Collapse

Barrett: The Collapse of Iraq and Syria
2. The World Wars and the Mandate
System
When the world stumbled blindly into World War I, the Levant and
Mesopotamia were part of the Sunni-ruled Ottoman Empire. Sunni
notables dominated the various Ottoman provinces of the region and other
groups were subordinate to them and the Ottoman Turk overseers and governors.
Patronage flowed through the Sunni elites to their families, clans,
and tribes. For centuries, this patronage defined the political, economic, and
social system—the pecking order of power. The other groups in the region,
the Christians, Jews, other Islamic sects, and offshoot groups held subordinate
positions at the munificence of the Ottoman rulers. The Ottomans,
in return, controlled the region through the Sunni elites. In areas where
Sunni elites did not exist, then control and stability were problematic; Basra
province was an example. Just as the Young Turks under Enver Pasha had
pushed for the Turkification of the empire, there were various Arab nationalist
groups who were enthralled by the rise of European nationalism and
the emergence of the Italian and German nation-states in the 19th century,
but their ideas were limited to relatively small groups of Westernized elites.
When the war began, there was little or no forewarning of the changes
that were to come—even the contradiction between the secularist policies of
the Enver Pasha regime in Istanbul and the call for jihad against the Allied
powers, and particularly the British, did little to alter the nature of political,
economic, and social relations—at least in the early years. Of course, no
one could foresee that the war would destroy four of the five empires that
entered it—Germany, Russia, Austro-Hungary, and the Ottoman—and leave
the fifth, Britain, struggling with massive debt and a disillusioned population.
In the Levant and Mesopotamia, the aftermath would be even more
dramatic as the 300-year old system of administration and security was
removed overnight and a new system of rule was imposed on the region:
the League of Nations mandate system. The League of Nations, established
in 1919, constructed a system whereby the former colonies and holdings of
the central powers—the German, Austro-Hungary, and Ottoman Empires—
were administered by the Allied powers. There were classes of mandates,
the Class A mandates being Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia—all former
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