Jinnah, Churchill and the Sykes-Picot Agreement

Policy of the British Colonial Secretary Sir Winston Churchill and the British military and officialdom was to settle natives of India in Iraq at the end of the First World War that began on June 28, 1914 and culminated on November 11, 1918). The Follow-up was the treaty of Mudros of October 30, 1918. Mesopotamia (Iraq and Trans Jordan) called the cradle of civilisation literally defines the land between two rivers namely to Euphrates and the Tigris. Mesopotamia was the colony of the Ottoman Empire, conquered by the British under the command of General Allenby and Colonel T.E. Lawrence (Seven Pillars of Wisdom) in the First World War.
SYKES PICOT CONCORD In accord with the terms of the Sykes Picot Agreement of May 19, 1916 in London, attested by the British Foreign Minister Sir Mark Sykes and the French Foreign Minister George Picot with the assent, ratification of Czar Nicolas the second of imperial Russia, Mesopotamia was to be divided into the spheres of the British and French influence.
Detailed in the cited Map are the territories awarded to the British Empire, were Jordan, Iraq, and Persian Gulf states, presently known as Emirates. Areas ceded to the burgeoning French Empire were Syria and Lebanon. France was under the rule of a shrewd, political animal Prime Minister Clemenceau. British Prime Minister was Sir Lloyd George of the Tory Party.
BALFOUR AWARD
Corollary to the Sykes Picot Agreement was another covert, clandestine document titled the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917, that was a secret letter from the British Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur James Balfour to the Jewish Banker Walter, Rothschild. Contents of Lord Balfour's letter read if the Zionist leaders gave a definite promise to rally Jewish sentiment and support to the World to the Allied cause in the First World War, in a quid pro quo, the British committed themselves to giving a national home for the Jew in Palestine, then under Ottoman tutelage, at culmination of the War. Prime Minister Lloyd George, a protagonist for the Jews, had stated that the Zionist kept their word, alluding to the period in 1917, when Allied position was most precarious and serious with the defeat of the British forces at Gallipoli by the Ottoman army under the command of General Mustafa Kamal Ataturk. British hard pressed in the struggle with Germany, were anxious to gain the whole-hearted support of the Jewish people in Russia and United States of America. Jews in United Stated were urged by the British, to prevail upon President Woodrow Wilson, to join hands with the Allied forces in the defeat of German army positioned at the Maginot Lines in France. Prime Minister Lloyd George was also a strong supporter of the Balfour Declaration. Lloyd George was motivated by gratitude for his Zionist friend, the scientist Chaim Weizmann, for his ingenious process of developing the chemical trinitrotoluol, for the production of cordite, used to manufacture dynamite that proved a saviour for the Allied forces in the blighting, incinerating of the German army on the Maginot Lines.
At the time of the adoption of the Balfour Declaration in London, on November 2, 1917, population in Ottoman Palestine consisted of 11% Jews, 78% Muslims, 10% Christians, 1% Druze, Bahia, etc.
TREATY OF VERSAILLES (1919)
En route to Cambridge (England) for his higher studies, my Mamu (maternal uncle) Hussain Ali bhai Karamali Subjailai sailed in the Lloyd Trestino vessel from Bombay to Genoa in July 1919, which also had as passengers Right Honourable Mahomed Ali Jinnah and his wife Ruttie Jinnah. Aegis of Hussain Ali Mamu's second cousin, Baronet Sir Mahomed Currimbhoy, Hussain Ali bhai and Jinnah had been acquainted with each other, at a gathering of the Khoja community. Hussain Ali bhai was very well read, most proficient in the English language. He was wont to call on the Jinnahs at their residence South Court, Mount Pleasant Road at Malabar Hill. In a way, my maternal uncle Hussain Ali Karamali Subjiali was the speech writer of the Founder. My Mamu related to my father, Haji Bhai Esmail Dossa that when he encountered Jinnah on board the Lloyd Trestino liner proceeding to Genoa, Jinnah explained that he was representing the British India Government as an Observer in the Versailles Conference of Paris. In London, Jinnah was due in London for discussions with the Colonial Secretary Sir Winston Churchill at Whitehall. He would then reach Paris, to attend the international gathering.
