, in villages like Girshamo, the Syriac community survives—barely. The modern church at Girshamo was built in 1998 on the same site as the original church, which was erected in 1830. With only about 13 households in the village, and with many of the people not there full-time, there isn’t mass every week. The church is dedicated to Saint Kyriakos, and on his feast day on July 15, fellow Syriac Orthodox Christians from the surrounding area come to celebrate with the villagers of Girshamo. But the celebration is not the same as it was in the mid-20th century, when about 70 households called the village home.

Such is the case for other Syriac villages in northeastern Syria. Many of the young people there have left for Europe, unable to see a future for themselves in their home country. The political situation is uncertain, and that makes it difficult to plan ahead. A few kilometers down the road, in the village of Tell Jihan, Turkish troops occasionally open fire on the town. Tell Jihan is less than a kilometer from the Syrian/Turkish border, and the church wall it faces has bullet holes that residents say appeared about five or six months ago. In mid-June, bullets broke one of the church’s windows. Like Girshamo, Tell Jihan has only a few households left. When Turkish bullets land in the village, it reminds the residents of the massacres committed against them a century ago. The modern Turkish government still refuses to acknowledge the genocide.

There would be tens of millions more Christians living in places like Girshamo and Tell Jihan had the massacres not occurred. In that sense, the plan to exterminate Christianity from the region succeeded. Somewhere between two and three million people were killed in the Armenian, Greek, Assyrian, Syriac, and Chaldean Christian communities. In what is now Turkey, for example, Christians went from making up about 20 percent of the population before the genocide to less than 0.5 percent today, and those who remain are on the verge of disappearing. Greek and Armenian survivors at least had a country to flee to that was run by their ethnic brethren, even if it only possessed a small fraction of the territory that it once did. The Syriac, Assyrian, and Chaldean communities, however, had no country to turn to, and ended up primarily in places like Syria and Iraq, where 100 years later ISIS would commit the same crimes against them that the Ottoman government committed against their grandparents.The civil war in Syria has been particularly hard on the country’s Christian community. In the northeast along the Turkish border, villages that had 20 or 30 households several decades ago now have only two or three. Those who remain feel abandoned by the international community. Hanna Danho says the current crisis is more difficult than any the community has faced before. He says it’s impossible to know who wants what is best for the country and who is trying to destroy it. It wasn’t just ISIS that targeted the Christian community; in the village of Ghardouka, south of Qahtaniyah, the al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra deliberately destroyed the church, leaving the rest of the village mostly untouched. Residents rebuilt the church, and today it stands as a proud monument to Syriac steadfastness.

Even after ISIS’s defeat, however, problems have continued for these Christians, as well as their Kurdish and Arab neighbors. Following a record year of rainfall and hopes for a good harvest, fires have consumed thousands of acres of ripe wheat and barley crops. Dozens have died fighting the fires, and the economic and psychological damage is massive. While no definitive proof of ISIS’s responsibility exists, they seem to be the most likely culprit, and they have claimed responsibility for fires in both Syria and Iraq. In a normal year, some fires ignite as a result of lightning strikes or faulty harvesting equipment. But the scale of the fires compared to past years make it almost impossible that this is an accident, residents say. Someone is trying to disrupt the order of Syria’s northeast, and civilian farmers are paying the price. Exacerbating the problem are the abundant crops in the area after a winter of good rain; this has limited the availability of equipment to bring in for the harvest. In most years, the crops would have already been successfully harvested by now. Instead, farmers are racing to find a spare combine to bring in their crops before the fires take them.

As Syriac Christians in Syria’s northeast face existential threats, their memory of past crimes is taking on new life. For much of the last century, Syriac Christians did not memorialize their genocide in the same way that Armenians did. Over the last few years, however, that has changed. The Syriac community has chosen June 15 as the date to mark the beginning of the genocide in 1915, and this year, events were organized in the cities of al-Hassakah, Qamishli, Qahtaniyah, and Derik. On the evening of June 15, the Syriac Orthodox archbishop for northeastern Syria, Mar Maurice Amseeh, held a mass at the Virgin Mary Orthodox Church in al-Hassakah, followed by a procession through the neighborhood of al-Nasira, which has a significant Syriac population. The next day in Qamishli, in the largely Christian neighborhood of al-Wusta, the Syriac Union Party held a commemoration of the event featuring poems, dance, music, speeches, and a documentary video with photos taken during the genocide of starving children, women crucified, and piles of bodies left to the wolves, literal and figurative.

