The day an arbitrarily drawn boundary triggers the biggest conflict in the history of humanity

One day in November 1915, in a back room in Baghdad, two diplomats are sitting at a huge wooden table. A map, a ruler, and a pencil lie before them. These three objects will trigger countless wars, produce millions of deaths, destabilize an entire region, and sow the seeds of modern terrorism. On this day Frenchman François Georges-picot and Briton Mark Sykes divide the Ottoman Empire— and break a promise. Because in exchange for their cooperation against the Turkish and German forces, the Arabs were assured they’d receive their own independent Arab state after World War I. The Sykes-picot Agreement takes effect in November 1916. Its boundaries form the basis for the establishment of Iraq. But the way these borders are drawn has nothing to do with the promised independence for the Arab tribes. Ethnically contiguous areas are divided. Iraq is indeed founded in 1920, but initially it is not a sovereign state— the British continue to topple governments until Saddam Hussein comes to power in 1979. Decades of utter tyranny, two Gulf Wars, and the fall of Hussein in 2003 follow. The pencil strokes of Sykes and Picot become the basis for almost 100 years of monstrous war in the Middle East— and the reason for the emergence of dozens of terrorist groups. The artificially imposed national boundaries continue to spawn fierce conflict in the region.