Fertile Croissant

摘要

Did winston churchill hiccup or sneeze? Either way, the story goes, the pen in his hand slipped on the map, leaving Jordan's eastern border sharply indented. Like many legends, this holds a kernel of truth. Many Arab frontiers reflect not naturalor human boundaries but the whims and fears of the imperialists who drew them up. As colonial secretary in 1921, Churchill might have lopped off more of Jordan, but he wanted to keep control of an air corridor to another British protectorate, Iraq, where the Royal Air Force was dropping poison gas on rebellious Arab tribes. In 1916, in the middle ofthe first world war, Britain and France had signed a secret pact, the notorious Sykes-Picot agreement (named after the British and the French diplomats who negotiated it), to split the Fertile Crescent between them. A northern slice, running from the Mediterranean to theTigris river, went to France; a southern slice, from Palestineto Iraq, was bagged by Britain.