Middle East Focus: NATO and the New Arab Mandate: East Libya and West Libya and Gertrude Bell………..

Arabia Deserta

Middle East Focus: NATO and the New Arab Mandate: East Libya and West Libya and Gertrude Bell………..

NATO and the New Arab Mandate: East Libya and West Libya and Gertrude Bell………..

Rattlesnake Ridge

BFF
“Yesterday’s decision by the British Government to recognise Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC) as the “sole governmental authority” of that country has limited practical but considerable symbolic significance. It follows the decision a fortnight ago by the Libya Contact Group, meeting in Istanbul, to accept the rebels as the legitimate governing authority in Libya. A total of 30 countries, including the US and France, have now taken similar action…….. This looks like the start of a process that the Nato alliance has been desperate to avoid – the effective partition of the country……. It opens the way for Gaddafi to hand over control to a successor of his choice in the knowledge that he will be able to enjoy sanctuary in his homeland………”

This new Western mandate of the Arab world is creating new divisions within the Arab states, just as that old post-1918 mandate did at that time. Libya is already de facto divided and the division may solidify. Yemen used to be divided into two independent states until 1990, when the rulers of the South (Aden) made the mistake of joining the tribal North. Now it looks likely to be re-divided. Iraq has been under the threat of some sort of division since the election of 2005, and not just in the Kurdish north (that part was split after 1991). The Sudan has been divided now, and I believe rightly so. Syria is unsettled, with protests demanding an end of the dictatorship, but it is an unlikely candidate for division. All this makes other large area countries worry, especially Saudi Arabia which was joined together by military force only some eighty years ago.
The sad fact is, the only Middle East states that are not apparently under Western mandate are non-Arab (Turkey, Iran, and Israel). It is like going all the way back to 1918, T.E. Lawrence, Percy Cox, Gertrude Bell, and Winston Churchill, et al. The fact is, the Arab elites obtained independence and control decades ago and proceeded to fuck up, big time.
Cheers
mhg

m.h.ghuloum@gmail.com