How two pencils redrew the Middle East

0:00You're listening to a podcast right now, driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're into podcasts, chances are you have something to say too. With RSS.com, starting your own is free and easy. Upload an episode, and we distribute it to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and hundreds more. Track your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads like this. Even with just 10 listeners a month. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is your sign. Start free at RSS.com. I want you to try and imagine a highly specific scenario for a moment. Just picture a quiet, heavily guarded room, yeah, exactly. And on a large table, there's this enormous map of the world spread out, illuminated by whatever sparse light is filtering through the windows, and you pick up a literal blue and red pencil. A literal pencil. A literal pencil. And in complete secrecy, you just begin redrawing the map.

1:03You sketch a rigid line across a desert here, or you carve out a fertile river valley there. Completely ignoring the complex tapestry of people, tribes, and ancient communities who actually live on that ground. Just slicing right through them. Exactly. Now, imagine that those somewhat arbitrary pencil lines you casually sketched go on to spark massive entrenched geopolitical conflicts that completely dominate the daily news you read well over a century later. Welcome to today's deep dive. We are really thrilled to have you with us. It's great to be here. And, you know, it sounds suspiciously like the premise of a sprawling political thriller, but it is a very tangible, heavily documented piece of our history. It really is. Today, our deep dive is anchored on an incredibly comprehensive Wikipedia article detailing the 1916 Psychopoco Agreement. Our core mission here is to take this dense, multi-layered, historical subject and extract the absolute best aha moments for you. Yeah, the real turning points.

2:04Right. The goal is to give you a clear shortcut to being well informed about how the modern middle east was literally sketched out on a map by two diplomats acting behind closed doors. And to truly process the magnitude of this agreement, we really have to look at the immediate context. We're operating squarely in the middle of World War I. Right. The whole world is at war. Exactly. And the Ottoman Empire, which has maintained control over the vast majority of the Middle East for centuries, is actively crumbling under the weight of this global conflict. It's just falling apart. Yeah. And anticipating a total collapse, the triple entente that's Britain, France, and Russia are already operating on the assumption of ultimate victory. With the Ottoman Empire on the brink, these allied powers decide to preemptively divide up the spoils of war, understanding the mechanics of this specific agreement really gives you the ultimate lens through which to view modern geopolitics. OK, let's unpack this. The core negotiations for relating this new map took place over a period stretching from November 1915 to January 1916.

3:06The two primary architects sitting at that table are Mark Sykes, representing British diplomatic interests and Francois George Pico. Acting on behalf of France. Right. We're looking at this massive expanse of the Middle East, and they essentially decide to slice it directly across the middle, allocating massive spheres of influence. In the specific geographical breakdown, the agree upon is crucial to visualize here. France secure the northern territories. Their blue pencil lines guaranteed them control over southeastern Turkey, the Kurdistan region, Syria, and Lebanon. Meanwhile, the United Kingdom claimed the southern section. Their red pencil line secured what is today, southern Israel, and Palestine, Jordan, and southern Iraq. But they didn't stop it just drawing massive territorial blocks. No, they didn't. The British meticulously carved out a very specific strategic enclave for themselves, encompassing the crucial ports of Haifa and Aker. Which is huge. It's massive. That wasn't just a land grab. That was a highly calculated move to ensure the British Empire had direct, unimpeded access

4:08to the Mediterranean Sea. If we connect this to the bigger picture, Britain and France were operating within a much larger, incredibly fragile alliance. They weren't the only empires demanding a piece of the Ottoman territories. Far from it. Right. To finalize their own Middle Eastern borders, they had to satisfy the territorial ambitions of their other allies. Russia, for instance, had already stake its claims earlier in the 1915s as an off-palea log agreement. Quite a mouthful. It is. And through that prior arrangement, Russia was promised Western Armenia, Constantinople, and the highly strategic Turkish Straits. And the diplomatic scrambling didn't stop there. Later on, through the 1917 agreement of San John de Maureen, Italy was officially promised control over southern Anatolia. So everyone wants a piece? Basically, yeah. You essentially have a scenario where every major power is attempting to grab whatever strategic foothold they can manage. But amidst all of these solid blocks of red and blue and green, there was one specific

5:09anomaly on the Sykes Ticomap. It was designated simply as the brown zone. Right. The brown zone. Yeah. That was an area encompassing Palestine, though it is worth noting this was a somewhat smaller geographic footprint than the later borders of Mandatory Palestine. Good distinction to make. Yeah. And the reason it received this unique designation was due to the sheer concentration of competing interests. The territory was considered far too contentious to be handed over to a single imperial power. To delicately balance Russian, French, and various Islamic interests regarding the holy places. This brown zone was designated to fall under an international administration. Basically a compromise. Exactly. The diplomats effectively decided that since no single power could comfortably claim it without causing a diplomatic crisis, it would just be managed by a vague international consensus. The underlying motives driving all of these intricate pencil lines were deeply rooted in logistics, economics, and imperial survival. I mean, the lines weren't drawn out of a desire for mere territorial expansion.

