The Arc of Crisis

There is an area in the Middle East called Fertile Crescent, which looks like an oasis amid the Arab deserts. If nations were flowers, Syria would be the most dignified and beautiful one in that oasis.

Now, that Syria is in the crosshairs of the world’s leading superpowers, it would be interesting to look briefly into the history of that nation and see why it has become the center of attention of such countries as Great Britain, France, the United States of America, and Russia. However, Syria is not alone in the spotlight. There are nations in the Middle East that have long been cultivated and harvested by the global superpowers. Something about that region makes it an object of heightened attention on the part of other nations. In addition, something about it warrants a more careful handling than what we have been witnessing so far.

The Fertile Crescent is a term referred to a roughly crescent-shaped area situated between the Arabian Desert to the south and the mountains of Armenia to the north, it extends from Babylonia and adjacent Susiana (the southwestern province of Persia) up the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to Assyria. From the Zagros Mountains east of Assyria it continues westward over Syria to the Mediterranean and extends southward to southern Palestine. The Nile valley of Egypt is often included as a further extension, the short interruption in Sinai Peninsular is no greater than similar desert breaks that disturb its continuity in Mesopotamia and Syria. The Fertile Crescent term owes its origin to the relatively fertile land of that area which probably had a more moderate, agriculturally productive climate in the past than today, especially in Mesopotamia and the Nile valley.

The Fertile Crescent in its wider extension corresponds exactly to the region that plays a dominant role in the Hebrew traditions of Genesis. It also contains the ancient countries (Babylonia, Assyria, Egypt, Phoenicia) from which the Greeks and Romans derived their civilization. The age-old belief that the earliest known culture originated in the Fertile Crescent has been confirmed by the development of radiocarbon dating since 1948. It is now known that incipient agriculture and village agglomerations there must be dated back to about 10000 BCE.

These days, the Fertile Crescent geographically is usually referred to as the Middle East. The quarter-moon shaped area runs from the Persian Gulf, through modern-day southern Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and northern Egypt.

The term Fertile Crescent was first coined in the early 20th century by University of Chicago archaeologist and Egyptologist James Henry Breasted. In his work “Ancient Times: A History of the Early World”, James Henry Breasted wrote: “This fertile crescent is approximately a semicircle, with the open side toward the south, having the west end at the southeast corner of the Mediterranean, the center directly north of Arabia, and the east end at the north end of the Persian Gulf.”

The Fertile Crescent is traditionally associated (in Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths) with the earthly location of the Garden of Eden. Known as the Cradle of Civilization, the Fertile Crescent is regarded as the birthplace of agriculture, urbanization, writing, trade, science, history and organized religion and was first populated about 10000 BCE when agriculture and the domestication of animals began in the region.

By 9000 BCE the cultivation of wild grains and cereals was wide-spread and, by 5000 BCE, irrigation of agricultural crops was fully developed.

By 4500 BCE the cultivation of wool-bearing sheep was practiced widely. The first cities began to rise (Eridu, Uruk) around 4300 BCE and cultivation of wheat and grains was practiced in addition to the further domestication of animals (by the year 3500 BCE the image of the breed of dog known as the Saluki was appearing regularly on vases and other ceramics as well as wall paintings).

The unusually fertile soil of the region encouraged the further cultivation of wheat as well as rye, barley and legumes and some of the earliest beer in the world was brewed in the great cities along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers (the most ancient evidence of beer brewing coming from the Sumerian Godin Tepe settlement in modern-day Iran). From 3400 BC, the priests (who were also the rulers of the cities) were responsible for the distribution of food and the careful monitoring of surplus for trade.

By 2300 BCE, soap was produced from tallow and ash and was in wide use as personal hygiene was valued in relation to one’s standing with one’s community and with the gods. Attention to one’s person in terms of hygiene was stressed in that human beings were thought to have been created as helpmates to the gods and so should make themselves utterly presentable in the performance of their duties (this was especially so for the Priestly Class).

