[punkrex]

Honestly to explain the nuance of the situation would take too long and isn't super easy to reduce to right and wrong. The background required to understand how syria came to be is not something that can be sufficiently and succinctly explained in a comment thread.

Attempts to simplify it run into the exact issues you've noticed above. You're bias comes into play which conflicts with various other peoples PoV, and it all devolves into a shouting match.

Also the pipeline/Syke-Picot people will interject themselves into any conversation about the middle east because "this one simple event explains everything" is appealing to a ton of folks.

[knz]

> Also the pipeline/Syke-Picot people will interject themselves into any conversation about the middle east because "this one simple event explains everything" is appealing to a ton of folks.

Do the "Sykes-Picot people" attribute everything to that agreement or just view it as a logical starting point for many of the current political problems seen in the Middle East that can not be attributed to other factors (geography, sectarian conflict, control of natural resources, migrant populations that defy modern borders, a history of historical conflicts/slavery, and/or pressure from environmental, political, and cultural changes)?

Sykes-Picot isn't exactly a fringe internet theory.... any textbook on the modern Middle East is going to devote substantial time to it.

[punkrex]

I dislike it personally because it robs any agency on the part of the locals and ascribes everything happening because of Westerners. I think the simplistic view presented in textbooks is wrong. Sykes-Picot never really came into effect and as much as the British/French tried to control the area their attempts at control were co-opted by savvy local nationalist parties to establish local nation states after the collapse of the Ottoman empire.

The map of the modern day middle east has more in common with Ottoman Provinces then it does with the Lines of Control that Sykes-Picot proposed. Now I am not trying to absolve the west of all it's guilt, it did a number of shitty and horrific things, but I think the narrative that the West screwed up the Middle East ignores both a significant history of conflict in the area over land and resources, as well as the political situation on the ground being influenced more by locals then outsiders. I am also not saying that colonialism is not a horrific thing, I think that efforts elsewhere(Africa, Asia) started earlier and were more heavy handed.

The reason why Sykes-Picot appeals to so many people is that it provides a simplistic political narrative for why the region is so messed up, and allows blame to be shifted on a politically convenient scapegoat. Hopefully as we shift away from the "Great Man"(and I think Westerners trying to impose their will on the Middle East were bad folks) theory of history we will come to view these simple theories as useless and try to understand the nuance of how the modern Middle East came to be as not something that two Westerners in 1917 could ever hope to dictate.

[knz]

Fair enough - as you indicate, nuance is important and sadly it's often lacking from many media articles and debate these days.