ABSTRACT

A dominant feature in the modem history of Arab politics has been the struggle for the leadership of the Arab countries. This has invariably been undertaken in the name of Arab unity. The unity of the Arabs has been the most compelling idea of Arab nationalist thought. The Arabs have been expressing their allegiance to their unity ever since they recog­ nized themselves to be different from their co-religionists, the Turks, when they seemed to have acquired a corporate national identity. The desire for unity was accentuated by the dismemberment of the Arab possessions of the Ottoman sultan into many and separate political enti­ ties after the First World War. Thus the Arabs have felt inclined to blame the European Powers for their division. There is little doubt that the Powers took the initiative in dividing the Arab territories into artificial and sometimes clumsy states and saw it in their interest to keep them divided. Although the idea of unity has been accepted by all Arabs, none dare resist nor denounce it, yet after more than fifty years of attributing their division to imperialist designs and Western diplomatic machinations, a fresh look at Arab unity is required by none more than the Arabs themselves. The struggle which the Arabs have waged for their unity has produced nothing, with the exception of the short-lived SyrianEgyptian union, but invective, recrimination and the active intervention by some Arab states with the backing of one or more of the Great Powers to keep the Arab world divided and maintain the status quo which was established in the 1920s. Furthermore, the movement for unity has always been constrained by

the power struggle among the Arab states for the leadership. From the beginning the Arabs were divided into three camps - on one side the Hashimites who led the Arab movement for independence and found kingship in Iraq and Jordan, the Saudis who ousted the Hashimites from the Peninsula and established their own domain, and finally the Egyptians who at first expressed little interest in Arab political affairs but found themselves embroiled later on. The League of Arab States set up in 1945 as a first step towards the desired unity has served more as an obstacle to its primary purpose than a contribution. Apart from recognizing the

political sovereignty and acknowledging the territorial integrity of its member-states, the League has served to institutionalize the conflict between the various Arab rivals instead of becoming a vehicle to further their unity. It has become the main safeguard for their independence and therefore their division. The League has always been hampered in its effort for positive action by the Egyptian-Saudi-Hashimite rivalry for the leadership of the Arab world. The development of the ideological schism of the late 1950s and the 1960s between the ‘revolutionaries’ and the ‘reactionaries’ among Arab regimes did not alter the nature of this rivalry, as ideological differences had to give way to political exigencies from time to time. Given this inherent discord among the Arabs which manifests itself in

their rivalry, all the attempts undertaken by the Arabs to unite their countries has meant partial unity, that is, the merger of two or more states and not all of them. This was seen by the others, mainly those who were left out, as a contrivance to extend the authority of a dynastic house or the interest of a ruling clique at the expense of others through the creation of a threatening power base. Thus Iraq’s plan for a Fertile Cres­ cent union, her desire to unite with Syria, and her claim to Kuwait; Jordan’s design for a union of Greater Syria; Egypt’s union with Syria and her involvement in the Yemen, were all seen by the largest Peninsular state, Saudi Arabia, as threats to her political independence and territorial integrity. The Saudis felt it their right and duty to disrupt any such plan, encouraged by the fact that most of the attempts undertaken lacked genuine public support and approval on the part of the peoples of the countries concerned. The pattern which has characterized the approach of the Peninsular states to Arab politics has been first and foremost to protect their own independence and territorial integrity and secondly to maintain the independence and sovereignty of the other Arab states. So jealously did they regard the attributes of their statehood that until the establishment of the Arab League in 1945 their policy towards the other Arab states was tantamount to isolationism. The struggle between the Wahhabis under the leadership of Ibn Sacud

and Sharif Husain of Mecca for the control of the Peninsula was concluded when the Saudis succeeded in driving the Hashimites out of Hijaz in 1926. Henceforward and until about 1957 the main preoccupation of the Saudis had been to stamp out Sharifian influence and appeal in the Peninsula and to contain it in the Arab world. The repercussions of the dynastic antagon­ ism were to determine the nature of the relationship not only between the two parties immediately concerned, but of all the Arab states towards one another. Thus when Sharif Husain declared himself King of the Arabs in October 1916 the Saudis who were busy consolidating their position in

Najd did not dispute his claim but when he asked them to acknowledge his authority over some territory and tribes which the Saudis believed theirs they resisted.1 Their resistance turned into an open war when the Sharif assumed the caliphate in March 1924, three days after Atatiirk had abolished it in Turkey. In his war against the Sharif, Ibn Sacud found a willing ally in King Fuad of Egypt who entertained the desire to assume the caliphate himself.2 When Hijaz became part of his domain in the Peninsula Ibn Sacud saw no reason to support the pretentions of the Egyptian king thereby subjecting himself to a superior Muslim authority in the holy cities under his control. In 1926 another crisis over the Egyp­ tian litter, the Mahmal, which in 1924 led to a rupture between Sharif Husain and King Fuad, was to precipitate a bloody clash between the puritanical Saudis and the Egyptian guards accompanying the litter. The Saudis found the ceremony too offensive for their simple taste and the musical accompaniment an outrageous profanation of Muslim teachings. The incident led the Saudis to suspend the Mahmal and caused the Egyptians to withhold diplomatic recognition from Ibn Sacud until King Fuad’s death in 1936.3 Having ousted the Sharif from Hijaz and having rebuffed Fuad over

