Pursley, Sara. "Lines Drawn on an Empty Map': Iraq's Borders and the Legend of the Artificial State". Jadaliyya, 2 June 2015.

Pursley, Sara. "Lines Drawn on an Empty Map': Iraq's Borders and the Legend of the Artificial State". Jadaliyya, 2 June 2015.

• The common narrative in media, popular history, and scholarship is that the borders of Iraq and other Middle Eastern states were established arbitrarily by the British and French without regards to local conditions, and thus they lack legitimacy. This means that the states created by them, especially Iraq, are artificial. 
• This same narrative has also been employed by ISIS following the establishment of their Caliphate, declaring that their state would end the artificial division of Syria from Iraq and, "hit the last nail in the coffin of the Sykes-Picot conspiracy."
• The narrative about the Sykes-Picot agreement defining the borders of the Middle East and creating artificial states, whose artificiality is supposed to have led to all sorts of problems later, is flawed and rests on an ahistorical reading of the creation of Arab states in the Middle East.
• The original argument that Iraq was artificial was posited by British imperialists to argue that Iraq was not a sufficiently coherent entity to govern itself. It was then adopted by Arab nationalists, who used it to argue that Iraq should be dissolved into a larger Arab state.
• The earliest form of this argument was made by imperialists who claimed that the tribal and uncivilized nature of rural areas and the ethnic and sectarian mix of urban areas made the Middle East inhospitable to self-governance. By denying that any sense of an Iraqi nation existed, British imperialists could justify continued colonial or mandate rule over the country.
• These claims that Iraq was an artificial state were often made by the same officials who were putting down explicitly nationalist insurrections, as in 1920. These claims served their political aims to delegitimize and erase Iraqi nationalist demands.
• The Sykes-Picot agreement was between Britain and France and divided the Arab territories of the Ottoman Empire between the powers, with Britain occupying the provinces of Baghdad and Basra as well as a stretch of Persian Gulf coastline down to the Qatar Peninsula, and France occupying the provinces of Syria and Mosul. France also intended to establish direct colonial control over much of interior Anatolia around Adana and the Levant down to Palestine.
• Outside of the area of direct French control in Anatolia and the Levant, the actual status of the other Arab areas was left deliberately vague. The public stance of the British government was that a united Arab government would be formed, making the Sykes-Picot agreement compatible with the Husayn-McMahon agreement. It may have been intended for a single Arab state to feature different economic concessions to Europeans in these areas. 
• Moreover, the Sykes-Picot agreement did not ever establish the borders of either Iraq or Syria, which were decided upon later in correspondence with local groups as well as between colonial governments.
• The falsity of the claim that Middle East borders were created by the Sykes-Picot agreement does not, however, undermine the wider claim that Middle Eastern borders were drawn by Europeans in the 1910s and 1920s.
• The fact that additional conferences in Paris in 1919, San Remo in 1920, and Cairo in 1921 were needed, however, points to the agency of local Arabs. The changes made at these conferences were made because complaints by Syrians and Iraqis, as well as armed insurrections against the colonial governments, demanded that the Europeans change the borders.
• Early British attempts to secure legitimacy for their rule in Iraq through plebiscites in 1918 and 1919 came under challenge. Although the British tried to engineer an affirmative response by collecting small groups of notable Iraqis to support British rule, even these small assemblies responded strongly against British rule and in favor of full independence. The only British proposal they supported was an independent Iraq with borders covering Basra, Baghdad, and Mosul provinces.
• These Europeans did not, however, ignore local concerns when drawing borders. The borders of the Middle East were created in reference to population densities, previous Ottoman borders, oil and mineral deposits, infrastructure, geography, and prior political agreements with both European and local actors.
• Moreover, the borders of Iraq were not decided by Europeans alone, but over the course of decades in a contested process were proposed borders were challenged by other states and local political actors. The Iraqi border with Turkey was not settled until 1926, Syria and Iraq bickered over their northern border until 1932, Iran had border conflict with Iraq throughout the 1930s, and Iraq did not recognize Kuwaiti borders until 1991.
• During the period of Ottoman rule, the term 'Iraq' was used to designate the two lower provinces on the Euphrates and Tigris: Baghdad and Basra. The claim that Iraq was totally artificial was untrue, as the term for the region was taken directly from the Ottomans by the British.
• The central claim that European cartographers and imperialists ignored local conditions and concerns in drawing the borders of Iraq implies that there is a more correct way to divide the region that would be organic rather than artificial. 
• These claims should be met with extreme skepticism, as they usually imply that the preferred method of division would have been state borders along ethnic and religious lines. In other states created along these principles in the aftermath of WWI, the result has been ethnic cleansing and genocide; these issues likely would have arisen in the Middle East due to the presence of large areas of extreme diversity.
• The border between Iraq and Syria were only decided in 1932, but the idea of Syria and Iraq as separate states was also contested during the immediate aftermath of WWI. The independence of these states, retroactively recognized by the European powers in the 1920 San Remo conference, was decided by the proclamation of separate Arab kingdoms under Faysal and Abdallah Hussayn in Damascus in March 1920.
