Two important events transpired in the week following the US Senate’s failure to ratify the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations Covenant. First, Faisal ordered France and Britain out of Palestine and Syria, and President Wilson gave France his long-awaited response to the Question of Turkey. Both events would prove pivotal in the First Arab Spring of 1920.

On March 23, 1920, Faisal ordered the France and Britain out of Palestine and Syria. He gave them until April 6 to remove their militaries, allowing only diplomatic relations from that point forward. But, while France was busy in Europe sending its army into Germany in order to obtain its war reparations demanded in the Treaty of Versailles, it patiently awaited President Wilson’s response on the Question of Turkey.

On March 30, 1920, the Wilson administration finally gave the Europeans the statement they had been waiting for. “In regard to the relinquishment by Turkey of her rights to Mesopotamia, Arabia, Palestine, Syria and the islands, this Government suggests that the method resorted to in the case of Austria be adopted, namely, that Turkey should place these provinces in the hands of the great powers, to be disposed of as these powers determine.” Wilson’s statement acknowledged that the US would not be joining the  League of Nations, but stated that the US was “vitally interested in the future peace of the world.”

Wilson’s statement was made to address France’s and Britain’s proposal to expel the Turkish government from “Constantinople,” i.e., Europe. Wilson also addressed Britain’s fear that expelling the Turkish government would spark a jihad and the boundaries of an Armenian state. But, by falling short of recognizing the legitimate national aspirations of the Syrian people, who had recently declared their independence, one must wonder whether Wilson had any involvement in the statement attributed to his administration.

Wilson supported expelling the Turkish government and gave no credence to the idea of a Muslim uprising. He stated that “it cannot be believed that the feelings of the Mohammedan peoples, who not only witnessed the defeat of Turkish power without protest, but even materially assisted in the defeat, will now so resent the expulsion of the Turkish Government as to make a complete reversal of policy on the part of the great powers desirable or necessary.” Wilson went on to state that the southern border of Turkey should end where the Arab peoples begin. But, as to the borders of the Arab nations, he left those to be determined “by the great powers.” What happened to the principle of self-determination he espoused in making the League?

Wilson’s statement came out very strongly in favor of an independent Armenian state. We will have to imagine how differently things would have gone in the Middle East in the succeeding decades had Wilson came out as strongly in favor of the Syrian state recently declared by the Syrian Congress. Is it that the Syrian Congress’s declaration of independence fell on deaf ears in Washington, or was the declaration a catalyst for the Wilson administration’s latent response to the Question of Turkey?

However, it wasn’t Wilson’s last chance to support a Syrian state. By the end of March 1920, France had made no forays into Syria proper (Syria and Lebanon). As the stakes ratcheted up in the course of the spring 1920, Wilson would again be given another  opportunity to support an independent Syrian state.

The First Arab Spring is described in historic detail in The Peddler, a novel by Stephen Louis Moses.

In March, 1920, the 19^th Amendment made its rounds for ratification among the states, the Senate voted whether to ratify the Treaty of Versailles and join the League of Nations, and Germany fell into in a Soviet-style workers’ revolt. These were heady times for the United States and the world, not unlike today. The old world fell apart and a new world rose in its place.

On Friday, March 19, 1920, Wilson suffered the greatest defeat of his presidency. He fell 7 votes short of ratification of the Treaty of Versailles and the Covenant of the League of Nations in the United States Senate. While Wilson campaigned exhaustively for the passage of the Treaty and the League’s Covenant, Republican Senator from Massachusetts Henry Cabot Lodge waged his own campaign against it. In the second and final attempt to ratify the Treaty, 23 Democrats joined Lodge. The senators had reservations over Article X of the League of Nations Covenant, which required signatory members to defend any treaty nation at the urging of the League. Many senators believed that Article X was unconstitutional, because the United States Constitution gave only Congress the right to declare war.

Lodge chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and from that pulpit declared the League a “mongrel banner” and opposed US engagements abroad. Lodge argued that ratification of the League’s Covenant without exclusion of Article X would transfer Congress’s authority over war to the Executive Branch. He offered a resolution excepting Article X from ratification, but Wilson refused to consider anything but full ratification. Having been felled by a stroke in September 1919, Wilson did not have the strength and energy to oppose Lodge’s resolution in the Senate and to defend the League’s Covenant to the American public. America’s failure to join the League of Nations set in motion a cataclysmic series of events that would shape not only the geography of the modern Middle East, but America’s relationship with it for the next century.