August 14, 1919, Jinnah's fragile wife Ruttie bai prematurely delivered a daughter in London, though arrangements had been made to have the babe in Paris. The girl was born a Muslim, but given the French pre nom of Dina after her grandmother, when Ruttie was convalescing in Paris. In the ways of French women brilliantly portrayed by Proust and Flaubert, the lovely and nubile Ruttie had sought out the incorrigible, staid, bachelor, entranced Jinnah and soon had him around her little fingers. The petit grandiose villa at Neuilly (Paris) was opened by the caretakers after four years.
Jinnah had crossed the Channel with his wife Ruttie and infant daughter Dina to Paris, from where he made forays to Versailles as a representative of British India, where at first hand he visualised how Clemenceau, Lloyd George, guided by a very calculative, clever, suave Colonial Secretary, Sir Winston Churchill and wily General Allenby put circles around the idealist, gullible, ailing, fatigued, octogenarian, American President Woodrow Wilson, who among other things was suffering from amnesia, dementia. The Sykes Picot Agreement of May 19, 1916 and the appended Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917, with ramifications of partitioning Palestine in to forming the state of Israel a homeland for the Jews, was pushed down the throat of the desolate and helpless Arabs.
They had been given all kinds of assurances and promises by Colonel T.E. Lawrence, when he prevailed on Sharrif Hussain of Makkah and got the bedouins to attack, strike at the Ottoman army, at their stronghold in Aqabah in Palestine, during July 1917. At Versailles, the terribly disillusioned Prince Faisal and Prince Abdullah, sons of Sharrif Hussain of Makkah, explained to Jinnah, how the British and French had undercut their moorings and sidelined Colonel T.E. Lawrence, by Churchill ordering the Arab sympathiser, to report from Paris to his regiment in Manchester and not dabble in the politics of the Middle East. For sure the lesson learnt of the British betrayal and cheating of the Arabs at Versailles, prompted Jinnah, thirty years later on August 14, 1947 to turn down Mountbatten's suggestion to be the Governor General of both India and Pakistan.
And an enraged Mountbatten "contributed to the slander against Jinnah, calling him vain, megalomaniacal, etc. Jinnah rose magisterially above Mountbatten's bias, not even once attacking the former Viceroy." (Andrew Roberts: Sunday Times, August 18, 1996). Eventually, Mesopotamia was carved by the British into the distinct nations of Iraq and Jordan, to accommodate the two sons of Sharrif Hussain of Makkah Prince Faisal and Prince Abdullah. Sharrif Hussain was the ally of the British operations in Mesopotamia against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.
Churchill has documented in his biography that while the Conference was under was in a tent, in the desert, he drew a line in the sand with his baton on the desert dunes that in time were to signify the two nations of Trans Jordan and Iraq. Palestine was superficially declared an International zone of United Nations but for all purposes under the British administration and army. Syria and Lebanon were given to the French who in turn arranged a manipulated, warped census that included the migrant Lebanese Christian populace in Brazil, to declare the Christian Maronites, as the majority to reign over Lebanon. The Muslim populace of Lebanon, though in majority, was sidelined, economically, subjugated, deemed second-classunder the regime of the Francophile President Camille Chamoun.
ISRAEL
May 14 1948, a new white flag with a single blue six pointed star, representing the Star of David, was hoisted, unfurled to a mast by David Ben Gurion, the first President of Israel, on the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Event ushered the state of Israel, in an implementation of the sykes Picot Award and the treaty of Versailles of 1919. Support, of Members of Security Council in New York, represented in the big five, namely United Kingdom, France, United States, Russia, China and the Norwegian United Nations, Secretary General, Trygve. Lie.
Three months there after, Jinnah who had done every thing within his powers to thwart the creation of Israel passed away on September 11, 1948. Our Quaid-e-Azam's last public appearance was at the opening of the State Bank of Pakistan on July 1, 1948. At the United Nations in New York, the Arabs were clearly inept in propaganda techniques, as the Jews nationalists were past masters, who had also the backing, support of Hollywood's film and television industry. Jinnah no more on scene, with his tuberculosis and enfeebled health it was left to his Foreign Minister Sir Zafarullah Khan, to speak up, represent the Palestinians, in the adoption of November 1947, resolution calling for a partition of Palestine between Zionists and Arabs.
