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The Making of the Modern Middle East · explore words discover worlds

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to the session on the making of the modern Middle East.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_03: I'm joined by two absolutely excellent scholars in this field.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_03: And within the next 45 minutes, because there are 40 minutes, and I want to give you all time to ask questions to the panel, we're going to cover somewhere along the lines of about 150 years of history in the Middle East.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_03: So we're going to be averaging about maybe two or three years a minute.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_03: So if you want to bear with us at that pace that we have, we are joined on my extreme left with a friend of mine as well.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_03: This is Hassan Abadin, who is currently a senior advisor at Unitas Communications.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_03: He's also a consultant on media and conflict resolution.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_03: Has expensive, I was going to say, maybe it's also expensive for you as well, Hassan, experience when it comes to working with multilateral organizations in the field of advocacy for refugees, for minorities, and for religious freedom.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_03: Hassan has held senior roles at the OIC, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and has worked on OIC United Nations efforts to tackle intolerance, discrimination, incitement to violence against people on the basis of religion or on belief.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_03: We are also joined by Michael Al-Manay, is that nailed it, who comes to us from Qatar as a PhD researcher at the Hamad bin Khalifa University.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_03: She's in fact wearing the national colors of Qatar, as you can see, a wonderful shade of purple.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_03: Her work examines identity, nation-making, and modernity in the contemporary Gulf, drawing on backgrounds in communication, Middle East studies, and Islam and global affairs.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_03: Her research explores how politics, culture, and global power shape collective identities and public narratives.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_03: But wait, there's more.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_03: Along with her academic work, Michelle also works in Qatar's government communications office, where she focuses on strategic communications and public engagement.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_03: Her interests include post-colonial thought, media representation, nationalism, and the evolving relationship between tradition and modernity in the Middle East, as you can see, all incredibly timely and relevant topics for a changing region of the world, and one that certainly captures not only regional but also international attention in the imagination.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_03: Please welcome Hassan as well as Michael.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_03: So the word modern is very, very complicated.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_03: When we talk about being modern, we of course think about the very here and now, but modern is of course a relative term.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_03: And when it comes to the Middle East, it is equally problematic.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_03: I teach a course on the modern Middle East as it is listed in the course catalog, which begins in the year 1261 and goes until 1918.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_03: And unfortunately, a lot of students get duped into thinking that that's the course that deals with the very contemporary, and they're shocked to think that it's something that begins 750 years ago.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_03: And I always tell them that any good story of history has to have an on-ramp.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_03: They didn't expect that it was going to be one that takes seven and a half centuries to warm up.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_03: We're not going to do that tonight or today.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_03: We're going to focus on the modern as perhaps we understand it best, and that is over really the last century and a half.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_03: And more specifically, I would argue that time at the turn of the 20th century where the interests in the modern Middle East take on a new dimension, particularly in the so-called Oriental gaze or the European gaze.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_03: Hassan, where do you see that moment where the Middle East becomes intriguing, interesting, exciting, and worth the attention of Europe?
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_02: Well, good morning, Said and Michelle, and good morning to all of you.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for coming in on a Sunday morning to attend this session.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we've all been watching the headlines recently about oil and straits and energy, and our daily lives are impacted by the price of petrol, uh, the price of living, and a lot of that can be traced back to that moment when oil was interesting.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: 1908, when Britain discovered oil in Iran, uh, and the Anglo-British Petroleum Company became uh realized, became a strategic asset for the crown.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: Now remember at that time Britain was much more interested in protecting its imperial jewel in India, and the Gulf was a way station.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: Their focus was elsewhere, but strategically, in order to get from Britain and from Europe to India, the Gulf was an important way station.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_02: And hence when oil was discovered, it suddenly meant that this would provide the fuel, the power for empire, for productivity, for whether it was back home in Britain or in Imperial India.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the moment when uh the level of interest, both in London and in Bombay and in Delhi, uh, the Gulf rose to the occasion.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_02: And it wasn't until 20 years later that the United States would start to become interested.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_02: And the and the difference is that the US was rather passive about the Gulf.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't much interested in terms of imperial outstretch.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: It was far more the result of missionary interest.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, we were talking yesterday about one of the early American explorers to the Gulf, uh, Charles Crane, who was a California businessman, evangelical, passionate about Arabia and the Middle East, fascinated with the Holy Land, had visited Egypt and Palestine.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_02: And while he was in Egypt having lunch on the Nile, talking to local diplomats, he met with a representative of a young Abdelaziz al-Saud, who was the ambassador for the then king of Saudi Arabia, which hadn't been formed yet.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: And it is over that lunch that he discovered that there was a world of Arabia across the Red Sea.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and it was this intrepid interest over a lunch conversation that perhaps across the desert there would be great artifacts to be discovered.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_02: And also he had a sort of an entrepreneurial interest and uh he wanted to send an engineer to explore the sands of Arabia.