I've heard that several conflicts in Africa and the Middle

honestly the me is just fine except for kurdistan

for africa they never really unified at all, theres thousands and thousands of tribes and groups that hate eachother. You could try all day and never get something that brings peace

I remember a thread where some anons attempted it and ended up with roughly 300 irrelevant shitholes.

File: saddam hussein aesthetic.jpg (37KB, 590x350px) Image search: [Google]

37KB, 590x350px

>>620514
>and Kurdistan to the east.
A nomadic group from Persia that committed genocide against Assyrians and Armenians doesn't deserve a fucking state.

>>620514
For staters, the borders of Saudi Arabia, Iran and Ethiopia weren't drawn up, they were created in large part by their respective ethnic groups.

>>620514
For the middle east an Iraq-Syria merger would be good

>>620603

Well you're in luck, Daesh are on the job..

>>620585
>Ethiopia
Except they kinda were. They were tricked into selling Eritrea to Italy which started that whole mess in the first place, and then once the Italians were defeated, Menelik II got in on the colonization scramble and claimed a bunch of land to the south and west, including the Ogaden territory that was originally Somali.

>>620514
For the middle east the only major mistake was having Israel and, realistically, nowadays it's here to stay. This and the cold war are the real causes of the instability there.

The changes based on language or religion that you could make in the Middle East would only bring more instability and irredentist conflicts. People asking for a Kurdistan is asking for another Israel that will bring decades of butthurt and anti-western sentiment in the whole area. The only sensible change may possibly be having a shia arabic state but that (like a lot of other things) wouldn't be necessary if it wasn't because the cold war and the israeli problem killed the arabic nationalist movement.

>>620624
>daesh

No one calls them that anymore

File: 9297c476366a96e33e2f8b309367bfbe[1].gif (3MB, 3599x4399px) Image search: [Google]

3MB, 3599x4399px

>>620523
>thousands and thousands of tribes and groups that hate eachother

That's an oversimplification, like saying the Balkan wars in the 90s were caused because of 'ancient ethnic hatreds'

>>620514
In what country/place did you heard that ? In what circumstances ?
I heard that too. I'm French and heard this idea told in history class.

File: africa1.jpg (2MB, 1200x1414px) Image search: [Google]

2MB, 1200x1414px

African borders as drawn by African warlords themselves, minus European intervention.

File: ethnic map of africa.png (96KB, 816x1056px) Image search: [Google]

96KB, 816x1056px

And an ethnic map of Africa, made exactly in response to the bad borders.
Notice how many distinct ethnic groups that hate each other's guts are there. If this division were to occur, the small African states would be forced into forming federations anyways.
Still, I am sure borders drawn that way, through alliance or war, would be better and more stable than the artificial straight lines going through the plains.

File: africa1.jpg (877KB, 1200x1414px) Image search: [Google]

877KB, 1200x1414px

>>621426
The map in its original position, for easier reading.

>>621382
Why does everyone hate Kurdistan?

It's a region where most kurds live, they want self determination.

So why not just give them the land they live on?

>>621434
>Why dont Iraq, ISIS, Turkey and Iran, all political enemies, gather together to each tear away part of their states to give to this ethnic group that they all dislike?

Gee, lad, I just dont know. Why arent Texas and Ireland independent republics?

>>621437
>Iraq, ISIS, Turkey and Iran, all political enemies
Also Syria, also a political enemy of all involved, and they all enemies to it, and also hates kurds.

>>621437
But it makes no sense.

If they hate these people so much then they would gladly see them off to rule themselves.

Most Texans don't want independence nor does North Ireland.

>>621441
>i dislike your culture
>thus go away, dont pay me taxes, dont work in my industry, and here, take this land too

You are being childish right now.

>>621434
You can say this about literally every minority on earth that doesn't have a state, you know that right? No country wants a secession.

>>621441
>Most Texans don't want independence nor does North Ireland.

