ロレンスとISIS - Living, Loving, Thinking, Again

最近偶々オマー・シャリフに言及したのだった*1。

Giles Fraser*2 “Lawrence of Arabia wouldn’t have been surprised by the rise of Isis” http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2016/apr/08/lawrence-of-arabia-wouldnt-have-been-surprised-by-the-rise-of-isis

映画『アラビアのロレンス』*3はTEロレンスの『知恵の七つの柱』を原作としている。そこに書かれたロレンスの武勇談が大袈裟なものだということはしばしば言われている。しかし、本当の問題はそんなところにない。ロレンスがアラブの諸部族とともにオスマン帝国と戦っていたとき、英国と仏蘭西の秘密交渉によって、第一次世界大戦後のアラブ世界を英仏が二分割するという「サイクス＝ピコ協定」が結ばれていた。勿論、それはロレンスの与り知らない上層部が決めたことではあるが、彼は協約についてのリークされた情報を知ったときでも、その本質を理解していなかった；

But Lawrence’s greatest deception was not to his readers but to his Arab colleagues. To give this some context: It is 1917. Lawrence and the Arab army were fighting against the Turks who had taken the side of the Germans in the first world war. Lawrence, with backing from the British government, had promised the Arabs their own autonomous state on collapse of the Ottoman empire. This is why the Arabs were fighting alongside the Brits. But what Lawrence didn’t know – at first at least – was that back in 1916 a secret deal had been struck between the French and the British to carve up the Middle East in a way that totally ignored the wishes of the indigenous Arabs.
The Sykes-Picot agreement, creating long, diagonal straight lines across the desert, gave Syria and Lebanon to the administrative control of the French, and Palestine, Jordan, the Gulf and Baghdad to the British. As news of this deal leaked out to Lawrence, he had to wrestle with whether to tell his Arab army that they had been betrayed by British diplomats and that they would never have the state they were giving their lives for. Perhaps he never appreciated the whole truth about the Sykes-Picot deal until it was published by this newspaper in November 1917. But he knew enough to realise he was misleading his Arab friends. “I had to join the conspiracy and assure the men of their reward. Better we win and break our word than lose,” as he put it in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom*4.

また、ロレンスは結果的にアラブの同志を裏切ることになったことで、後には自殺未遂も起こしている。

アラビアのロレンス完全版 [DVD]

出版社/メーカー: ソニー・ピクチャーズエンタテインメント
発売日: 2006/12/20
メディア: DVD
購入: 2人クリック: 25回
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さて、100年後。

A century on, the effects of the Sykes-Picot treachery are still with us. Indeed, when Islamic State proclaimed the re-establishment of the caliphate, they did so with a video entitled The End of Sykes-Picot. And it’s interesting that the state they proclaim is not a million miles away from the one promised by Lawrence.
Currently, we are obsessed with destroying Isis, and understandably so. They are murderous thugs. But the underlying forces that press for a Sunni state that runs across the Sykes-Picot border – including large chunks of what we are still calling Syria and Iraq – will not disappear, no matter who is in charge or what name we give to them.
Yes, there is much more to Isis than the desire to undo the century-long effects of British and French colonialism. But that’s a key goal. And if Iraq ends up splitting into a Kurdish, a Shia and a Sunni bit, and if Syria ends up splitting with an Alawite strip along the coast, and a Sunni bit further east, then Islamic State may end up getting precisely what its name proclaims, even after it has been defeated. These new borders will be based on ethnicity and religion rather than 100-year-old imperial design. And, this time, I don’t think western intervention can stop it.

シリアとイラクを股に掛けるISIS*5は公然と「サイクス＝ピコ協定の終焉」を宣言している。イラクやシリアという国家自体が「協定」の産物である*6。Giles氏は「と「サイクス＝ピコ協定」によって劃定された「国境」を否定し、「国境」を引き直そうとする運動はISISがどうなろうと消えることはないだろうという。
ところで、英国ブリストル大学の考古学的発掘によって、（現在サウディ･アラビア領の）Halat Ammar*7での鉄道襲撃の際に「アラビアのロレンス」が撃った可能性が高い拳銃の弾丸が最近発見されている*8。
ロレンスについては、取り敢えず中野好夫『アラビアのロレンス』と牟田口義郎『アラビアのロレンスを求めて』をマークしておく（月並みではあるが）。また、春日井健は「住む場所のいづこにもなき悲しみに砂漠清しと言ひしロレンス」と詠っていたのだった（『続・春日井建歌集』、p.63）*9。