his aspiration to the caliphate, Ibn Sacud turned his attention to improving his relations with his neighbours by the settlement of border disputes and the control of tribal movement across the frontiers. To the north the border with Iraq had been the scene of tribal raids and clashes. The establishment of police posts on the Iraq side of the border in 1925 caused considerable resentment as they were seen by the Saudis to be detrimental to Najdi interests and consequently led to renewed clashes of increasing violence. In 1930, however, Britain, before granting Iraq her independence, sought to reconcile the heads of the feuding dynasties and a meeting between King Faisal of Iraq and Ibn Sacud took place on board a British warship in the Gulf. Friendly relations between the two states were established and steps were taken for the settlement of border disputes as well as measures for controlling the movement of tribes across the boundaries. After the death of Faisal in 1933 and with the rise of pan-Arab sentiment in Iraq under the leadership of Yasin al-Hashimi, friendly visits between the two countries were exchanged in 1935. A year later a Treaty of Arab Brotherhood and Alliance was officially signed in Baghdad. A significant feature of the treaty was the emphasis on the religious bonds

between the two countries on which the Saudis laid great importance as well as Arab kinship, a feeling highly valued by the Arab nationalists of Iraq.4 The reconciliation between Hashimite Iraq and the Saudis did not end

the dynastic confrontation. Amir Abdullah of Trans-Jordan was not to abandon his father’s cause but continued to pursue the Hashimite vendetta with Ibn Sacud, especially as the Saudis remained adamant in their claim to the district and port of Aqaba as part of the Hijaz territory and there­ fore their own. Abdullah continued to stir up trouble for the Saudis by his incitement of the tribes of northern Hijaz to rebel against the authority of Ibn Sacud. These attempts coincided with similar action undertaken by the Imam of Yemen on Ibn Sacud’s southern border. It seems that in 1932 the Amir of Trans-Jordan and the Imam of Yemen had an understanding to launch a two-pronged attack on the Saudis to drive them out of Hijaz. The attack from the north, in which the deposed Khedive of Egypt, cAbbas Hilmi, was thought to be implicated, was quickly stemmed when Saudi troops put down the rebellion.5 However Saudi relations with Abdullah were to deteriorate further in the aftermath of the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948, and to remain strained until the assassination of King Abdullah in Jerusalem in 1951. In the south the Saudi armies occupied large areas of the Yemen including the port of al-Hudaidah. Hostilities were terminated with the signing of al-Ta’if agreement between Ibn Sacud and Imam Yahya in 1934 whereby the major portion of the Saudi-occupied territory was restored to the Yemen. In 1936 the imam was invited to adhere to the Saudi-Iraqi pact of the same year, and after some hesitation Imam Yahya, who disliked every kind of international commitment on the part of his country, felt obliged to sign the pact. It was about this time that the Arab states became concerned and

alarmed about the situation in Palestine where continuous outbreaks of violence were taking place. The violence was the manifestation of Arab resistance to the British policy which sought the implementation of the Balfour Declaration in establishing a national home for the Jews in Palestine. The British had conducted many fruitless enquiries and drafted several reports and White Papers. While other Arab leaders felt mistrust­ ful of British and French intentions in the area, Ibn Sacud seems to have placed too much confidence in Britain and France on the assumption that

they would not act against the real interests of the peoples of the area. He advised moderation on the part of the leaders of the Palestine Arabs as well as of the Arab states in their dealing with Britain; and he was reported to have warned the pro-Axis regime of Rashid cAli al-Gailani in Iraq not to antagonize Britain or act against her interests.6 None the less, the Saudis have always been suspicious of Hashimite ambitions in Syria and Palestine. Iraqi interest in Syria dates back to the Arab kingdom of Faisal set up

in Damascus in 1918 and driven out by the French in 1920 when the mandate for Syria was awarded to France. Faisal, it seems, could not readily forget his old capital, nor did his supporters - Iraqis as well as Syrians - who continued to campaign for Syrian independence. His hope to regain Syria received fresh stimulus when some Syrian nationalist leaders met Faisal, then the King of Iraq, in Paris in 1931 and pledged themselves to work for the unity of the two countries.7 However it was not so much the efforts of the Syrian nationalists that revived the issue of unity and gave it some credence but rather the Second World War. Both contestants in the great conflagration made some friendly overtures to the Arabs and offers to help in the realization of their national aspiration for unity. The British, having liberated Syria from the Vichy administra­ tion and promised her independence, having suppressed the Gailani regime in Iraq and imposed a pro-British cabinet on Egypt, could wield greater influence in determining the destiny of the Arabs. Thus in 1941 Anthony Eden, the British Foreign Secretary, made a speech in which he said that the British Government would give full support to any scheme that commanded general approval among the Arabs to strengthen the cultural, economic and political ties between the Arab countries. In December 1942 Nuri al-Sacid, Prime Minister of Iraq, put forward a plan for an Arab union in two stages. First, he recommended the formation of a single state - unitary or federal - comprising Syria, Lebanon, Trans­ jordan and Palestine with special autonomous status for the Jews of Palestine and the Christians of Lebanon. Secondly, Nuri proposed an Arab confederation to begin with of the new state and Iraq, but open to any other Arab country that wished to join. The plan was known as the Fertile Crescent Union.8 Nuri’s plan was opposed by more than one interest in Arab politics.