But do you think they would be granted independence if they wanted it? Maybe the irish, but the UK is an oddity in this sense. Most countries would not allow something like the scottish referendum.

>>620514
>what would this continent and a 5th look like if there was more of an effort to draw the borders to respect cultural identies.
Huge clusterfuck.

Africa before the colonisation was the same as it is now, except it has the layer of multi-ethnic states on top of it.
To make this continent NOT go into infighting you need an African Stalin who can redistribute the population in a way that guarantees existence of monolithic nation/tribal states with sensible resource distribution. Except this Stalin would need much more power to execute it, as the continent is much bigger than the part of Europe he got in his hand and the tribes/ethnicities are distributed in a very inconsistent manner. See >>621427 here. The problem is that you still won't do anything to help the situation since the resource distribution will cause constant wars between the states.

Middle east has mostly religious problems. Shia minorities everywhere, some Christians somewhere else throw several hated ethnicities like Kurds in and add Wahhabi approach to other religions and you have giant clusterfuck.

>>621441
>Most Texans don't want independence nor does North Ireland.

Probably most Kurds dont want it either. It is a very small minority that you read about in the news.
They are around 40 million people, and less than half a million fights for a state.

>>621382
>The changes based on language or religion that you could make in the Middle East would only bring more instability and irredentist conflicts
Retarded idea if I've ever heard one. The borders of the middle East are largely the result of Western imperialism. And that's not a 'hurr durr check ur cultural imperialist privilege' standpoint, but an observation on reality. It lumped Sunni and Shi'a Arabs, Turkmen, Kurds, and Assyrians all into Iraq, and then demonized any idea of ethnic self determination from these original borders because reasons.

Turkey is one of the biggest fuck you's to ethnic identity that was allowed to exist, and that's largely because the Allies were too exhausted to give a shit when the Young Turks drove the Greeks out and then disregarded the West's plans. At least most of the land that was planned to be taken from the former Ottoman empire really did lack a Turkish majority in most places.

>>621507
>we are the descendants of the Ottomans, and thus have a claim on all their land!
>however we arent the descendants of the Ottomans, and thus dont have to answer for their war crimes and genocide!

Should've forced them to pick one or the other.

>>621444
How?

Ethnically homogenous countries are better than multicultural ones
>>621447
>No country wants a secession.
Why?
>>621455
>But do you think they would be granted independence if they wanted it?
Maybe, it's the 1st world where we don't use violence to keep our people under our rule.

>>621547
>how
By saying "why" a couple of lines later in your post.
This "why" portrays you as a child.

>>621391
In brazil, this is the mainstream narrative for african and middle east conflict taught in schools. The root of the 3rd world violence is bad borders draw by the imperial powers. But thats stupid, even with self drawn borders those places would be full of war, just like europe was.

>>621580
Totally agree, the logic is flawed. But, with correct borders, wouldn't that be wars between countries rather than civil wars ?

>>621692
Still, those are "new" countries. From what I know, most new countries end up at war with their neighbours for whatever nationalistic/strategic/expansionist reason (South America, Israel, Balkans, even the U.S. could fit this I guess) and face their own internal strifes (Uruguay is a prime example)

I admit I don't know much about African nations, but give them some time. Some of them are grow quite fast iirc.

>>621386
It's not that ancient if you only had to go back 50 years

>>621429
>>621426

since when has Sicily been considered a part of Africa?

>>620514
The same leftists who blame all conflict in the middle east on the west's decision to draw borders that lump people of different cultures into the same state are the same leftists who cry racism if you are opposed to mass immigration to european countries.

If cultural heterogeneity is so bad, if it is a recipe for inevitable conflict, then why are you working so hard to foist it on european countries?

>>621794
Arabs considered Spain and Sicily part of their domain, so its relevant to the map.

>>620563
Better than 50 irrelevant shitholes full of civil war

>>621840

Arabs are not Africans.