Wilson’s stroke also prevented him from responding to repeated demands by the Europeans for his views on the enforcement of the Treaty and the League of Nations Mandates in the Middle East. Enforcement of the Treaty was made more urgent in March 1920 as German workers lead a Soviet-style revolt, toppling the German government. France and Britain feared that a communist government in Germany would make alliance with the USSR, which would give Germany a stronger position to oppose paying war reparations to the Entente. When the U.S. Senate refused to ratify the Treaty and the League a second time, the Europeans determined they could wait no longer.

In order to win his League of Nations, Wilson tied the enforcement of the Treaty of Versailles to the convening of the League of Nations. In other words, in order to obtain the reparations they won against Germany in the Treaty, the Allies would have to convene the League. It was a fateful and unintended consequence of tying the two treaties together, which Wilson surely intended he would be deeply involved with. France and Britain convened the League of Nations without Wilson’s involvement and enforced the Treaty against Germany in March 1920. Later that same month, the League would authorize the mandates in the Middle East agreed to between France and Britain during the War. Based on the outlines made in the so-called Sykes-Picot Agreement, France was granted mandatory control of the territory of Lebanon and Syria, and England was granted mandatory control of the territory of Palestine, including the Transjordan, and Mesopotamia (Iraq).  (Part 3.)

The First Arab Spring is described in historic detail in The Peddler by Stephen Louis Moses.

100 years ago this week, March 8, 1920, the Syrian Congress declared Syria was an independent nation with Emir Faisal as its King. Faisal lead the Arab Revolt against the Turks during WWI and represented the Hijaz (Arabia) at Versailles. In referencing the Declaration of Independence and President Wilson’s 14-Points, the Syrian Congress declared that Syria was not the spoils of war and that it would govern itself as a democratic nation with a King. An odd mix, but not so odd for the time, when the modern system of nation-states was still forming following the collapse of the world’s great empires as a result of the war to end all wars.

To put Syria’s declaration in context, it is helpful to understand its role in the Great War, which is a lesser known, but equally as important as the story of the Arab Revolt. During WWI, the Syrians ardently opposed the Turkish-German alliance and a war against Europe. The eastern Mediterranean was blockaded by the British navy in order to cut-off Germany from the Suez Canal, but it also cut-off Syria, which was not a front in the War.  In response to their lack of support, the Turks brutally suppressed the people of Syria who refused conscription and resisted the Turks at every turn. As a result of the blockade, Turkish oppression, a plague of cicadas (true story) and a freezing winter of 1916-17, Syria fell into a famine that resulted in over 200,000 Syrians dying of hunger. Emaciated corpses littered the roadways as starving Syrians roamed the country looking helplessly for food. The Germans called them serferberlicht, the walking dead. In Syria, it is known as the safir barr, literally “in country travels”, but more accurately translated as internal displacement. No nation outside the theater of war suffered more during WWI than Syria.

Syria’s Declaration of Independence was swiftly condemned by the Entente powers of France and Britain, who had their own designs on the Middle East. But, they were bogged down implementing the Treaty of Versailles in Europe, while at the same time the French military chased the Turks around the Anatolian peninsula. The cries for America’s involvement went without a response as President Wilson had his own troubles trying desperately to obtain the votes he needed in the Senate to ratify the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations covenant.

Wilson’s silence caused the Syrians and the Europeans fits. He was asked by the Europeans to elaborate on his 14-Points, particularly point XII, where he decreed that the nationalities under Turkish rule would be assured an “undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development.” France and Britain sought Wilson’s input on the limits of Article XII before finalizing the treaty with Turkey to no avail. In Wilson’s silence, the Syrians concluded that (1) Turkey would be left only with Constantinople and the Anatolian peninsula, if they could keep it amid other nationalist movements by the Armenians and the Kurds, (2) Syria (including Mt. Lebanon), Palestine, Mesopotamia and Arabia would be left to pay Turkey’s war reparations, and (3) they would be occupied by France and Britain.

