The Attack on the Bardo

Since the Jasmine Revolution in 2011, Tunisia has been the one success story of the Arab Spring. There has been some violence, attacks on police, and political polarization; trouble along the Libyan and Algerian borders, but nothing like today's attack at the Bardo National Museum. Even previous attacks on tourist sites, such as the 2002 attack on the Ghriba Synagogue in Djerba, were outside the capital;  today's attack struck at its very heart, its symbolic center of culture.

For readers unfamiliar with Tunis, the Bardo is Tunisia's national museum, and one of the world's great museums. It contains, among much else, one of the world's largest collections of Roman mosaics, which survived in the dry North African climate better than in Italy. So it is a powerful symbol of national heritage.

It is also a keystone of Tunisia's tourist industry, which took a hit after the Revolution. Tunisia's beaches are popular and affordable for European tourists, and he high profile Bardo attack is a direct attack on the industry.

But there is another powerful symbol: it stands next to the Tunisian National Assembly, recently elected, housed in an old beylical palace which shares a courtyard with the museum. So it also strikes a blow at Tunisia's nascent democracy.

In the Google image below, the complex at left (west) is the museum, the structure at the bottom (south) is the Parliament building.

War Plans and Strategies 1914: The Alexandretta Scenario Part I: Strategic Origins of the Idea

One of the great "What ifs" of the First World War in the Middle East stems from prewar strategic planning and events in the early months of the war, when British planning against the Ottoman Empire focused on two competing plans for attacking the Ottomans. The War Office, under Lord Kitchener (who until the outbreak of war had been Britain's man in Egypt) advocated an amphibious landing on the Syrian coast at the port of  Alexandretta (today the Turkish town of İskenderun) to disrupt Turkish communications and cut the railways. The Admiralty, on the other hand, under First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, was backing Churchill's pet project of a landing on the Dardanelles and opening the Turkish Straits.

I assume my readers know enough about the war to know that the Gallipoli project carried the day, and failed massively. Fans of alternative history and "what if?' scenarios may speculate on whether the Alexandretta project could have worked. I intend to devote a post to that subject, but first I want to look at the strategic origins of the idea as part of a number of posts on war plans and strategies.

Interestingly, the idea first originated with an event that was the subject of a recent post: the Taba Crisis of 1906. That alerted British planners to the potential danger of a Turkish attack against the Suez Canal, the critical Imperial lifeline to India. Given the anomalous position of Egypt as both an Ottoman province and a de facto British protectorate, especially as the Young Turks with German help were strengthening the Ottoman military, an attack on the Canal was not completely out of the question even absent a general European War.

The Haifa Scenario

The contingency planning scenarios which followed envisioned not a passive defense of the Canal against a Turkish attack, but a more aggressive forward defense. At least as early as 1909 the Committee on Imperial Defence (CID) approved a contingency scenario under which in the event of a threat to the Canal, Britain would land four divisions at Haifa (the head of a rail spur from Damascus) to cut the Turkish lines of communications and supply. At the time, other landing sites (Alexandretta, Beirut, Acre, and Jaffa) for this intervention were considered; Haifa was initially chosen, and British intelligence reportedly carried out some reconnaissance.

The original plans seem predicated on a war with Turkey alone, in which Britain would have significant forces available. By the time it became clear that Turkey might actually enter the war on the German side, Britain was already bogged down on the Western Front in France, and moving troops from Egypt and India to that Front. Britain had fewer forces available for a Syrian landing, as it had to simultaneously defend the Canal and maintain forces on the Mesopotamian Front (though admittedly the Russian campaign in the Caucasus also created another front for Turkey).

The Gaps in the Baghdad Railway

The strategic situation in 1914 also made Alexandretta more attractive than Haifa. The Ottoman (and German) vision for tying the far-flung parts of the Empire centered around the German-funded project called the Baghdad Railway (popularly the Berlin-to-Baghdad Railway, though the Berlin-to-Constantinople parts already existed). By 1914 the railway was still incomplete. Because Ottoman planners wanted to keep the railway inland, where British Navy guns could not threaten it, they decided to avoid routing it down the coast. This meant though, that it would have to go through both the Taurus and Amanus mountain ranges. The tunnels were not yet ready. There was a 30-mile gap in the Taurus range, and the five-mile-long Bagche tunnel in the Amanus was also incomplete. Worse still, the road through the Amanus passes was unsuitable for motor traffic. There was no easy way to connect with Aleppo, where the rail lines could connect one to Damascus, Haifa and Medina.

As a result, the only practical connection between Adana and Aleppo was to take a spur line along the coast, that terminated at Alexandretta, and then travel by road from Alexandretta to Aleppo. But the road from Alexandretta to Aleppo was rocky and muddy and was considered nearly impassable for motorized traffic.