>>622071
Arab Egyptians are not African?

>>621580
But then the countries nor leftist westerners wouldn't have the "muh western imperialism" excuse for why their country is a shithole, which would be more beneficial for everyone.

>>622085

You got it.

>>622071
Yeah, Arabs worse than Africans.

>>620514
The only option that would have resulted in long term stability would have been the creation of the United States of Africa.

Africa's divisions make it easy for other countries to exploit the continent. A federation of African states would have done much to strengthen Africa.

>>621385
>Wanting to call them by their preferred PR name
That's like wanting to call the Nazis the NSDAP

>>621361
>>In large part
That's what I meant. Their borders were formed by other countries to the same extent that France's or Germany's borders were.

>>622160
They are the Khalifate.

>>622071
Northern Africans are the only real Africans. The rest of the continent should be called Negria and separated from Africa proper by the Sahara.

>>622190
>Isisposting
Is this going to be a new meme?

>>622212
>calling the formation by its actual name means you're sympathizing with them

That's the only meme in here. On /his/ of all places I'd expect to avoid cringeworthy reddit tier monickers.

>>622201

No, we were supposed to have Five populated continents, then the Americans forced their "Americas are two different continents" of seer butthurt. We are not gonna get another one just to please you.

>>622119
Didn't Gaddafi want to do something like this?

He was evil if you recall.

Therefore it's a bad idea.

>>622232
>They want you to call them Islamic State because it legitimises them
>Alright then

File: df0b24_b7e0f2b90a4e42a4bce074604587ba62.png (18KB, 400x400px) Image search: [Google]

18KB, 400x400px

Are there any online resources that aren't spouting endless >muh cradle of humanity reposts when it comes to African history?

All I can find on this massive continent are either Egyptian history and modern conflicts, and a serious dearth of anything inbetween. I don't even know where to begin outside of Wikipedia and blind Google searches.

>tfw rarely any websites even mention Coptic Catholicism

>>623243
The history of sub Sahara history is largely lost, I don't think they had a written language so everything was passed down orally. Which I'm pretty sure was all lost during colonisation

>>621507
Yeah, because the middle eastern map was full of nation-states before big bad western euro showed up. People with different language and culture never lived in the same country before the eternal anglo and the frogs decided to fuck the Middle East.

>>620563
Most modern nation states were built on the genocide of other cultures, Africa never went through this so if you try to draw nation-states on it you will get shitloads of countries.

>>621547
>Maybe, it's the 1st world where we don't use violence to keep our people under our rule.

Spain doesn't allow it's secessionists to leave or even vote to see if they want to leave, France, Germany and Italy do the same although they have less problems regarding this subject. The flemish secessionists literally rule in Belgium yet they haven't managed to become independent yet. One of the most famous conflicts of the USA, nation of freedom, was all about preventing a secession.

>>623243
The UNESCO webpage had some nice pdfs abou world history including african history iirc

Got some very nice stuff about Aksum some time ago there.

>>623477
The great mistake that causes so much pain was to decide that everyone in the world should be a nation-state liberal democracy. Let them have their tribes, kingdoms or whatever and live aparted from the world. You can still steal all their ressources without having to deal with destroying states causing so much pain. It's different for the MENA but for most of Africa that should work.

File: belgium.jpg (36KB, 418x328px) Image search: [Google]

36KB, 418x328px

>when the borders for these states were drawn up they were haphazard and didn't take into account who lived there, their cultures, history etc.

File: switzerland.jpg (44KB, 418x328px) Image search: [Google]

44KB, 418x328px

>>623509
>when the borders for these states were drawn up they were haphazard and didn't take into account who lived there, their cultures, history etc.

File: canada.png (245KB, 1280x1107px) Image search: [Google]

245KB, 1280x1107px

>>623515
>when the borders for these states were drawn up they were haphazard and didn't take into account who lived there, their cultures, history etc.

