The Secret Deal That Redrew the Middle East
While the war was still being fought, two diplomats carved the Arab world into British and French spheres on a map that still defines the region.
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British diplomat Mark Sykes and French counterpart Francois Georges-Picot negotiated a secret treaty dividing the Ottoman Empire's Arab territories into spheres of influence, with a international zone around Palestine.
The deal was made without consulting the region's inhabitants even as Britain was separately promising Arab leaders independence for rising against the Ottomans.
When the Bolsheviks published the secret text after the Russian Revolution, the contradiction was exposed. The borders it sketched became, roughly, the modern map of the Middle East.
"A pencil line from Acre to Kirkuk divided a civilization. The promises made in 1916 outlasted the men who made them."
The Sykes-Picot Agreement secretly partitioned the Ottoman Arab lands between Britain and France, contradicting parallel promises of Arab independence. When the map became public, it fueled lasting distrust of the West and shaped the borders of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine.
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Three Conflicting Promises
In the same years, Britain promised the Arabs independence (Hussein-McMahon), the French and itself control (Sykes-Picot), and the Zionists a homeland in Palestine (Balfour). The contradictions would haunt the region.
The Map Made Real
After the war, the mandates of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, and Palestine followed lines strikingly close to Sykes-Picot. Artificial borders grouped and split peoples with little regard for local realities.
A Legacy of Distrust
The exposure of the secret deal became a powerful symbol of Western hypocrisy in the Arab world, cited for generations as the moment the modern Middle East was decided by outsiders.