From a larger perspective, the modern Arab states owe their existence to the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement negotiated between Britain and France, with assent from the Russian Empire, and the Kingdom of Italy, to redraw the Middle East boundaries after the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire.
The agreement, concluded in 1916, amid WWI, effectively divided the Ottoman provinces outside the Arabian Peninsula into areas of British and French control and influence.
A separate treaty – the Sazanov – Paleoloque Agreement, accorded Russia the region of Western Armenia, Constantinople, and the Dardanelle Straits.
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The Anatolian parts of the agreement were covered in the August 1920 Treaty of Sevres. However, these ambitions were thwarted by the 1919–23 Turkish War of Independence under Kemal Ataturk.
The Allied forces were defeated by the Turk nationalists led by Kemal Ataturk in the Gallipoli Campaign (17 February 1915 – 9 January 1916), putting to rest the Allied ambitions to capture Constantinople and control the Dardanelles. It is said y that, in the event of a Turkish defeat, a train was ready to evacuate the last Ottoman caliph, his family members, and royal retainers – lock, stock, and barrel, from Constantinople to the Anatolian hinterland.
In 1923 the Treaty of Lausanne was signed by the Allied Powers which amended the previous treaty. Forming present-day Turkey, Lausanne specified the northern borders of Syria and Iraq, ignoring minority ethnic groups and frustrating the Kurdish dream of forming a sovereign Kurdistan state.
The New Middle East
The term “New Middle East” was coined in June 2006 in Tel Aviv by U.S.Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. It aimed at sweeping the “Line in Sand” drawn by Sykes and Picot during WWI and replacing it with newly drawn Middle East borders.
The “New Middle East” project was introduced publicly by Washington and TelAviv with the expectation that Lebanon would be the pressure point for realigning the whole Middle East and thereby unleashing the forces of “constructive chaos.”This “constructive chaos” –which generates conditions of violence and warfare throughout the region– would in turn be used so that the United States, Britain, and Israel could redraw the map of the Middle East for the second time after WWI following their geo-strategic needs and objectives.
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This Anglo-American- Israeli military roadmap is the plan to use the Middle East as a marshaling area for entering Central Asia. The Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are stepping stones for extending U.S. influence into the former Soviet Union and the ex-Soviet Republics of Central Asia.
To test the waters, a relatively unknown map of a redrawn and a restructured MiddleEast, identified as the “New Middle East”, has been circulating in the world media and governmental/private think tanks and policy-making circles since mid-2006.
This redrawn map has been, by design, allowed to surface from time to time in public, in an attempt to build consensus and to slowly prepare the general public for possible, maybe even cataclysmic, changes in the Middle East. The map is showcased and presented as the brainchild of retired Lieutenant-Colonel (U.S.Army) Ralph Peters, who believes the redesigned borders contained in the map will fundamentally solve the problems of the contemporary Middle East.
Ralph Peters’ map – A fantasy or the blueprint for the extended Middle East?
The proposed map conforms to the proxy wars waged by the US and its allies in the Eurasian landmass for the last almost half a century. It envisages a Kurdish state carved out from the Kurd-dominated areas of Turkey, Iraq, and Syria. Kurds were promised a state of their own by the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Whereas the agreement was successful in drawing boundaries of the modern Arab states, and whereas it fulfilled the promise made by Britain, through the Belfour Declaration, to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine, the promise for a Kurdish state remained unfulfilled.
It is also in the interests of the US, its European allies, and India, that a greater Balochistan state is established incorporating the Iranian and Pakistani Balochistan. The present US-Iran rift over Iran’s nuclear program and the slow-burning proxy war going on in Pakistani Balochistan should be viewed in this context.
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How will these regional insurgencies transform into full-blown wars?
In the event of a major US military operation combining kinetic and non-kinetic dimensions of war, Iran’s and Pakistan’s critical nodes within their electricity, communications, transportation, military, and industrial systems will be subjected to cyber/electromagnetic pulse weapons attacks. Such attacks will break down these critical national networks, shutting them off. Simultaneously, the US will arm and actively support already active ethnic guerrillas to turn sections of Iranian and Pakistani Balochistan into autonomous zones till the regimes change.
As for the Arab monarchies, they exist because they fulfill the present global order determined by the US. One day these monarchies will outlive their utility to the US. As the expatriate populations increase, and as the local population clamors for increased human rights and freedom, the US, may contrive mass uprisings in the Gulf similar to the Srilanka civil war choreographed by India during the 1980s.
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The blood borders map shows AJK, GB, and KPK as parts of a greater Afghanistan. However, there may be a variation. Till a pliant regime is installed, the greater Afghanistan plan will be put on hold. There is a likelihood that GB will become part of Indian Held Kashmir because India is being projected as a strategic ally of the US. These are the secret plans being implemented through proxy insurgencies while the target states remain embroiled in regional disputes.
Saleem Akhtar Malik is a Pakistan Army veteran who writes on national and international affairs, defense, military history, and military technology. He Tweets at @saleemakhtar53. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Global Village Space.