[video=youtube;JzYF1AyFHgk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzYF1AyFHgk[/video]
[QUOTE]The dramatic developments in Iraq have their underpinnings in a secret, nearly century-old accord between a British colonel and a French consul. In the Sykes-Picot Agreement, Mark Sykes of Britain and George-Picot France agreed upon the division of Ottoman Empire territories in 1916.
The catch: At that time, the Ottoman Empire still existed. Its caliph, or spiritual-political leader, was at that time Sultan Mehmed V (1908-1918), followed by Mehmed VI (1918-1922).
The political element of the Ottoman caliphate ended in November 1922 through the founding of Turkey by Kemal Ataturk; spiritually, the caliphate held on until March 1924, when, at Ataturk's initiative, Turkey's parliament formally abolished it.
Carving up the Middle East
Both Britain and France had large interests in the lands between the Mediterranean Sea and Persian Gulf. London's strategists had recognized by the early 20th century how important it would be to have access to petroleum production sites. The region also lay directly between Britain and what was then British India.
Paris, by contrast, had growing business relations with the large harbor cities of the Mediterranean: Beirut, Sidon and Tyrus. Securing access to them was the goal of the Sykes-Picot Agreement.
The fate of locals in those areas was all the same to the great powers. With a stroke of the pen, Sykes firmly drew a hooking line - from roughly Kirkuk, Iraq to Haifa, Israel - which gave France control of northern territories and Britain control of the south.
"The artificiality of state formation has caused numerous conflicts over the last few decades," said Henner Fürtig, director of the Institute of Middle East Studies at GIGA research institute in Hamburg. "These questions haven't been solved for a century and burst open again and again, in a cycle, like now with the ISIS advance in northern Iraq."
Return of the caliphate
The agreement resulted in a region with states composed of a variety of ethnic groups and religions. The terror group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) would like to erase those borders, calling for an all-Islamic state in the form of a greater caliphate. The group's name makes it clear, Fürtig said, that they hope to undo the boundaries they view as Western-imperialist impositions.
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[url]http://www.dw.de/sykes-picot-drew-middle-easts-arbitrary-borders/a-17734768[/url]
On the upside, the public is now having a greater understanding forced on them of how much of the Middle East's geography and warfare history boils down to arbitrary lines drawn on maps by colonial powers with no real claim to the land or concern for the people living there.
Whenever people bring up extremism, I point to the "agreements" post WW1 with the carving up of the former Ottoman territories, and then when the European powers left they just put someone who they liked in charge.
How fitting that this year is the one hundred years anniversary of the start of the First World War, a war that lead to the arbitrary division of the Middle East.
I am glad that the border is finally fixed, though not in ways I would prefer... It took almost 100 years to get fixed...
What makes it slightly ironic is that the United States actually wanted to divide the Ottoman Empire based upon the desired futures of the people that actually inhabited it (see: the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King-Crane_Commission]King-Crane Commission[/url]). I mean we always get flak for being the World Police, but in a way it's like our interventions in the Middle East are like us trying to clean up a mess we never wanted to make.
[QUOTE=Fhenexx;45251403]What makes it slightly ironic is that the United States actually wanted to divide the Ottoman Empire based upon the desired futures of the people that actually inhabited it (see: the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King-Crane_Commission]King-Crane Commission[/url]). I mean we always get flak for being the World Police, but in a way it's like our interventions in the Middle East are like us trying to clean up a mess we never wanted to make.[/QUOTE]
In a way, except it's not about that at all, it's about securing the U.S. hegemony and trying not to look stupid in the eyes of the world.
[B]SENSATIONALISM [/B]
[QUOTE=laserguided;45251408]In a way, except it's not about that at all, it's about securing the U.S. hegemony and trying not to look stupid in the eyes of the world.[/QUOTE]
I'm not saying it's [I]that[/I] simple and that we're entirely innocent janitors of peace or something like that. My point here is that "Hey, America could have fixed this! Not [I]everything[/I] is our fault!"
Americans can do good things too!
So this Ottoman militia is claiming the entire middle east as theirs?
[IMG]http://www.dw.de/image/0,,17734997_401,00.gif[/IMG]
[QUOTE=Hollosoulja;45251460]So this Ottoman militia is claiming the entire middle east as theirs?