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_02: Initially the idea was if he found water, he would be able to provide drinking water for the locals and hence gain some kind of uh appreciation and would allow him to then send uh missionaries in to preach the gospel.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_02: So it was all very altruistic.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: But little did he know that when his engineer would come a few years later, he would actually discover something far more interesting than water, and that was the black gold that we now know comes under the sand.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: So that inter interregnum between Britain's interests and the American interests is an interesting one.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_02: But I think it's in that period of 1908 to 1927-28 that we really see the interest in the Gulf significantly increase.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you mentioned uh Hussein, you mentioned London, you mentioned uh Bombay and uh New Delhi, but there was also another uh capital city that had a lot of interest in the Middle East, and that was Paris.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_03: Uh an interest which uh arguably began from the time of Napoleon invading Egypt in 1798, uh, but also a little bit uh further up, uh starting in 1859 when Ferdinand Delesops uh started construction of the Suez Canal, something that took 10 years to uh build at a cost of about a hundred million uh US dollars.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_03: In today's terms, that's about two billion uh US dollars.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, think about it, two billion dollars in relative terms today is nothing, uh can probably uh finance most of an athletic stadium, maybe not all of it, but a good amount of it.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and then you have this rivalry that has existed since uh, I mean, since time immemorial between the French and the British.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_03: Uh the Egyptians can't hold on to the uh uh the Suez Canal, it's too expensive.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_03: They sell uh the major stake to the British, and so now the British have an awful lot of skin in the game, uh, but don't leave the French out since about the middle of the 19th century.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_03: As you said, with missionary work, they have started to place themselves into what is called the Levant or the northern Syrian provinces, uh, today Syria and Lebanon uh respectively.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_03: So they were already there, and yet the British now, as you said, have a major interest in Iraq, they have uh the interest uh in the Suez Canal, and most importantly, they want to make sure that no other power is encroaching on their interests, including in the case of uh places like Qatar and the Persian Gulf.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_03: While most of uh the Middle East, as we understand it, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Jordan, Israel, uh, and Egypt are under Ottoman rule, there's this fascinating gap when it comes to the Arabian Peninsula itself.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_03: And so the British then engage in a tremendous amount of diplomacy and negotiation with the coastal regions of the Arabian Peninsula, particularly within the Persian Gulf.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_03: And you have these small, rather impoverished uh emirates or sheikhdoms, if you will, city-states, including Kuwait and Bahrain and Qatar and Oman.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_03: And uh in the case of the United Arab Emirates as we understand it today, these were all individual and distinct.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_03: So you have Abu Dhabi and Fujera and Rasul Haima and Al-Ain and Ajman and Dubai and uh I'm sure I'm leaving a few out, oh, Sharjah, of course, uh, and others.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_03: And the British form agreements with all of these little city-states, known as the trucial states, so states with a relationship by truce throughout the 19th century in order to come in as sort of the big brother and hold at bay any skirmishes that they have against each other, and also to protect them from any other empire that might come into that.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_03: And it creates this fascinating relationship between the British and these states, which not only sustains itself well into uh the early 1970s with independence, which we will talk about, but also a rather amicable relationship, which puts it in contrast with the more conflicted relationship that the European powers have with the Persian Gulf.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_03: And uh how is this history, um uh, Michelle, how does this play out in the historical identity of Qatar, do you think?
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_03: The relationship with the British going back now about 170 years.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_05: Uh and so these tribes actually act as a as a house of research.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so when uh the nation came to be to be to be uh they had to go first uh navigate and balance the power each of the tribe held.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so this was the first challenge.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_05: Then came the uh navigations and balancing between on one hand the Ottoman Empire, and on the uh second the British Empire.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_05: So and it it was like an uh a back and forth between each of uh the two uh powers.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_05: Uh uh at one point Qatar was uh had was to be part of the United Arab Emirates uh along with Bahrain, but that didn't go well, uh luckily.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_05: And so Qatar uh became a nation uh the the tribal structure is of course present uh with two other layers, uh nationalism and religion, of course.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_05: So these three uh identities are what actually makes a uh state, uh nation-state uh and so the uh the social structure.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_05: And I put it this way usually in my research, I uh I focus uh around the three uh uh parts and how it evolves throughout history, uh taking into consideration the global dynamics uh and others' role in uh the international uh sphere.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, thank you.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I I I always find that that contrast when we think about the Middle East very important, that it is oftentimes seen as a zone of conflict relative to the Western powers, but there are these subtle uh and nuanced relationships which show the difference and essentially play out today when we realize that perhaps there's multiple uh Middle East.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_03: Hasan, when we look then at, let's let's let's bring it uh up to uh the start of the 20th century, as you said, or back to it, with uh with oil, oil concessions being given by the Persian Shah, um uh Muzafra Ali Shah to uh uh the the British uh interest uh Darcy.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think any relationship to Pride and Prejudice for Eugene Austin fans.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but clearly now there is uh the interest in the potential of oil.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_03: Uh Daniel Jurgen uh wrote a wonderful book called The Prize, which is essentially a history of oil and the race uh to try to dominate it.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_03: But the history of the Middle East oftentimes, again, is framed as one of regional conflicts back and forth.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_03: But the Middle East is actually more a background or a backdrop for the proxy war between rival empires and rival colonial interests like the British and the French.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_03: How did that play out?
