Today is the anniversary of ISIS’s least-favorite arbitrarily-drawn line on a map, the Iraq-Syria boundary delineated by the Sykes-Picot agreement. Al-Jazeera has a pretty handy explainer on the agreement, though I think the headline oversells the content a little bit. Here’s another explainer over at Juan Cole’s Informed Comment that is pretty good. Or you can read my long-ago look … Continue reading Today in Middle Eastern history: Sykes-Picot is signed (1916)
Tag: sykes-picot
Sykes-Picot Still Confounds
Hey, I've moved! If you enjoy this post you can find more of my writing at Foreign Exchanges, a Substack newsletter covering a variety of topics in history and foreign affairs. Check it out today and become a subscriber! Jennifer Thea Gordon at National Interest has what is actually not a bad piece challenging the … Continue reading Sykes-Picot Still Confounds
Badly-drawn colonial borders are still a problem
Hey, I've moved! If you enjoy this post you can find more of my writing at Foreign Exchanges, a Substack newsletter covering a variety of topics in history and foreign affairs. Check it out today and become a subscriber! WARNING: VERY LONG A couple of months ago there was a piece in The Atlantic by … Continue reading Badly-drawn colonial borders are still a problem