From 2334 - 2279 BCE Sargon of Akkad (Sargon the Great) ruled over the first multi-cultural empire in Mesopotamia, allowing for the growth of great building projects, artworks and religious literature (such as the hymns to Inanna by Sargon’s daughter, Enheduanna). By 2000 BCE, Babylon controlled the Fertile Crescent and the region saw advances in law (Hammurabi’s famous code), literature (The Epic of Gilgamesh, among other works), religion (the development of the Babylonian pantheon of the gods), science, and math.

From 1900-1400 BCE trade with Europe, Egypt, Phoenicia and the Indian subcontinent was flourishing. Then began the spread of literacy, culture and religion to these regions. It is speculated that it was in either 1900 or 1700 that the Biblical patriarch Abraham left his native city of Ur for the 'promised land’, carrying the tales and legends of Mesopotamia with him which would in time appear, transformed, as Biblical narratives.

The Fertile Crescent region changed hands many times through the ages. By 600 BCE the Assyrians controlled the Fertile Crescent and, by 580, the Neo-Babylonian Chaldean Empire under Nebuchadnezzar II ruled the region. In 539 BCE Babylon fell to the Cyrus the Great after the Battle of Opis and the lands fell under the control of the Achaemenid Empire (also known as The First Persian Empire). Alexander the Great invaded the area in 334 BCE and, after him, it was ruled by the Parthians until the coming of Rome in 116 CE. After the short-lived Roman annexation and occupation, the region was conquered by the Sassanid Persians (c. 226 CE) and, finally, by the Arabian Muslims in the 7th century CE.

By this time the glorious achievements of the early cities which grew up beside the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers had long been disseminated throughout the ancient world but the cities themselves were mostly in ruins through the destruction caused by the many military conquests in the region as well as natural causes such as earthquakes and fire. Rampant urbanization and the overuse of the land also resulted in the decline and eventual abandonment of the cities of the Fertile Crescent.

For instance, the city of Eridu, considered by the early Mesopotamians to be the first city on earth, built and inhabited by the “gods”, had been abandoned since 600 BCE. The city of Uruk was abandoned since 200 CE and Babylon, the city, which gave writing, law and culture to the world, became a ruin.

The National Geographic News reported in 2001 that the Fertile Crescent area was rapidly becoming such only in name. Due to extensive damming of the rivers as well as a massive draining works program initiated in southern Iraq from the 1970’s on, the fertile marshlands which once covered 15,000 – 20,000 square kilometers (5,800 – 7,700 square miles) had shrunk to a mere 1,500 – 2,000 square kilometers (580 – 770 square miles). The region, which once was the lush paradise and cradle of civilization, these days largely consists of dry, cracked plains of sunbaked clay.

This region, alongside Mesopotamia (which lies to the east of the Fertile Crescent, between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates), also saw the emergence of early complex societies during the succeeding Bronze Age. There is also early evidence from the region for writing and the formation of state level societies.

Since the Bronze Age, the region's natural fertility has been greatly extended by irrigation works, upon which much of its agricultural production continues to depend. The last two millennia have seen repeated cycles of decline and recovery as past works have fallen into disrepair through the replacement of states and political turmoil. Another ongoing problem has been salination - gradual concentration of salt and other minerals in soils with a long history of irrigation.

Thus, river waters remain a potential source of friction in the region. The Jordan River lies on the borders of Israel, the Kingdom of Jordan and areas administered by the Palestinian Authority. Turkey and Syria each control about a quarter of the river Euphrates, on whose lower reaches Iraq is heavily dependent.

However, since the beginning of heavy industrial development in Europe, North America, and Russia and ever-increasing use of fossil fuels, including natural gas and oil, as well as various precious and rare earth elements, the title of Fertile Crescent of that region has gleaned a new meaning. This has become especially relevant to international geopolitics and diplomatic relations of the recent centuries as the world’s most powerful Empires of Great Britain, Germany, Russia, and Ottoman Turks began their Great Game of strategic rivalry and conflict for supremacy in Central Asia a few hundred years ago.