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_02: Well, going back to the Gulf, in fact, uh you mentioned the Trucial States, and the reason why Britain was so eager to sign those agreements was to prevent the Germans and the French, uh, and even the Russians from signing similar agreements.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_02: So, in a sense, it was preempting uh and clearing the Gulf from foreign uh interference.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: And and and Britain certainly felt that the Gulf was its back backyard to India.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that led to um a lot of the local political dynamics affected by uh Britain's largesse.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_02: And indeed, uh when Britain signed those agreements, it did so uh in order to secure uh not only a beachhead uh within the Gulf, but also to ensure that the Ottoman Empire was put in check.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_02: And in fact, when uh Britain supported uh Kuwait, the idea was that Kuwait was uh considered to be an Ottoman vassal, to consider it an Ottoman territory.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_02: And it was very it worked very hard to uh entice uh the families uh of Kuwait to be supportive to the to Britain.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: And indeed while doing so, it also used its presence there to monitor the interior of the country.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we all know about the modern Saudi Arabia, but essentially there are three kingdoms of Saudi Arabia going back to 1777.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_02: So uh Britain was keenly aware of the interior dynamics of the peninsula.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it was in fact the Kuwaiti royal family at the time that hosted the family of Al-Saud uh in Kuwait for many years, but because the interior of Arabia at that time was being controlled by the Ibn Rashid, al-Rashid tribe, and they were being supported by the Ottoman Sultan in Istanbul.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_02: So the rivalries that Britain had with Europe were equally matched until a certain point by their concern for uh ensuring that the Ottomans were kept in check.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_02: And we know later, during the First World War, the encouragement of by Sir Lawrence, uh T.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: E.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: Lawrence to uh encourage the Arab Revolt, again to draw down Ottoman soldiers into battle in the peninsula so that they wouldn't face Allied forces on the European continent.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_02: So these games were consistently being played.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: And uh we talked also about how we are living in a time where we're talking much more about the Gulf and less so about the Levant and about Egypt and Syria and you know, Baghdad, Damascus, uh, and you know, Jerusalem were the traditional capitals of culture, of history, of theology that were imbued with so much symbolism and iconoclasm.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but now we can see, starting in that early 20th century, a shift driven by economy, driven by geography and strategic concerns of the UK, as well as Germany and France, who tried to enter, but unsuccessfully so.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we will probably talk about the Sykes-Pico Agreement, which essentially created what we know as Lebanon, where you know the mandated states ultimately of Jordan and even Iraq, which was constructed out of three cities, Baghdad, Mosul, uh, and Basra.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so these games of nations that were played out uh certainly impacted the way in which the modern political landscape uh has uh been formed.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that, yeah.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_03: So so in many ways for for Europe it's a game.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_03: The pieces are the people of the Middle East, but no one told them that it was a game, and no one told them what the rules were.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_03: So and before we get to the Sites Pico Agreement, uh there is, of course, another set of documents that are crafted, uh, as you mentioned, uh, with uh T.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_03: E.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_03: Lawrence in that era, and this involved the British High Commissioner of Egypt, Sir Arthur Henry MacMahon, uh, and uh Sharif Hussein, who was at the time the governor of the province of the Hejaz in Western Arabian Peninsula.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_03: Remember, no Saudi Arabia until 1932.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_03: He uh could trace his lineage back to the Prophet Muhammad by way of his clan, the Banu Hashim.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_03: He was dissatisfied with Ottoman rule because, after all, this was an Ottoman province, and he saw opportunity that he could perhaps have uh uh skin in the game for himself and for his family, and he seemed uh interested, uh willing, ready, and able to form an alliance with the British against uh the Ottoman Empire.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_03: The correspondence that begins in the summer of 1915 and culminates in March of 1916 involves uh ten letters that go back and forth between Sharif Hussein and uh and Sir uh Arthur Henry MacMahone, and these become known as the Hossein MacMahone letters.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I'm just gonna go ahead and ask a question uh because I don't want to make any presumptions.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_03: When's the last time any of you wrote a letter to somebody?
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_03: And the anyone in the last year, Hans?
