What was Sykes-Picot?
Is it really one of the main reasons why the Middle East is so messed up today?
>>497603
During WW1, The Ottomans were with the Central Powers.
The entente promised to support free, Arab states in the region if they revolted against Ottoman rule, which they did.
But Britain and France had made a secret agreement (Sykes-Picot) to split the land between themselves as colonies, which they did after the war.
So now the Arabs are pissed because they didn't get what they were promised. To make things worse, when the colonies finally got independence their borders were drawn along colonial lines with little regard for ethnic, cultural, or religious boundaries, which created a lot of tension. Just look at Iraq or Syria today to see the mess it caused. Palestine being given to the Brits also directly led to the creation of Israel, which of course fucked things up even more.
Overall, Sykes-Picot isn't the sole reason for the Middle East being a shithole today, but it definitely helped to contribute a lot.
It's a scapegoat. Whatever borders had been drawn, some groups would have felt wronged.
>>498175
Unless they could've fought it out like Europe where every ethnicity either has its own territory or was destroyed in the process. That's the whole point though, Africa, Asia and the middle east never had the chance to form their own borders because of imperialism. And now it's too late because Europeans and Americans have a compulsive need to interfere because of economic reasons.
>>498560
>asia never had a chance to form its own borders due to imperialism
indian subcontinent notwithstanding this is just flat out wrong and you know it
>>498596
Aside from Japan and China all other borders were drawn by western powers. 2 countries in a dozen or more isn't exactly against my point.
>>498621
>Aside from Japan and China
are you going to try and argue korean borders were drawn due to western imperialism?
also remind me of all the brutal ethnic violence in southeast asia while you're at it
>>498560
Well now they're fighting and Sykes-Picot is still blamed.
>>497603
It has an impact but it's not really a cause. The intranational conflicts would have been international if borders had been drawn along ethnic and religious divides, and smaller minorities would have suffered more.
The imperialism of france and britain was a problem, but now it's over and Sykes-Picot has not much to do with current issues.
>>498640
The border between North and South Korea is a direct consequence of American intervention.
>>498670
intervention is not imperialism
No, being muslim is the reason.
It is one of the main reasons why they hate the West so much. And arguably, they could have had an easier time westernizing without that. Which in turn could have meant more secularism, and thus being less shitty.
>>497603
No, the borders are fine for the most part. It's misplaced postcolonial critique by pseuds on the centre-left.
>>498694
>intervention is not imperialism
The British and Romans surely agree.
>>498175
>"No matter how I draw this arbitrary line in the desert, people don't like it!
No shit. What's relevant about it is that the -majority population- in these areas, Sunni Arabs, felt wronged by the borders and that there should be a single representative state for all of them. This is a major propaganda point of Daesh and was pretty much the driving factor for everything that's happened in the region since, see the Arab Cold War.
>>497603
>What was Sykes-Picot?
A treaty to divide control of the former Ottoman Empire between the victorious powers
>Is it really one of the main reasons why the Middle East is so messed up today?
Indirectly and directly yes. Effectively the treaty meant the game was rigged from the start and those artificial nation-states were always going to fail, which catalysed the current and unprecedented (1950-) trend of Islamic revivalism
>>498763
This. If anything the problem (in terms of nation states) is that of pan-Arabism or Arab nationalism, meaning even bigger borders. It's not like Africa at all.
>>499705
>the treaty meant...
Explain yourself. Why would it mean all that ?
>>499653
Do you have sources that indicate it's a central point of their propaganda ?
The organisation calls itself islamic state "of Iraq and the Levant". If they saw that area as one entity, why did they keep using the two names ?
>>499789
Different guy here. ISIS present themselves as an alternative to nationalism and liberal democracy claiming it's a western-imposed system unfit for muslims. It's stated quite explicitly in some of their videos. It's a pretty standard anti-western, anti-modern and anti-colonial position throughout the world.
>Iraq and the Levant
Just meaningless geography with no national implications. They view themselves as a Caliphate.
>>499789
They call themselves just The Islamic State now.
>>499789
>The organisation calls itself islamic state "of Iraq and the Levant"
No it doesn't, it hasn't called itself that in literally over a year.
Their goals changed from establishing a regional emirate, "an" Islamic state, to establishing the caliphate- "the" Islamic State.
>>500045
Which any reasonable person should resist on principle, as it implicitly legitimates their right to govern. Calling them Da'esh is politically calculated and totally appropriate.
