Maps That Changed Borders

The Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 drew straight lines across the Middle East, splitting Ottoman territories between Britain and France with little regard for ethnic or geographic realities.

Iraq was stitched together from three Ottoman provinces with different majorities — Kurdish, Sunni, and Shia — forced into one nation by a line on a map. Many ongoing conflicts trace directly back to that choice. Straight borders like these are a telltale sign of outsiders looking at maps, not at the spaces people actually lived in.