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_03: In the last five years?
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, we got one, we got two, okay, so last five years.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_03: I just like to ask that question, not to shame you, not to age you, uh, but just to show you that how we have moved quite a bit farther than this.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_03: And I wonder if back then there would have been ten texts between Hussein and Mac Mahone, uh, and you wouldn't have even had to have worried about involving an interpreter because Google Translate would have solved everything.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_03: But nonetheless, back then there were these letters that went forth, and this was a negotiation that in exchange for what uh Sharif Hussein promised, which was galvanizing the Arab tribes uh to fight against the Ottoman Turks, that uh the British would support him and his family having a hereditary kingdom in this area, which uh essentially was going to be between the Tigris and the Euphrates, uh, at least to the Sinai, involving the Levant and involving at least the Hejaz in uh in the Arabian Peninsula.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_03: The area that was of contention was the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_03: It seems as though that was left purposefully ambiguous by the British.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_03: Nonetheless, uh the agreement comes into place in March.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_03: It seems as though the Hussein family is satisfied that the British will support a kingdom in the aftermath of uh the war and the successful expulsion of the Ottomans.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_03: Now, this was no easy task because, of course, it was going to involve Sharif Hussein galvanizing uh a good part of the Arab world there, which were Muslim, and they were essentially going to have to be waging war.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: Against the caliphate.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_03: So a sense of treachery and treason, and for some even an act of heresy, was part of the narrative that was involved.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_03: Now, on May the 9th, as Hussan referred to it, there was the Sykes-Picot Agreement.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_03: Here you have Sir Mark Sykes and you have Georges-Francois Picot, two bureaucrats, one British and one French, who then go ahead and carve up what arguably is the most consequential document when it comes to forming the Middle East, far more than even the document with which most people are familiar, that comes about a year and a half later, the Balfour Declaration.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_03: The Sykes-Pico Agreement becomes the blueprint of who gets what, and more importantly, how to keep the peace between the British and the French.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_03: The British would get an area, not including initially Mosul, but later it was, from Iraq, all the way sweeping across the area of what would include Jordan today.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_03: They called for what was known as an Allied condominium, an international zone between the uh Jordan and the Mediterranean.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_03: Egypt was not going to be part of this because Egypt was going to be wholly and solely under the British protectorate.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_03: Now, of course, if you're asking the question, doesn't this geography sound a whole lot like the geography that was per uh promised or allegedly pledged to Sharie Hussein?
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_03: The answer is absolutely yes.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_03: You could probably just simply overlap them or put them on uh to one another.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_03: The other question that begs to be asked is that, as we know, with the exception of uh negotiations currently underway between Washington and Tehran, negotiations take years to go ahead and cobble.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and so we would imagine then that the Seitz-Pico agreement was being negotiated for quite some time, and clearly we can go ahead and presume while the negotiations were simultaneously happening between Sharif Hussein and uh and uh uh Lord Arthur Henry McMahon.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_03: The agreement was kept secret because of how sensitive it was, and it was finally disclosed, not any time soon, although there were rumblings about it, by no other than anyone know who uh leaked it?
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_03: This would get you an A in my class if you knew right off the bat.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_03: Vladimir Ilyanich Lenin.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_03: When the Bolshevik Revolution happened, the uh one of the signatories or one of the allies with the British and the French in the war, of course, was Russia.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_03: And uh Lenin goes into uh the Kremlin, finds the Tsar's paperwork, and finds a copy of the Sykes-Picot Agreement.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_03: He publishes it in Pravda, and a week later a copy makes its way to the Manchester Guardian and is published in English, and it proved to be rather embarrassing, as you can imagine, to the British, who then had to explain to Sharif Hussein's family that, oh yeah, um, I guess we did sign that one as well.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_03: How does the Sykes-Picot Agreement change everything?
