Dan Perry
Imagine two diplomats in smoke-filled rooms in wartime London and Paris, poring over maps of the Ottoman Empire. Mark Sykes, representing Britain, and François Georges-Picot, were not renowned cartographers nor great experts on the Middle East. But the clandestine map they signed in 1916, together with some agreements in the years that followed, created the unhelpful map of the Middle East today.
In essentially divided up the region into British and French protectorates (Russia, the other element in the Great War's "Triple Entente," imploded in civil war and lost its chance to control Istanbul). There was little concern for the realities on the ground—the tribes, religious communities, and ethnic groups that had been lorded over by the Ottomans.
The lines they sketched lumped diverse populations into hastily imagined nations. This is how we ended up with Iraq, a melding of Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds who hate each other. That is why we have Syria, similarly a fake country which blew up in a ruinous civil war. Imperial machinations are why Jordan even exists—that had to do with offering compensation to a tribe that did not get handed Saudi Arabia.
No comments:
Post a Comment