Could Greater Syria work?

I'm not sure if there ever was a real chance to create a unified Arab state in the Levant (Syria+Iraq+Jordan, possibly including Lebanon and Palestine).

My question is, IF by some strech of a POD such a state would have been created post ww1 could it have survived in the long run? Or would it have fallen apart along tribal/religious etc. lines?
 
Iraq is not in the Levant. The King of Jordan was constantly wanting to annex the Palestinian territories and at least all of Syria besides the coast (which the British and French wanted), which is why there was disunity between the regional powers during wars against Israel. They didn't trust each other.
 
could the requirement for a greater Syria be filled by getting the other Levant countries into a Syria sphere of influence
 
"Greater Syria" usually refers to what is now Syria+Lebanon+Jordan+Israel+Palestinian Territories (generally not including the southern desert-y parts that no one really cared about). Iraq is united with these lands in the label of "Mashriq".

Anyway, leaving aside the problem of the Zionists, which are already reasonably well-established by the end of WWI, there's no reason why such a state would be any less stable than any OTL Arab nation, many/most of which were also forged by colonial powers without regards to tribal lines.

Per the 1922 French and British censuses, the total population will be about 3 million (all numbers rounded to within about 10% for convenience):

1.7 million Sunni Muslims
200k Allawites
100k other Shiite
100k Druze
100k Jews
600k Christians (about half/half Catholic/Orthodox, belonging to over a dozen sects proper - largest group Maronites at 200k)

Religiously, this is quite a diverse state, so there's the possibility of a glorious Lebanon-style clusterfuck from that perspective.

But if we assume that that doesn't happen due to a reasonably solid, well-distributed Sunni majority pitted against a variety of smaller groups that have no reason to band together, and we further assume that the Jews aren't going to make trouble (they're small, but very well-organized and with good technology), then it could easily go either way. There's hardly a large Arab state that hasn't undergone some kind of revolution at some point aside from Saudi Arabia (which is still in many ways dominated by tribalism), but countries like Syria and Iraq have had stable governments for decades at a time. Even Egypt, which has an ethnically and largely religiously homogeneous population in an easily centralized location with a long history of central, statist rule has had its fair share of instability.
 
You could make the Hashemite Kingdom of Syria last longer.
Problems are two, though:
1) Hashemites didn't have Iraq...yet, back then.
2) How to make it survive in the first place?

The whole state was..."abusive", we could say. French and Brits already split the Levant and Mesopotamia among themselves, and historically the French brought it down, if I'm right.
 
Given that "Greater Syria," and the Levant are terms for what was just called Syria before the Europeans split it up, it sure could work.
 
I think I should have phrased the original question this way: if after ww1 the people of present day Iraq-Syria-Jordan-Lebanon-Palestine had the chance to decide for themselves how to organise their lands- what would the borders have been?
 
I think I should have phrased the original question this way: if after ww1 the people of present day Iraq-Syria-Jordan-Lebanon-Palestine had the chance to decide for themselves how to organise their lands- what would the borders have been?

Which people, precisely? The Faisal and his brothers, who wanted to divide the region into kingdoms of their own? The Kurds, who basically just wanted to do their own thing in the mountains? The Druze, which are the same? The Maronites, who, come to think of it, wanted mostly the same? The Alawites, again, chilling out by themselves and governing themselves in the mountains? (I only just now realized how many groups there are in that region wanting to chillax in the mountains). The Jews, who wanted to found a modern nation-state? The nobility of Baghdad, Damascus, and Beirut, who were becoming nationally conscious? The Shiite Arabs on the Gulf coast? The millions of illiterate peasants, who really didn't care one way or another as long as the taxes weren't crazy and no one tried to interfere with their lives?
 
Which people, precisely? The Faisal and his brothers, who wanted to divide the region into kingdoms of their own? The Kurds, who basically just wanted to do their own thing in the mountains? The Druze, which are the same? The Maronites, who, come to think of it, wanted mostly the same? The Alawites, again, chilling out by themselves and governing themselves in the mountains? (I only just now realized how many groups there are in that region wanting to chillax in the mountains). The Jews, who wanted to found a modern nation-state? The nobility of Baghdad, Damascus, and Beirut, who were becoming nationally conscious? The Shiite Arabs on the Gulf coast? The millions of illiterate peasants, who really didn't care one way or another as long as the taxes weren't crazy and no one tried to interfere with their lives?

Yeah, this is exactly my dilemma, I mean there is so much diversity, but I can't judge how politically strong each of these groups was at the time. Was a common Arab consciousness strong enough to give a unified state a chance? Or was tribal fragmentation inevitable? And of course what are the chances that the Maronites, Alawites, Jews etc. can found their own viable states without foreign interference? I guess the Jews have a decent chance, they basically did it alone, but what about the extremely diverse Lebanon?

