The Problem With the Middle East's Borders

this video was made possible by curiosity stream watch a full-length exclusive companion video to this one on nebula which you can access by signing up for the curiosity stream nebula bundle deal for just over a dollar a month at curiositystream.com real life floor this region of the world goes by many different names but the middle east or western asia are the most common ones that we hear in the english language whatever you want to call it it's an enormous place when excluding russia the middle east is bigger than the rest of europe is and just like europe it's an amazingly diverse place the middle east isn't just this monolithic thing that a lot of people in the west seem to think it is it has huge divisions between different religious beliefs big separations in different ethnic groups and big divides in languages and dialects not to mention the massive difference in the location of strategic resources like oil and gas that makes some areas wealthier than others in many ways the middle east is really similar to europe or any other big global region but it's very different in at least one critical way that all of us are acutely aware of for most of our lifetimes the middle east has been incredibly unstable and violent and there's a lot of reasons for that but part of it has to do with how the middle east borders are drawn here they are normally on a political map of the world but seeing the borders like this doesn't really help to explain why they're not very good here they are placed instead over a religious map where you can clearly see that in a lot of places they just don't match up very neatly places like lebanon syria iraq and yemen are sharply divided between sunni muslim and shia muslim majority areas while saudi arabia and iran in contrast are much more solid switch the religious map out for an ethnic map and you can again see that a lot of these same places just don't match up very neatly in this view syria and iraq remain divided between arabs and kurds along with even more divisions in turkey iran and afghanistan and finally let's switch out the ethnic map for a linguistic map and specifically a map of the various dialects of arabic each of these regions is essentially a separate community inside of the greater arabic world and i want to point out a few important things to take away from this map first of all the entirety of egyptian arabic is fully located within the country of egypt this is very similar to moroccan arabic being almost entirely located inside of morocco and algerian arabic being almost entirely located inside of algeria the entire linguistic communities in all three of these examples are pretty much all located within the borders of an actual real country and that's partially why they're all a bit more stable but in a lot of other places in the middle east specifically just like with religion and ethnicity the political borders of countries rarely line up neatly with the communal linguistic borders the iraqi levantine north mesopotamian gulf and najidi dialects of arabic are all spread out across multiple countries while iraq syria and jordan are basically dialect mosaics so if most of the political borders inside of the middle east don't line up with religious ethnic or even linguistic realities then what are they actually there for and why were they decided upon that way in the first place the answer is of course because they were designed that way on purpose by people from outside of the middle east in order to maximize the levels of chaos and unrest as much as possible this is the problem with the middle east's borders allow me to explain from the beginning prior to the 20th century nearly the entirety of what we know today as the middle east was ruled by the ottoman empire for centuries the oldest border in all of asia and naturally the middle east dates back to this time period modern day iran's western boundary with iraq and turkey this border was settled upon back in 1639 between the rival ottoman and safavid persian empires as the boundary between their realms but it wasn't exactly perfect mountains are a fairly common and easy way to mark clear divisions between peoples empires and countries and this border generally sticks to that rule until it gets to the province of kujistan inside of modern day iran geographically kujistan is on an open plain west of the mountains that make up the rest of iran's western border ethnically the majority of the people who live there are arabs and not persians which was of little concern in the 17th century when it was decided it would belong to persia by a turkish and a persian empire but it's been a great concern in the 20th and 21st centuries with the rise of arab nationalism and identity but even worse the turkish and persian map makers could have never predicted the main cause of the future conflicts that placing kujistan east of this border would generate kuzdan is absolutely loaded with oil it's so oil-rich in fact that just this single province alone generates 57 of all of iran's entire oil production which means that controlling it today is absolutely vital for the iranian economy to function despite it being a primarily arab province the conquest of kujastan and the annexation of the arabs and the oil located there were the prime reasons why iraq invaded iran in the 1980s and the retention of that oil was the main reason that iran effectively fought to the death in order to defend it but shia arab kujastan being on the shia persian side of the border is far from being the most problematic of the middle east's borders later on in the 20th century the ottoman empire made the foolish decision to join the germans in the first world war and by 1918 it was obvious that that war was lost the empire that had once spanned the entire middle east was collapsing and the victors were eyeballing all of its land like it was a free-for-all black friday sale at target germany accused of starting the whole war only lost about 15 percent of her territory in the peace deal at versailles but the allies initially planned on basically taking over almost a hundred percent of the ottoman empire's land the british were going to take over all of this stuff the french were going to take over all of this stuff the italians were going to get all of this stuff armenia and greece were going to get some tokenland tossed their way too an independent state of kurdistan for the ethnic kurds was being discussed istanbul was going to be ruled by an international government and whatever was left of turkey itself was basically just going to be confined to a rump state here now obviously this is a lot it's extremely harsh and the allies overplay their hand a little bit the treaty that set these borders was signed by turkey but never ratified and when the severe terms became public the turks became enraged the turkish government literally revoked the citizenships of the