File: 1362220555029.png (344KB, 545x402px) Image search: [Google]

344KB, 545x402px

>>622160
"Daesh" is a dismissive term created by white Europeans as not to offend Muslims by calling Islamic State the Islamic State. Right now the BBC's standard is to always preface IS with "so-called".
>The so-called Islamic State
IS in fact hates the word because they're doing all this for religious reasons and tolerant white people are saying they're not.
>I'm doing this for A
>No, you're doing it for B
>Look, it says here in my book that I should do A
>No, no, you're a product of Western meddling, you're not a real A.
>No. We even named ourselves the A Group
>I'm sorry you feel this way, B Group. We made you do this with our imperialism.
>ALLAH A-BAR
>You mean B-BAR

Greentext premise blatantly stolen from a facebook post by some arab guy I can't find

>>623520
Nobody lived there

>>623523
The phrase "Daesh" was first used by a Syrian activist, not a European. It's what most muslims refer to it as, since it has a double meaning in Arabic which is very derogatory to them.
https://www.freewordcentre.com/blog/2015/02/daesh-isis-media-alice-guthrie/

>>623523
Plus, in it's first meaning "Daesh" is just "ISIS" in Arabic, so your insinuation that it avoids referring to them as an Islamic State is false.

>>623575
Useful idiot

>>623575
I stand corrected. Thank you for the link.

>>623585
No worries. Happy to help.

>>623583
You too.

>>623523
>"Daesh" is a dismissive term created by white Europeans as not to offend Muslims by calling Islamic State the Islamic State. Right now the BBC's standard is to always preface IS with "so-called".
No, it was invented by Arabs. I was in Lebanon and everyone called them Daesh.

>>622119
Yeah sure because some idealistic federation would be something else than one giant shithole plagued by civil wars and ethnic violence. Probably wouldn´t even exist longer than 20 years at most.

Africa is a lost cause for the foreseeable future. The middle east on the other hand would benefit from new borders that regard the ethnic and religious situation.

Also independent kurdistan when ? Even if it has the same destabilizing effect as israel, on the long run the kurdish question has to be solved one way or another. The arab regimes and turkey simply aren´t willing or able to integrate the kurds properly.

>>623617
>on the long run the kurdish question has to be solved one way or another

What about good ol' genocide? Turks are good at that.

>>623633
> implying the Kurds don't have ample experience killing Armenians and Assyrians

>>623633
Sure looks like they are trying to assimilate the kurds by force. They absolutely hate that the kurdish militias actually are gaining traction in gaining their independence. Sadly USA and EU need them so they won´t interfere. I just hope that the kurds draw them in a guerilla war and the public oppinion turns against militarism and akp authorianism.

>>620514
You would have had a real bitch of a time dividing up Africa in any cohesive way. The Middle East isn't all too terrible except for kurdistan, and the fact that Isreal is there. That's likely the source of most of the political issues.

>>623642
Yeah, fine, let's have more conflict and violence in the most decent and stable country of the middle east.

>>623641
true

>>623646
>Decent
Yeah sure, actually look up how turkey aided and enabled isis. They are playing their own game and it isn´t necessarily good for the middle east. Also the most decent country there is israel.

>>620514
It's not like there are clean, obvious lines between ethnic groups where you could just draw a border and everyone would be okay with it. There are lots of mixed areas which would be claimed by different ethnic groups. There would be attempts by the new ethnic states to "protect minorities" in the neighbouring countries, expulse other people etc.

The pretext of Europe's relatively homogenous nation states is the expulsion and ethnic cleansing of tens of millions of people and (forced) assimilation of minority groups in the 19th and 20th century. All in all, this makes the homogenous nation state as a concept for a peaceful Africa / Middle East look very questionable at least.

To fix the ME, basically you need to get Israel off the map, give the Kurds kurdistan, make a Levant nation out of Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, create a Sunni Arab republic and Shia Arab republic out of Iraq, let the Hijaz be its own thing and keep the rest of the peninsula the same basically.