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the fact of the matter is that Britain was very worried about the agreement being published, partly because of the Muslims of India being so um pretty much uh the chief concern that if this gets out, the Muslims in India will revolt, that there will be a huge internal dissension, they would have trouble, riots in the streets, uh, it would be hugely embarrassing for the crown.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_02: So it was it was something that was vital national security at the time.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um and of course, we're living with the uh the outcome of that agreement with the borders that we see today, with this the dividing of tribes and sectarian groups along different lines, artificially created borders, um, dependency on the outside.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the the agreement was designed so that France and Britain would perennially have to come in to sort out the disputes between people left on either side of those borders.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and I think that's something that has been part of that colonial exercise is that in order you give something, but you take something back.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_02: So you're always involved in the process, you can't leave.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_02: And this was the idea behind why wasn't India ultimately allowed to have its own independence, because you will never be able to sort yourselves out.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_02: Hindus and Muslims, if we leave, you will be killing each other.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_02: So we have to stay.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_02: Same thing in South Africa, same thing across uh uh the Middle East.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: So I think this kind of strategy was was keenly deployed.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_02: And even within a few years, uh Sharif Hussein was being um uh put pressure on by Al-Saud, and the British were giving Al-Saud an encouragement because they felt that he had a stronger case to take and hold territory.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_02: He was very successful in the eastern province uh shortly before the start of the war in uh in the early part of 1915.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_02: He was able to take over uh Ottoman territory.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_02: So suddenly uh Whitehall is looking at, ah, this is quite interesting.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_02: We have Sharif Hussein that we're negotiating with, but there's another chap on the peninsula who's made quite a success of himself.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_02: We need to keep an eye on this one.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um and soon there were uh rapprochements made, there were uh diplomatic um cables that started flowing back and forth between the India office and the foreign office, between the government in India, that to watch out for this guy, Abdul Aziz al-Saud, uh, because he's someone that we might need to do business with.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_02: And ultimately, um it wasn't ten years later that Al-Saud was standing in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, having taken over with the blessing uh of London to ensure that the peninsula would stay within uh friendly hands, because uh the concern was that again uh outside forces might come in and influence.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I mean, also Sharif Hussein by that point had been pretty fairly well uh discredited by the Arab people and by the Muslim people for ironically joining with the British to fight against uh the Ottomans.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_03: Uh the British uh gave him a concession or uh a consolation prize uh by going ahead and uh installing one of his sons as king of Iraq.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_03: This would be uh King Faisal, uh, played in the movie Lawrence of Arabia by none other than Obi-Wan Kenobi Sir Alec Guinness.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_03: Uh another son was installed in uh Transjordan or Jordan uh and this was Ab Abdullah.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and again, this was uh in part, I don't think it was British guilt, but it was strategic to go ahead and put these uh monarchies in place, uh, also because you had uh a dependency which was set up.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_03: When uh uh Abdulaziz al-Saud invades uh uh the western uh side of the Arabian Peninsula, as Hassan says, the British put uh start to back uh Al-Saud because they see his uh see him as more formidable, and they tell Hussein, look, you can go into retirement and you can go uh and live with your sons in either Iraq or Jordan.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_03: So it was a fairly convenient uh uh arrangement.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_03: But it was a sense of betrayal on the West, which was not necessarily felt uh regarding the relationship again with the Trucial states uh that happened.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_03: The Treaty of Sevd comes about after World War I and codifies not only the map and the arrangements of the Seitz-Pico agreement, but also blends in the Balfour Declaration, which then shapes uh and creates the Middle East as we understand it today, geographically, politically, and with both borders and conflicts, arguably, that are uh that are still with us.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_03: But you made a point that I'd like to then ask you uh uh about, Michelle.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_03: Uh Hassan, uh you you alluded to what seemed to be this transformation that happens between, if I can use the terms, the old Middle East, uh, one that was uh defined more unfortunately by conflict, but also from cultural epicenters in places like Egypt and Syria.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_03: And over time it seems as though economics plays a big driver in this.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_03: The new Middle East emerges, partly, of course, by oil, partly because of strategic interests, and now the new Middle East and the center of gravity has shifted to the Gulf.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_03: Places like the UAE, places like Bahrain, places like Kuwait, and of course places like Qatar.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_03: Uh this coincides also with the independence of Kuwait in 61 from the British, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, all in 1971, so very young countries, uh 55 years old.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, Qatar's younger than I am, uh, which kind of blew my mind when I was thinking about it.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so for them, they have uh histories that don't just begin as nation states, they have an on-ramp to that as well.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_03: Michelle, how do you see this shift from the old Middle East to the new Middle East shaping the identity of Qatar and its neighboring uh Gulf states?
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_05: So, as you said, it's 55 years, so everything happened very fast.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so going back to my point when I said about tribalism, uh the borders are cut through large tribes.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_05: So people were nomad, they uh continuously moved throughout uh the year.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_05: During the summer they went to the shore, uh lived off of the sea, uh, went back to the desert during the winter.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_05: And the cut desert of tribes is because of uh overlapping loyalties, multiple identities that we still uh see and feel uh until this day.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_05: Um and of course it's not just in the Gulf that happened uh throughout the region.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_05: And just as a side note, I usually prefer uh the term West Asia over Middle East.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_05: Uh Middle East to me is a Eurocentric colonial term and uh has no geographic uh meaning.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_05: So uh back to your question.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_05: Um because everything happened relatively uh fast, we're still trying to figure out uh an identity that would cover the uh religion, the tribalistic and the nationalistic uh feelings or sentiments that are very deep in the people uh of Qatar.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_05: So and I think the state is actually doing a greater job greater even than the people themselves, so it's a few steps ahead.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_05: Uh and we need to uh just differentiate between uh modernization and westernization, I think because with the flood of um Western institutions, so I was in a British school and then I went to an American school, and this is most people uh from my generation.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so just like differentiating between that and understanding where we stand, uh trying to find a middle ground, uh, that would uh lead to a better understanding of the identity of the state.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_03: So you have a young nation, as you said, 55 years old.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_03: So from the standpoint of nationalism, that's a fairly recent development.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_03: Tribalism has been part of uh the culture of the people since time immemorial.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_03: So you have new ingredients, old ingredients internally, but you also have external factors which keep the pot stirring, so to speak, and of late uh in uh a faster pace.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_03: These are all challenges that you see happening for, as I said before, a country that is uh young enough that it's still trying to find a sense of itself.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_03: How do you see the trajectory moving forward for a country like Qatar?
