On May 16, 1916, while the First World War raged across Europe and the Ottoman Empire fought for its survival, two mid-level diplomats—Sir Mark Sykes, a British baronet and MP, and François Georges-Picot, a former French consul in Beirut—signed an agreement that would shape the Middle East for the next century and beyond. Working with lines drawn on a map with a chinagraph pencil, the two men divided the Ottoman Empire’s Arab territories into British and French spheres of influence, creating the framework for the borders of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine. These borders, drawn with minimal regard for the ethnic, religious, tribal, and geographic realities of the region, became the political architecture of the modern Middle East—an architecture so flawed that its consequences echo in every headline from Baghdad to Damascus to Gaza.
The Sykes-Picot Agreement is not merely a historical curiosity. It is the founding document of a regional order that has produced a century of instability: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Lebanese civil war, the Iraqi sectarian catastrophe, the Syrian disintegration, and the rise of ISIS—which, in its first propaganda video after capturing Mosul in 2014, showed a bulldozer erasing the Iraq-Syria border while a narrator declared: “This is not the first border we will break.” The line being bulldozed was, quite literally, the Sykes-Picot line.
Context¶
The Ottoman Empire in Decline¶
By 1916, the Ottoman Empire—which had governed the Arab Middle East for four centuries—was in its death throes. The empire had entered World War I on Germany’s side in November 1914, and British and French strategists were already planning for its partition. The “Eastern Question”—what to do with the Ottoman Empire’s territories as it declined—had preoccupied European diplomats for over a century. Now, with the empire’s defeat appearing increasingly likely, the question demanded an answer.
The territories at stake were vast and strategically vital. Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) contained enormous oil reserves, already recognized as essential for naval power. Palestine held religious significance for Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Syria and Lebanon were objects of French ambition, rooted in centuries of French cultural and economic ties with the Levantine Christian communities. The Arabian Peninsula, largely desert, was strategically important for its proximity to the Suez Canal, Britain’s imperial lifeline to India.
Competing Promises¶
The British government, pursuing wartime alliances with minimal coordination, made a series of promises that were mutually contradictory:
The Hussein-McMahon Correspondence (1915-1916): Sir Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner in Egypt, exchanged letters with Sharif Hussein of Mecca, promising British support for an independent Arab kingdom in exchange for an Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire. The exact boundaries of the promised kingdom were deliberately vague—McMahon excluded certain coastal areas but left the interior ambiguous. The Arabs interpreted the correspondence as a promise of independence for the entire Fertile Crescent; the British later claimed the promises were more limited.
The Sykes-Picot Agreement (May 1916): Simultaneously, Britain and France secretly agreed to divide the same territories between themselves. The contradiction with the promises made to Hussein was stark and, to the British government, apparently untroubling.
The Balfour Declaration (November 1917): British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour wrote to Lord Rothschild, declaring British support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” This promise conflicted with both the assurances given to the Arabs and the Sykes-Picot arrangement, which had designated Palestine for international administration.
These three sets of promises—Arab independence, Anglo-French partition, and a Jewish homeland—were fundamentally incompatible. The attempt to honor all three, or the selective betrayal of each, produced a legacy of bitterness and conflict that has never been resolved.
The Agreement¶
The Negotiators¶
Sir Mark Sykes (1879-1919) was a colorful, energetic, and arguably overconfident Conservative MP who had traveled extensively in the Ottoman Empire and fancied himself an expert on the region. He was 36 years old, with no formal training in diplomacy or Middle Eastern affairs, and held no ministerial position—an extraordinary choice for negotiations that would determine the fate of millions.
François Georges-Picot (1870-1951) was a career diplomat from a prominent French colonial family. His father had been instrumental in expanding French influence in West Africa; François carried the same imperialist conviction to the Levant. He was determined to secure Syria and Lebanon for France, viewing the region as France’s rightful sphere based on centuries of cultural and religious ties with the Maronite Christians.
