Surveys show that most Americans know little about geography and, therefore, probably even less about the history of distant parts of the world. I want to focus on some of that history because it is vital to understanding what is going on now in places such as Ukraine, Yemen, Palestine, and lots of other places. I'll start with Ukraine and expand outward. I'm not consulting sources at this point but only relying on my memory of previous studies I have done. What I'm trying to bring out at a very broad level is both how things that happen at great distances can have strong connections and also that even events from distant time periods can have echoes today.
Ukraine is a very flat country with mountains only near its western borders and in Crimea. As a result invaders have swept through it for millennia. Despite its mountains, Crimea has also been controlled by a wide range of people, including ancient Greeks and Romans, the Tatars associated with the Ottoman Empire, and, more recently, Russians. Eastern Ukraine and southwestern Russia were dominated by Khazars about 1300 years ago. The Khazars were a Turkic people who migrated from the western edge of China. They created a kingdom above the Black and Caspian seas and converted en masse to Judaism because their neighboring threats were the Muslim Ottomans to the south and Christians to the west. Today, the only known genetic traces of the Khazars are in southeastern Russia.
Swedish Vikings, known as the Verangians, conquered the Khazars and created what was called the Kievan Rus. The Kievan Rus had three areas under its control: the area around Kiev, what is now Western Ukraine, and an initially small settlement to the northeast called Muscovy. In the 13th century, Genghis Khan, who ruled an empire stretching from China into Europe, swept through Ukraine and destroyed Kiev. The Mongols were able to conquer this large area because they had learned to shoot bows and arrows accurately from horseback. Incidentally, current episodes of the TV series, “The Vikings,” show the Swedish Vikings marching from Kiev to invade Norway.
After the fall of the Kievan Rus, Western Ukraine fell to the Polish-Lithuanian empire. Eastern and Southern Ukraine were not much settled then because the Tatars would raid those areas from their base in Crimea. Over a few centuries, Muscovy grew into the Russian empire. In the 17th century, groups of peasants from Western Ukraine escaped from their feudal rulers, managed to arm themselves, and settled southern and eastern Ukraine. They were called Cossacks, but they were not the same as the Don Cossacks in southern Russia. The Ukrainian Cossacks lived in armed and walled settlements to keep out the Tatars. Their most prominent leader was Bogdan Khmelnitzky, whose statue is in modern Kyiv's Maidan or Independence Square. He was also virulently anti-Semitic and slaughtered tens of thousands of Jews. (Kiev is the Russian spelling; Kyiv is the Ukrainian spelling.)
The Russian empire was the next to take over Ukraine. This became a very contested conquest because the Russians tried to impose their language, which is significantly different from Ukrainian, and their religious leaders on Ukraine. The far western part of Ukraine had many Roman Catholics, but many Ukrainians, like Russians, were Eastern Orthodox but with a different and local hierarchy of their church. Ironically, both Russian and Ukrainian became modern literary languages at around the same time in the early 19th century. The first such Russian writer was Pushkin, who incidentally traced his descent to an African slave who was ennobled by a tsar generations before. In Ukraine, it was Taras Shevchenko, and I saw a few statues of him in different parts of Ukraine.
To the south of Ukraine and Russia was the aging and weakening Ottoman Empire, based in the caliphate in Turkey. Karl Marx wrote columns for the New York Tribune, and one of those praised Mohamed Ali, the Albanian governor of Egypt, as one of the few actors in the region with a head on his shoulders. Ali rebelled against Turkish rule in the mid-19th century.
Also in that period came the Crimean war in which France, Italy, and the Ottoman empire fought Russia on the peninsula. Russia lost that war, but that loss also sparked the fall of feudalism in Russia. Russia began to modernize and even drove the weakened Ottoman empire out of Bulgaria. If you go to Bulgaria today, you will still find in Sofia a memorial to the Russian soldiers who liberated Bulgaria from Turkey in the late 19th century.