• The Damascus declaration was made due to pressure from national groups in Syria and Iraq, both called al Ahd. Al Ahd al Iraqi was founded in 1918 by former Iraqi officers in the Ottoman army in Syria, and they demanded the establishment of an Iraqi state on its 'natural borders', from the Persian Gulf to Deir ez Zor on the Euphrates and Diyabakir on the Tigris.
• The victory of Al Ahd in having its establishment of separate Syrian and Iraqi states recognized in the San Remo conference was a major trigger from the 1920 Iraqi revolt, largely organized by the rival nationalist organization, Haras as Istiqlal. Whereas Al Ahd, mainly based in Syria and Mosul, supported close ties with Britain, Haras as Istiqlal, with its support in Baghdad and among the southern Shia, rejected British domination and sought an independent foreign policy.
• Most of the border issues between Syria and Iraq were over the status of the province of Dier ez Zoir. Originally occupied by the Arab Kingdom of Syria, locals asked the British army to annex the region in November 1918. Locals then became resentful of the British occupation and requested in 1919 to be readmitted to Syria.
• The push to return Dier ez Zoir to Syria actually came from Iraqi nationalists working within the Syrian government, who believed that the city would make a good base from which to launch attacks against British forces, including the 1920 revolt. Thus, they annexed the city into Syria so that Britain would not have jurisdiction there and they could organize Iraqi nationalist forces free of harassment.
• Most conflicts in Syria and Iraq were not over the borders of those states, but over independence and when they would receive full independence and autonomy from their mandate governments.
• The border between Iraq and Najd was unsettled after WWI and was only determined following the success of Abdulaziz ibn Saud's forces between 1920 and 1927, which pushed the borders of Najd to the point where the colonial governments tried to fix them to prevent further conquests. The border was set around 1927 and 1928, when Britain used its air force to bomb Najdi forces and prevent them from cutting off the corridor between Iraq and Transjordan.
• The actual border line itself was decided by the British and Saudis to guarantee stable water infrastructure on both sides of the border and to avoid splitting up nomadic groups. The border thus often reflected the alliances of certain nomadic groups, and at times it was changed to reflect the demands of these groups.
• The major most boundary dispute was between Iraq and Turkey over possession of the province of Mosul. The British occupation of Mosul on 3 November 1918 violated both the Sykes-Picot agreement, which promised Mosul to the French, and the Armistice of Mudros, signed with the Ottomans on 30 October, four days before the occupation of Mosul. As a result, the Ottoman and Turkish governments refused to recognize British, and then Iraqi, claims to the territory.
• The Treaty of Sevres, imposed on the Ottoman government in August 1920, left Turkey as a rump state in central Anatolia with large parts of east given to Armenia or Iraq, or possibly the Kurds. This treaty was a major cause of the Turkish War of Independence, during which Kemalist forces defeated the European powers and secure borders in the Treaty of Lausanne.
• Although the province of Mosul was promised to France in the Sykes-Picot agreement, the main dispute was over continued Turkish possession of the region. France was originally angry at its ally's actions, but it was mollified by a promise from Britain of a share in Mosul's oil resources.
• The Treaty of Lausanne did not settle the issue of the border between Turkey and Iraq and instead said that the issue would be discussed for nine months and then referred to the League of Nations if not resolved. A commission appointed by the League decided in 1925, after conferring with the local populace, that the province be given to Iraq. Turkey appealed the decision, but it was upheld and Turkey recognized its present border with Iraq in 1926.
• Prior to the arrival of the League commission, Britain and Iraqi nationalist groups sent delegations up to Mosul and Sulaymaniyah to convince locals to support incorporation into Iraq. 
• Britain used the issue of Mosul's status to force Iraqi nationalists to accept and confirm the position of Britain as holder of the mandate. Britain made its advocacy for Iraq in the League conditional on Iraq ratifying the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty, which they did in 1924.
• Mosulis themselves were deeply divided over which state to join. Many religious minorities, especially Armenians and other Christians, felt that joining Turkey would leave them exposed to genocide. Kurds were divided as neither side was willing to support an independent Kurdish state. The Mosuli branch of al Ahd suggested that incorporation and alliance with the Kemalists and the Soviets might actually be better than a British mandate, while other Iraqi nationalists believed that only Britain could secure Iraqi territory.
• Throughout the entire dispute over Mosul between 1920 and 1925, Britain and Turkey were involved in conflict. Britain frequently bombed Turkish positions in the province, as well as aerially bombarding pro-Turkish villages and Kurdish separatists.
• In the 1920s, Arabism and Iraqi nationalism were not necessarily conflicting ideologies, but many were happy to see an independent Iraq with a strong Arab identity. This meant that many non-Arab minorities sought to preserve the mandate system to protect themselves from Arab nationalism.
• The British were aware of the fears of national minorities in Iraq and actively sought to play up these fears by referring to Iraq as an Arab state and encouraging Arab nationalist sentiments.