Arab States and the History and the Contemporary Era
E xactly 100 years ago, on November 23, 1917, the communist newspapers Izvestia and Pravda, published the secret agreement set by the British diplomat Mark Sykes and his French counterpart, François Georges-Picot, commonly known as “Sykes-Picot Agreement”, with the approval of the pre-Soviet Russian government. Both men sat with a map of the Arab nation and drew the now existing borders between the Arab States to distribute the region among themselves. This was the origin of the present day puppet Arab States. Gradually, we got used to these borders and started to identify ourselves saying I am Syrian, Iraqi, Egyptian or Moroccan or Algerian or Sudanese. We all forget our single unifying identity; that we are Arabs ! We have become the only nation in this world that has the same language, the same culture, common history, religion, geographic unity and economic interests. Yet, it is divided into 22 states. The funny thing is that, unlike us, the West knows deep inside