The case of how the modern Middle East was developed and destroyed by the UK and France - Personal Opinion

The case of how the modern Middle East was developed and destroyed by the UK and France.

The secret Sykes-Picot agreement was signed on January 3, 1916, by France and the UK and essentially partitioned former Ottoman empire provinces in the middle east into French and British spheres of influence. This agreement was signed in the year 1916, and was a secret agreement which was named after the negotiators of the deal, Sir Mark Sykes and Francois Georges-Picot, thus the Sykes-Picot agreement.

According to the Sykes-Picot, Syrian coast and most of modern Lebanon would be acquired by France, central and southern Mesopotamia around Baghdad and Basra provinces and Palestine would have an international government. The remaining part of the territory in question - a vast land comprising of modern-day Syria, Mosul in northern Iraq, and Jordan would have its local Arab chiefs under French authority in the north and British in the south. In addition, Britain and France would not lose their free passage and trade in the other zone of influence. The issue was that by dividing the former Ottoman lands between the UK and France, and essentially establishing the modern middle east, these two countries did it without even a single thought given to the religious perspectives of the local people, and ethnic character of the national desires.

As an example, the three unique ottoman provinces that made up modern day Iraq included a Sunni province, Shiite province and a Kurdish province. British simple threw the three of them into a carriage without thinking of ethnicity or religious differences, backgrounds and tensions. The outcome of such was a chain of bloody revolutions, tribal wars, subjugation, killings and civil conflicts between all the three ethnic and distinct religious provinces that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and is still being felt even today by the people of Iraq and modern day Iraq.

The British and the French were interested in their strategies only. Hence local citizens of various religions, background, and cultures were pooled in a man-made constructed state, the borders of which were determined in Paris and London. This is the way Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine (then Israel/Gaza/West Bank) came into existence, because of minor, greedy squabbling of two crumbling colonial powers.

Mark Sykes and Francois Georges-Picot.

This deal was closed due to the fear that the locals would rebel against it and also due to the fact that it amounted to breaking promises the British government already made to Hussein bin Ali sharif of Mecca and other British and French allies in the Middle East who assisted it in WW1. Only when Lenin and the Soviet Russia revealed it to the world did it come into the limelight.

Nobody is implying that there was nothing like the middle east was a paradise without conflict and war prior to the UK and France dividing it between themselves, however centuries of the Ottoman kingdom brought the region, to a greater extent, long durations of stability and relative peace. Naturally all that would have disappeared in the current middle east, the one that was westernized by western Europeans.

It is the direct consequence of that accord, which was signed 104 years ago, that we are seeing today in the Middle East, between Gaza and Damascus to Baghdad. Bibliography: "History of modern middle east William Cleveland. Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac, Kingmakers: The Invention of the Modern Middle East.

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