I’m reading an interesting article, The Map that Ruined the Middle East by Gabriel Scheinmann, a Ph.D. candidate in international relations at Georgetown University in the U.S. The article is on the WWW at http://www.thetower.org/article/the-map-that-ruined-the-middle-east/.
Scheinmann contends, and I am in full agreement, that “The infamous 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, the secret Franco-British-Russian pact that allocated regional zones of control, became the blueprint for today’s map, but Europeans had little interest in understanding the maze of Middle Eastern identities.”
The Europeans carved up the former Ottoman empire on lines convenient for them, irrespective of tribal affiliations.
They did the same thing in Africa.
They did the same thing in the Far East.
Almost everywhere the Europeans went, they left the ingredients for intertribal war.
Even Ireland, where England imported Protestants into the north.
About the only place the European presence has not had a wholly negative influence is North America where the U.S. and Canada manage to coexist. Interestingly, both countries are populated by immigrants from the four corners of the world. (True, there are exceptions, Quebec being a notable abscess on an otherwise agreeable land mass.)
The Brits divided the Indian sub-continent into Pakistan and India not along tribal or religious lines but on a border convenient to England.
Scheinmann writes that in the Middle East, “the borders of the new states were determined neither by topography nor demography. The infamous 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, the secret Franco-British-Russian pact that allocated regional zones of control, became the blueprint for today’s map, but Europeans had little interest in understanding the maze of Middle Eastern identities. A large Kurdish population—today numbering perhaps 25 million—was divided between four states: Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Shiite Arabs were split between Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the eastern provinces of Saudi Arabia. The Alawites, a heterodox Shiite Arab sect, reside today along the northern Lebanese, Syrian, and southwestern Turkish coasts. The Druze were distributed between today’s Israel, Lebanon, and Syria. Lebanon, supposedly a Christian redoubt, included large Sunni and Shiite populations, as well as Alawites and Druze. Sunni Arabs, who formed the dominant population of the Middle East, were divided into numerous states. Pockets of Turkomen, Circassians, Assyrians, Yazidis, and Chaldeans were isolated throughout. At the dawn of the 21st century, minority ethnic groups ruled Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Bahrain, often repressively.
“Arab attempts to undo the partition of the region culminated in the merger of several states, such as Syria with Egypt and Iraq with Jordan, which itself annexed those parts of mandatory Palestine that were not ruled by Israel. The effort was short-lived. Arab leaders ultimately proved more interested in maintaining the fiefdoms they inherited from the Europeans than abdicating their cathedra for the greater Arab cause.”
What we see today – “Arab Spring,” ethnic “cleansing” in Africa, and the on-going saber rattling between India and Pakistan has nothing to do with Israel. It has very little to do with the so-called “Palestinians”- they are involved because for the most part they cannot or will not leave the camps and integrate into neighboring Arab states, unlike the Jews who were mostly banished from the Arab states to immigrate to, and integrate into Israel.
To be fair, there are Jews still in Arab states. Some refuse to leave because they are too old to start over, others have businesses they feel they cannot abandon, and a few who simply don’t want the Western lifestyle of Israel or the U.S.
Scheinmann’s article reminds us that the Europeans created, over the centuries, borders that generally adhered to ethic groupings. Some countries, originally forced into existence by war, have managed to fragment into like groupings to establish new nations. As examples, Scheinmann cites “Prior to World War I, the Russian Empire controlled eight modern European states. Norway achieved independence from Denmark and then Sweden only in 1905. Austria-Hungary was a conglomeration of various national groups and has given way to six independent nation-states. Nearly a century after its creation, the dissolution of Yugoslavia has resulted in seven Balkan nations.
“With few exceptions, each European state now consists of a single people with a shared ethnicity, language, and religion. The French speak French in France; Germans speak German in Germany.”
I don’t think there is anything particularly novel about Scheinmann’s effort, but it is a worthwhile read, both in regard to what was and what he predicts will be.
I am left with the thought that, looking at today’s maps, this, too, will change. Hopefully, unless destroyed by internecine war, Israel will survive.
