When Lines Split People

The Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 carved the Ottoman Empire into French and British zones, using lines that ignored ethnic, religious, and tribal boundaries. The Kurdish people were split across four countries — Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria — creating a stateless nation of over 30 million people.

The partition of India in 1947 drew a border through Punjab and Bengal based largely on religious demographics, displacing 15 million people and killing up to 2 million in the violence that followed. The original division of Korea, the 38th parallel, was chosen in 1945 by two American military officers using a map; today's fortified border follows the 1953 armistice line, which only roughly tracks that parallel.