Iraq had been a medieval province of the caliphate, whereas “Lebanon” referred to a mountain and “Jordan” to a river. The French mandate marked the first time “Syria” had been used as the name of a state, whereas “Palestine” was merely a Syrian appendage. Libya reappeared in 1934, when the Italians combined Cyrenaica, Tripolitania, and Fezzan. Syria, Libya, and Palestine were given names resurrected from Roman antiquity. Ottoman provinces became Arab kingdoms, while Christian and Jewish enclaves were carved out in Lebanon and Palestine.

The victorious Allies transformed the Middle East into its current form, with its European-designed names, flags, and borders. It lost control of its European possessions prior to the war and, having allied with the defeated Central Powers, lost its Middle Eastern territories afterward. The Ottoman Empire had long been the “Sick Man of Europe,” hemorrhaging territory for nearly a century. Much as it did in Europe, World War I radically changed the political geography of the Middle East. It is now time for outsiders to preach what they have practiced. In the words of one veteran observer, “the myth of the strong and cohesive Arab state has been laid to rest.” The people do indeed want to bring down the regime. With this in mind, Europe and America should not stand in the way of the Balkanization of the Middle East. This process, and the resulting concept of self-determination, eventually led to the longest period of peace in Europe’s history. The history of modern Europe has been defined by the gradual emergence of nation-states out of the ashes of numerous multi-ethnic European empires. Rather than maintaining the artificial regime it imposed a century ago, Western nations, and Europe in particular, should look to their own geopolitical evolution for guidance. Leopold Pilichowski’s 1918 portrait of Sir Mark Sykes. Even as the ongoing Arab revolt tears at the modern Middle Eastern order, Washington, Paris, London, and Moscow remain committed to defending the status quo. Western intervention in Syria would likely have the same goal. Americans and Europeans have even shed blood to ensure that these borders remain unchanged: in Lebanon in the 1950s and again in the 1980s, Iraq in 19, and Mali in 2013. Middle Eastern borders have become an inviolable and sacrosanct principle of Western international relations. A political map of the region from 1930 looks nearly identical to one from 2013. Until now, the post-Ottoman order, fashioned by wartime exigency, imperialist ambitions, and ignorance of local identities, has survived a century of independence, revolution, and war. Long-repressed identities have reemerged, challenging the unity of many Muslim states and blurring once-solid geopolitical lines. The wrath of the misnamed “Arab Spring” has exposed the sectarian nature of the region. The doodles of Daraa, however, have unwittingly shaken a different, more expansive “regime” altogether: The century-old, European-created Middle Eastern political order. Twenty-eight months later, their goal remains elusive. Their graffiti was so threatening that the Daraa Fifteen, as they became known, were arrested, beaten, and denailed-a medieval form of torture-by the regime.

Like their brethren in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, the schoolchildren had a bleak but limited goal: To end the 43-year rule of the totalitarian Assad regime. On March 6, 2011, fifteen Syrian fourth-graders in the southern border town of Daraa scribbled, “the people want to bring down the regime” on the walls of their school, echoing slogans shouted across the Arab world for two months. They are gone, but the map remains, along with a shameful irony: While Europeans found a better way to set their own borders, the states they carved out of the Ottoman Empire continue to burn and self-destruct. A century ago, European powers redrew the lines of the Levant according to their own needs.

Map of the middle east