FORT BENNING, Ga. -- Exactly 100 years to the day after the Sykes-Picot agreement was signed, Soldiers gathered in Marshall Auditorium, May 16, to hear scholars explain how this agreement shaped the Middle East and the affect it has on the world today.
"We need to talk about how a document signed 100 years ago still impacts the modern world and what we all are engaged in as men and women in uniform," said Col. Patrick Donahoe, chief of staff of the Maneuver Center of Excellence, as he introduced the three speakers.
The Sykes-Picot agreement was a secret pact between Great Britain and France with consent from Russia during World War I, which divided up regions under Ottoman Empire control. The negotiators of the agreement, Sir Mark Sykes of Britain and Francois Georges-Picot of France, created new borders throughout the Middle East, reflecting the interests of the great powers during World War I. Sykes and Picot drew new borders, splitting control of the regions between Great Britain, Russia and France but failed to take ethnic and religious identities into consideration.
"These simple straight lines failed to take into account the tribal and ethnic configurations of a deeply divided region," said Dr. Lawrence Rubin, Ph.D, a professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Georgia Tech. "Many states struggled to really figure out whose nation they were, where did their loyalties lie; is it to the tribe, the newfound state or something broader?" Rubin asked.
The result was a combination of militarily weak states and divided loyalties, leaving leaders struggling for power, said Rubin.
John Gallagher, president of the Institute of Global Engagement, agreed that the Sykes-Picot agreement has had a lasting impact on the region.
"It (Sykes-Picot) doesn't track well with the borders and where people have bonded together to fight for those borders. It creates a sense, inherently, of unequal citizenship and even now we are experiencing security penalty in the region and trust deficit," said Gallagher.
Gallagher explained that the lines drawn by Sykes and Picot are less durable because they were externally drawn.
"It creates a sense that they are open for revision as people strive for what they believe to be a more just society worth fighting for," said Gallagher.
Dr. Sebastian Gorka, Ph.D, professor at Marine Corps University on Irregular Warfare, asserted that Sykes-Picot was not simply a re-drawing of borders.
"This wasn't a re-drawing of borders, it was a mapping of influence after a global war. Which nation would have greater influence?" asked Gorka.
Gorka encouraged the audience to think about the complexity of the situation that the Sykes-Picot agreement originated from.
"One hundred years ago, this was not an ideal solution. But what was the reality of the Ottoman Empire 100 years ago? Could you have done any better if we had given you the job of stabilizing a totally decrepit and internally bankrupt multiethnic organization like the Ottoman Empire? Not exactly an easy task," said Gorka.
Still, the idea the West is responsible for the violence of the Middle East is not true, said Gorka.
"The idea that the West is responsible for the violence is utterly fallacious. There was no silver bullet, there was no way to stabilize that region of the world, whoever was drawing lines on a map."
In closing, Gorka said that we must understand what motivates our enemies in order to defeat them.
"Your kids, my grandkids, will be fighting this war unless we delegitimize the ideology that motivates the recruits," said Gorka.
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