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M I D - E A S T C E N T U R Y :
Turning Points in Middle East History in the 20th Century
A B D U L L A H T H E F I R S T
It was sometime early in 1914 - the exact date not known for
sure. Lord
Kitchener, Great Britain's man in charge of the Middle East,
had a very
important visitor who had come to Cairo from Mecca to see him.
The
visitor had been sent by his father, Sherif Hussein, the leading
member
of the Hashemite family, at that time the traditional "guardians"
of
Islam's holiest sites in Mecca and Medina.
The visitor was a young Arab prince, Abdullah, son of Hussein
of Mecca.
And the Middle East has never been the same again. Abdullah's
meeting
with Kitchener had a decisive influence on the entire history
of the
Middle East throughout the rest of the century. In a sense,
the Arab
world has never freed itself from the shackles and intriques
that began
at this time.
And so the British-Hashemite alliance was born. Lawrence of Arabia
was
soon to follow, Lawrence bonding with another of Hussein's sons,
Feisal,
urging him to the Paris Peace Conference in 1918. It was at
this Anglo-
American-French "Peace To End All Peace", as it has come to
be known,
that the boundaries of today's Middle East were carved out,
twisting and
disfiguring the contrived borders of the region for all time.
The dream
of Arab unity was destroyed on the alter of Arab tribal and
family
rivalries.
Additional deals with other Arab families -- the al-Saud's who
were soon
to defeat the Hashemites in Arabia, the al-Sabah's in Kuwait
carved out
of Iraq, and still others in Bahrain and the Gulf Emirates --
successfully divided the Middle East into small, competing,
easily-
manipulated and controlled entities that have continued until
modern
times.
It was only a few years after the Abdullah-Kitchener meeting
in Cairo --
with the Ottoman Empire defeated and the Hashemites on the run
from
Arabia -- that the British created a throne for Abdullah in
Amman, and
another for his brother Feisal in Baghdad. Armed with British
money and
guns, but expelled from Arabia by ibn Saud, the Hashemites were
thus able
to establish their rule in this crucial areas to which they
had no
previous claim.
The young Abdullah fell to an assassin's bullet at al-Aksa Mosque
in
Jerusalem in 1951, the young Hussein at his side, the bullet
meant for
him deflected by the medals on his chest. Feisal's heir, Feisal
the
Second, was assassinated in 1958, the Hashemite clan dragged
through the
bloody streets of Baghdad, the country on the road to the Ba'ath
counter-
reaction that then lead to Saddam.
And now, in 1999, the great grandson of the Abdullah who met
with
Kitchener, Abdullah the Second, himself mothered by the daughter
of a
British military officer, Toni Gardner, now living quietly in
the suburbs
of Washington, sits on the last remaining Hashemite throne and
is touring
the Western world begging for more money and more guns as did
his
ancestors before him.
All at such a tremendous historic price in blood and fortune
for the
people and societies of the Arab world. (5/11/99)
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M I D - E A S T R E A
L I T I E S
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