6:10There was a real strategy there. Absolutely. Before Sykes and Pico even finalized their agreement, the British government had established the Debuncin Committee in 1915 to explicitly define their objectives in the event of the Ottoman Empire's collapse. And the Debuncin Committee's findings laid bare the actual priorities of the British Empire. Their foremost objective was the protection of the Western flank of India, which was widely considered the crown jewel of their imperial holdings. Exactly. Beyond sheer defense, they were heavily focused on securing vital commercial routes. They needed uninterrupted land bridges and railway networks connecting the Mediterranean directly to the Persian Gulf to facilitate global trade. And layered on top of those commercial and defensive strategies was the emerging realization of a new, game-changing resource. Oil. There were already early persistent whispers of massive oil reserves located in the Mosul Viliyet, which was an Ottoman administrative province situated in modern day, northern Iraq.

7:11So it wasn't just random lines in the sand. Not at all. The borders engineered by Sykes and Pico were meticulously designed to encapsulate trade routes, railway corridors, strategic buffer zones, and vastly lucrative oil fields. This intense focus on securing resources and trade routes brings us to a massive parallel storyline unfolding at the exact same time. While Mark Sykes and Francois Georges Pico are secluded in back rooms, quietly sketching lines and trading cities, the British government is simultaneously making entirely different, wildly contradictory promises to the Arab populations actually living in those territories. The historical record points to a staggering level of diplomatic duplicity here. This parallel timeline revolves around the McMahon Hussein correspondence. Between July 1915 and March 1916, there is a highly sensitive exchange of ten specific letters. These communications are flying between Sir Henry McMahon, serving as the British high commissioner to Egypt, and Hussein Ben Ali, the Sharif of Mecca. And the British lay out a very clear proposition.

8:12Right. They agree to formally recognize and support a fully independent unified Arab state after the war. The condition for this British support was significant. In exchange for the promise of a unified Arab homeland, Hussein was required to launch a massive armed insurrection against the Ottoman Empire from within. Effectively opening up a brutal new front in the war. So Hussein accepts the terms of the correspondence. In June 1916, Hussein, fighting alongside his sons Ali and Faisal, officially triggers the Arab revolt. They begin waging a grueling military campaign against the Ottoman forces. The British government heavily backs this insurrection. Heavily. According to the source material, the British inject 50,000 pounds in gold into the revolt, alongside continuous shipments of weapons, ammunition, and food to sustain the Arab fighters. What's fascinating here is the sheer audacity of the diplomatic contradiction. You have Arab forces out in the desert actively fighting, bleeding, and dying under the foam belief that their sacrifices are paving the way for an independent unified homeland.

9:15Because they were told exactly that. They are heavily relying on the explicit promises detailed in those 10 letters from the British High Commissioner. All while remaining entirely oblivious to the fact that months earlier, Sykes and Pico had already methodically carved up that exact same territory into colonial spheres of influence. The British and French governments had zero intention of allowing a unified Arab state to emerge. Zero. They had already drafted the blueprints to install their own direct administrations and their own colonial advisors over Damascus, Baghdad, Lebanon, and Palestine. The intricate web of secret treaties and contradictory promises was bound to fracture eventually. You can't keep that quiet forever. Here's where it gets really interesting. Because an imperial secret of this magnitude simply cannot stay buried forever. The ultimate leak of the Sykes and Pico agreement happens, and it originates from a wildly unexpected source. Out of nowhere, really. Yeah. As forward to November 1917, World War One is still tearing Europe apart, but the Russian