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I know you can't necessarily speak for some of the other Gulf countries because they have their own uh distinct uh um uh uh issues.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_03: But as far as Qatar goes, how do you see the road ahead in that?
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so uh when it comes to external uh pressures, I think uh external pressures bring out nationalism.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_05: So when when political stability is uh uh the case, uh some tensions may uh be seen between uh tribalistic and nationalistic uh sentiments, but uh in general and uh what I see for the foreseeing future is that uh nationalism is leading actually.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_05: Uh it is uh setting foot and uh becoming more uh stronger.
• 36:14
  unknown: Okay.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_03: Hasan, so we have the case of of uh Qatar uh and its challenges as a as a young state.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_03: Uh it's arguably one of the youngest states in West Asia.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_03: And as a result of it, you're now having to deal with those other countries that have a longer track record.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_03: In some senses, they perhaps have the benefit of experience of dealing with challenges.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_03: Uh at the same time, there's also the challenge of the fatigue of still having these major challenges.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_03: How do you see these dynamics playing for uh playing going forward in the region uh as a whole?
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_03: Do you see it creating uh a greater sense of cohesion?
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_03: Do you see it creating more uh clash and competition and conflict?
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, or do you see this as just simply uh the reality moving forward over the say the next uh the next hundred years?
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's a great question.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I mean, you know, we are coming up to almost the 10th anniversary of the blockade of Qatar by its own neighbors.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I think, you know, who could have imagined the level of hostility, the level of vitriol, the level of tension that that occurred in you know, night uh 2017, 2018, it was it was vicious.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_02: It was, you know, the tensions were extremely high.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um it it paralyzed regional relationships, it created these blocs.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you had Egypt, Saudi Arabia, uh UAE on one side, had Qatar, Turkey, you know, on the other side, Iran.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and it was, you know, they were they were, you know, as petty as you know, milk uh and yogurt that was from Turkey or from Qatar that was blocked at the border, they had, it was, it was disastrous economically for the region.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, driven by uh, some would argue, some of the most, the worst cases of social media amplification and negative propaganda that was deployed.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we started seeing that even in Europe and the United States with the 2016 elections, where, you know, propaganda and media, we were we were talking about Soviet-Russian interference and the elections across democratic societies.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_02: We were seeing that even in the Gulf, being affected by outside forces.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_02: So I think we've seen the potential for tensions to be stoked and fueled by both real and imagined threats and fears.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, at the same time, you have regional organizations like the GCC, which is designed to sort of keep uh the countries together.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_02: How effective that will be in the future, particularly after the recent uh crisis, is going to be interesting to observe.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_02: Where alliances are going to be strengthened, I think one of the big wake-up calls is that the region has realized that they cannot rely on an outside guarantor of their security.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_02: No one country.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_02: The United States no longer can provide that traditional guarantee, which is only since the Second World War.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_02: But I think we're seeing through all of these negotiations and ceasefires that no one trusts that external guarantor anymore.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_02: Therefore, you're seeing quite interesting diplomatic moves and measures.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_02: We're seeing the role of Pakistan coming out, where China emerging as a mediator.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_02: And we're seeing just yesterday the Saudi Arabian delegation to the funeral in Tehran, which would have been unthinkable a few years ago.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_02: So I think we're seeing the reality of a realignment happening.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_02: How that will settle, I think, is still too early to say.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_02: But it's certainly a huge wake-up call to the region, to the capitals.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh they're going to have to look at their economic security, their strategic security, their physical security, because that is no longer guaranteed.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_02: That whole paradigm of the latter half of the second 20th century and the first half of the 21st has completely shattered.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_02: And we are now seeing the pieces being put back together in a new architecture of security, trade, and investment that will really be interesting to watch.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, I think you're absolutely right that uh in this arc that we've covered, we went from uh two empires dominating the region, uh, the British and the French, to a period of a single uh uh superpower actor, and now we have multipolarity with Russia, China, uh, the US, and uh sort of uh-ish uh India as a major, at least regional power.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_03: And uh perhaps uh the shaping of the modern West Asia uh is its uh case study of where a multipolar world engages uh, although recently dominated by military action, uh, also the very strong uh potential and promise for how diplomacy uh plays out.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_03: Uh with that, we'd like to open it up for your questions, and I think we should have a roving mic uh somewhere.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_03: Uh do we?
