Why the Middle East’s Borders Guarantee Forever Wars

lesson: never let the British draw borders

I'm Syrian-Lebanese on my father's side, I remember first being told that we were Syrian, and then being told we were Lebanese, the answer kept changing depending on the family member I asked. I was very confused why there wasn't a consistent answer and would wonder "are we Lebanese or Syrian?". As I got older and learned more about the Sykes–Picot borders I realized why the inconsistency was there and the answer to which heritage we were was "yes".

People in the West aren't usually very familiar with the 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement, but I remember being shocked at hearing it mentioned by some ISIS fighters during their period of territorial conquest (c. 2014). A bunch of them had just crossed from Iraq into Syria and one of them said something like "F– the Sykes–Picot Agreement, this is just a line they drew in the sand". The West might not remember, but for some in the region the resentment is so deep that even 100+ years later these arbitrary choices still have major consequences. edit: I found it! It's from Ben Anderson for VICE News, titled "Bulldozing the Border Between Iraq and Syria" and posted on August 13, 2014. Two mentions start at 2:50 in that video: "We don't believe in the Sykes-Picot agreement" and "We've broken Sykes-Picot" as they bulldoze the border (not exactly what I remembered, but same idea).

Iraqi guy here hi everyone please don’t trust anything the media tells you , iraq is now much safer than before everybody’s is more than welcome to visit and experience the history and the culture and we would be so happy to see anyone from around the globe ❤️

You can tell this video isn’t gonna be controversial because it has 0 dislikes on it!

I think the most concise way to convey the difficulties in the area are to overlay maps of geography, ethnicity, culture, historical claims, and natural resources. Doing this reveals there is no combination that doesn't leave a very large number of people very angry about something.

I like how we kinda just have Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait chillin'.

I'm an Israeli. It's a really good video. I was suprised to understand the dinamics between Egypt and the arab monarchies in the gulf. We Israelis tend to focus on our own middle eastern issues, and rarely give attention to those of other countries. We do only when it matters to us (e.g. when the Houthis fired balistic missiles towards the UAE while our president visited). I did notice 2 inaccuracies: The video fails to address the fact that the British Empire limited Jews migration to Palestine, or aliya. Additionally, the relations between Israel and the US began to foster after 1967, as France withdrew its weapons support after Israel striked first.

It’s hard to believe they were all part of a single empire at one time or another. The Persian Empire, The Byzantine Empire, The Ottoman Empire.

If aliens land and tell humanity that Earth is their “protectorate” — the British have shown us what that means.

Mosul, Kirkuk and some parts of Syria has significant turkmen population which the narrator conveniently fails to mention in his charts. He demonstrates kurdish entities as one while categorizes arabs as shia vs sunni whenever convenient.

It is sad and bleak when most of the commenters here only seem to talk of the past that they themselves never lived in...but never would they talk about making the future better for everyone including themselves....

As a Syrian, it's nice to see this all explained objectively and with no bias. They did teach us some of this in school, but it had bias, and mainly focused on Syria. Keep it up RLL!

I am blown away by the quality of this mini documentary. It’s amazing how much valuable information is weaved together in just over 37 minutes under a coherent narrative without overwhelming the audience with details. Respect!

I disagree, Borders are not the only cause of why the Middle East is so unstable, it's also very important due to the Tribalistic Mindset of the arabs

The elephant in the room is that these wars are largely motivated by religious intolerance, tribalism, and mutual hatred. By using the term religious intolerance, I'm not just talking about interfaith Muslim, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Christian, etc. wars and violence. I'm also talking about intrareligious violence, like Sunni vs Shiate vs Druz, etc. violence. Boundaries have been gerrymandered throughout history in the entire world, artificially separating homogenous groups or uniting peoples of disparate ethnicities, languages, traditions, etc. under the same national flag. But we don't see the same level of perpetual violence in any other part of the world. There's more at play here than just modern state boundry drawing and oil. The perpetual cycle of violence in the Middle East can't just be blamed on the historical European powers and Israel. This is a simplistic explanation.

I learned more about the history of the Middle East in this single 37-minute video than I did in all my years at school! Crazy how easy this actually is to learn and understand once you include visuals alongside the words.

I love how RLL is such a good creator he makes even the sex comment bots break character and compliment his vids

This is a great presentation dude 👍Thank you

Shutting down the Suez Canal for 8 years is a key detail thats never mentioned during any talks/discussions of the 6-Day War (I wonder how many history books go into details about it, And the impact of it? ). Even in this video he mentions it quickly, but this video is about the whole region and goes over years of history & major events in the region, not about the 6-Day War (plenty other videos on that). That 8 year closure of the Canal impacted economies among many other things for countries in the region and worldwide.