And worse still, the rail line north of Alexandretta ran along the coast, making it vulnerable to naval gunnery, and also was just above the high-water line; heavy winter showers could wash out parts of the line. This period map shows the situation:

Ironically, when Djemal Pasha, one of the Young Turk triumvirate, headed to Syria in November-December 1914 to take up his new duties as Fourth Army Commander and also political authority in Syria, he experienced the problem firsthand; the rail line between Adana and Alexandretta was washed out in places and the road from Alexandretta to Aleppo nearly impassable by motor vehicle. (I'll be quoting his account in a forthcoming post.) As bad as this route was, it was faster than the Amanus pass until the tunnel was complete.

So a major Ottoman force seeking to move from Anatolia to either the Suez Canal or the Mesopotamian theater of war had to endure one of these routes through the mountains, and the easiest of these was via Alexandretta. An occupation of Alexandretta by the British would cut a key line of communications; even just naval raids along the coast (which did occur in December 1914-January 1915) could disrupt the rail traffic.

The British already had hopes for risings among the non-Turkish citizens of the Ottoman Empire. Although Sharif Hussein of Mecca's Arab Revolt would not occur until 1916, there were Arab nationalist secret societies not just in the Arab Vilayets but within the Ottoman Army itself. Both the British and especially the French also hoped for an uprising of Lebanese Maronites, with whom French intelligence had contacts. The dream of detaching the Arab provinces might be sped along by an Alexandretta landing.

The second part of this series will deal with the War Office versus Admiralty, Gallipoli versus Alexandretta debate, and a third part will consider the "what ifs" and in mid-December I'll be detailing the British raids along the Sinai and Syrian coasts, including Alexandretta.

A Portrait of the Syrian Port City of Tartus

From Jadaliyya, an intriguing profile of the ‘Alawite-majority Mediterranean port city of Tartus in Syria, by Khedar Khaddour: "Tartus in the Present Crisis: A Mirror of the Syrian Regime."

EIPR on Mubarak's Legal Status

The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) has a useful FAQ on the legal status of Husni Mubarak's various cases. Since most of the Western media is just reporting "Mubarak released" without any sense of the process, this is very useful. He's out of jail, but not out of the legal woods yet. (But he's also not nearly as dead as the last time he died, in June 2012. He got better.)

Back to the Future? The French Mandate's Confessional Partition of Syria

On several occasions we've looked at "vanished states"of the 20th century Middle East, among them some in Syria: including the short-lived Arab Kingdom of Syria, and the briefly independent Republic of Hatay. As the Syrian tragedy continues to unfold, we are hearing talk of a disintegration into ethnic/confessional enclaves, including a possible ‘Alawite enclave in the northwest.

As a much older Middle Easterner once put it, there is nothing new under the sun. When the French mandate was first created after World War I, they partitioned the hell out of Syria:

Initially, in 1922, there were actually five separate states in what would be the French Mandate: a Syrian Federation consisting of two states, Aleppo (including after 1923 the Sanjaq of Alexandretta, the later Hatay, which had briefly been autonomous) and Damascus; a separate ‘Alawite ("Alaouite" in French) state in the northwest, initially (1922-24) part of the federation but thereafter autonomous, a Druze state in the Hawran (Jabal al-Druze State), and Greater Lebanon (Gran Liban), combining the Maronite and Druze Mount Lebanon, the Sunni north around Tripoli, and the Shi‘ite south and Baqa‘a, creating the mix that would become the republic of Lebanon.

Flag, State of Syria

Each of these "states" had its own flag, with the French tricolor in canton. The "State of Syria" was formed in 1924 out of the federation of the states of Damascus and Aleppo. The Alaouite State did not join.

Flag, State of Damascus

This "State of Syria" was created in 1924, but the next year a full-scale revolt broke out, led by the Druze leader Sultan al-Atrash in the Druze state, but becoming Syria-wide. The French crushed it with aerial bombardments and sieges of cities, including Damascus.

Flag, State of Aleppo

The Syrian revolt would ultimately lead, in 1930, to the French renaming the State of Syria as the Republic of Syria, though still under French mandate.

Flag, Alaouite State

As for the Alaouite state, it had been less affected by the uprising, though in 1930 it was renamed the District of Latakia. Finally in 1936 it was merged into the "Republic" of Syria. Lebanon always remained a separate entity. Efforts toward independence were sidetracked by World War II and Vichy control, but after Britain expelled Vichy Lebanon and Syria declared their independence and had secured it by 1946.

Flag, Jebel Druze State

In short, Syria has been partitioned before, under colonial divide-and-rule strategies, but nationalism ultimately overcame internal division in the name of fighting a common enemy. Whether that will happen again is of course another question entirely.

Flag, Gran Liban

Spillover: The Fighting in Lebanon

The fighting in Tripoli (the Lebanese one) that broke out over the weekend is pretty universally seen as a spillover from Syria: sectarian in its origins, involving Sunni Islamists and ‘Alawites. One of the best assessments I've seen to date is this one by Emile Hokayem at Foreign Policy. Lebanon's fate seems to be to echo the conflicts of its neighbors, but most inevitably Syria's. The potential of a protracted civil conflict in Syria to spill over into a regional conflict is real; in Tripoli, it's already happening.