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, we do.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_03: So please feel free to go ahead and uh uh ask away and uh to any of our esteemed panelists.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_03: We have a question over here.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um do you see any propulsion or momentum for democracy uh in the Middle East?
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's the proud claim, but rather odd claim, that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now we know it's you know very fragile, it's dependent PR dependent, so therefore you've got small parties, coalitions are very, very uh the tail often wags the dog and everything shifting.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: But in the Arab countries, any dissent is seen uh as uh outrageous and to be suppressed, and people are bumped off, let's be honest.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: So do you see any potential for democracy to take root, or is it going to be tribal top-down forever?
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_03: A question on democracy.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_05: So the two main claims that would be they have been saying uh throughout the years that one is uh development over diplomacy, so that's one.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_05: Um the second would be cultural particularism.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_05: Uh these are the two main uh arguments that uh that would be uh given uh whenever the the democracy uh topic is raised.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_05: Um I'm not sure if you I'm not sure if any of these stand up to uh to what we've seen uh or what would would happen, but these are the two main ones.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_02: So that's a great question.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_02: Look uh democracy defined by what standard and you know through what mechanism of democracy.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_02: I mean we were There was a panel yesterday where Ibrahim Rasul, who was the premier of the Western Cape in South Africa, was talking about you know democracy in South Africa and comparing that to what's going on in Europe in terms of what do we, in the scale of democracy, do we have the democracy at its height means justice, equality, opportunity, and at its lowest means just elections.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_02: And there are many countries where there are elections and there is a democratic process and one where you put your ballot in, but does it actually lead to equality, opportunity and prosperity?
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_02: Now, if you were to look at the Middle East, the Gulf in particular, one could argue that they have a lot of prosperity, they're a lot of opportunity.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_02: They have a lot of access in many of these Gulf societies in particular, the tribal heritage and construct of society means that, in their view, they have access to the ruler at any time.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_02: Their tribal system allows them to go and address the highest level of government, to petition, to ask for what they need, and to receive, maybe not immediately, but over time.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_02: So it's often, as Mashal mentioned, imbued with a cultural context in terms of what they see as culturally appropriate because of their heritage.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_02: In the UK, there's a constitutional monarchy in the sense that there you you have a monarch, but there is a separation.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_02: In other countries, the monarchy is actively involved in deciding matters of state and of everyday life.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_02: So I think one of the things is where are we looking at measuring that democracy?
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_02: And yes, I think at some stage there would there may be a desire to do so, but also remember that many of these states, aside from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, are relatively small in population.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_02: So they will, you know, when you're talking about like Egypt, you know, or which is almost the population of Egypt and the UK is not that far, not that far off.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_02: About the same, comparatively.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_02: But the population of, let's say, you know, the UAE is tiny.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you could fit the entire UAE into Bradford in its surrounding districts.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_02: So the those populations coming from a tribal heritage would prefer to have uh those direct uh contacts that they've had historically.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_02: But of course, what happens in the future is up to those people.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I mean, if I can add to that, I mean, if you look at usually the the question of democracy is framed in terms of Enlightenment philosophy and its philosophical uh genealogy.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_03: It's important to remember that someone like, say, a Rousseau is is talking about the social contract and the general will, but he was doing so at a time when Geneva uh looked like him, talked like him, and thought like him.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_03: Uh it was it was an area of sameness uh with with Calvinists.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_03: So in a situation like that, having uh a social contract uh and uh and having it aligned with what we think of as an enlightened uh philosophy makes sense.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_03: And if you look at the Gulf countries, particularly in other places, you find these societies that, uh, as was said before, that subscribe to a tribal model and are on the same wavelength for 99% of whatever uh they believe.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_03: And also, I would argue 99% of what they feel they need for themselves to be fulfilled socially, culturally, economically, and other ways.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_03: And the state responds to that quite well by giving them what the public uh generally wants.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_03: So I think from that standpoint, and particularly, uh it also needs to be mentioned that as democracies uh elsewhere, including in the West, become more illiberal, uh, we're finding that the model of centralized authority uh that provides uh services seems to be gaining favor in in many parts of the world, including uh in the region.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_03: Let's see.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_03: Another question?
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, I've got a question right there.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um, please don't just have a question.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_03: All this wonderful technology would go to waste if you just um okay.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_01: I had a question regarding um when you were talking about external alliances and securities?
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_03: Could you speak up a bit, please?
