The war in the Middle East is not a new one.

 

The war in the Middle East is not a new one. 

On Wednesday 2nd December, British MPs debated late into the night about whether or not the UK should ‘go to war’ with Syria, and at 22:32 the result of their vote was announced: Britain was to bomb Syria. A new war had begun.

---

At least, that was the impression you would receive if you read any of the newspaper headlines the morning after. “It’s WAR”, screamed one, “Britain at War”, yet another. The truth is, this is not a new war. The war in the Middle East has been an issue for centuries; the First Crusade of 1096–1099 is widely viewed as the very first West vs. Middle East war. Christianity and Islam were clashing at fault-lines all across eastern Europe, so following the Muslim capture of Jerusalem Pope Urban II declared war in 1905, in order to win back the Holy Land. The war lasted three long years, and in the climax of the Crusade (the infamous Siege of Jerusalem), around 11,000 Christian soldiers and over 50,000 civilians lost their lives trying to reclaim the Holy City.

All parties were in agreement that a war of such scale should never occur again, but just over 100 years later, the states formed by the First Crusaders were crumbling. In 1150 the County of Edessa, the very first state formed by the earliest Crusaders, fell; this led to the Second Crusade, which featured a similar plot line to the first: Middle Eastern unrest; Catholic intervention; unnecessary bloodshed. History repeated itself in the Third Crusade, and by that point, the total death toll for Christian wars in the Middle East had risen to over 250,000, even by the most conservative estimates.

The West appears to have an addiction to intervention in the Middle East, and, whether you view this as good or bad, there is one absolutely vital lesson for the West to learn. Forethought. The West lacked forethought in the Gulf War – having liberated Kuwait and gained occupation of Iraq, they failed to deal with the oppressive dictator in command of the country, Saddam Hussein. The CIA believed it would be better to allow a coup d’etat to overthrow Hussein. However, due to a lack of coordination; a lack of planning; a lack of forethought; by the CIA, the coup failed and Hussein, and his regime, remained.

However, whilst Hussein had enough military power left to crush the CIA-orchestrated revolt, he could not hold on to the dog-eared corners of Iraq. A power vacuum had been created. This is viewed by many Middle Eastern commentators and historians as one of the main causes for the chaos that we see in Iraq, and, increasingly, in Syria, today. The north of Iraq has been shattered by war; the Kurds are piecing together the shards in the northeast, whilst Daesh have swept in from the west. The result is a harshly divided three-way struggle for power; a political hot potato that cannot be, and has not been, solved by air strikes alone.

Whilst Britain’s politicians clash heads over the UK’s military strategy (or, in Jeremy Corbyn’s case, why we even need a military strategy), they must keep this important lesson in mind. Air strikes, ground warfare, or a political future are nothing without forethought. Any strategy requires careful planning for the future of Syria, and, for that matter, the liberation and restructuring of Iraq. If this planning is not completed, I fear we will all be feeling a strange sense of déjà vu around 15 years into the future when this terrible mess repeats itself.