The Crimean war created a huge demand for food to feed its armies and much of that was supplied from Palestine, where wheat, orange, and other food production rapidly multiplied. In 1856, Palestine was the most rapidly expanding part of the Ottoman empire. That and not the arrival of small numbers of European Zionist settlers decades later accounts for the modernization and expansion of agriculture in Palestine.
Skipping ahead to World War I, the weakened Russian and Ottoman empires both collapsed. The Bolsheviks took power in Russia and created the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Ukraine was one of those republics, and in 1920, the Bolsheviks gave the previously Russian city of Odessa, where my grandfather was born, to Ukraine. Turkey was taken over by a secular government. France and England divided up Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine in the secret Sykes-Picot treaty which the Bolsheviks found in the tsar's possession and published. Egypt was nominally ruled by a king, but real control was by the British and French who jointly controlled the strategic Suez Canal. Starting just after the war in 1918, the Saud family conquered most of the Arabian peninsula and created Saudi Arabia. The British had signed another treaty, this one public, called the Hussein-McMahon Agreement by which the Arabs were promised independence if they fought with the British against the Germans. Of course, the British ignored that after the war and followed Sykes-Pico. The British took Palestine and pledged to make it a Jewish homeland in the Balfour Agreement.
The only places the Saudis did not take were the small fiefdoms on the coast of the Gulf, Oman, and Yemen. The emirates to the east had signed treaties with Great Britain to keep their rulers in power in exchange for ceasing their piracy against British ships carrying the new machine made textiles which destroyed the textile industry in Iran and the shipping industry centered in Oman. Yemen's mountains, as high as the Sierras in California, kept the Saudis from taking northern Yemen. The British had built a colony in southern Yemen, to which the Ottoman empire never reached, to protect their huge naval base in Aden.
The Saudis took Mecca, the holiest place in Islam, and drove out its traditional Hashemite rulers. In recompense, the British gave them Iraq and Jordan. The Saudis also took a Yemeni city at the foot of the mountains, Najran. Note that Yemen, though much smaller in area than Saudi Arabia, has a larger population because it has much more water generated when monsoons hit the high mountains. Thus the Saudis have always fought hard to control Yemen.
Oil was discovered in large quantities in Iran in this period, and it was completely controlled by the British through the Anglo-Iranian oil company, known today as British petroleum. When oil was discovered in eastern Saudi Arabia in the 1930s, the British did not see the need for more oil, and American oil companies moved in, led by William D'Arcy.
The 1930s were also the period of rapid Soviet industrialization and Stalin's purges. Ukraine was the breadbasket used to fuel that industrialization, and millions of Ukrainian peasants were starved or killed when the food they grew was taken from them by force. Some Ukrainians, particularly in the western part of the country, became virulently anti-Soviet.
During World War II, the brunt of Nazi military campaigns were fought on the Eastern front in Russia and Ukraine and eventually Russians and Ukrainians defeated them. Some of those extremely rightwing Ukrainians worked with the Nazis and helped slaughter Ukrainian Jews.
Also during World War II, the Germans, who had built a railway line to Basra in Iraq, blockaded the shipment of oil from Saudi Arabia. The court of Ibn Saud, the founder of Saudi Arabia, only needed about $1 million to run itself. The US Congress sent that to the Saudis indirectly through the British because they could not stomach giving money directly to a monarch. In Iran, the Shah had collaborated with the Nazis, and the British deposed him.
After WW II, the UN adopted a partition plan for Palestine which allotted 54 percent of the territory to the Jewish settler minority (about one third of the population) and the remaining 46 percent to indigenous Palestinians. War broke out in 1947. It ended in an inconclusive ceasefire. In violation of the ceasefire, Stalin sent weapons to the Zionists via Czechoslavakia in the mistaken belief that they would found a socialist country. He realized his mistake soon afterward. That gave the Zionists overwhelming military superiority, and they proceeded to complete their genocidal ethnic cleaning of the 78 percent of Palestinian territory that they ended up with. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were driven into neighboring Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon and into the West Bank and Gaza. Expulsions continued after the war ended and Israel declared itself as a state in 1948. Another 50,000 were driven into Gaza in 1950. Palestinians who remained inside Israel lived under military rule until 1966.
