100 years ago this week, a British colonel and a French diplomat drew a few lines on a map of the Middle East. Those lines were the first draft of borders that are still disputed, and battled over today.
Mark Sykes and François-Georges Picot were empowered by their governments to secretly work out an arrangement to split up the Levant part of the Ottoman Empire even before World War I was over.
Sykes & Picot came up with areas of British (area A and area in red) and French influence (area B and area in blue). The brown shaded area would be internationally administered. The secret plan was signed on May 16, 1916, two-and-a-half years before World War I ended.
Sykes-Picot was seen as a betrayal of the Arabs by the British, who promised their support for an independent state in exchange for Arab support against the Ottomans.
Memories of that supposed betrayal remain strong. When the Islamic State bulldozed the barrier marking Sykes-Picot border between Iraq and Syria in 2014 they tweeted #SykesPicotOver.
So, is a line drawn in the sand 100 years ago the cause of the Middle East’s problems today?
Like most issues involving the Middle East, ask 10 people and you will get 10 different opinions.
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Sykes-Picot +100 Years
Making Sense of the Mideast Oil Muddle
Low oil prices don’t just affect the wealthy sheiks of the Gulf, but also the Kurdish peshmerga fighters operating on the front line against the Islamic State group. With the decline in market value comes a decline in oil exploration, and diminished budgetary expectations in countries like Iraq that are already hanging on by a thread.
For the Mideast, an Anniversary to Remember
Kuwait’s…government still has room for improvement. It is deemed “partly free” by…Freedom House. Critics of the royal families are harshly punished and the judiciary is not very independent. Yet it has a parliament elected by popular vote. Women have equal rights. The people have the means to air their grievances in peaceful, legal ways.
Oil Is Still heading to $10 a Barrel
[T]he world continues to be awash in crude, and American frackers have replaced the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries as the world’s swing producers. The once-feared oil cartel is, to my mind, pretty much finished as an effective price enforcer.