Updated October 2017
With the massive amount of attention paid to the Middle East and the Islamic world, particularly since September 2001, I thought it would be prudent to take a look at why this part of the world always seems to be in crisis mode and a possible solution to the region's problems. While it was published back in 2006, a feature article in the Armed Forces Journal entitled "Blood Borders - How a better Middle East would look" written by Ralph Peters looks positively prescient in its views of how the political boundaries in the Middle East will end up looking in the future. With the ongoing wars in both Syria and Iraq, the conflict between Saudi Arabia and Yemen getting almost no attention from the world's media and the Turkish involvement in the fight along its borders, it would not be surprising if the region would ends up with significantly changed boundaries.
With the massive amount of attention paid to the Middle East and the Islamic world, particularly since September 2001, I thought it would be prudent to take a look at why this part of the world always seems to be in crisis mode and a possible solution to the region's problems. While it was published back in 2006, a feature article in the Armed Forces Journal entitled "Blood Borders - How a better Middle East would look" written by Ralph Peters looks positively prescient in its views of how the political boundaries in the Middle East will end up looking in the future. With the ongoing wars in both Syria and Iraq, the conflict between Saudi Arabia and Yemen getting almost no attention from the world's media and the Turkish involvement in the fight along its borders, it would not be surprising if the region would ends up with significantly changed boundaries.
As a bit of background, Ralph
Peters is a retired United States Army lieutenant colonel who is
widely published the mainstream media and served in military intelligence in
Germany and as a Foreign Area Officer with a specialty in the Soviet Union.
After serving in the U.S. military for 22 years, he retired in 1998.
In his Blood Borders
paper, he opens by noting that international borders, as we currently know
them, are not always just and, as the British found out when they were the
world's main superpower, dividing land masses up does not always take into account
tribal and cultural differences. Keeping in mind that the Shia and Sunni sects of Islam are about as different as night and day and to give you some idea of the complexity of the problems facing the region, here is a map showing the patchwork religious composition of the region between Turkey and Afghanistan:
In fact, some of the world's least culturally sensitive boundaries were drawn in the Middle East during and after the First World War. The origins of these borders were the product of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, also know as the 1916 Asia Minor Agreement, was negotiated by the French and British governments and divided the Middle East as shown on this map:
In fact, some of the world's least culturally sensitive boundaries were drawn in the Middle East during and after the First World War. The origins of these borders were the product of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, also know as the 1916 Asia Minor Agreement, was negotiated by the French and British governments and divided the Middle East as shown on this map:
Another agreement, the Treaty of Sevres which was signed by Great
Britain, France and Italy in August 1920, further carved up the Ottoman Empire
after the First World War as we can see on this map:
Lastly, the 1923 Treaty
of Lausanne established the current state of Turkey and its present day
boundaries as the successor to the Ottoman Empire as shown on this map:
It is this treaty that
has played a significant role in Turkey's long history of sensitivity over
the Kurds who live in the eastern part of the nation.
From this brief snapshot
of Middle East history, we can see how fluid political boundaries have been in
the region over the last century. If we look in more detail at Ralph
Peters' analysis, particularly in terms of the recent military actions in the
region, we'll see that the boundaries are likely to continue to change.
Mr. Peters' analysis
focusses on the region between the Balkan Mountains and the Himalayas.
Let's look at how he would realign the region.
1.) Kurdistan: The author
notes that one of the biggest political injustices in the region is the absence
of an independent Kurdish state, a so-called Free Kurdistan. This ethnic
group, numbering around 36 million in 2012, live in a more-or-less contiguous region of the
Middle East, straddling several nations as shown on this map:
Turkey has the largest
population of Kurds, numbering around 18.1 million or 24.2 percent of Turkey's
total population. Both Iran and Iraq have over 7 million Kurds which
comprise 10.3 percent of Iran's total population and 21.5 percent of Iraq's
total population. Syria has approximately 1.9 million Kurds which make up
about 8.9 percent of Syria's total population. Obviously, this group has
suffered significantly over the past century and a half since they have not
been granted their own homeland and have been persecuted for their interests in forming a sovereign nation. The latest opportunity to offer
political stability to the Kurds came and went after the United States defeated
Saddam Hussein who took every opportunity available to him to torment the
Kurds, part of the reason why the coalition instituted a no-fly zone in Iraq after the Gulf War.
2.) Iraq: Here is a map showing how Iraq is split along
the Sunni (light green) and Shia (dark green) lines:
As the coalition found
out during Operation Iraqi Freedom, post-Hussein Iraq is far from united. The two main
sects of Islam are mortal enemies and will do everything in their power to
eliminate the other, particularly after a decade of control and abuse by the
Sunni/Baathist minority in the nation (despite the fact that the Baathists were
technically secular). As a result of the Shia-Sunni split in Iraq, the
nation would be ultimately be split into three parts; the aforementioned Free Kurdistan, a
Sunni northern Iraq and a Shia southern Iraq.
3.) Saudi Arabia: As we
know, the House of Saud dynasty controls the world's two most important Islamic sites;
Medina and Mecca. This control by the Saudis, along with their vast oil
wealth, has allowed them to project their Wahhabi vision of intolerant Islam
around the globe. To reduce the Saudi control on the Islamic world, the
author suggests that the creation of an Islamic Sacred State (i.e. an Islamic Vatican) would take control of the two sacred sites. This sacred state
would be ruled by a rotating council of Muslims from around the globe. As
well, to reign in the power of the Saudi royal family, Saudi Arabia would lose control
of some of its coastal oil fields that would become part of the Shia state that
is formed in southern Iraq.
4.) Iran: While Iran,
which practised Shia Islam, would lose some of its territory to a Unified
Azerbaijan and Free Kurdistan, it would gain territory in the east where it
would acquire the provinces around Herat in Afghanistan, a traditionally Shia region as shown
on this map:
Lastly, let's take a
brief look at what the author has to say about Israel, the elephant in the
Middle East room. He notes that the greatest hope of instilling peace
with Israel's neighbours would come with a return to its pre-1967 borders.
That said, he observes that it is highly unlikely that this issue will be
solved in our lifetime.
Now, let's close by
looking at two maps; the first shows the current political boundaries in the
Middle East and the second shows the more culturally and ethnically sensitive
boundaries recommended by the author of the analysis:
The long history of
imposing boundaries on the Middle East by outside powers has done nothing to
make the region more stable or less prone to violence. As we've
experienced over the past decade and a half, interference in the region by the
world's sole superpower and its proxies have led to the creation of a political
vacuum which has led directly to the deaths of millions and the displacement of millions
more. As the British learned the hard way in the early decades of the
20th century, nobody wins when a colonial power forces a political solution on
the Middle East. Let's hope that Washington and the Trump Administration pay heed to the lessons of
history. With a significant majority of Iraqis and Syrians wanting nothing to do with a redivision of their nations, while Mr. Peters' analysis is interesting and logical, it would appear that steering clear of further intervention would be the path best taken.
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