Speaking in Arabic, Sabah Shabo, the director of the Qamishli branch of the Syriac Women’s Union, told the crowd: “What brings us together today is commemoration and remembrance. Commemoration of the sayfo, which [sought to] bring an end to our people’s presence, to remove us from history and eliminate us…. A commemoration of the women whose blood was spilled, whose necks were cut…who were crucified naked, who were burned en masse without mercy or pity. We can still hear the cries of children as they are crying for a mother or a father, asking for a piece of bread.”

In the presence of Muslim attendees, Shabo continued:

We remember that many of our people survived from the killing and slaughter thanks to help they received from their Arab, Kurdish, and Yezidi brethren… They stood with their human brother, even if he was from another religion or ethnicity. My dear attendees, we don’t condemn these massacres in order to spread discord or hatred, but rather to wake up the human conscience in the international community, and to gain international recognition for the massacres. And today, sayfo has come back again to all, 104 years later, to all people without discrimination for religion or ethnicity. It has come back in the masks of ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, who killed and massacred and enslaved women in the Khabur, Sinjar, and all areas; all that under the guise of religion. But the steadfastness of the people of the area was able to defeat ISIS, the steadfastness from all communities who committed themselves to coexistence, who carried arms together, whose Syriac, Arab, Armenian, and Kurdish blood mixed together on this ground…. Brothers and sisters, as a Syriac people we must stand together to struggle, and to defend our dignity and our language, and to demand recognition for the sayfo…. Yes, we must eternalize this day, and promise the martyrs of the sayfo that we won’t forget, and that we will continue to demand recognition of the genocide.

For Syriac Christians still living in Syria, recognition and survival go hand-in-hand. In the village of Shalhoumiyah, three kilometers from the Turkish border, the four remaining families started building a new church last year after the old church, built in 1932, began collapsing. They must expect someone to still be in the village in 2123 when they mark 104 years after the defeat of ISIS, just as they now mark 104 after their genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Empire.

theamericanconservative.com

Many believe the Jewish Holocaust was planned by the Nazis at a Berlin lakeside villa at Wannsee on 20 January 1942. Most historians still think the Armenian Holocaust was hatched up by the Ottoman Turks in Istanbul in 1915. Of course, we’ve long known that the mass slaughter of Europe’s Jews began the moment the Germans crossed the Polish border on 1 September 1939 – and carried on across the Soviet Union in 1941, seven months before Wannsee.

But now, almost incredibly, we discover that the liquidation of Christian Armenian men, women and children was first instigated on 1 December 1914 in the far away city of Erzurum – not on 24 April 1915, when Armenians commemorate the first killings of the genocide perpetrated against them. And that back in that fatal December month, the Turkish “Special Organisation” – the Ottoman equivalent of the later German SS and Einsatzgruppen – organised the immediate liquidation of Armenians “liable to carry out attacks against Muslims”.

We already know the terrifying statistics of the two genocides. The Armenian Medz Yeghern (Great Crime) destroyed a million and a half souls. The Jewish Shoah (Holocaust), which began less than a quarter of a century later, destroyed at least six million souls.

The Turks – and, alas, the Kurds – committed these crimes against humanity of the First World War. The Germans – and, alas, many Slavic peoples of the Nazi-occupied states – committed these crimes against humanity of the Second World War.

The Turks have never, to this day, accepted their responsibility. The Germans have. We still respectfully record how the Turks “hotly dispute” their genocide of the Armenians. We always – rightly – condemn the right-wing Europeans who deny the Nazi genocide of the Jews.

But it is that fine Turkish historian Taner Akcam, in his self-imposed American exile, to whom we this month owe the historically seminal revelation that the Armenians were targeted for death exactly 31 days after the Ottoman Empire entered the First World War on 31 October 1914. The first Armenian victims were only men – the bloodlust to kill their families would come later – in the provinces of Van and Bitlis. But they prove how deeply this war crime was embedded in the countryside of eastern Turkey, in the cities of the periphery rather than the capital.