The most dramatic part of that Game ended up erupting into World War I, which eventually led to disintegration and demise of the Deutsches Reich, Russian Empire, and Ottoman Empire. The latter was disassembled into a handful of smaller Arab states under the mandate or rule of Great Britain and its Allies. Today, the rulers of that belligerent region are the UK, the US, and France. The French had taken most active part alongside their British counterparts in destruction of the Ottoman Empire back in 1914 – 1919 and subsequent subdivision of that territory into a number of seemingly independent states, including Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Syria.

All newly created states were under direct British rule initially but later were given their own kings, which had been picked by the British Intelligence. Nevertheless, the rule of the British, and later on American, intelligence officers did not remain unchallenged as Soviet Russia emerged in place of the former Russian Empire and successfully continued its part in the Great Game in the Middle East. Because of that global standoff between the Anglo-American stalwarts of “democracy” and Russian attempts at gaining foothold in the region, Iran and Syria became largely a no man’s land, as both nations strove to keep their independence by playing off the differences of the rivaling Cold War era superpowers around them.

Syria’s position has been more precarious than that of Iran, though. Unlike Iran, Syria had been part of the Ottoman Empire before the Allies dismantled the latter. Despite that, Syrian nationalism holds that the region presently occupied by a number of Arab states, which were created at the behest of the British Foreign Office in 1922, is to be referred to as the Syrian Fertile Crescent.

Syrian nationalists do view the whole of the Fertile Crescent as the potential playing ground for their own imperial ambitions akin to the political aspirations of the rulers of the ancient Assyrian Empire. The latter was a Semitic Akkadian kingdom, which existed as a nation state from the late 25th or early 24th century BCE until 605 BCE. The Syrian Fertile Crescent occupies the area of the Fertile Crescent at its maximum extent.

Antun Saadeh (1 March 1904 - 8 July 1949), a Lebanese Syrian nationalist philosopher, writer, politician, and founder of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, claimed that Syria has distinct natural boundaries. Notably, Saadeh rejected Arab Nationalism (the idea that the speakers of the Arabic language should form a single, unified nation), and argued instead for the creation of the state of United Syrian Nation or Natural Syria. Natural Syria would encompass the whole of the Fertile Crescent. According to Antun Saadeh , Syrian homeland "extends from the Taurus range in the northwest and the Zagros mountains in the northeast to the Suez Canal and the Red Sea in the south and includes the Sinai peninsula and the Gulf of Aqaba, and from the Syrian Sea in the west, including the island of Cyprus, to the arch of the Arabian Desert and the Persian Gulf in the east."

Saadeh rejected both language and religion as defining characteristics of a nation, and instead argued that nations develop through the common development of a people inhabiting a specific geographical region. He was thus a strong opponent of both Arab nationalism and Pan-Islamism. He argued that Syria was historically, culturally, and geographically distinct from the rest of the Arab world, which he divided into four parts. He traced Syrian history as a distinct entity back to the Phoenicians, Canaanites, Assyrians, and Babylonians. Antun Saadeh also argued that Syrianism transcended religious distinctions.

Syria traces its identity back to the Assyria, which was a Mesopotamian empire that grew out of the city-state of Ashur. It was one of the greatest empires in Mesopotamia, together with the Akkadian Empire of Sargon the Great and the Babylonian Empire under Hammurabi. At its height, the Assyrian Empire extended from Anatolia in the west, to Armenia in the north, to Media in the east, and to Egypt in the south.

During the periods of imperial decline Assyrian kings appear to have adopted a policy of maintaining and defending a compact, secure nation and satellite colonies immediately surrounding it, and interspersed this with sporadic punitive raids and invasions of neighboring territories when the need arose.

Perhaps, of all other Assyrian kings, Ashur-Dan II, who reigned from 935 BCE until his death in 912 BCE, should be viewed as an example of a national leader, steering the Assyrian Empire to recovery. He is recorded to have made successful punitive raids outside the borders of Assyria to clear other tribal peoples from the regions surrounding Assyria in all directions. He concentrated on rebuilding Assyria within its natural borders, he built government offices in all provinces, and created a major economic boost by providing ploughs throughout the land, which yielded record grain production.