The Map¶
The agreement divided the Ottoman Arab territories into five zones:
Zone A (French direct control): The coastal strip of Syria and Lebanon—roughly from Adana through Beirut to Sidon. France would exercise direct administration.
Zone B (French sphere of influence): The Syrian interior, including Damascus, Aleppo, and Mosul. An Arab state or states would exist under French influence and protection.
Zone Red (British direct control): Southern Mesopotamia, from Baghdad to Basra, including the vital port of Basra on the Persian Gulf. Britain would exercise direct administration.
Zone B (British sphere of influence): A vast area from the Sinai to Kirkuk, including Transjordan and much of the Arabian Peninsula’s northern fringe. An Arab state or confederation would exist under British influence.
Zone Brown (International administration): Palestine, including Jerusalem, would be administered by an international condominium—a concession to the religious sensitivities of the Holy Land that was never implemented.
The dividing line—drawn roughly from the “e” in Acre on the Mediterranean coast to the last “k” in Kirkuk in Mesopotamia—cut straight across the Arab world, separating communities, tribes, and trade routes that had been connected for centuries. Sykes reportedly drew the line by pointing at the map and saying: “I should like to draw a line from the ‘e’ in Acre to the last ‘k’ in Kirkuk.”
What the Map Ignored¶
The Sykes-Picot map ignored virtually every local reality:
Ethnic diversity: The territories contained Arabs, Kurds, Turkmens, Assyrians, Armenians, and others. The agreement’s borders cut the Kurdish population among four future states (Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Iran), ensuring that Kurdish national aspirations would destabilize the region for a century.
Religious complexity: Sunni and Shia Muslims, Maronite and Orthodox Christians, Druze, Alawites, Yazidis, and Jews lived in intricate patterns of settlement that no straight line could accommodate. The French zone combined the predominantly Sunni cities of Damascus and Aleppo with the Alawite mountains and Christian Lebanon. The British zone combined the Shia south of Iraq with the Sunni center and the Kurdish north.
Tribal and economic networks: Trade routes, pastoral migration patterns, and tribal territories that had functioned for centuries were severed by the new borders. Bedouin tribes that had moved freely across the Syrian-Iraqi steppe suddenly found their grazing lands divided between two colonial administrations.
Geographic logic: Mesopotamia (Iraq) was an artificial construction joining three Ottoman provinces—Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra—that had never formed a single administrative unit. Syria was separated from Lebanon, despite their economic interdependence, to create a Christian-majority state that France could more easily dominate.
Aftermath¶
The Mandate System¶
The Sykes-Picot Agreement was modified but not fundamentally altered by the postwar settlement. The League of Nations mandate system—created to provide a veneer of international legitimacy over what was essentially colonial partition—assigned the territories largely along Sykes-Picot lines:
- France received mandates over Syria and Lebanon (1920). The French carved Lebanon out of greater Syria to create a Christian-majority state under French patronage—a decision that would produce sectarian conflict for decades.
- Britain received mandates over Iraq, Transjordan, and Palestine (1920). Britain created Iraq by combining the three Ottoman provinces of Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra, and installed the Hashemite prince Faisal (who had been expelled from Damascus by the French) as king. Transjordan was carved off from Palestine and given to Faisal’s brother Abdullah.
The Arab populations who had been promised independence instead found themselves under European colonial administration. The betrayal of the wartime promises—particularly the Hussein-McMahon correspondence—generated a lasting distrust of Western intentions that shapes Arab political culture to this day.
Creating Iraq¶
Iraq’s creation was perhaps the agreement’s most consequential legacy. The three Ottoman provinces combined under British mandate had never been a single political entity:
- Mosul in the north was predominantly Kurdish, with Turkmen and Assyrian minorities, oriented toward Anatolia and the trade routes of southeastern Turkey
- Baghdad in the center was predominantly Sunni Arab, the seat of Ottoman provincial government and the commercial hub of Mesopotamia
- Basra in the south was predominantly Shia Arab, oriented toward the Persian Gulf and the Shia holy cities of Najaf and Karbala
The British installed a Sunni Arab monarchy over this population, despite the fact that Shia Arabs constituted approximately 55% of the population and Kurds another 20%. This arrangement—Sunni minority rule over a Shia majority, with a restive Kurdish population in the north—proved durably unstable. Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-dominated Ba’ath Party held Iraq together through totalitarian violence; its removal by the American invasion in 2003 released sectarian forces that the Sykes-Picot borders had compressed but never resolved.