Original terms of division of land, that favoured the Jews was substantially, watered down because of the extempore speeches, rhetoric in chaste English delivered by an articulate Sir Zafarullah Khan. Fact that East Jerusalem and the al Aqsa Mosque as well as the West Bank were awarded to King Abdullah of Jordan, was due to efforts and pains of Sir Zafarullah in New York, while the Pakistan delegation burnt the mid-night oil to ensure the inalienable rights of Arabs in Palestine. Be that it may be, Jerusalem and the West Bank were awarded to King Abdullah and his British General Sir John Bagot Glubb (Glubb Pasha) and not to the suggested state of Palestine for which the Palestinians felt betrayed, stating that the commander of the army Glubb Pasha had colluded with the Jews in excluding, holding back the Jordanian army, in the participation of an all military operation of the Arab League, in conquering Jerusalem from the rag tag Israeli forces of Moshe Dayan. King Abdullah was murdered by a disenchanted Palestinian youth after he had offered his prayers with his grandson Prince Hussain in the Al Aqsa Mosque on July 20, 1951. King Abdullah openly expressed his moderate views and rumours were afoot that he was planning a peace treaty with Israel, which led to his assassination by Palestinian radicals. Likewise, in a military coup d'etat, King Farouk of Egypt was dethroned on July 26, 1952 in Cairo, perhaps most wrongly. King Farouk was charged with the failure and ignominious defeat of the Egyptian army against the then ill armed forces of Israel in the Sinai Peninsula.
In recent times, the line drawn with a stick on the desert sand by Sir Winston Churchill defined in the treaty of Mudros of 1918 has been eroded, crossed over, faded, put behind, with the division of Iraq in three separate entities, the Shiite State, the Sunni and I.S. State that has also encroached upon what was once French Syria and the state of Kurdistan. Map of Syria and Iraq has been re-drawn. Former People's Party Senator Faizal Raza, Abidi states "Forty five thousand terrorists from NWA have left for Syria and Jordan (The News: August 3, 2014)". Abidi in defining his apprehensions, forewarned a catastrophic conflict.
Pakistani army posted in Saudi Arabia on the Iraqi border has been placed on red alert against a plausible invasion of jehadis from Iraq. "Pakistani troops to defend jittery Saudis?" reads a front page headline of Business Recorder: Sunday, August 3, 2014. The jeopardised Border of Iraq and Saudi Arabia had been affixed by the then Viceroy Sir Percy Cox on April 21, 1936, in terms of the Treaty of Versailles and attested, with signatures of King Ghazi of Iraq and ibn S'aud, King of Nejd and Hijaz. (Carl Brocklemann: History of Islamic People: Page 500)
Alex von Tunzelmann in her landmark "Indian Summer, the Secret History of the End of an Empire" has written that from the date of Jinnah and Churchill's encounter in Whitehall (London) and subsequently, in Versailles (Paris) up to the time, Jinnah's affliction with tuberculosis had reached the terminal stage in August 1948 the two political giants of twentieth Century had corresponded and exchanged letters and telegrams that were posted at a secret address in London. During August 1942, Jinnah was prompted to label Gandhi's call for Quit India movement as a Himalayan blunder. This was when Sir Winston Churchill was Prime Minister of England and fighting the World War Second, against Adolph Hitler, Chancellor of German and the Japanese Emperor Hirohito War Machine. Jinnah instructed the Muslims of the sub-continent to actively support, participate with the English in the war effort. I have the word of Major Shuja Subjiali of the British India Army that Jinnah urged Muslims soldiers to fight, shoulder to shoulder with the British in the destruction of the Nazis in Germany and Japanese forces in South East Asia, during the Second World War. May 10, 1945, I witnessed the valiant Major Shuja Subjiali, who was wounded in the Burma front and Colonel Nanjiani, proudly hold aloft the Union Jack victory parade flag of the combined British Indian army, navy, air force, at the Bra Bourne Stadium of Bombay, marching to the military band, playing the tune of British Granadiers. General Wavell, Viceroy of India, had flown from New Delhi for the occasion.
General Wavell was at the rostrum of the Victory Stand in the Cricket Club of India, to take the salute, from the dais, of the brave, dedicated, soldiers of the sub-continent, who won the Second World War and saved England from destruction, by courageously withstanding the Nazis and their cohorts in Japan, Austria, Romania, etc.