SATISH SHARMA - not just Rotigraphy.: The fighting we still see across Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and the military bases around them did not begin with the missiles that fall every night. It goes back to a secret agreement made in 1916 by two men who treated the region as territory that could simply be divided.

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The fighting we still see across Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and the military bases around them did not begin with the missiles that fall  every night. It goes back to a secret agreement made in 1916 by two men who treated the region as territory that could simply be divided.
Mark Sykes was the British official. He was thirty six, a baronet who had travelled in Ottoman lands and written books about them. He did not speak Arabic or Turkish well, but he spoke with great confidence. Britain at the time wanted oil, control of the Suez Canal and a secure route to India. Sykes offered a simple solution. Draw a line from Acre toward Kirkuk. France would take the area north of the line. Britain would take the area south of it. Palestine was left undecided for later.
François Georges Picot was the French official. He was older, a diplomat and lawyer who had served as consul in Beirut. His family supported colonial policy and France still remembered the setback at Fashoda. Picot saw the Levant as territory that properly belonged under French influence. He wanted a continuous French zone running from the Mediterranean coast toward Mosul.
In 1916 the two men met in secret and produced the Sykes Picot Agreement. It was a practical trade between two empires, not a carefully considered plan for the people who lived there. Russia was informed because the Tsar wanted control of Constantinople and the Turkish Straits, the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, so Russian ships could move freely from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean. The Arab leaders were not told the full truth. Sharif Hussein was encouraged to fight with promises of independence while the map was already being drawn.
The agreement itself was straightforward. France would control the northern coastal areas of Syria, Lebanon and parts of Cilicia with influence extending toward Mosul. Britain would control Baghdad, Basra, the approach to the Gulf and the ports of Haifa and Acre. Palestine was placed under a vague international administration because neither side would allow the other to hold Jerusalem alone. The real priorities in the document were railways, tariffs and oil.
In November 1917 the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia. They opened the old Tsarist files and published the secret treaties, including Sykes Picot and the earlier promise of Constantinople and the Straits to Russia. They did this to show that the war was being fought for territorial gains rather than any higher principle, and to justify their own decision to pull Russia out of the fighting. By publishing the documents and renouncing the claims, they also removed the threat that Russia would take Istanbul and the Straits from Turkey. Britain and France continued with their part of the arrangement anyway.
After the war the sketch was turned into actual states. France occupied Syria and created a larger Lebanon around the Christian communities it favoured. Britain combined three former Ottoman provinces into Iraq, placed Abdullah east of the Jordan River and kept Palestine under its own mandate. The borders were drawn for administrative convenience rather than local political realities.
That is one reason the problems remain. Iraq was assembled as a single state from different regions. Syria still divides along lines that first appeared as French administrative zones. Lebanon continues to manage a political system built around communal balances rather than a single national identity. Palestine remains the unresolved part of the original agreement. The missiles, refugees, armed groups and foreign bases of today operate inside borders and political structures that were first set out in that 1916 map.
The lasting effect is not mystical. It is the practical result of two officials drawing lines on paper without the consent or full knowledge of the people who would have to live inside them. Those lines outlasted both men and continue to shape the conflicts that take place on the ground.