129 Fildis: The Troubles in syria: spawned by French divide and rule The Troubles in syria: spawned by French divide and rule Ayse Tekdal Fildis Dr. Fildis is a tutor at ACRES Beacon College in the UK. She holds a Ph.D in Middle East politics from the University of Sussex. © 2011, The Author Middle East Policy © 2011, Middle East Policy Council T he Middle East, as we know it from today’s headlines, emerged from decisions made by the Allies during and after the First World War. Great Britain and France transformed what had been relatively quiet provinces of the Ottoman Empire into some of the least stable and internationally explosive states in the world. As a consequence, the First World War agreements are at the very heart of the current conficts and politics in the Middle East. The partition lines in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire originally laid down the terms of the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement in April-May 1916. The agreement gave Mesopotamia (Iraq), the Gulf and the regions bordering Palestine to Great Britain, and Syria and most of the eastern part of the region to France. Britain’s interest in the provinces focused on safeguarding the route to India, securing cheap and accessible oil for the Empire’s needs, maintaining the balance of power in the Mediterranean to its advan- tage, and protecting its fnancial concerns. France hoped to preserve her centuries- old ties with the Syrian Catholics, gain a strategic and economic base in the eastern Mediterranean, ensure a cheap supply of cotton and silk and prevent Arab nation- alism from infecting her North African empire. This study will focus on the estab- lishment of the French mandate, its imple- mentation, and the partition process in Greater Syria. It will also review France’s responsibilities under the Mandate Act of the League Nations. Post-War Divisions World War I witnessed the defeat and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, under which most Arab countries had lived for centuries and which had served as some kind of protection against European rule. Syria had been under the ultimate author- ity of the Ottoman administration for more than 400 years. When the Allied powers advanced into Syria, the political divisions of the country followed the lines of the provincial administrative divisions of the Ottoman Empire. Syria did not have a def- inite territorial border. “Syria” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was a geographic entity, known at various times as “Greater Syria,” “Geographical Syria” or “Natural Syria.” Geographical Syria consisted of a number of Ottoman vilayets (administrative divisions). The region was delimited by Aqaba and Sinai on the south, the Taurus Mountains on the