10:19Empire is simultaneously undergoing a chaotic, violent revolution. The Bolsheviks managed to seize power, and as they take control of the sprawling government ministries, they begin digging through the archives. Just looking for leverage. Right. And they literally uncover the imperial receipts. They find the fully documented secret Sykes to Co-Treaties hidden away in the diplomatic files. The Bolsheviks were operating on an ideology fundamentally opposed to this brand of imperial land grabbing and secret diplomacy. Completely against it. So upon discovering the documents, they made the immediate calculated decision to expose the entire arrangement to the world. They published the full text of the secret treaties prominently in their state-run newspapers, is Vestia and Pravda. The fallout was instantaneous. Within days, the revelation crossed borders. The Manchester Guardian secured the texts and printed the secret treaties in English on November 26, 1917. So it's out in the English-speaking world now, too. The secret was officially out in the open. Our source material features a fantastic quote that perfectly encapsulates the sheer global

11:23whiplash of this moment. It notes that in the wake of the publication, quote, the British were embarrassed, the Arabs dismayed, and the Turks delighted. Which makes perfect sense. The Ottoman Turks utilized the leak as a massive propaganda victory, pointing to the published texts as definitive proof to the Arab troops that their British allies were openly lying to them. A huge blow to morale. Absolutely. And this revelation also triggered a severe ideological crisis with the United States. Because the timing of the leak clashed violently with the public messaging of US President Woodrow Wilson. At this stage of the conflict, Wilson is loudly championing a completely different vision for the post-war global order. He's talking about a new way of doing things. Right. He is actively promoting concepts like open diplomacy and the self-determination of populations. These principles were the very foundation of his famous 14 points. Suddenly, courtesy of the Bolshevik archives, the British and French allies are caught red-handed.

12:23The published treaties expose them, engaging in the exact type of cynical, back-room, imperial horse-trading that they were publicly claiming to be fighting against on the global stage. It shattered the moral high ground the allies were attempting to maintain. Completely. Yet, despite the staggering diplomatic scandal, the war continues until the Ottomans finally sign an armistice in late 1918. The active military engagements largely halt, but the scrambling to enforce and manipulate the borders on the map kicks into a frenzied high gear. Because transitioning from secret pencil lines to enforceable borders proved to be an incredibly messy reality. The raw mechanics of how these borders were finalized is stunning to read about. In December 1918, just after the war's end, an entirely undocumented Sunday meeting takes place at the French Embassy in London. British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and French Prime Minister George Clementso sit down privately to haggle over the remnants of the Middle East. Just two men in a row. Exactly. And in that single undocumented conversation, Clementso makes a massive concession.

13:27He officially surrenders French rights to both the Mosul region and to Palestine. Which is huge. Because those were territories that France was explicitly guaranteed under the original 1916 Sykes-Pico map. But Clementso doesn't just hand over those territories out of good will. He executes a highly calculated trade. In exchange for relinquishing control of the land, Clementso secures a guaranteed share of the oil that is expected to flow out of the Mosul Viliette. Ah, the oil again. Always the oil. Additionally, he extracts a firm promise of British support regarding French territorial claims on the rural region back in Europe. While the Prime Ministers are trading regions like commodities in London, the situation on the ground in the Middle East is reaching a boiling point. Faisal, the son of Hussein, who had actively led the Arab Revolt alongside British forces, enters Damascus in late 1918. And he's expecting them to make good on their promise. Right. Operating on the promises made in the McMahon Hussein correspondence, he officially declares a fully independent Arab constitutional government.

14:28Faisal genuinely believes he has secured the independent homeland his forces blood for. But the Allied powers respond by shifting the legal framework of the post-war world to legitimize their original pencil lines. In April 1920, they convened the San Remo Conference. And the San Remo Conference effectively launders the psychs' pico agreement through international law. They achieved this by utilizing mandates. Which was a new concept at the time. Yeah, mandates were essentially a newly invented legal framework established by the League of Nations. They provided the imperial powers with international cover to govern these territories, supposedly until the local populations were deemed ready for self-rule. Armed with this new international mandate, the French government moved swiftly against Faisal's newly declared state. France issues a strict ultimatum to the Arab government in Damascus. Submit or else? Basically, when the Arab forces refused to submit to French authority, the French military marches in. At the Battle of Maisalune in 1920, French forces violently crushed the independent government

15:29and forcibly deposed King Faisal. The initial promise of Arab independence outlined in the 10 British letters is entirely dismantled. Entirely. And France assumes direct mandate control over Syria. The brutal enforcement of these borders left awake of fractured communities. The profound tragedy of the psychs' pico legacy extends deeply to populations who were entirely marginalized by the diplomat's pencil lines. It's notably the Kurds and the Assyrians. The original blue and red lines sketched in 1916 sliced arbitrarily through the historical region of Kurdistan. In the immediate aftermath of the war, there was a brief window of potential recognition. The Treaty of Severus, signed in 1920, actually contained provisions that hinted at the creation of an autonomous or potentially independent Kurdish territory. But that fleeting diplomatic promise was quickly erased by shifting geopolitical realities. Following the Turkish War of Independence, the Treaty of Severus was completely superseded by the Treaty of Luzanne in 1923.

