Iraq’s ancient border

SIR – There may be something in Tim Collins’s view that the pre-2014 frontier between Iraq and Syria needs to be moved (“Britain’s vital role in building peace for Iraq”, July 11), but there is no truth in the description of it as “the Sykes-picot-era border”.

That nonsensical agreement in 1916 provoked much sound and fury, but the monstrous geopolitical lines it drew were not replicated on the post-1918 map of the Middle East.

The border was established, separating provinces, by the Ottoman Turks 500 years before.

Dr C R Long

Ledbury, Herefordshire