The Six-Day War, fought between Israel and the combined forces of Egypt, Jordan and Syria from June 5, 1967 to June 10, 1967, ended in a catastrophic defeat for the Arab nations. At the war’s conclusion, Israel had seized the Sinai peninsula from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan. The central issue that ignited the feud, that of Palestine, remains unresolved 50 years on. The standard solution suggested by Arab nations is a return to the 1967 borders, but that, for reasons I will make clear later in the article, only emphasises the depth of Arab humiliation.
The roots of the conflict lie a further 50 years back in history, in letters composed by a British colonial official who, as it happens, also played a central role in creating the border dispute between India and China in Arunachal Pradesh. It is less improbable than it appears that a single person had a hand in the germination of two such longstanding squabbles. In the period when Britain was at the height of its powers, the colonial elite circulated through different outposts of empire and laid booby traps for future generations wherever they went.
The person relevant both to Palestine and India’s North East was Henry McMahon. As foreign secretary of the British government in India, he drew a line across the crest of the Himalayas east of Bhutan to demarcate the border between British India and Tibet. He did this in 1914, at a tripartite conference in Simla that involved Tibetan and Chinese officials apart from himself. The British considered Tibet to be under Chinese suzerainty, which meant Tibet was not considered capable of charting an independent foreign policy. The Chinese delegate to Simla did not care for McMahon’s line, and refused to sign the document that would make it an official border. McMahon then went ahead and sealed an agreement with the Tibetan delegate.
Seven years previously, Britain and Russia had come to an arrangement to deal with Iran, Afghanistan and Tibet, the buffer lands between their respective empires. The British took the view that McMahon’s treaty not only violated Chinese suzerainty but also the terms of the Anglo-Russian convention. With two strikes against it, the Simla agreement of 1914 seemed destined to become a mis-step with no consequences. But in 1921, Britain and the Soviet Union revoked the 1907 convention, and 15 years after that, a bright young Englishman realised that McMahon’s line could yield a few valuable acres to the Raj. British officials paid a visit to Tawang, which considered itself part of Tibet, and informed the monks there that the district was, in fact, part of India. Although neither Tibet nor China accepted this view, the Brits made the resurrected McMahon Line the border between India and Tibet in maps dating from the late 1930s. After India achieved independence in 1947, it claimed Tawang just as the British had done. Why wouldn’t it? Nations are as greedy for land as empires.
McMahon’s misadventures
The year after his Simla misadventure, McMahon was posted to Egypt as high commissioner. The First World War was dragging on, and there was talk that West Asia’s bedouin tribes could be assets in the fight against the Ottoman Empire, which had sided with the Germans. The tribes were not about to go to war alongside Lawrence of Arabia and get nothing in return. McMahon entered into a correspondence with the Sharif of Mecca Hussein bin Ali, in the course of which he promised, with minor caveats, the creation of an independent nation in Ottoman regions where Arabs were in the majority.
As with his Line, London did not share McMahon’s point of view. But while his Line found an afterlife, his promises to Hussein bin Ali would be buried forever soon after they were made. Even as McMahon was writing about the independent Arab state to come, two gentlemen named Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot were plotting to divide Ottoman lands between Britain and France in the event of a Turkish defeat. Russia was party to the secret agreement, but after the October revolution the Soviets turned the Pravda and Izvestia newspapers into the 1917 version of Wikileaks, publishing the Sykes-Picot agreement and exposing British duplicity for the world to see. A direct link to Wikileaks was provided by the Guardian, which published the English version of Sykes-Picot, just as it would publish the Manning papers decades later.
The Brits, though, were more treacherous even than the Sykes-Picot revelations showed. Just before the Anglo-French deal made headlines, the British Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour had written to Baron Rothschild, leader of Britain’s Zionists, promising a homeland for the Jews in Palestine.
In other words, while poor Henry McMahon was assuring Hussein bin Ali that an independent Arab state would follow Ottoman collapse provided Bedouin tribes joined forces with the Allies, Sykes and Picot were cutting up that land into what would become Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Iraq, with the intention of establishing quasi-imperialist rule in those territories (quasi-imperialist because they were ruled as “mandates”, not full-scale colonies). Furthermore, within one of those mandates, Britain had resolved to establish a homeland for Jews, though Arabs greatly outnumbered them in that area.
Needless to say, most Arabs found the idea of Israel nonsensical, the final twist of the knife in a series of betrayals. But they were not powerful enough to enforce their views. The state of Israel out-negotiated and outfought them at every turn, establishing itself more firmly in Palestine with each passing year. No realistic solution to the problem can now consider the elimination of the Israeli nation: that is just a staple of extremist imagination.
McMahon felt betrayed by his own side and retired soon after Sykes-Picot was exposed. He lived on till 1949 but made no further impression on history. Perhaps he was gratified to know that his Line, at least, had gained a second life.
What about the Line?
What is one to do about the Line, seemingly stillborn but shaken alive decades later? As with the case of Israel, Tawang being part of India is settled fact. China did over-run the territory during the 1962 war, but withdrew, indicating Arunachal Pradesh is not central to its idea of the Chinese nation. Since there is no desire within Tawang’s population to go over to China, it should be possible to get a deal that keeps all of the current Arunachal Pradesh within India.
Such a deal would entail India giving up areas that we claim but China controls, specifically Aksai Chin. Aksai Chin became part of Jammu and Kashmir state only because a British official named William Johnson drew a map that put it there. It is not as if the maharaja of Kashmir ever controlled that region or had any use for it. When China built a road through that region soon after the Communist take-over, India did not even notice for years.
If India gives up its unnecessary fixation on William Johnson’s Line with respect to Kashmir, China will probably accept Henry McMahon’s Line in Arunachal Pradesh. The mess created in West Asia thanks to lines drawn by McMahon, Sykes, Picot, Balfour and company is far tougher to fix.
