How the Middle East got that way: the seeds of much of the conflict in the Mideast today were planted by Britain and its Allies after World War I, when they carved up the remains of the Ottoman Empire.

• Author: Roberts, Sam
• Position: TIMES PAST

"Car Bomb Kills 56 in Baghdad"

"Israel Hits Gaza After Palestinian Rocket Attacks"

"Lebanese Official Critical of Syria Is Assassinated"

This small sampling of recent headlines about turmoil in the Middle East--and countless others in the last century--raises the question: Why is that part of the world such a mess?

It's complicated, of course, but the fact is that many of the current conflicts can be traced to decisions made after World War I by the victorious Allies (largely Britain and France) who divided up the territory of what had been the Ottoman Empire.

In drawing the boundaries of what would become today's Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Syria, and Lebanon, they paid little attention to the ancient tribal, ethnic, and religious differences that are at the root of much of the bloodshed in the region 90 years later.

The result, according to historian David Fromkin, was the creation of a group of neighboring "countries that have not become nations even today."

Beginning in 1914, the war in Europe pitted Britain, France, Russia, and eventually the United States, against Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire.

Ruled since 1299 by Muslim sultans in Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey's biggest city), the Ottoman Empire spanned southeastern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.

After the Allies victory in 1918, peace talks took place in Versailles, outside Paris. But there and in follow-up negotiations, the Allies disagreed about what the postwar world should look like: They argued not only about how severely to punish Germany, but also about what should happen to the Ottoman territories, which were home to many ethnic and religious groups, including Turks, Arabs, Kurds, Muslims, Christians, and Jews.

Nationalism was a growing force in "the early 20th century and President Woodrow Wilson advocated self-determination. In his Fourteen Points, Wilson urged that all nationalities within the former Ottoman Empire be assured "an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development."

But the Europeans were more intent on preserving, and even expanding, their colonial empires, and they wanted access to oil, which was starting to be discovered in large quantities in the Mideast.

The Europeans also wanted to loosen Islam's hold on the region by promoting secular government. But, as Fromkin writes, foreign powers trying to impose their own order would not be welcomed in places "whose inhabitants for more than a thousand years have avowed faith in a holy law that governs all life, including government and politics."

Further complicating matters, the British had made a number of conflicting commitments during the war: They had promised Arabs independence in return for taking up arms against their Turkish...