>>500188
>Calling them Da'esh is politically calculated and totally appropriate
David Cameron called out the BBC for refusing to use the term Daesh but I sympathise. It's not like we refused to call the IRA the IRA.
>>498175
>It's a scapegoat.
This. If the region had been divided along sectarian lines, people would be complaining that it made pan arabism, or pan islamism, impossible, thereby dooming the region. If it hadn't divided the region at all the complaints would be about all the minorities who were forced into the same state, thereby dooming the region. The actual roots of the conflicts are both far older and far more modern than Sykes-picot. It's just that whenever you get a conversation about 'why doesn't this third world country work' there are certain people who will turn it into a ridiculous variant of Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon, where they follow causal links back until they get to something done by a western country and then stop there and proclaim that to be the point at which everything went wrong.
Sykes-picot wasn't even all that influential, anyway. It didn't redraw the borders of anatolia as planned; instead the Turks won and managed to keep hold of a whole bunch of Kurds. It's more or less a myth that it divided the Arab super-state that was planned; the borders of Saudi Arabia were limited more by the fact that Hashemite rulers of Jordan managed to resist the attempted takeover by the house of al-Saud. Ditto with other Emirates like Kuwait and the Qatar; although they often had help from Europeans it ultimately came down to a matter of local Arab politics as to where the borders were drawn.
Really, the only significant thing Sykes-picot did was define iraq as a single discreet entity and syria as another, rather than either a series of provinces or a unified whole. And although it didn't match very well with the sectarian borders, it matched perfectly with the geographic ones. If Iraq had been split between the Sunni north and the Shia south people would be complaining that the Sunnis had lost access to the sea down the Tigris and Euphrates, thereby limiting their commerce and obviously dooming them to poverty.
>>500214
the only half reasonable argument that the borders were badly drawn by people who didn't know what they were doing is the fact that it ignored the nomadic lives of the pastoral peoples who moved between Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Except that there's absolutely no way you can draw a border to account for that, and if you make the whole region some giant super-state then you get all the problems people complain about with minorities being forced to live with other minorities that they don't like. There was literally no way someone was not going to end up pissed off. And in any case the nomads were a tiny proportion of the population of the middle east anyway so the people criticising Sykes-picot over that are really just cherry-picking.
>>500214
While I agree with most of this, I think the act of dividing in itself is problematic and you've skimmed over that.
Granted, partitioning the empire was inevitable, because there were few viable alternatives at the time, but that doesn't absolve colonial powers from responsibility
I also think when Sykes-Picot is brought up it isn't merely referring to demarcation but kinda entails the entire post-war colonial set-up, which also set the stage for a lot of current problems
really they should have just kept the millet system because that seemed to stop everyone killing each other for several hundred years
>>500214
>Really, the only significant thing Sykes-picot did was define iraq as a single discreet entity and syria as another, rather than either a series of provinces or a unified whole. And although it didn't match very well with the sectarian borders, it matched perfectly with the geographic ones. If Iraq had been split between the Sunni north and the Shia south people would be complaining that the Sunnis had lost access to the sea down the Tigris and Euphrates, thereby limiting their commerce and obviously dooming them to poverty.
Or, more understandably, because both the British and the French needed sea access.
>>500244
>which also set the stage for a lot of current problems
I'd rather blame current problems on things like the Cold War and the following decades. The superpowers will find and create problems with or without Sykes-Picot in their quest to take advantage of domestic issues, to destabilize, support rebels and dictators, and so on. We in the west think of these things too abstractly but just imagine it in first person for a moment, people being constantly supported to fuck government, economies, infrastructure and people up, leaving only short-term military strongmen at the helm. There was also the threat of pan-Arabism which few powers would want to have around.
Despite that I think it could've turned out just fine if the powers that be let go after the Cold War, as was the case with authoritarian reactionary rule in places like Spain, Portugal, Greece and Turkey, but they didn't, and it's still practically CW down there.
>>500321
Those are really good points that I haven't fully considered before. Thanks for actually broadening my mind about this.
>>500332
I'm not the guy you responded to earlier, mind you, but I very much agree with him
>>500244
>really they should have just kept the millet system because that seemed to stop everyone killing each other for several hundred years
firstly, there were still plenty of inter-clan skirmishes. Secondly, it was the threat of an Ottoman army marching in that kept local leaders well behaved.