The real glory of ancient Syria truly belongs to the period of expansion of 911 -  627 BCE, though. When the ancient Dark Ages (1200 - 900 BCE) were finally over, the world had changed dramatically. There were several remaining ancient kingdoms - Assyria, Babylonia, Elam, and Egypt. The Hittites endured in the form of smaller Neo-Hittite states. A number of new states had arisen during that tumultuous time period, including Persia, Media, Parthia, Mannea, Israel, Urartu, Phrygia, Lydia, Chaldea, the Aramean and Phoenician states of the Levant, Doric Greece, Putria (Libya), Colchia, Tabal, Nubia/Kush.

However, it was the ancient state of Assyria which rose to prominence and dominated the ancient world over the following three centuries. Beginning with the campaigns of Adad-nirari II (911-892 BCE), Assyria once more became a great power, growing to be the greatest empire the world had yet seen. The new king firmly subjugated the areas that were previously only under nominal Assyrian vassalage, conquering and deporting troublesome Aramean, Neo-Hittite and Hurrian populations in the north to far-off places. Adad-nirari II then twice attacked and defeated Babylonia, annexing a large area of land north of the Diyala River and a number of towns in mid-Mesopotamia.

Assyria then appeared stronger than ever. However, the long struggle with Babylonia and Elam and their allies, and the constant campaigning over three centuries to control and expand its vast empire in all directions, left Assyria exhausted. It had been drained of wealth and work force. The devastated provinces could yield nothing to supply the needs of the imperial exchequer, it was difficult to find sufficient troops to garrison the huge empire, and after the death of Ashurbanipal in 627 BCE severe civil unrest broke out in Assyria itself, and the empire began to unravel. In 605 BCE, the Babylonians and Medes defeated the Assyrians and their Egyptian allies at Carchemish, bringing an end to Assyria as an independent political entity.

Assyria remained a vital geopolitical entity as a colonized province until the late 7th century CE. Most of Assyria was ruled by Babylon from 605 BCE until 539 BCE. After that, the Persian Achaemenid Empire (as Athura) ruled it from 549 BCE to 330 BCE. Between 546 and 545 BCE, Assyria rebelled against the new Persian Dynasty. Cyrus the Great eventually quashed the rebellion.

In 330 BCE, Assyria fell to Alexander the Great, the Macedonian Emperor from Greece. Thereafter it became part of the Seleucid Empire and was renamed Syria (Greek corruption of Assyria). The Seleucids applied the name not only to Assyria itself, but also to the lands to the west, which had been part of the Assyrian Empire. When they lost control of Assyria, the name Syria survived and was applied only to the land of Aramea to the west that had once been part of the Assyrian empire. This was to lead to both the Assyrians from Mesopotamia and Arameans from the Levant being dubbed Syrians in Greco-Roman culture.

By 150 BCE, Assyria was under the control of the Parthian Empire as Athura (the Parthian word for Assyria) where the Assyrian city of Assur seems to have gained a degree of autonomy, and temples to the native gods of Assyria were resurrected. A number of independent Neo-Assyrian states arose, namely Adiabene, Osroene and Hatra.

In 116 CE, under Trajan, Syria was taken over by Rome as the Roman Province of Assyria. The Assyrians began to convert to Christianity during the period between the early 1st and 3rd centuries CE. Romans and Parthians fought over Assyria and the rest of Mesopotamia until 226 CE, when it was taken over by the Sassanid (Persian) Empire.

It was known as Asuristan during this period, and became a center of the Church of the East (now the Assyrian Church of the East), with a flourishing Syriac (Assyrian) Christian culture which exists there to this day. The city of Ashur again flourished, and appears to have gained a great deal of autonomy during this period. Speculatively, Assyria may even have once again been independent for a while prior to being sacked by Shapur I the Great, the second King of the Sassanid Empire, in 256 CE. Temples were still being dedicated to the national god Ashur in his home city and in Harran during the 4th century, indicating an Assyrian identity was still strong.

