The
First World War: The Origin Of Real Terrorism And The
Beginning Of Ongoing Oil War
16 November 2009
By Yamin Zakaria
"The Arabs betrayed the Ottoman Caliphate and now it
was their turn to be betrayed. The British betrayed
them first by giving Palestine to the Zionist-Jews,
and a secret treaty drawn up with France (Sykes-Picot)
to carve up the Middle East amongst themselves,
discarding the earlier promises of independence made
to the Arabs in return for their support in rising
against the Ottomans."
The cessation of hostilities was declared on the 11th
hour, the 11th day of the 11th month on the Western
Front, between the Allies of World War I (WWI) and
Germany. Today, the nation commemorates the 2.5
Million dead with a two-minute silence, a war that
took approximately 20 Million lives in total.
Despite the enormous loss, and after almost one
hundred years, there is little reflection on the
causes of this war, hardly any discussion on this
point, and the lessons to be learnt from it. They say
historians to date cannot agree on the causes. The
history books in schools and colleges point to the
assassination of Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand of the
Austrian-Hungarian Empire by the Serb nationalists as
the trigger for WWI.
Nations did not mobilise their forces and wage costly
wars due to the assassination of one man. The war was
not one of good versus evil, tyranny versus freedom,
but simply a struggle for material resources. It was a
war over territory, colony, inflamed by nationalism
and historical feuds. The war was simply a global
clash of empires.
Once the war was triggered, the central powers (German
Empire, Austrian-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman
Empire) on one side faced the Triple Entente (Britain,
France and Russia). This conflict was marked by the
introduction of air raids and poison gas, a prelude to
the birth of state-terrorism. In the early 1920s, the
British used chemical weapons on the Kurds in Iraq,
under the direction of Winston Churchill long before
Saddam Hussein. During the next global war, these
methods involving air raids, chemical weapons and
explosives were developed and deployed on a larger
scale on the civilian population. This is the origin
of real terrorism.
The Germans tried to instigate a pan-Indian uprising
against the British Raj by conspiring with the Ghadar
Party and some Indian nationalists. This plan was
thwarted when British intelligence infiltrated the
movement. India was the Crown Jewel for the British
Empire; it gave her so much wealth and the ability to
raise an army. Many Indians did serve in the British
forces, in fact a third of the British forces in
France were from India.
Fighting also broke out between the British and the
German in the various colonies in Africa (Togoland,
Cameroon, South West Africa and East Africa).
Just prior to the war, Germany was strengthening
political and economic ties with the Ottoman Empire.
They advised and supported the building of the Berlin
to Baghdad railway, which was planned to link with the
Hejaz railway that was being built at the same time.
The railway would operate from Istanbul to Damascus,
then to Medina and Mecca. Both railways would make
most of the provinces easily accessible to the Ottoman
Caliphate. Part of the reason why this was constructed
was to keep the British forces out of these Arab
provinces.
The Hejaz railway links were never completed, the
Ottomans joined in the war in 1914, Sultan Mehmed V
declared the last Jihad by a Caliph. It had very
little impact on the Muslims. The Arabs sided with the
British, a major act of treachery against the
Caliphate. The Muslims from India continued to serve
the British Forces.
In response to the Ottomans declaring war, the first
major military act by the British forces was to land
troops in Abadan, near the southern tip of Iran. This
was to protect the flow of oil to west. Substantial
investment into the Iranian oil fields was already
made by Britain and France. Two years earlier the
British Royal Navy switched from coal to oil, and it
was the fuel for its planes and tanks. Naturally, they
felt the need to secure Iraq as a way of defending
those supplies and the British forces marched along
the Tigris and settled in Kut-al-Amra. This marked the
beginning of the oil war, from this point on the
entire region was subjected to western interventions
in the successive years until present day.
Internally, the Ottomans faced rebellion in many
areas, propelled by Slavic nationalism, the Russians,
the Greeks and the Serbs supported the various
Orthodox Christian communities within the Ottoman
State to rise in revolt. The Ottomans State fragmented
by the end of the war, Palestine was acquired by
Britain as war booty. So began the sufferings of the
Palestinians, as their land was already promised to
the Zionist Jews, according to the Belfour Declaration
of 1917. Lord Balfour agreed to the Zionist demand as
they promised to use their influence into bring the US
into war on the side of the Allies. Which proved to be
a turning point in the war, and the late entry by the
US meant it minimised self-injury, whilst maximised
the war booty.
The Arabs betrayed the Ottoman Caliphate and now it
was their turn to be betrayed. The British betrayed
them first by giving Palestine to the Zionist-Jews,
and a secret treaty drawn up with France (Sykes-Picot)
to carve up the Middle East amongst themselves,
discarding the earlier promises of independence made
to the Arabs in return for their support in rising
against the Ottomans.
Armistice Day should remind us all of the mess created
in the Middle East, all stems from treachery and the
greed of Capitalist nations.
Yamin Zakaria can be reached at yaminz@yahoo.co.uk or
yamin@radicalviews.org is blog is available at http://yaminzakaria.blogspot.com
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