representatives who signed the treaty and then went on to fight a three-year-long war of independence against the allies before finally emerging victorious and in a better position to renegotiate a new treaty was signed and this time ratified that largely established the borders of the modern day republic of turkey the european powers were pretty much kicked out of turkey itself but all of the lands that the ottomans once controlled outside of modern day turkey's borders were pretty much relentlessly pillaged in a secret treaty signed in 1916 while the war was still going on the british and the french agreed to divide the middle east between themselves the british were to gain mesopotamia palestine and trans jordan while the french were going to take over northern syria and most of the levant the boundary between their colonies was drawn here and became known as the sykes-picot line after the british and french diplomats who signed the terms this boundary between the old british and french colonies in the middle east pretty much still remains largely attacked today over 100 years later as the border between iraq and syria and we all know how problematic that's become in the past decade the sykes-picot line was simply a device to separate british and french interests in the region and was never meant to be used as something beneficial to the people who actually lived there as a consequence it largely cuts across various communal dialects of arabic and has divided linguistic communities between two countries for over a hundred years now but the rest of the colonial borders that the europeans came up with here were arguably much worse iraq's borders were drawn to keep shia and sunni arabs as well as kurds all locked together in the same state the shia make up the majority of the country and control nearly all of the oil in the south but despite this the minority sunni dominated the ba'ath party that ruled iraq from the 1960s until the fall of saddam in 2003. the borders of syria were also drawn in a way by the french to wedge the shia and the sunni arabs as well as the kurds all together into another divided country and despite being the minority the alawites an offshoot of shia islam have effectively ruled the entire country for the past 40 years now despite being mostly arab ethnically lebanon was also designed to keep the sunnis the shias and the christians all sharply divided inside of the same country all of these divisions were intentionally established by the british and the french in order to keep the people who lived there divided amongst themselves so that they couldn't ever unite against their colonizers the british and french would eventually leave but the borders they drew that kept communities divided and separated remained it should come as no surprise then that the middle east has been particularly volatile in the years since iraq's invasions of iran and kuwait under saddam were all about unresolved border disputes like the arabs and oil and kujastan and the arabs and oil in kuwait which had remained a british colony until the 1970s that iraq always insisted should have been given to them the lebanese civil war of the 1980s the syrian civil war of the 2010s and 2020s and the rise of isis conquests across the sispico boundary have all been fought over the poor boundaries between different religious ethnic and linguistic communities that the british and french drew all that time ago and this is why the borders in the middle east are so terrible they were drawn to be terrible on purpose and the consequences of those decisions are still seeing colossal ramifications and loss of life today recognizing this some geopolitical theorists have drawn up borders of what a hypothetical redrawing of the middle east's borders in the future might end up looking like this map created by columbia university gives us a glimpse into how tensions and unrest in iraq and syria might shatter the countries into four brand new states that follow the religious ethnic and linguistic lines a bit more realistically in this hypothetical scenario there would be a shiite arab state in the southeast an alawite shiite arab state in the west along the mediterranean a sunni arab state in between both of them and an independent kurdish state in the north only time will tell if the middle east will ever see a massive political redrawing of the map like this but there's one really big really obvious part of this whole story that i've so far been leaving out and that big part is israel and palestine look i know how making videos on youtube works and i know that this video already has a really really high chance of being demonetized and under promoted by youtube's algorithm but once i begin talking about israel and palestine it's a guarantee that this video isn't getting promoted to any of you or ever getting monetized but i still really wanted to make a super detailed video anyway that was just as long as this one explaining how the israel-palestine border situation is the most complicated and controversial in the world and so instead of uploading that video to youtube i've uploaded it exclusively to nebula instead which as you've probably heard by now is home to tons of exclusive ad-free content from tons of your favorite educational creators but the reason that i and others are able to put exclusive companion videos like this israel-palestine video over there is because of the way that nebula works it doesn't have an algorithm that punishes us when we want to make something controversial or something that's different from our normal stuff and the direct subscriptions from users help to fund both these and other projects like our many many nebula originals so if you're interested in watching all of this awesome exclusive content plus supporting loads of independent educational creators at the same time you can sign up right now by using the curiosity stream nebula bundle all you gotta do is go to curiositystream.comreal and sign up for any subscription they have but i'd suggest the yearly one since it's less than 20 a year and then you have access to both streaming sites and curiosity stream itself has some pretty great stuff too from more established names like david attenborough or richard hammond from top gear or almost hour-long extensive documentaries like d-day wings of victory where you'll learn all about the lesser-known aerial battle over normandy between german and allied pilots during d-day in world war ii all told curiosity stream is awesome thanks to their seemingly endless library of top quality stuff while nebula is great thanks to its exclusive early and ad-free videos from the educational creators you already know and love curiosity stream and nebula together though are even better because it's only fifteen dollars for the entire year when you go to curiositystream.com real life lore or by clicking the link down in the description and as always thank you so much for watching