And thanks to Akcam’s research in hitherto unexplored prime ministerial Ottoman archives, we find, for the first time, a secret order from the local Erzurum government headquarters to the governors of Van and Bitlis to arrest Armenians who might be rebel leaders or might attack Muslims, and ordering them “to be deported to Bitlis immediately in order that they be exterminated”. No euphemisms here – like the Nazis’ infamous “final solution”. The Ottoman officials use the Turkish word for extermination: imha.

In some villages near the town of Baskale, the entire male population above the age of 10 was killed. Two months later, in February 1915, an Armenian deputy in the Ottoman parliament sent a report from Van to Talaat Pasha, the Ottoman interior minister in Istanbul, who would be held responsible for the entire genocide of a million and a half Armenians, telling him that “massacres are being carried out in some villages and townships in the environs of Baskale and Saray”. Clearly, local Ottoman officials were instigating the genocide – and then asking their masters in Istanbul to approve their decisions.

Akcam has unearthed evidence that local governors would sometimes travel to Erzurum – almost 800 miles from the Ottoman capital – to hold joint meetings on the killings and then communicate their decisions to Talaat Pasha. One of them – only days before the date on which Armenians today recognise the start of their genocide – records an instruction from Erzurum to the governor of Bitlis to send Kurdish militias after the Armenians. On some occasions, it is apparent that regional governors would gather around a single telegraph machine in Erzurum and conspire together with Istanbul in an early 20th-century version of a social media conference call: meetings by telegram.

That the governors fully understood the wicked nature of their acts – and clear evidence that Talaat was well aware of their criminal nature – is reflected in the constant instruction that their telegrams were “top secret” and “to be decoded by the recipient only”. One telegram stated that “the copy of the cable was burned here on the spot. Please ensure that Istanbul burns their copy”.

On 17 November 1914 – scarcely two weeks after Turkey had joined its German and Austro-Hungarian allies in their war against Britain and France, and long before the previously regarded date of the genocide’s commencement – Erzurum governor Tahsin wrote to Talaat that the time had come “to take permanent decisions and orders in regard to the Armenians”. Talaat archly replied that Tahsin should “carry out what the situation demands … until definitive orders are given in regard to the Armenians”.

As historian Akcam writes in his essay in this month’s issue of the Journal of Genocide Research, Istanbul was essentially “giving the green light to Erzurum for the violent actions that it would subsequently carry out”. At the end of November 1914, we find Talaat slyly instructing Governor Cevdet of Van that “until decisive orders are given, it is necessary to carry out the measures demanded by the situation, but judiciously [sic] implemented”.

Cevdet, under whose authority 55,000 Armenians would be killed, had warned Istanbul that gangs of Armenians were fighting on the side of the Russians in Iran and the Caucasus and that this had been viewed as a “general uprising by the Armenians”. Armenians did indeed ally themselves with Russian troops – for the Tsar was an ally of the Anglo-French entente against the Ottomans – advancing into eastern Turkey. Armenian historians acknowledge this historical fact but point out, correctly, that when Armenians usually took up arms, it was to defend themselves against the Turkish genociders. Around Van, however, there was also evidence, later in the war, that Armenians had revenged their own persecution by massacring the inhabitants of local Turkish Muslim villages.

Hitherto, Turkish historians – other than Akcam and a few brave colleagues – have refused to recognise the Armenian genocide as a genocide.

They have suggested that the deportation of the Armenians may have been prompted by the Allied landings at Gallipoli in the fourth week of April 1915, a few hours before the first Armenian leaders were arrested in Istanbul, or by the Turkish defeat at the battle of Sarikamish in January 1915. But to suggest that the mass killings of a million and a half people could have been devised in so short a time is ridiculous. For example, Governor Resit of Diyarbakir told Istanbul of his plans weeks before Gallipoli, expressing the view that “it would be profitable … to implement practices as harsh and effective as necessary against the Armenians”.