After the Arab Islamic conquest in the 7th century, Assyria was dissolved as an entity. Under Arab rule, Mesopotamia as a whole underwent a gradual process of Arabisation and Islamification, and the region saw a large influx of non indigenous Arabs, Kurds, and later Turkic peoples. However, the indigenous Assyrian population of northern Mesopotamia (known as Ashuriyun by the Arabs) resisted this process, retaining their language, religion, culture and identity.

Assyrians are a distinct ethnic group whose origins lie in ancient Mesopotamia. They trace their ancestry back to the Sumero-Akkadian civilization that emerged in Mesopotamia about 4000–3500 BCE, and in particular to the northern region of the Akkadian lands, which would become known as Assyria by the 24th century BCE. The Assyrian nation existed as an independent state, and often a powerful empire, from the 24th century BCE until the end of the 7th century BCE. Assyria remained a geopolitical entity after its fall, and was ruled as an occupied province under the rule of various empires from the late 7th century BCE until the mid-7th century CE when it was dissolved, and the Assyrian people have gradually become a minority in their homelands since that time.

Today that ancient territory is part of several nations: the north of Iraq, part of southeast Turkey and northeast Syria. They are indigenous to, and have traditionally lived all over what is now Iraq, northeast Syria, northwest Iran, and southeastern Turkey. They are a Christian people, with most following various Eastern Rite Churches, although many are non-religious. Although culturally similar, Assyrians are distinct linguistically, genetically and for the most part geographically from the Syrian Christians of Syria (except the northeast) and Lebanon.

Assyrian people, retaining the Aramaic language and Church of the East Christianity, remained dominant in the north as late as the 11th and 12th centuries. The city of Ashur was still occupied by Assyrians during the Islamic period until the 14th century when Turko-Mongol ruler Tamerlane (9 April 1336 – 18 February 1405) invaded Syria, sacked Aleppo and captured Damascus, and massacred indigenous Assyrian Christians in 1399. The massacres massively reduced the Assyrian population throughout Mesopotamia.

Thus far, the only people who have a high level of genetic, historical, linguistic and cultural probability to be the descendants of the ancient Mesopotamians are the Assyrian Christians of Iraq and its surrounding areas in northwest Iran, as well as northeast Syria and southeastern Turkey. Assyria continued to exist as a geopolitical entity until the Arab-Islamic conquest in the mid-7th century, and Assyrian identity, personal names and both spoken and written evolutions of Mesopotamian Aramaic (which still contains many Akkadian loanwords) have survived among the Assyrian people from ancient times to this day.

In 1516, the Ottoman Empire invaded the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt, conquering Syria, and incorporating it into its empire. The Ottoman system was not burdensome to Syrians because the Turks respected Arabic as the language of the Koran. Damascus was made the major stopping point on the route to Mecca, and as such, it acquired a holy character to Muslims. 

Ottoman administration followed a unique system that lead to a peaceful coexistence for centuries. Each religious minority - Shia Muslim, Greek Orthodox, Maronite, Armenian, and Jewish - constituted a separate community. The religious heads of each community administered their laws and performed certain civil functions.

After the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, Syria was under the French mandate in lieu with the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. In 1941, when the British and Free French occupied the country the mandate was effectively ended. Continuing pressure from Syrian nationalists and the British forced the French to evacuate their troops in April 1946, leaving the country in the hands of a republican government that had been formed during the mandate.

Soviet Russia helped Syrian nationalists to propel the nation toward the creation of a United Arab Republic with Egypt. Behind that idea was a Syrian nationalist concept of United Syrian Nation or Natural Syria, and the Syrian Fertile Crescent. Possible creation of such a nation state, engulfing all the nations of the Fertile Crescent, from Egypt to Iraq to Syria, would dramatically change the geopolitical situation in the region and severely undermine the position of the Brits and Americans there.

Carried out with the assistance of Russia, creating such a United Arab Republic would be a nightmarish event to the UK and US. In addition to Iran – a staunch ally of Russia – coming into existence of such a United Syrian Nation, potentially the size of the whole of the Fertile Crescent would also be a devastating geostrategic blow to the Anglo-American imperialist policies in the region.