I know this is quite a lot, but any ideas are welcome.
 
Yeah, this is exactly my dilemma, I mean there is so much diversity, but I can't judge how politically strong each of these groups was at the time. Was a common Arab consciousness strong enough to give a unified state a chance? Or was tribal fragmentation inevitable? And of course what are the chances that the Maronites, Alawites, Jews etc. can found their own viable states without foreign interference? I guess the Jews have a decent chance, they basically did it alone, but what about the extremely diverse Lebanon?

I know this is quite a lot, but any ideas are welcome.

As far as I've read, the Arabs at this time are still almost entirely tribal. Arab nationalism was basically born with Faisal, and introduced to the region of Syria only at the very end of WWI, and I think only really made it to Iraq in the 40s. Faisal was famously welcomed with open arms when he rode into Damascus, but I have to wonder to what extent that was indicative of the local population; and also, recall that Damascus was quite an advanced city, culturally speaking (though so was Baghdad).

That said, from what I've read, a lot of the violence in Palestine in the 20s was almost entirely tribal, rising to become a general "anti-other" sentiment only in the 30s (and of course the Palestinians lost their tribal identity and formed a national one relatively quickly after they were expelled, but shared suffering and the breakdown of preexisting society seems like it would speed that sort of thing along). Libya, even today, it still very tribal; Jordan is pretty tribal as well. Syria, Egypt, and Iraq (those states that were socialist and pan-Arabist, plus more urban) less so. Some sort of Arab nationalism could easily develop among the educated urban classes, and perhaps even trickle down to the peasants eventually (and in the mean time, the peasants won't mind nationalist Arab leaders more than they did imperialist Turkish ones). If the nationalists are smart and patient, first integrating the cities, and then slowly extending their true control into the hinterlands, they could easily knit together a nationalist state within a generation or two - or, if they overextend, it could all fall apart. And even a non-tribal government won't necessarily be stable.

As for smaller groups founding their own states without outside interference...it depends on what you mean by state. The Druze, Alawites, and Kurds under the Ottomans enjoyed, more or less, several hundred years of benign neglect. Unless the rich cities of Damascus, Baghdad, and Beirut, the Ottoman tax collectors and recruiting men never much bothered to venture in the poor, rugged mountains full of people just itching to kill outsiders. If left to their own devices, they'd probably stay as loose tribal associations until some external stimulus provoked them into unification (say an invasion by the Sunni state in Syria). They probably won't survive such an invasion without outside help due to low organization, but if the statist Arabs are disorganized enough (which, frankly, they very well might be), our hardy mountain tribes may well band together into a tribal federation that becomes more like a state every passing month. The Maronites of Beirut and Mount Lebanon are already protected by Europe per an international treaty passed in 1860. Again, if they're pushed by an external threat, they might well bind together (though the French are almost certain to get involved - they really loved them their Arab Catholics).

The Jews are, of course, something of a wildcard. The extent to which they received external aid is highly disputed (or at least, external aid from a government actor - that the world Jewry supported the Zionists to a high degree is incontrovertible - well, except for the Bundists :D ). While the Jews have a small, relatively dispersed population, they also have technology, organization, and motivation fairly unmatched by their Arab neighbors (a friend of mine, an IDF officer with a Master's in Middle East studies, told me once: "the reason that we won in 1948 was because, in general, the Arabs had warriors while the Jews had soldiers"). In 1948, small groups of Jews were able to use advanced tactics and support fire to hold or route Arab forces many times their size (one notable example: the battle of Yad Mordechai next to the Gaza Strip, where 130 Jews, of which only 20 were trained soldiers, held off over 2000 Egyptian infantry with armor and artillery support for 4 days). Such a state does completely lack strategic depth, though, and could easily be crushed by a sufficiently competent enemy if attacked before reaching a certain level of population (though the Zionists, likely with universal militia training for both genders and possibly contemporary European weaponry, will probably be able to punch far above their weight).

The Shiite Arabs in Iraq are very tribal still at this point (hell, they're quite tribal even today), and it'll be difficult to gather them into pan-Arabism, which often had something of a Sunni emphasis even when allegedly secular. I can't see them organizing their own state, but in the absence of British control of Iraq, I could easily see them getting absorbed into Iran.

The Shiites in Lebanon...also very tribal and disorganized. But then, so are the Sunnis. The mountainous terrain and relative diversity of the region mean it has always been pretty decentralized.

And the Bedouins, of course, are the kings of tribalism.
 
Maybe the easy way is to keep the French out in 1919. Britian 'had' to give part of the Ottoman Empire to them! We save the French and everyone else suffers. Yes it could have worked without the French. Did I mention the French?
 
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