Channel: RealLifeLore

Views: 903,887

Rating: 4.8240924 out of 5

Keywords: real life lore, real life lore maps, real life lore geography, real life maps, world map, world map is wrong, world map with countries, world map real size, map of the world, world geography, geography, geography (field of study), facts you didn’t know, middle east, borders, border, syria, iraq, jordan, maps, mapped

Id: r86yPzQhzLw

Length: 13min 8sec (788 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 25 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/StrangeInitiative635]

That's why there needs to be more freedom of movement among the Arab World. These borders were drawn by colonial oppressors and there is no reason why we should be working so hard to enforce them.

[u/steve_keys01]

The europeans split the region up, but why didn’t the arab states merge together afterwards? They attempted but they failed every time. Syria and egypt tried once, it failed. Jordan and iraq, failed. Libya, egypt and Sudan, Also failed. People say that Israel prevents unification or even fucking lebanon or europeans but why couldnt the pan arabist countries merge with each other and focus on themselves before constantly crying about Israel or whatever. Absolute fail of a region and there is a higher chance that arab countries will split up more in the future, like syria or iraq and Maybe even lebanon if a civil war hits it again, than uniting.

[u/scalpel11]

It's not their fault for seeking their own interests it's ours for believing in & making them a reality.

Do not expect anyone else to want anything but what's good for them .

[u/eenghmm]

Arabs should unite and form a single arab state. The Shia Sunni thing is bull shit. We are all muslims. We share 99% of our beliefs and differ in less than 1%. Still the west and their beloved dictators somehow convinced us that other muslims are more dangerous to us than the Israelis and foreign states deploying military bases all over the middle east.

I believe that dictators will fall and people will unite as soon as the US gets weak or busy somewhere else in the world. This may be sooner than we think as tensions with China and Russia are rapidly escalating.

[u/rayan2002]

"The borders were intentionally drawn to keep communities to devided to revolt"

Arab nationalism: Allow me to introduce myself

[u/ForIAmTalonII]

This is going to piss people off here. But the Arabs are the ones to blame.

As much as I hate Ataturk he knew that Turkey would be divided so he rallied his people and fought to keep all the lands. And he won.

The Arabs were divided. And when they fought it wasn't to unite their lands. It was support those who were at the top. The fact that so many here see themselves as Lebanese or Jordanian is astounding... these identies that so many of you hang to weren't created by your people rather the foreign power who wanted to divide you. Iraq never got Kuwait because the British didn't want Iraq to have a port in the Persian Gulf, leaving it with a smaller one. The French divided Syria and created Lebanon which should have never existed. It's a ticking time bomb as we've seen time and time again. The Arab world has a ridiculous amount of potential. It's resources have been wasted and it's geographical location not used to it's full advantage.

Many will blame the leaders. That's pathetic. Change comes from people. Japan was bombed twice. Two fucking nukes. If they had hit the Arab world. You wouldn't have one of the largest economies and export sectors. The Arabs would sit and hold grudges and blame how two nukes ruined their future.

[u/NOTsfr]

Anno 2100 news headlines: first city on Mars built, African human development index is on par with the west, r/arabs in depth analysis how Sykes picot is to blame for the 36th civil war in the middle east in 21st century.

[u/na_7_as]

Palastine not israellllll

[u/NPredetor_97]

Real Life Lore❤️