Many things happened in 1953. First, Stalin died, which eventually led to significant changes in the Soviet Union. The following year, Nikita Khruschchev gave Crimea to Ukraine. During the war, Stalin had deported the entire Tatar population in Crimea to eastern Asia. Also, in 1953, the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohamed Mossadegh, announced the nationalization of his country's oil. The British were too weak to do anything and asked the Dulles brothers, secretary of state and head of the new CIA, to help. The CIA sent Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of Teddy, to overthrow Mossadegh and bring back the shah. Ibn Saud also died in 1953, and his successor wanted to nationalize Saudi oil. The US-owned oil companies objected, the new king was deposed by his family, and no nationalization took place. In 1952, the Egyptian army led by Nasser overthrew the king of Egypt and established a new government. Nasser tried to follow a nonaligned path between the Soviet Union and the West. At the first nonaligned conference in Bandung, Indonesia in 1955, he proposed a peace treaty to Israel. The Israeli response was to join Britain and France in 1956 to try to seize the Suez Canal. The US government opposed that invasion, which was not successful.
In 1957, a guerrilla movement began in northern Oman. At first, the Saudis supported it because they hoped to gain control of oil fields on the Omani border. However, in 1959, Iraqis overthrew the Hashemite king there. The Saudis pulled their support, and the rebellion ended soon afterward.
A few years later, a rebellion began in the British colony of southern Yemen. Some Yemenis had worked in the Saudi oil industry and became radicalized. They allied with elements of the army and others to throw out the British in 1967. A separate rebellion occurred in northern Yemen to overthrow the imam who ruled the country. The Saudis supported his family and Nasser's Egypt supported the new republic in a civil war which ended in 1967 when Nasser's air force was destroyed on the ground by Israeli bombing. The republic continued but under strong Saudi control. Southern Yemen formed the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, which was supported by both the Soviet Union and China. I visited there for a week in 1979 just as the Shah was overthrown in Iran. There was also a more leftist rebellion against the sultan in southern Oman from 1965 to 1973. The Shah sent troops to help defeat the revolution. Oil was also discovered in Oman, which allowed Sultan Qaboos (who just died) to buy off some of the discontent. Finally, there were two uprisings in Saudi Arabia in 1979, one around the oil fields in the east and one in Mecca. These were brutally repressed. Note that the royal family in Saudi Arabia is widely disliked by their subjects for three reasons: they used brutal violence to conquer the country, they have not shared the oil wealth, and they are not the traditional rulers of Mecca. During the war in Yemen, a number of Saudi air force pilots defected and flew their planes to Cairo. Indeed, the Saudi royal family had a national guard, separate from the army, whose job is to protect them from the army.
After the war, a progressive secular party grew in Syria, the Ba'ath. It spread to Iraq as well, where Saddam Hussein eventually seized control of the party and the state. In Syria, Hafez Assad, the head of the air force and a leader in the right wing of the party, seized control in 1970. In September 1970, the king of Jordan, frightened at Palestinian strength in the country, launched a brutal campaign against Palestinian organizations called Black September. Syria under Assad did not aid the Palestinians in Jordan.
In 1979, the Iranian people rose up and overthrew the Shah. They did not establish a secular, democratic government like the one they had in 1953. Instead, Shi'a religious leaders took control. There are elections in Iran, but candidates have to be approved by religious figures. It is noteworthy and well-documented by UN inspectors that Iran has not had a nuclear weapons program since 2003. The US, which is unhappy with Iran's regional alliances, especially in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza, continues to impose massive sanctions against Iran even though Iran signed and abided by a multi-party agreement to keep nuclear weapons from being developed. Of course, Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons, but that is rarely discussed.