[IMG]http://www.dw.de/image/0,,17734997_401,00.gif[/IMG][/QUOTE]
Yes, they declared leader of Jihad, and they literally are the worlds leading jihadist organization.
[QUOTE=laserguided;45251470]Yes, they declared leader of Jihad, and they literally are the worlds leading jihadist organization.[/QUOTE]
What does that mean for NATO and the UN?
[QUOTE=Hollosoulja;45251496]What does that mean for NATO and the UN?[/QUOTE]
Caliphate vs world
[QUOTE=laserguided;45251499]Caliphate vs world[/QUOTE]
How often in history has david defeated goliath?
[QUOTE=Hollosoulja;45251460]So this Ottoman militia is claiming the entire middle east as theirs?
[IMG]http://www.dw.de/image/0,,17734997_401,00.gif[/IMG][/QUOTE]
No.
Remember the Arabs Lawrence of Arabia was helping? Those Arabs who were betrayed by the British. They wanted all that area for the Arabs and got next to nothing, despite them fighting for it.
These guys are more similar to those Arabs, though not exactly the same, it is with that bitter sentiment with which the middle east views us.
[QUOTE=Hollosoulja;45251525]How often in history has david defeated goliath?[/QUOTE]
Only when he gets a lucky 360 headshot in with a highly lethal weapon on the skull of a big dude, followed by God posting the MLG dubstep video as his own.
[quote]The terror group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) would like to erase those borders, calling for an all-Islamic state in the form of a greater caliphate.*[/quote]
*only if the muslims inside the caliphate are of the acceptable version of islam, otherwise they're to be slaughtered like the dogs they are
ya isis, fixing things by killing everybody that doesn't agree with them, cas thats never caused any problems in the middle east
[url=http://gulfanalysis.wordpress.com/2013/12/30/dammit-it-is-not-unravelling-an-historians-rebuke-to-misrepresentations-of-sykes-picot/]A rebuttal to the Sykes-Picot theory.[/url]
A few key points (read the whole thing):
[quote]By way of contrast, the details of demarcation in the interior – where a more informal form of British and French influence was envisaged – was accorded less importance at the time. Furthermore, scholars such as Eliezer Tauber and Nelida Fuccaro have convincingly demonstrated that local politics, not the rough lines of Sykes Picot, governed the final details regarding the disposal of border areas between Syria and Iraq like Abu Kamal and Jabal Sinjar during the 1920s. Conversely, local resistance against Sykes Picot at the time was mainly framed as a protest against the way in which the agreement divided what was perceived as “historical Syria” by isolating the coastal fringe including Lebanon and the Alawite lands from Damascus. The desire for union between Iraq and Syria, by way of contrast, was not such a central theme.[/quote]
[quote]What is often not realized is the extent to which the agreement merely put on the map patterns of special administrative arrangements that had been in the making under the Ottomans for decades, if not longer. Thus, special Ottoman arrangements for Palestine and Lebanon date back to the nineteenth century: the special administrative district of Lebanon dating to 1861 and the special district of Jerusalem established in the 1870s. As for Iraq, it had been separated entirely from Syria in administrative terms almost since the beginning of Islam – and had for long periods been ruled from Baghdad as a single charge.[/quote]
[quote]It is often forgotten that most of the Sykes-Picot agreement was never implemented. ... What remains is the rough line of division between Syria and Iraq, but again that broadly reflected indigenous patterns of administrative subdivision and was not really implemented to the letter in any case.[/quote]
[quote] OK, so we have hordes of ultra-radical Islamists occupying points on either side of the Syrian-Iraqi border. They talk pan-Islamic and sometimes act pan-Islamic. Isn’t that decisive proof that the borders of the past, whatever their exact historical origins, are falling apart? Far from it. They are receiving more attention today because everyone’s eyes are on Syria, but back in 2005 pan-Islamic movements also operated in this area, including an Islamic emirate in al-Qaim near the Syrian-Iraqi border.[/quote]
Youtube is going too far with it's war on terror. The video above was not even violent and it was suspended. I've seen way worse shit on youtube.
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