The Syrians saw their moment and they seized it. Anticipating that the Ottoman Empire would be broken up and divided between France and Britain as the spoils of war, the Syrians united around independence. As the New York Times reported on March 12, 1920, “Although they cherished the French for their culture and the British for their business, the Syrians cherished more than either their independence, which they insisted on if the Turkish Empire was to be broken up.” (NYT, March 12, 1920, p. 1.)

What followed was the first Arab Spring from March to July, 1920. The First Arab Spring is described in historic detail in The Peddler by Stephen Louis Moses.

In November 2005, I traveled to Syria to do some research on the region and characters I wanted to write about in The Peddler. In particular, I visited Wadi Nasara, the Valley of the Christians, in western Syria. I also visited other Christian enclaves, including the Christian Quarter of old Damascus and the Christian towns of Malula and Saidnaya. My hosts, the al-Durrah family, were very helpful and gracious and assisted me in any way they could in my research.

It was not my first time in Syria. I traveled there in 1993, during the time the US and Norway negotiated the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinians. In 1993, Syria was bizarre. I had never visited a totalitarian state before. It was like stepping into the novel 1984. I was interrogated while traveling on a bus from Homs to Palmyra after I asked some questions about the peace negotiations with Israel. I literally had some Syrians tell me to stop asking them questions, because I was endangering their lives.

In 2005, the contrast to 1993 could not have been more stark. I traveled freely throughout the country with my cameras, meeting people who talked with me openly about life in Syria. I did notice, however, that no one wanted to discuss history. Their memory did not seem to go back further than 40 years, when Hafez al-Assad first took power. The Syrians did express a deep desire for economic freedom and for justice. The economy was opening up and the cities and towns I visited were all very lively with commerce. Every one had satellite television and they watched programs from throughout the world. In fact, one of the most popular shows was Judge Judy. The notion that a legal complaint could be handled so swiftly greatly intrigued the Syrians, who cannot rely on their courts for swift and just resolutions. But that is a different topic for a different time.

Without further adieu, I am reproducing here the journal I kept in my few weeks in Syria in November 2005, where I uncovered the mysteries of the people and places I write about in The Peddler.

November 6, 2005

The excursion begins. I am staying with Michele (Abu Ziad) and Selwa (Um Ziad) al-Durrah and their family in their house in a suburb of Damascus, Dahat al-Assad. They have embraced me like a son and a brother; and fed me like a stuffed goose. I arrived at 1:30 a.m. and we stayed up until 4 a.m. talking and eating. Abu Ziad’s youngest son, Basim, and youngest daughter, Raghda, live at home. Ziad, the oldest, is married to a dermatologist, Hayam, and they have two kids. They live in Bab Tuma, the Christian quarter in Damascus. It is customary for children to live with their parents until they are married. Raghda, 32, has not married yet, despite the fact that she has had several proposals. She is a civil engineer (muhandissat) working for the city of Damascus. She is very shy, and she blushed and looked away the first time that I said “hello” to her. I feel bad that they gave me Basim’s room, which has two single beds in it. I am sleeping there alone, while Basim and Raghda share the next room.

Basim, 24, is in his third year of college, studying iqtisad, economics. He has a beautiful girlfriend, Katya, who is half Russian and half Syrian.

With Ziad and Basim at Jebel Qasyoun overlooking Damascus.

We stayed in all day on Saturday. We woke up around noon. Before I knew it it was 6 o’clock and we were eating dinner. Then, after dinner, we relaxed for a while. Then, Basim and Ziad and I went to Jebel Qasyoun and Bab Tuma. At Bab Tuma we went to a coffee house, qahweh, owned by one of Ziad’s friends. It’s called Beit Yasmine. His friend owns three cafes now and, according to Ziad, he is rich because of it. He is from a village in Wadi Nasara. He appeared distinctly disinterested in me when Ziad told him that I was an American and that I was writing a story about the Syrians who left for America in 1900 and returned to Syria in 1920. Then, he told him that I was a business attorney also, which got the response: “Muhami shaqat tayib.” The legal business is good!

It was very lively and engaging café and the décor was amazing. We each had a hubbly-bubbly, narghile, and some snacks. The snacking was one of the largest meals I have eaten in a long time. We left around 12:30 a.m. after about 3 hours.

