The League of Nations formally allocated the French mandate for Syria in September 1923, but like the British mandate in Palestine and east of the River Jordan, the French had already been governing Syria – albeit with considerable opposition.
The action provided cover in international law for what the French and British had been up to for the previous five years. Why not? After all, the British and French in effect ran the League.
The term mandate was simply licensed hypocrisy, an updated version of colonialism. From the Latin verb ‘to entrust’, the idea was that the occupying power would act as ‘trustee’ of the territory until ‘the natives’ were deemed suitable for self-government. Then the mandate would terminate and a new sovereign state would emerge.
The whole notion reeked of imperialism, colonialism and racism.
Who would decide when the inhabitants of the mandate had reached the stage of suitability for self-government? Why, none other than the occupying power.
What tests would there be? What hurdles to jump? Simple: whatever the occupying power thought up.
In fact, the occupying powers, Britain and France, had no intention of handing over their mandates to any government they couldn’t control.
Unsurprisingly, the inhabitants of the mandated territories believed they were quite capable of running their own affairs. As a result, both the British and French faced repeated insurrections.
In the case of the French, their takeover in Damascus in November 1919 was complicated by the inconvenient fact that there already was an Arab government elected by the Syrian National Congress in May.
In March 1920, the Congress declared Syria independent and proclaimed Faisal, son of the Emir of Mecca, king of the Arabs.
The French were having none of that. Matters came to a head in July when an experienced French division, 12,000-strong, defeated a hastily scrambled Arab army.
The French then proceeded to reorganise Syria, a huge place stretching from the Mediterranean to Iran, with a mosaic of religions and peoples: Sunni, Shi’ite, Alawite, Christian, Kurds, Turks.
They set out deliberately to accentuate these divisions to prevent the Arabs finding common cause against the occupier. They divided the place into half a dozen semi-autonomous provinces loosely based on the original Turkish ones.
However, there was one crucial area the French took special interest in: Lebanon. That province of Turkish Syria contained a substantial population of Maronite Christians based around Mount Lebanon.
Since a 1536 treaty between King Francis I and Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, the French had assumed the role of protector of Christians in the Ottoman empire, “Les Chrétiens d’Orient”. Even today the French government gives €4 million a year to Christian schools in the Middle East.
Responding to an appeal from the Maronite patriarch for an area Christians could control, the French expanded the boundaries of Lebanon province, taking in as many Christian villages as possible, and announced what they called ‘Greater Lebanon’. The outcome was the only place in the Middle East with a Christian majority.
If Syria was a mosaic of ethnic and religious groups, Lebanon was a kaleidoscope of Muslims and Christians including Maronite, Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholic, Armenian, Syriac. The slightest shake of the kaleidoscope set off inter-communal disturbance.
Even though the French contrived elaborate systems of power-sharing, the rest of Syria was outraged at the French gerrymandering a border to create an artificial state. The Muslims of Lebanon never accepted its independence and still demand reunification with ‘Greater Syria’, as the region was in Ottoman times.
Nevertheless, although the Christians quickly lost their majority due to emigration and a higher Muslim birthrate, Lebanon remained independent and different from the rest of Syria when the mandate ended. Educated people spoke French, many looked to France, adopted French customs.
Although the French still retain influence and relations with the Maronites and send financial aid, the whole complexion of the new country changed irrevocably when the Israelis drove tens of thousands of Palestinians off their land in the ‘Nakba’ in 1948. Many flooded into refugee camps in Lebanon.
By the 1980s Lebanon became another casualty, a failed state, in the forever war between the Jewish settler colony and the Arab world into which it was inserted.
Britain and France had no intention of handing over their mandates to any government they couldn’t control