At the end of WWI, western powers subdivided the Middle East as per the Sykes-Picot Agreement (map above), leading to a century of conflicts (map via Rob's Webstek).
If the borders had been drawn (or could be redrawn) as follows -
- giving consideration to ethnic distributions, some of those conflicts might have been eased. More at the New York Times, via Rob's (five-year-old) Webstek.
More maps of Syria can be found at the excellent map blog www.midafternoonmap.com. And to play the devil's advocate: here is an intriguing article supporting that borders should not be blamed for problems in the Middle East.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Rob. I had not seen the Atlantic article before.
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