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Any place on Earth you look to and think that things are kind of fucked up, politically speaking, you can often trace back to colonialism and empire building. The Middle East has long been a victim of empire builders, and the Sykes-Picot agreement made it Europe’s turn.
--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: January 3, 1916--
World War I raged, and Russia was on the side of the Allies. In 1915, Britain made a secret agreement with Russia to let it have Istanbul so it could control the Bosporus and Dardanelles, strategically critical straits that connect the Black Sea with the Aegean. In exchange, Russia would be cool with another secret agreement Britain made with France a year later to divide up much of the rest of the Middle East, fucking over the region ever since.
The Sykes-Picot agreement was created on January 3, 1916, and ratified the following May. Sir Mark Sykes represented British interests, and François-Georges Picot the French. The Ottoman Empire sided with Germany and Austria-Hungary in the war, and even though the war was almost three years from being over Britain and France were already planning how to divide up Ottoman territory afterward. Britain got what is now South Israel, Palestine, South Iraq, and Jordan. France got Syria, Lebanon, North Iraq, and South Turkey. Continues below …
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They had a map and everything, saying you get this part, and we get that part and … the map they came up with it didn’t actually stick, but that’s not what’s important. What’s important is that they were already planning on butchering the Ottoman Empire and were talking about how to divvy up the carcass like regions were cuts of meat. This started a trend of future agreements that created modern Middle East states out of what Europeans wanted, not anything local populations decided, and without asking those who actually fucking lived there. The new maps didn’t take into account local politics, cultures, religions, or identities. It was all about colonial imposition of authority.
You know Lawrence of Arabia? He played a key role in the Arab Revolt. The Arab Revolt was launched because the British government promised the Sharif of Mecca that if they helped kick the shit out the Ottoman Empire, Britain would support the creation of an independent Arab state afterward. Of course, they fucking lied. Sykes-Picot was a betrayal of that promise.
Remember that the Russian Empire was in on this, but then there was a revolution. Vladimir Lenin found a copy of the agreement and had it published in Pravda. The creation of artificial borders in the Middle East was referred to by Lenin as “the agreement of the colonial thieves.” The leak created a scandal in Britain and France but didn’t end their colonial thievery.
To this day U.S. foreign policy, and the foreign policies of other outside powers, is based on maintaining those bullshit borders associated with Sykes-Picot. Much of the current conflict in the region, along with the lasting animosity toward outside powers, is linked to this imposed border fuckery.
Thanks, Jonathan, for the suggestion of today’s topic.
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