The Palestine Problem¶
The Balfour Declaration’s promise of a Jewish “national home” in Palestine created an intractable conflict that Sykes-Picot had not anticipated but had enabled. Under the British Mandate, Jewish immigration accelerated—particularly after the rise of Nazism in Europe—producing tensions with the Arab majority. Britain, unable to reconcile its promises to both Jews and Arabs, eventually handed the problem to the United Nations. The partition of Palestine (1947) and the establishment of the state of Israel (1948) produced a conflict that remains unresolved, with Palestinians displaced by the creation of a state built on territory that the Sykes-Picot framework had designated for international administration.
Legacy¶
A Century of Instability¶
The borders drawn by Sykes and Picot have proven remarkably durable—and remarkably destructive. Despite a century of coups, revolutions, invasions, and civil wars, the basic territorial framework of the Middle East remains largely as it was drawn in 1916:
- Lebanon’s sectarian system, designed by France to maintain Christian dominance, produced a civil war (1975-1990) that killed approximately 120,000 people and has left the country with a dysfunctional confessional political system
- Syria’s artificial unity—combining Alawites, Sunni Arabs, Kurds, Druze, and Christians under a single state—was maintained by authoritarian regimes until the civil war that began in 2011, which killed over 500,000 people and displaced half the population
- Iraq’s Sunni-Shia-Kurdish divisions have produced war, Sanctions, invasion, occupation, civil war, and the rise of ISIS
- The Kurdish question remains unresolved, with 30-40 million Kurds—the world’s largest stateless nation—divided among Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran
The ISIS Bulldozer¶
When the Islamic State captured Mosul in June 2014 and erased the Iraq-Syria border, it was making an explicitly anti-Sykes-Picot statement. ISIS propaganda framed the group’s conquests as the restoration of a unified Islamic caliphate that the Western powers had dismembered in 1916. The slogan “The End of Sykes-Picot” resonated across the Arab world—not because most Arabs supported ISIS, but because the artificiality of the region’s borders is universally acknowledged.
Beyond Blame¶
It is tempting to attribute all of the Middle East’s problems to Sykes-Picot—and many commentators do precisely that. The reality is more complex. The agreement created a flawed framework, but the subsequent century of authoritarian governance, Cold War intervention, oil wealth distortion, and regional power competition has shaped the Middle East at least as much as the original border lines. States that received similarly artificial borders elsewhere—in Africa, in Central Asia—have not all descended into the same degree of conflict.
Nevertheless, the Sykes-Picot Agreement remains the founding sin of the modern Middle East—the moment when European powers, pursuing their own strategic interests with minimal regard for the people who actually lived in the region, drew lines on a map that determined the fate of millions. The consequences of those lines—drawn in wartime by two men who had never governed the territories they divided—continue to unfold.
Sources & Further Reading¶
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A Line in the Sand: The Anglo-French Struggle for the Middle East, 1914-1948 by James Barr — The definitive account of the Sykes-Picot Agreement and its implementation, drawing on British and French archives to reveal the cynicism and improvisation behind the partition.
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A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East by David Fromkin — Essential history of how wartime diplomacy produced the modern Middle East, covering Sykes-Picot, the Balfour Declaration, and the mandate system in rich detail.
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The Modern Middle East by James L. Gelvin — A comprehensive textbook that places Sykes-Picot within the broader context of Middle Eastern modernization and state formation.
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Quicksand: America’s Pursuit of Power in the Middle East by Geoffrey Wawro — Traces the long arc of Western intervention in the Middle East from World War I through Iraq, showing how the region’s problems accumulated across a century of external interference.