What was the purpose of partitioning the Middle East?

The Ottoman Empire had been the leading Islamic state in geopolitical, cultural and ideological terms. The partitioning of the Ottoman Empire after the war led to the domination of the Middle East by Western powers such as Britain and France, and saw the creation of the modern Arab world and the Republic of Turkey.

What are the two biggest environmental issues in the Middle East?

The Middle East and North Africa faces a host of major environmental challenges, from water scarcity and food insecurity to climate change adaptation.

Why are borders drawn?

A border outlines the area that a particular governing body controls. The government of a region can only create and enforce laws within its borders. Borders change over time. Sometimes the people in one region take over another area through violence.

Would better borders have spared the Middle East a century’s worth of violence?

The idea that better borders, drawn with careful attention to the region’s ethnic and religious diversity, would have spared the Middle East a century’s worth of violence is especially provocative at a moment when Western powers weigh the merits of intervention in the region.

Why are the Middle East’s modern borders straight?

Drawing the Middle East’s modern borders on map with a ruler certainly seemed simple. Perhaps that’s why the lines, set in 1916 by Englishman Sir Mark Sykes and Frenchman Francois Georges-Picot were straight ones. The infamous Sykes-Picot Agreement was a pact between Great Britain and France, in the middle of World War I (with Russia’s blessing).

How did European colonization of the Middle East affect the region?

As the European colonial powers drew many of the borders of the modern states in the Middle East after the end of Ottoman rule in the region, European colonial interests and aspirations by and large created a new regional order in the Middle East.

Does drawing borders work in Africa?

Africa — where the creation of new colonial states transformed pre-existing power structures far more radically than in the Middle East — provides perhaps the best evidence that drawing borders is an inevitably ugly business, no matter who does it.