Still apparently concerned that the killings in his own district of Sivas had not been given an official imprimatur, Governor Muammer wrote to Istanbul in a telegram on 29 March 1915 that “if a decision has been taken by the central [government]…that would ensure the orderly mass removal and elimination [sic], I ask that you permit its communication without delay”. Other governors referred to the Armenians’ “annihilation” and the “implementation of exterminatory measures”.

The start of the Armenian genocide in December 1914 could have been no surprise to the authorities in Istanbul, certainly not to Talaat. The Erzurum decision was originally taken by Bahaettin Shakir, the head of the “Special Organisation” and the man largely regarded as the architect of the Armenian genocide. But he was himself a central committee member of the governing Union and Progress Party and had arrived in Erzurum from Istanbul. Perhaps Talaat found it expedient to begin the genocide – or to give the project a trial run – far from the capital and its foreign ambassadors, especially the Americans who would publicly reveal the later massacres to the world.

Akcam himself is still bemused as to why Ottoman archive personnel produced the incriminating papers for him. “The decision and following exterminations resemble … the first killings of Einsatzgruppen in Poland,” he told me. “I discovered other telegrams from local governors again in the Ottoman archive where the term ‘extermination’ of Armenians is openly used. These are amazing discoveries. I don’t know why they made these documents available for researchers.”

They certainly disprove the idea – widely disseminated by Turkish genocide deniers – that the Armenian deportations and killings occurred when Turkey was experiencing serious military difficulties and the prospect of losing the war. Not only were the Erzurum decisions taken five months before Gallipoli and a month before the Russians destroyed Turkish forces in the forests of Sarikamish; the killing of Armenians was underway well before the Ottoman state was endangered.

The early massacres of Armenians in the far east of Turkey – long before the Armenian community in Istanbul felt threatened – oddly parallels the experience of Jews in Vienna after Hitler’s 1938 Anschluss, when the Nazis incorporated Austria into the Third Reich.

Jews who fled the mass killing and anti-semitism of the Austrian capital for Germany found that Jews suffered less discrimination in Berlin. This, of course, was not to last. The Germans preferred to commit their grossest crimes of humanity against the Jews outside the Reich: in the ghettos of Poland and the Ukraine – in Babi Yar – in the killing fields of Belarus and Russia and then, after Wannsee, in the extermination camps and gas chambers set up in Poland.

Hitler followed the history of the Armenian massacres closely and often referred to them in the years before the Second World War. Nazi Germany envied the Turks for having “purified” the Turkic race and German diplomats in Turkey during the First World War witnessed the Armenian deportations in cities far from Istanbul. Rural Muslim Turkish and Kurdish communities far from the sophistication of Istanbul or Smyrna might have more easily accepted the first brutalities; they were certainly to participate in them.

In other words, local towns provided the impetus for killing the Ottoman empires’ minorities, just as Baltic and Ukrainian militias allied to the Nazis did not need to be instructed to murder their Jewish neighbours. Nor were the Croatians ordered by Berlin to slaughter their Serbian neighbours after Germany occupied Yugoslavia in 1941; they did so without orders from Berlin. The roots of their genocidal racism already existed.

Does this apply to Rwanda, where up to a million Tutsi and moderate Hutus – including 70 per cent of the Tutsi population – were massacred in the 1994 genocide? This was centrally organised and planned, but the execution of these crimes against humanity was in the hands of Hutus across the entire country, where neighbours killed neighbours. And in their persecution and murder of Christians and Yazidis in Iraq and Syria, Isis – which included Muslims from around the world – may not have been specifically aided by the local population; but while Arabs tried to protect their neighbours, others systematically looted their homes and property after Isis had slaughtered or deported the owners.

Hebrew University of Jerusalem lecturer Umit Kurt studied the 1915 dispossession and killing of Armenians in the southern city of Aintab and found that local Turkish Muslims freely and willingly participated in the crimes. What he discovered was that a genocidal government must have the local support of every branch of respectable society: tax officials, judges, magistrates, junior police officers, clergymen, lawyers, bankers and, most painfully, the neighbours of the victims. Not to mention the governors.

In other words, leaders do not commit genocide, not on their own. Ordinary people do. And holocausts can start far from home, in the frozen east, and long before the date we all believed the bloodbaths began.

counterpunch.org