HOW DO MAPS PRIORITIZING IMPERIAL INTERESTS STOKE TERRORISM TODAY?

Kate McKeough (WHS)

When we think about maps today, we think about nations and provinces separated by borders, defined by boundaries which are fixed in place. But in the early and mid 20th century, when empires around the world still held significant influence and power, maps were displays of potential. They illustrated countries to dominate, territories to expand into, and competition to eliminate. The people of the places under empires’ spheres of influence were very rarely considered, while the division of territory was prioritized. Diplomats, politicians, and cartographers alike pored over maps, reimagining the borders which would define lives. But what happens when, over a century later, those borders have modern day consequences?

On May 16th, 1916, a secret agreement was ratified between France and Britain, with assent from the Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Italy. The agreement in question was a map of the Middle East, crudely and simplistically divided using a ruler and blue and red coloured pens. British and French diplomats Sir Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot represented the interests of their respective empires, creating the Sykes-Picot Agreement based on this map. The British and French empires had plans to split the Middle East after the fall of the Ottoman empire, post World War l. It was decided that the French would take the North under their sphere of influence, and the British would gain the South. The nature of this agreement is epitomized in a quote from Sykes to the British Foreign Secretary, when asked about the border agreement: “I would like to draw a line from the ‘e’ in Acre to the last ‘k’ in Kirkuk,” Sykes stated, bringing to mind a fiction writer creating a fantasy world from their imagination, rather than a diplomat whose actions have real consequences on the lives of real people. After the war, this abstract line became the border between Iraq, Syria, and Jordan, splitting up communities and forcing groups together that were previously separated by religious, ethnic, and linguistic divides. This ‘divide and rule’ tactic allowed Britain to maintain complete control by exacerbating ethnic and religious differences and not allowing any one group to get too powerful. The agreement was doubly malicious as the British had promised, in the event of the Ottoman empire falling, to support King Hussein and his sons in the formation of an Arab state. Thinking they were fighting for a future with a united Arab nation, the Arabs secured key victories for the Allies at the port city of Aqaba and aided in the capture of Jerusalem. Furthermore, the British pledged to support the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine in the Balfour Declaration of 1917. They did this in order to gain the support of the Jews in the fight against the Ottomans. At this point, the British had promised nearly the same set of land to both the Jews and the Arabs, all the while knowing the land was to be theirs, as denoted by the secret Sykes-Picot agreement. The duplicity of the British was revealed just weeks after the Balfour agreement, when the Imperial Russian government was removed from power following the Russian Revolution of 1917. The Imperial Russian government had helped approve the Sykes-Picot agreement, and then had filed it away in state archives. The new Bolshevik leaders discovered the secret map, acted as whistle-blowers, and published it. Because of this, much controversy surrounded the League of Nations mandates for Iraq and Syria as they were given to Britain and France. The mandates didn’t last for long, with Iraq being granted independence in 1932, and Syria’s mandate being lifted in 1943. However, the map’s impact remained in the form of its borders between Syria and Iraq, which were formalized at the San Remo Conference of 1920. Today, we can still see the effects of that fateful SykesPicot map. One of the main goals of the Islamic State terrorist group, more commonly known as ISIS, is to restore Muslim unity in the Middle East. ISIS believe that this unity was taken away by imperial and Western intervention. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS from 2014 until his death in 2019, said “This blessed advance will not stop until we hit the last nail in the coffin of the Sykes–Picot conspiracy.” Furthermore, in a 2014 ISIS propaganda video named ‘The End of Sykes-Picot’, militants bulldozed a part of the SyriaIraq border in a symbolic show of resistance against imperialism. This shows the importance of the SykesPicot agreement in the propaganda machine of ISIS, as

they spread the message of being a post colonial, post national group who aim to unify the Middle East. In truth, Syria and Iraq have often been ruled separately throughout history; no ruler has, arguably, truly unified the Middle East since the death of Muhammed in 632. The overarching message of ISIS has limited basis in fact, but the widespread destruction that was caused in the name of dismantling imperial interference is indisputable. While the Sykes-Picot map is obviously not solely responsible for the turmoil seen in the Middle East today, it does offer some explanation. It also is useful as a key example in displaying the deterioration of Western-Middle Eastern relations. The Middle East, and more specifically Iraq and Syria, remains politically unstable and in a state of disarray. These countries are forever changed by the empires of two nations who prioritized increasing their territory over people’s lives. D.H Lawrence stated, “The map appears more real to us than the land.” This seems fitting for an empire which strove for greatness through territorial expansion, and perhaps even more fitting for Sykes and Picot, two diplomats who saw the map as merely a piece of paper to draw a line on.

Bibliography

Awan, A. (Jan 1, 2016). ISIS and the Abuse of History. History Today. https://www.historytoday.com/archive/ isis-and-abuse-history Awan, A. (May 16, 2016). Architects of Failure: 100 Years of Sykes-Picot. History Today. https://www. historytoday.com/architects-failure-100-years-sykespicot Wright, R. (April 30, 2016). How the Curse of SykesPicot Still Haunts the Middle East. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/howthe-curse-of-sykes-picot-still-haunts-the-middle-east Wikipedia. (May 8, 1916). Map of Sykes-Picot Agreement showing Eastern Turkey in Asia, Syria and Western Persia, and areas of control and influence agreed between the British and the French. Royal Geographical Society, 1910-15. Signed by Mark Sykes and Francois Georges-Picot. Wikimedia. https:// commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MPK1-26_Sykes_ Picot_Agreement_Map_signed_8_May_1916.jpg