The History of East Asia

Sykes -- Picot Agreement

As Iraq lurches deeper into turmoil, Kurdish leaders threaten to break away and declare outright independence, and the militants of the self-styled Islamic State (IS) are reshaping the border between Iraq and Syria, one must look to the history of the region to be able to put these conflicts in full perspective (Muir, 2016). The Sykes -- Picot Agreement was officially signed on May 16, 1916, however the agreement was in the workings for quite some time before it was officially signed. The deal was also known as the Asia Minor Agreement because of the geography that the agreement sought to affect. The Middle East has been a major strategic goal for policy planners and strategist for centuries. An author who published in the Smithsonian summarized the agreement as:

"Even before the final outcome of the Great War has been determined, Great Britain, France, and Russia secretly discussed how they would carve up the Middle East into "spheres of influence" once World War I had ended (Christianson, 2015)."

At the time in which this agreement was being negotiated, the Ottoman Empire had been decline for decades and many representatives in the West saw their opportunity to exert control over the region in order to secure the avenues in which they could access the resources that are concentrated in the region.

From November 1915 to March 1916, representatives of Britain and France were in the process of negotiating an agreement, and Russia was also in the loop regarding the contents of the discussions. However, the treaty was officially being negotiated in secret, out of the view of the public and only key officials were privy to the information. The negotiations eventually became known as the Sykes -- Picot Agreement, after it was named after its lead negotiators, the aristocrats Sir Mark Sykes of England and FranAois Georges-Picot of France (Christianson, 2015). The terms that these leaders constructed, shaped the course of future far beyond anything that could have been possibly realized at the time. The geopolitical consequences of the claims to the Middle East have lingered into today's era.

At the time, Britain and France were already well established in the region in terms of their economic and culture influences and the two men and this obviously gave the men the confidence to presume they could control the region's future. Sykes states "I should like to draw a line from the 'e' in Acre (on the Mediterranean coast) to the last 'k' in Kirkuk (in modern-day Iraq)" and the terms of the specific arrangements included in this deal some of the following points (AFP, 2016):

Territory north of the line would come under French protection, directly or indirectly, and territory to the south would be controlled directly or indirectly by the British.

France would take control of a "Blue Zone" that included Lebanon, the Syrian coast and parts of what is now Turkey.

Within a "Red Zone," Britain would get southern Mesopotamia, or Iraq including Baghdad, along with the Mediterranean ports of Haifa and Acre.

Between the two, an Arab state or a confederation of Arab states was to be created under French and British protection.

Palestine, including Jerusalem, was designated by the color brown and was to be under an international administration.

Imperial Russia and Italy rallied to the accord, but later on it was the revolutionary Russian government that leaked news of the deal in 1917.