Qahweh Beit Yasmine

Fortunately, I am not sick at all. My stomach has adjusted fine. Even the tap water is safe – I haven’t gotten sick from brushing my teeth – although we drink bottled water from Kayme. The food is outrageously fantastic. The hospitality unlike anything you will find any where.

***

I had a very uncomfortable experience when we were driving from Jebel Qasyoun to Bab Tuma. I was video taping the drive and I saw a billboard of Hafez al-Asad. I turned my camera to video tape it and it was on a military building and the guard standing in front of the building made a very unhappy motion toward me and my camera. All I wanted was a picture of Hafez on the billboard. I had flashbacks of 1993. But, to my surprise, Ziad blew off the police man. He waived him away with his hand and the police me relented. Still, I put the camera down. I don’t want to cause trouble for Ziad and his family. I was very nervous for a few minutes after that and I will take extra precaution with it.

I have gotten a lot of stares, but I am not sure if it is because I look American, foreign, or like a jihadi with my beard. I think I throw every one off a bit. When I arrived, the mudheer at the airport asked where I was from originally and made a motion with his hand circling his face. I told him that my family was from Syria. He said “Welcome to Syria.” Then he asked where I was staying and I told him I was staying with family in Damascus, but I did not know the address. Then he suggested “the Sheraton” and I said, yes.

Although Damascus needs some city planning and construction, it looks and feels modern. Everyone has their own cell phone and every house has satellite television. There are as many new cars as there are old ones. A lot of construction is taking place and new office buildings and neighborhoods are being built throughout the city.

We watched Al-Jazeera, CNN, Egyptian, European and Syrian TV today. My Arabic is getting better by the minute. Many people, perhaps half or more, and all the Christians, dress very modern in styles that one would find in San Francisco or New York. Raghda dresses like a Suicide Girl, although I haven’t noticed any tattoos yet. Today when I met her for the first time she was wearing a pair of skin tight horse-riding-like pants and a zip up vest. Both in milk chocolate brown. And a pair of black, zip-up, ankle-high rocker boots. She would fit in at any modern city in the world.

Not only do they have Internet access from home, although it’s dial-up, Ziad had my lap top hooked up to the Internet in about 10 minutes. I didn’t work too well, so I used the PC in Basim’s room. Then, Basim connected me to his media phone and I made my first ever VOIP call. Again, because of the dial-up service, we could barely talk with the delay and cutting out of our voices. But still. Clearly, Syria has kept up.

The price of cars, homes and clothes are very expensive. The 3-bedroom apartment that Michele and his family live in cost them around $90,000 when they bought it several years ago. Ziad’s apartment cost him $150,000 about 5 years ago. Some apartments here go for $1 million. $200,000 to $400,000 is common. These are San Francisco figures. Cars that would cost $20,000 in the U.S. cost $30,000 here. Michele, Selwa, Basim and Raghda share the same car and hire a driver, Safi. He cost 8,000 SYR per month. Clothes are expensive too. I think most of the clothes are blackmarket, because until recently imports of clothing were banned. But a law just passed permitting all clothing imports, with a 40% tariff. So, they should remain expensive although plentiful.

There is a strong wind (shawal) this time of year bringing cold air from the North. It’s not very cold yet, but the wind last morning was severe.

Ziad does very well. He is a mechanical engineer and he now does the purchasing for his company, which does a lot of oil and gas pipeline work. He is looking for good business opportunities and is interested in my assistance. He mentioned the same lawyer that Chuck mentioned to me – Jacques Hakim. He is going to set up a meeting for me. One of Ziad’s ideas is to make cinnamon from Syria, which is not made here. He also wants to start serving as an agent and wants me to bring some American companies here for public contracting. We are going to review the public tenders published on line and draft an agency contract.

They are all very distressed about the threats from U.S. President Bush. They fear an attack by the U.S., which would be totally unwarranted.

At the same time, this is an opportunity for every one. For Assad to take control of his government. For Americans to learn the truth about the limits of American foreign policy in the Middle East. It is also an opportunity for the Syrian people to advertise how good they really are to the world — to come out of their shell, so to speak. It’s an opportunity for me to participate in this process, insha’ allah, by publishing my novel. And, it is an opportunity to wipe the slate clean, end sanctions and open up Syria the way that the people here want. They want political stability, elections, freedom, and trade. They do not want a war with Lebanon, Israel or the U.S.