When ISIS
announced the founding of the Islamic State, its propaganda machine made a big
deal of the fact that it was scuppering the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 that was
to shape the political map of the post-Ottoman Middle East. This agreement was
negotiated between the British and the French, with Russian complicity, with a
view to establishing each Western power’s sphere of influence and ensuring that
others kept their noses out.
It was not,
of course, the first time that the imperial powers had drawn lines on maps of
regions far away from home.
