Review : Could Different Borders Have Saved the Middle East?
Article Published in NYTimes
How the Arab region was divided by Britain and France in 1920
Article Published in NYTimes
How the Arab region was divided by Britain and France in 1920
Like Levant , colonial masters did same in our region by dividing it through two bloody lines McMahon and Durand Lines in 1914 and 1893.
How Sharief Makka Hussain bin Ali and Saud family played in the hands of colonials masters is a history....click and read comments and article
Lot of books have been written on this subject yet we still need to reread the story with little more attention at Levant, Sino-India Borders and Pakistan-Iran-Afghanistan region. We can understand why these three were important trade links of Silk route. Why Britain and France divided all the region? What were the motives? Why these regions are by and large away from democracies? The story written in NYTimes is good yet it needs little expansion too. The infamous Sykes–Picot Agreement did pivotal rule in setting the future agenda regarding Middle East but until 1919 British colonial masters were supporting both Hussein Bin Ali (Sharief e Makka) and Saud family. I remembered a book MI6 : the history of the Secret Intelligence Service, 1909-1949 which i reviewed in The News on Sunday at 24rth July 2011 but till this moment it's link http://jang.com.pk/thenews/jul2011-weekly/nos-24-07-2011/lit.htm#2 is not working. Will try to get it but i remembered events mentioned in the book from 1916 till 1920. Initially colonial masters promised Hussein Bin Ali a Khilafat by replacing Turkish/Ottoman king. As Saud family was Wahabi so they used Wahabi, Sunni and Shia conflict smartly. They spread conflicting stories only and similar policies were adopted by french imperialists in Syria. Use of religion, sect, languages, dialects, ethnic identities were the main weapons of colonial masters and to strengthen that they published many books too. the wanted to divide Turkey too into three parts but US played a vital role to stop it. colonial masters divide the world in new nation states as par their imperial designs so it is time to address the conflicts in order to resolve it. Porous Borders may work well but understanding the rape done by colonial masters is essential too.
Sykes-Picot: Lines in the sand The story of the secret century-old deal which aimed to carve up the Middle East in ways that still reverberate today.
That Western imperialism had a malignant influence on the course of Middle Eastern history is without a doubt. But is Sykes-Picot the right target for this ire?
The borders that exist today — the ones the Islamic State claims to be erasing — actually emerged in 1920 and were modified over the following decades. They reflect not any one plan but a series of opportunistic proposals by competing strategists in Paris and London as well as local leaders in the Middle East. For whatever problems those schemes have caused, the alternative ideas for dividing up the region probably weren’t much better. Creating countries out of diverse territories is a violent, imperfect process.
Imperial Russianborder 1914150 MilesTokatRussian controlTURKEYKizilirmakRiverEuphratesFrench controlIRANAntakyaArab territory underFrench influenceKirkukSYRIATigrisEuphratesBeirutBritishcontrolDamascusIRAQBaghdadArab territory underBritish influenceHaifaInternationalzoneAmmanBritish controlJerusalemISRAELJORDANEGYPTArabiaKUWAITSAUDI ARABIASykes and Picot Hatch Their PlanIn May 1916, Mark Sykes, a British diplomat, and François Georges-Picot, his French counterpart, drew up an agreement to ensure that once the Ottoman Empire was defeated in World War I, their countries would get a fair share of the spoils.Both countries awarded themselves direct control over areas in which they had particular strategic and economic interests. France had commercial ties to the Levant, and had long cultivated the region’s Christians. Britain intended to secure trade and communication routes to India through the Suez Canal and the Persian Gulf.To the extent the Sykes-Picot plan made an attempt to account for the local ethnic, religious or cultural groups, or their ideas about the future, it offered a vague promise to create one or several Arab states — under French and British influence, of course.
150 MilesTURKEYSilifkeRaqqaAntakyaSYRIADeir al-ZourTigrisArab Kingdomof SyriaEuphratesBeirutDamascusLEBANONBaghdadMediterranean SeaHaifaIRAQISRAELAmmanJerusalemJORDANEGYPTCairoSAUDI ARABIANileHejazRed SeaFaisal Dreams of a United Arab KingdomIn March 1920, Faisal bin Hussein, who led the Arab armies in their British-supported revolt against the Ottomans during World War I, became the leader of the independent Arab Kingdom of Syria, based in Damascus. His ambitious borders stretched across modern-day Syria, Jordan, Israel and parts of Turkey. (But not Iraq.)Would Faisal’s map have been an authentic alternative to the externally imposed borders that came in the end? We’ll never know. The French, who opposed his plan, defeated his army in July.But even if they hadn’t, Faisal’s territorial claims would have put him in direct conflict with Maronite Christians pushing for independence in what is today Lebanon, with Jewish settlers who had begun their Zionist project in Palestine, and with Turkish nationalists who sought to unite Anatolia.
150 MilesTURKEYAlexandrettaAleppoState of AleppoAlawiteStateDeir al-ZourTigrisSYRIALEBANONEuphratesState of DamascusBeirutDamascusMediterraneanSeaDruze StateIRAQHaifaISRAELAmmanJerusalemJORDANEGYPTSAUDI ARABIAFrance Divides ‘Syria.’When France took control of what is now Syria, the plan in Paris was to split up the region into smaller statelets under French control. These would have been divided roughly along ethnic, regional and sectarian lines: The French envisioned a state for Alawites, another for Druse, another for Turks and two more centered around Syria’s biggest cities, Damascus and Aleppo.This cynical divide-and-conquer strategy was intended to pre-empt Arab nationalists’ calls for a “greater Syria.” Today, five years into Syria’s civil war, a similar division of the country has been suggested as a more authentic alternative to the supposedly artificial Syrian state. But when the French tried to divide Syria almost a century ago, the region’s residents, inspired by ideas of Syrian or Arab unity, pushed by new nationalist leaders, resisted so strongly that France abandoned the plan.
RUSSIA200 MilesBlack SeaBULGARIAInternationalConstantinopolitanStateGEORGIAAZERBAIJANARMENIAArmeniaTurkeyTURKEYKurdistan or joinedto MesopotamiaSmyrna: semi-autonomouswithin TurkeyIRANTigrisSyriaMesopotamiaSYRIALebanon: semi-autonomouswithin SyriaIRAQMediterranean SeaISRAELEuphratesJORDANKUWAITArabiaNileEGYPTSAUDI ARABIARed SeaAmericans to the Rescue?In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson sent a delegation to devise a better way to divide the region. Henry King, a theologian, and Charles Crane, an industrialist, conducted hundreds of interviews in order to prepare a map in accordance with the ideal of national self-determination.Was this a missed opportunity to draw the region’s “real” borders? Doubtful. After careful study, King and Crane realized how difficult the task was: They split the difference between making Lebanon independent or making it part of Syria with a proposal for “limited autonomy.” They thought the Kurds might be best off incorporated into Iraq or even Turkey. And they were certain that Sunnis and Shiites belonged together in a unified Iraq. In the end, the French and British ignored the recommendations. If only they had listened, things might have turned out more or less the same.Nick Danforth, a senior analyst at the Bipartisan Policy Center, blogs at midafternoonmap.com.- Correction: Some earlier versions of the map illustrating a discussion of the Sykes-Picot plan mislabeled a country. Iran is on the far right portion of the map, not Iraq.
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