re: #469 CuriousLurker

Mission accomplished.

Yeah, their mention of the Sykes-Picot Agreement made me immediately uneasy as it goes back to the defeat & breakup of the Ottoman Empire and was a treaty¹ quickly followed by the Balfour Declaration, then later Mandatory Palestine. Those of you familiar with your 20th century Mideast history will know that these things also eventually led to the establishment of the State of Israel, which declared its independence on the same day—May 14, 1948—that the British Mandate for Palestine was due to end (at midnight).

KT and satt were poking fun at me last night for going back to the early and mid 20th century, perhaps thinking that I was just playing some kind of game. I wasn’t—you can draw a direct line from that time to the present with ISIS propaganda outlets actually boasting that “the organization is in the process of restoring the caliphate, and erasing the lines secretly drawn by French diplomat Franois George-Picot and his British counterpart Mark Sykes before the end of World War I.”

As a matter of fact, it was even mentioned and predicted earlier this year by the Brookings Institutution: The End of Sykes-Picot? Reflections on the Prospect of the Arab State System (PDF)

You may take them seriously or just consider it pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking, but either way it could cause a shitload of trouble all across the region.

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1.) It was right before this treaty that the British first discussed Zionism (at the cabinet level).

And someone mentioned this beginning around WWI yesterday. A lot of this goes back a very long time. Groups like ISIS think about these things while Americans continue to ignore the deeper historical context and look for quick and easy macho military solutions through military hardware.