The Arabian penninsula and the areas bordering the Arabian desert are like the Caucasus, or the Balkans. Ultimately, whatever the pretext is for fighting, the fact is that societies there are fundamentally tribalistic and everyone is at each other's throats all the time. "Me and my brothers against my father. Me, my brothers and father against my uncles and nephews. All of my family against the clan. My family and my clan against the other clans." This isn't a Muslim thing, it's an arabian thing. It's the desert that does it. Note that Egypt, even with its recent political instability, never got close to the disintegration seen in Syria or Iraq. Because it is a settled, farming culture that long predates the arab invasion, and it was too well established to be totally uprooted by the Arabs, who are nomadic by inclination. Same with Iran, which has also remained a relatively stable political entity under circumstances that would have seen an Arab state disintegrate into civil war.
You can't farm in a desert, so only pastoral peoples can survive there. And this encourages raiding culture, because its a lot easier to steal a herd of goats which can walk under their own power then it is to empty the contents of a granary. Likewise, if you're a desert culture you both have an incentive to raid the farmers on the borders of your lands because deserts are poor, and because you know the desert and can disappear back into it with your loot without being pursued. Despite the civilising influence that came from overrunning the more settled areas of the middle east in the 6th century, Arab culture remained at heart violent and divisive.
>all these tribes that hate eachother wouldn't if DA WEST did X
I want this meme to die
>>500823
None of the conflicts in the ME are tribal, Anon. Few of them are even ethnic!
>>500834
what goalpost game are you playing brother? most of the problems are indeed sectarian and unless there is a strongman making them place nice, that is what you will end up with.
>muh tribalism and made up borders causing all the problems
last time I checked it was all about muh depiction of the religion of peace like always
>>498175
Borders were specifically drawn to keep the Kurds from having a nation or being a majority in any one nation.
The Sykes Picot borders were never applied. If you want to read more about this fact: http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/21759/lines-drawn-on-an-empty-map_iraq%E2%80%99s-borders-and-the
The Sykes-picot is well known because the form kinda resembles the modern map (while geographically it really doesn't!!) and because it's an easy scapegoat. In reality the modern borders were agreen upon on conferences with many relevant actors participating. Of course stuff like >>500847 is very true. The colonial powers used a classical tactic to make the mandates dependent on them.Create countries that are barely stable, but stable enough to exist. These short-vision goals are logical from their european pov. However, a dramatic redrawal of borders is needed. This Syrian conflict really is just the beginning of the end for the current Middle East.
>>500847
You're a fucking idiot
>>500823
>>500840
I'm not the boo west type of guy even when it comes to colonialism, but most conflicts in the middle east are outright artificial.
If you're going to blame them for something it should be the inability to form a strong state of their own accord and not get played so easily by outsiders, which isn't an easy job in their position.
>>498670
>American intervention
CHINA
H
I
N
A
>>500195
>the IRA is like ISIS
completely different btw
>brutcvck
ohh, right.
>>500244
>problematic
>>501014
Yes, two imperial powers were involved in a proxy war in the Korean peninsula that redifined internal and international politics.
>>500834
Most of them are religious, but there is an undeniable ethnic (tribal) element to the fighting.
>>501032
>but I'll blame America for keeping South Korea free and prosperous cause I have cognitive dissonance!
>>501035
Still wrong, as the majority of them are Sunni vs. Sunni. The majority of the violence, certainly, is Sunni Arab vs. Sunni Arab.
>>501035
I don't think Russia+Iran+Syria vs USA+Israel+Saudi counts as Tribal
>>501038
>concede that China and the US are both culpable
>the original point was that imperialist intervention had political consequences on the peninsula, more specifically the border definitions of the two Koreas
>you're still on me about some bizarre red-baiting fantasy you've got going on in your head
How do you see this conversation playing out?
>>497603
>s it really one of the main reasons why the Middle East is so messed up today?
Main reason? No
one of many reasons? Sure
People forget that there are countries around the world that have had their borders redrawn by greater powers, and have suffered little or no damage.
The absolutely main, main, main reason, and this goes over-looked, I think, is that for centuries the Middle East was solely dominated by an individual great power, whether it be the Ottomans or the Selucids or the Abbasid Caliphate. Yes, there were other powers at that time, but the atmosphere was not like Europe's (where you had several unique great powers and not one dominating power, like the Roman Empire)
When these giant caliphates fell, the rest of the area went with it. And that is the main reason there are no longer any more "Middle Eastern great powers"
>>501032
i think it's pretty unfair you're completely taking away the agency of the korean people to blame the whole war on those darn dirty imperialists
>>501105
They let themselves be used. There is still agency in selling yourself into slavery.
