Dodge: Sykes-Picot not helpful in understanding Islamic State

Toby Dodge, director of the LSE's Middle East Centre, has written for the International Institute for Strategic Studies criticising the tendency of politicians and commentators to talk about the troubles in Iraq and Syria in terms of the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement.

"Given the infamy of the Sykes–Picot agreement, it was no surprise that Lebanese Druze politician Walid Jumblatt declared its demise in June, going so far as to present Hassan Nasrallah, his colleague and the leader of Hizbullah, with a book that explained the genesis of the deal. But it is alarming that both academics and senior statesmen have also used the Sykes–Picot narrative in their accounts of the crisis in Syria and Iraq. The portrayal of the agreement as a catalyst for a century of Middle Eastern history is empirically and analytically unsustainable. It extrapolates from a brief moment in time, employing a snapshot that does not represent the wider socio-political dynamics that unfolded across the region during and after the First World War. This misuse of history may well lead to weak policy prescriptions."