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I had a question regarding when you were speaking about external alliances and securities.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: Do you see um any of those Middle Eastern states and countries reaching out to other countries other than the United States for those kind of alliances and securities, like maybe like North Korea or any of those other countries?
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_01: And if so, what would the ramifications be?
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, I mean the idea that with external alliances, uh in fact, a shift from the conventional and the traditional understanding that these countries in West Asia look to the West, but are they looking elsewhere for uh these kinds of uh engagements and arrangements?
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, sure.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_02: There's certainly already begun.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, long before the current crisis, uh China has been approached.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you have to remember that it was perhaps maybe 30 years ago that much of the Middle East or the West Asian uh countries relied on the United States and Europe for importing their technology, their resources, their consumer goods, consumer goods from automobiles to refrigerators to supermarket shells were stocked with Western produced goods from France, from Britain, from the US.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_02: And increasingly we've seen the influx of Chinese produced goods.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_02: So now Chinese cars, Chinese refrigerators, Chinese tech consumer goods have flooded the market.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_02: So the balance has now shifted in terms of reliance, and and even that leads to the question of how revenues will be paid for, or how uh oil will be paid for, whether you'll shift from the dollar to the Remen B.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_02: So these debates have already started happening.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_02: There's already been a shift.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I think more recently there has been renewed interest in Turkie, and of course, uh Pakistan has played a diplomatic role that's trying to use that to increase its trade uh profile with the region.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_02: So that certainly has happened.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_02: I don't necessarily see them turning to North Korea yet, for um, certainly not directly, but if it if anything, it would be for energy security.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's the one thing that uh this recent crisis has brought to the fore is how will energy security be guaranteed for the region?
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and that question is going to be debated long into the future.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_03: Well, we saw probably about five to six years ago, China signed a$400 billion over 25-year infrastructure investment deal with uh Iran.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_03: So you have economic cooperation uh which then circumvents uh the sanctions which have been imposed by Western countries uh upon Tehran.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_03: And then, of course, you have in the current uh conflict uh clear evidence of the military cooperation uh between Beijing and Tehran, including at very high levels of technological uh innovation when it comes to satellites, when it comes to quote-unquote painting targets, uh, which allowed uh Iranian uh munitions to be uh frighteningly accurate in uh and and not only uh targeting but also uh being able to get past the seemingly uh uh impregnable iron dome uh within not just Israel but other um areas in the Gulf.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_02: And one more point don't forget Russia.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we have not heard much conversation at all about the Caspian Sea.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_02: The Caspian Sea is the back door of Iran.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_02: It has a direct route to Russia.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_02: There are implications that Russian ships have been consistently supplying goods, military technology through Iran quietly, but it hasn't been discussed very publicly at all.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and that whole uh we've heard reports of ships turning off their uh transponders so that they are not identifiable and that they are moving.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_02: And that might account for the ability of Iran to sustain itself through those sanctions.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_03: We have time for one more question if anyone has one.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, right over here.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_04: Hi there, thank you so much for your talk.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_04: I thought it was really uh really, really interesting.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I just wanted to ask about identity.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so a lot of these uh across the modern world, not just um UAE and the Gulf states, you know, a lot of these countries are very young.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and you know, some of them are still using, you know, for example, like we touched on the education system, uh American or UA sort of British education systems that are still going on in those countries.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_04: What do you think needs to happen in order for these countries to be able to kind of move away from Western influence and carve out their own identities?
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_04: How can they moving forward?
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_04: What do they need to do?
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_04: Not like I said, not just UAE, but even countries like Pakistan.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_04: What do they need to do in order to change their institutional um their institutions and kind of institutional structures um so that they can carve out their own kind of clear identity moving forward?
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_03: I think we'll give that to you, uh Michelle.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_05: Actually, sorry to uh uh so we have educational city home to six US campuses.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_05: One of them is shutting down two years, I think.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_05: It's a moving act, and there is a sense of uh approval from the people uh that uh this should continue, and the five other campuses uh should be replaced with uh local universities.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so I think it's uh the generation that actually got the uh Western uh education are the ones that are um actively trying to pull and go back to uh their roots.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean I think that this is the wonderful thing about uh technology that it allows somebody in in Pakistan to uh embrace and be exposed to different cultures, as somebody in Qatar, as somebody even here in Bradford.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, uh the popularity of BTS and Korean pop music in in so many of these places uh provides a very interesting alternative uh decenters Western culture uh as being the gold standard and the North Star.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_03: And so now people have uh a buffet as opposed to uh just uh one thing on the proverbial menu.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_03: Uh thank you so much for uh joining us in our discussion of the making of the modern West Asia.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_03: Uh thank you to uh my esteemed panelists, uh Hassan Abedin, uh Michael Al Manai.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_03: Please join me with a round of applause for them as well.