>>501102
I argue this point often. I think the ME won't stabilize until they have another big empire in the area to subjugate them.
>>500214
>This. If the region had been divided along sectarian lines, people would be complaining that it made pan arabism, or pan islamism, impossible, thereby dooming the region. If it hadn't divided the region at all the complaints would be about all the minorities who were forced into the same state, thereby dooming the region. The actual roots of the conflicts are both far older and far more modern than Sykes-picot. It's just that whenever you get a conversation about 'why doesn't this third world country work' there are certain people who will turn it into a ridiculous variant of Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon, where they follow causal links back until they get to something done by a western country and then stop there and proclaim that to be the point at which everything went wrong.
In Syria, a Shiite minority was placed in control of a Sunni majority country, and in Iraq, a Sunni minority was placed in control of a Shiite majority country and In Lebanon, a Christian minority was placed in control of a Muslim majority country.
All very deliberate on the part of France and Britain in order to ensure their control over these strategically and economically important areas.
>>501085
Syria is Sunni rebels versus a Shiite government, Yemen is Shiite rebels versus a Sunni government, and Saudi Arabia just executed Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a Shiite cleric for criticizing the government.
>>501188
>Iraq
>a Shiite majority country
>>501251
But it is a Shiite majority country?
Hell, if it wasn't for the Kurds the Shiites would be over 70%
>>501306
"the final authority must be in the hands of the Sunnis, in spite of their numerical inferiority;"
I'm starting to think that large empires that toss their minority populations a bone every so often are the way to go
>>500188
Do you call the USSR CCCP too?
>>501584
You are a stupid person.
>>501227
And?
>>500733
Syria and Iraq both have land suitable for agriculture, they're farm from being huge sparse deserts.
Your argument really only applies to Saudi Arabia and to some extent Yemen. Oman is also a desolate desert yet they're relatively stable, as is the UAE.
>>500188
I don't think you can legitimise or delegitimise a faraway group's right to govern anything. That's what they alone can do. Call them what you like, but the rationale offered here is meaningless.
>>501836
Right, because the AIPAC doesn't commit millions of dollars in lobbying funds to prevent or suppress the Palestinian territories being referred to as a state or independent governing body in US political discourse. Because all of that is meaningless.
>>501814
>Syria and Iraq both have land suitable for agriculture
absolutely true, and if this was a thousand years ago I'd be leaving Iraq and Syria out of the equation. Iraq especially had a settled, farming culture that long predated the arab invasion.
This was why cities like Damascus and Baghdad were the jewels of the early caliphate. Because the people living there weren't THAT different from the arab invaders, being closely related semites, but they understood how civilisation was supposed to work. However, centuries of occupation by arabs takes its toll. The real shift, however, began after the Mongol invasions. The Mongols destroyed the irrigation system in Mesopotamia. After they left, because ultimate control of the caliphate rested in the hands of Arab tribesmen, instead of making an effort to help the farmers restore the irrigation system they let the abandoned lands fall into the hands of Arab tribesmen who weren't much interested in irrigation systems because they were nomadic goat herders.
Remember, there were only relatively tiny numbers of Arab conquerors in the initial conquest. Enough to take nominal control of an area, but the local populations remained essentially as they always had. However, where before the settled peoples had always looked down on the pastoralists and tried to keep them out, now the pastoralists were actually in charge. Meaning that the areas on the immediate borders of the Arabian desert - mesopotamia and syria - slowly became more arabized, not just linguistically and culturally like north africa, but socially and economically.
>Oman is also a desolate desert yet they're relatively stable, as is the UAE.
they're both relatively small, meaning its easier to hold them together. But far more importantly, they have oil money. Lots and lots of oil money.
>>502917
>But far more importantly, they have oil money. Lots and lots of oil money.
Oman has no oil.
Thanks France!
>>498596
Thats because exceptionally, Indian lands had a more "definite" border, even though they where HRE style divided in dozens of little kingdoms.
They also had (and still have) trouble with british set borders.
> Pakistan
> Bangladesh
> Junagadh
> Tamil tigers
You sir, you are a cuck
>>503417
>indian subcontinent notwithstanding
>>502923
it has oil, just not as much as it's neighbours. It's like the 20th largest producer and has a population under 5 million. It's Yemen that has virtually none
>>497627
There is literally nothing wrong with Israel
>>503922
Regardless of whether you think Israel is wrong or not, you can't deny that their existence has caused a lot of unrest.