In the 1980s, the Reagan administration allied with Saddam Hussein in Iraq. They supplied him with chemical weapons and urged him to use them and attack Iran, which he did. Saddam lost that war. Later, he sent his troops into Kuwait. There is some evidence that the US ambassador to Iraq sent him the message that the US government would not object. In any case, the US drove him out of Kuwait. However, they stopped at overthrowing Saddam. That was a sore point for some rightwing forces and led directly to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which, as we know now, was completely based on huge lies. The US occupiers dismantled the Ba'ath party which essentially meant dismantling every institution which made Iraqi society run. The tragic results are well-known.
In 1969, a secular and progressive government was elected in Afghanistan. That government's reforms were opposed by many powerful warlords, and the government asked the Soviet Union to help them. The massive Soviet war enraged many Afghans, and foreign insurgents also arrived to fight with them. The Reagan administration armed these fighters whose quartermaster was a Saudi citizen named Osama bin Laden. An Afghan group called the Taliban took control of the country. Interestingly, they stopped the opium trade completely. After the September 11 attack, the US invaded the country, ostensibly to target Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Instead, they drove the Taliban underground. Ironically, the Taliban restarted the opium trade to finance their operations. Now, the US is negotiating with the Taliban to end the war.
Events in Lebanon are beyond the scope of what I planned to cover, but the essence is that there was a balance between the religious communities of Maronite Christians, Sunni and Shi'a Muslims, and the Druze. There is also a very small Jewish community in Lebanon, which still persists. Political power was divided according to a very old census, and since the composition of the population has shifted greatly since then with no new census, cracks grew in that balance and eventually broke out into a civil war. Israel bombarded and invaded on many occasions until 2006, when Hezbolleh, which is a Shi'a organization, successful defeated an Israeli invasion. Israel has not invaded since then. Most recently large protests have been held essentially in favor of secular democracy.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, Ukraine finally gained its independence. Ukraine ended up with many Soviet era nuclear weapons. In 1994, Ukraine signed a treaty with Russia, the USA, and the UK by which Ukraine sent all of its nuclear weapons to Russia, and Ukrainian territorial integrity was guaranteed. Russia was allowed to keep its massive naval base in Sevastopol. Meanwhile, the Tatars returned to Crimea, and, although there was still a Russian-speaking majority there, the ethnic Ukrainian population in Crimea also grew.
In 2013, an opinion poll was held throughout Ukraine asking the simple question: Would you rather be Ukrainian or Russian? Overall, 80 percent of Ukrainians wanted to stay Ukrainian. In the west, it was 90 percent, but it was also 80 percent in eastern Ukraine. Only in Crimea did a majority of 54 percent say that they wanted to be part of Russia. Ukraine, like Russia, lost its state assets to a small number of ultra-wealthy oligarchs. Ukrainians rose up against corruption and in favor of democracy in 2005, but not much changed. In 2014, they revolted again. This time President Yanukovich placed snipers on rooftops and shot demonstrators. Faced by massive outrage, he fled the country. Russia used that opportunity to seize Crimea using its forces in the Sevastopol naval base. The Russians held a referendum in which they said that 95 percent of Crimeans wanted to be part of Russia. Of course, with a population that included 30 percent anti-Russian Tatars, that was not plausible. In addition, Russian annexation of Crimea was a clear violation of the 1994 treaty. In fact, Crimea has become an economic drag on Russia. Russia is currently building a bridge from Crimea to the Russian Azov peninsula.
Next, Russia organized an invasion into eastern Ukraine, a war which continues today. Most Ukrainians are still strongly opposed to these Russian incursions, though they seem resigned to them. However, some eastern Ukrainians have become disillusioned by the way they have been treated by the Ukrainian government during the fighting.
North and South Yemen united in 1990. Not much is left of the People's Democratic Republic in the south. There have been uprisings and government overthrows, and terrorist groups like Al Qaeda have also operated there. From the Saudi point of view, Yemen was freeing itself from Saudi control and the Saudis, partnered with the United Arab Emirates and the US government, launched a genocidal bombing war against Yemen which also continues today.
I am not going to discuss contemporary Syria in detail except to point out that hostility between Turkey and Russia in Syria echoes their 19th century wars.
This is a work in progress, and thoughtful comments are welcome.