16:29And the terms changed dramatically. They did. In the finalized text of the Treaty of Luzanne, there was absolutely no provision made for a Kurdish state. The ultimate result of this diplomatic whiplash is that the Kurds, alongside their Assyrian neighbors, find their historical homelands severely partitioned. They are left politically marginalized. This specific fragmentation laid the groundwork for severe systemic disenfranchisement and conflict that continues to heavily impact the political stability of those four nations today. So what does this all mean? Why does a memorandum, drafted by two European diplomats in 1916, remain critically relevant to the information you are consuming today? The ongoing relevant stems from the fact that historians and political analysts widely view the Sykes-Baco agreement as the literal blueprint for the artificial borders defining the modern Middle East. The foundation of the map. Right. These boundaries were engineered almost exclusively to serve the logistical, economic,

17:33and defensive interests of the British and French empires. They were drawn with virtually zero regard for the complex ethnic, tribal, or sectarian realities of the people physically inhabiting the terrain. When we look at how this agreement echoes today, our source points to stark, modern examples of how these borders are viewed by various factions operating on the ground. As a reminder to you listening, we're just conveying the reported facts from our source material here without endorsing any viewpoints. For instance, looking at the historical record of the Islamic State, or ISIL, their insurgency explicitly targeted the legacy of the Sykes-Baco agreement. Erasing those specific lines wasn't merely a byproduct of their territorial expansion. It was a foundational, stated objective of their campaign. The source notes a highly specific public address from July 2014, where the group's former leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, delivered a speech focusing heavily on the 1916 map. He publicly vowed that their military advance would not cease until they, quote, hit the last nail on the coffin of the Sykes-Baco conspiracy.

18:34The group even produced a highly publicized propaganda video explicitly titled End of Sykes-Baco. In the footage, a fighter stands directly at the physical border separating Iraq and Syria, declaring to the camera that they fundamentally do not recognize the boundary. They frame it entirely as a colonial imposition that they are actively dismantling. And the resonance of these borders stretches right up to the current geopolitical landscape. The source highlights a recent perspective from August 2025 involving American diplomat Tom Barrick. In that specific interview, Barrick openly discusses how the modern state of Israel views the territorial lines drawn over a century ago. According to the source, he stated that Israel views the Sykes-Baco borders as meaningless. Furthermore, he asserted that Israel possesses both the capacity and the desire to take over Lebanon and Syria. These events and statements spanning from insurgent groups to modern diplomatic assessments really illustrate just how deeply the structural foundation laid down by Mark Sykes and François Georges Bicot continues to dictate the terms of modern conflict.

19:37It is genuinely staggering to consider how a quiet, secretive memorandum, initialed in January 1916 to protect railway lines and secure early oil fields, managed to create a geopolitical earthquake. The aftershocks of that single meeting are literally still dictating the headlines appearing on your newsfeed this morning. It raises an important question, and I want to leave you with a final thought to mull over as you step away from this deep dive. Think about the physical tools Mark Sykes and François Georges Bicot used to define the future of millions of people. It literally used a blue and a red pencil on a static paper map. It's almost absurd to think about now. It is. Now, consider the sheer complexity of the tools being utilized to define our world today. We operate with global positioning systems, real-time satellite imagery, complex demographic algorithms, and massive networks of data harvesting. The infrastructure of power has moved entirely beyond paper and pencil. Precisely. So consider this. And invisible lines are being drawn right now. Deep inside modern corporate boardrooms, across encrypted digital spaces, or quietly

20:41processed within massive data centers, what new unseen boundaries are being sketched out today that might define the political and social conflicts a century from now. That is an incredibly provocative thought to end on. Thank you so much for joining us on this deep dive. We hope we've successfully provided you with a clear shortcut to understanding the complex, and hidden history behind the map of the modern Middle East. Keep questioning the lines you see on the maps every day, and we'll catch you next time. You're listening to a podcast right now, driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're into podcasts, chances are you have something to say too. With rss.com, starting your own is free and easy. Upload an episode, and we distribute it to Apple podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and hundreds more. Check your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads like this. Even with just 10 listeners a month. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is your sign. Start free at rss.com.