The diffusion of political power in the world after 1957 has led to the rise of regional powers and conflicts with distant and not so obvious connections to the main rivalries of the Cold War blocs. Multinational political and economic pressure groups and various revolutionary, terrorist, or religious movements began to operate across national boundaries (“non-state actors”). Such diffusion of power was brought about by the Allies (the UK, France, and US) in order to prevent the Soviet Union from turning the divided Arab states of the Fertile Crescent into a solid political entity, spanning across that ancient region, commonly opposed to the divisive influences of the West. That is why the US has been so actively involved in the Middle East and Central Asia, eventually turning the Fertile Crescent area into what Zbigniew Brzezinski, in 1978, called the “arc of crisis”.

The “arc of crisis” has been defined as an area stretching from the Indian subcontinent in the east to the Horn of Africa in the west. The Middle East constitutes its central core. Its strategic position is unequalled: it was the last major region of the so called Free World directly adjacent to the Soviet Union. As it is known, the region holds in its subsoil about three-fourths of the proven and estimated world oil reserves. It is the focus of what has turned into the most intractable conflict of the twentieth century: that of Zionism versus Arab nationalism. National, economic and territorial conflicts in the region are aggravated by the intrusion of religious passions in an area which was the birthplace of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Pitching Jews against the Arabs in that region was not for nothing. The Fertile Crescent became the “arc of crisis” again because its conflicts there are rooted in strategic rivalry between several natural super nations, which have intrinsic global imperial dynamics: the United Kingdom (as closely allied with other members of the Commonwealth and NATO member-states, especially the United States of America), Russia, and China. All three have vast geographic territories, large populations with relatively positive demographics, and favorable economic and political dynamics that means their spheres of influence are bound to expand.

Super nations with global imperial potential always try to contain regional powers preventing them from growing too fast too much. Moreover, it is expedient to keep other countries as small as possible to curb expenditures of their containment as regional power states with a rich history of imperial experience will always try to regain regional dominance and consequently become allies of one of the global superpowers thus exacerbating the problem of ever-growing competition to all the others. Iran, for instance, as well as India, is a nation with regional imperial potential. Historically, Syria is a regional superpower, too.

The only way Syria could become a true regional superpower is by becoming Greater Syria, or Natural Syria. However, since Syria would never be able to achieve such a goal on its own, it must use assistance from one of the global superpowers. In this case, it is Russia, which has already been allied with Iran and Syria for quite a while and uses them to expand its influence in the region. Greater Syria, as well as greater Iran, inevitably means greater Russia as a natural global imperialist competitor. Therefore, neither the UK/US, nor China, would ever allow Greater Syria become a reality.

Besides, the UK/US party already views Syria as their lawful booty, which they had previously failed to exploit more properly shortly after the destruction of the Ottoman Empire and later on. This time they are eager to bring Syrian territories firmly under their allied control. From their point of view, Syria is an integral part of the Fertile Crescent, but it can only be so if the whole region remains the “arc of crisis”. It is supposed to be manipulated as one permanent crisis area that spans the Middle East and Central Asia, where the small Arab states, as well as “non-state” actors (i.e. multinational interest and pressure groups, international terrorists dubbed as revolutionaries, fundamentalist religious movements, etc.) are continuously pitched against each other from abroad by their Anglo-Saxon overlords. Moreover, as the imperial ambitions of the West continue to expand, the “arc of crisis” is bound to expand into a “Greater Middle East”. This is how earlier Russia’s aspirations to reinstall Greater Syria have been thwarted by the UK/US putting forward their Greater Middle East project that prospectively covers all of the former Soviet republics in Central Asia.

Thus, the Fertile Crescent will provide fertile ground for wars and conflicts rather than agriculture there, in the near future. Syria remains the centerpiece of this Middle Eastern puzzle and another pavestone on the way into what Halford Mackinder (15 February 1861 – 6 March 1947) called the Pivot Area (Heartland) of the World-Island. Therefore, that former Assyrian territory will hardly be left alone by the current global superpowers. Economically and geopolitically, the Fertile Crescent has become too precious for all the superpowers involved in the Great Game to let its flowers grow wildly, the way they did for millennia before.