re: The Partition of India 1947 (long read, violence, etc)

quote:

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A lot of the reason for the violence in the ME today is due to the British/USA creating countries out of thin air with no regards to different religious sects or cultures. We royally screwed it up

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I used to think that, but I am of the opinion that is no longer the case.

Take Iraq as an example. There is and was never a clean way to partition Iraq. When the British left, you had a Sunni Arab western and north-central Iraq, a Shi'a Arab southern and south-central Iraq, and a Kurdish northern Iraq...or, at least, that's how the story goes.

But wait, nearly half of Iraqis lived in the metropolitan Baghdad area, which was a potpourri of every sect, ethnic group, and interest present in Mesopotamia, living in neighborhoods right next to each other interspersed all throughout the city.

Oh yea, you also had Arab Christians and Jews all up and down the country. Large and influential populations of Shi'a Arabs in Fallujah, Diyala, and Samarra (all in the heart of supposedly Sunni territory). You had large and influential populations of Sunni Arabs in places like Mahmudiyah and Hillah. You also had Zoroastrians, Yazidis, and a whole bunch of other groups in the mix.

So who gets Baghdad? How do you avoid what happened in the subcontinent happening in the 1940's and 1950's in places like Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and on and on and on?

We get told "Colonialism bad. British and French fricked up. Reason for violence in Middle East today." but, but as usual, the answer is a lot more complex than that, and there weren't any easy answers. I actually think the British and French did a decent job of trying to manage interests with the geography they were working with when they left.

That doesn't even get into Africa - trying to make Westphalian nation states out of most of that continent was damn near impossible after WWII.