>>623652
>Turkey is not decent because of playing realpolitik and profiting from the destabilization of their rival neighbours
>fucking Israel is

It's not like arbitrary borders are exclusive to these continents. Europe went through an extended period of conquest, borders getting carved up, reconquest, rinse and repeat, etc. for a long time.

It may have caused problems but at the end of the day it's just a convenient excuse.

>>620514
Biafra needs to be a thing.

North Nigeria can get fucked.

>>623243
Go read up on Axumite and Ethiopian history. It's pretty cool.

>>623672
The gulf shia arabs should not stay under Saudi rule either, I don't know if they would agree to be with south Iraq or they would be more ok with Bahrein but they can't stay under wahabbism. I would say that this is more urgent than kurds or palestinians, despite being less mediatic.

>>623581
It also means something close to "shit" in syrian or egyptian arabic dialect thus why its funny.

>>623677
>"Realpolitik"
> erdogans pseudosultan osmanic ciclejerk is realpolitik
> bismarck spins in his grave right now

Seriously Realpolitik is always suited for the time and the actual power and influence a nation has. In this regard the pipe dreams erdogan has are far away from it. He is alligned to the strongest military alliance in the world and overseeing a prosperous economy. What does he have to gain from meddling in a failed state, surpressing a important minority in his country and alienating russia ?

>>620514

why should europeans give a fuck about the borders?

Did you ever think that the european powers specifically didn't fix borders to ensure constant war, strife and weakness for their former colonies, who had every interest in being antagonistic towards europe?

>>620514
Instead of going back in and redrawing borders, what we need is for the established powers to stop pestering and getting involved Africa so much, and stop holding them to Western standards even when they've barely developed culturally or technologically for millennia. Just leave and let them change the will of the Africans decide what happens there, just like how every other civilization has developed through history.

>>623709
You assume bad intention. In reality it is a combination of greed, impotence in the post colonial era and a simple lack of understanding and foresight that lead to the borders we have now.

>>622235
>Americans

No, it's a pan-Anglo attitude. Seven seas, seven continents. Deal with it.

>>623243
>history

Most of Africa was illiterate before the arrival of Europeans. You should be looking for archaeology, not history.

>>623509
It's possible to get along even with these arbitrary borders, especially if the region containing the drawn up country is prosperous and stable. But I don't think you could dispute that drawing up almost an entire continent like this is just a recipe for disaster.

>>623509
>>623515

True for Belgium but not for CH, which was self-organised.

>>621386

>that picture

thank fuck I went against my adviser, I have interest in jumping into the irrelevant academic shit hole that is specializing in NigerCongo/Bantu/Saharan language families.

>>623714
For better or worse, that doesn't work anymore. In a globalized world every country is connected through trade, power and politcs.

>>623520
Quebec follows the line of French speaking areas, Nunavut covers most of the traditional Eskimo homeland.

>>621426

>as drawn by African warlords
>25% as drawn by arabic warlords

I guess imperialism is ok as long as the evil white man isn't doing it.

>>623708
US/Turkey/Israel want to run a new pipeline from Saudi Arabia through Turkey then into Europe. Iran wants to do the same, replacing Saudi Arabia's role as the oil supplier. But it has to run through Syria to get to Turkey. Assad sided with Iran. Russia did as well to try to stop further American expansion into the region.

>>623718

Not bad intention, but pragmatism.

The Europeans knew, to some extent, that the borders were a wreck for the natives, because when the Europeans chopped up Africa it was between themselves and had nothing to do with the natives.

Did the Europeans know how to delineate borders correctly? No, I don't think so.

But could they have figured it out? Yes, definitely. But what would it have benefited them to do this? Nothing.

The Europeans are not going to spend extra time and money to withdraw from enemy territories in such a way as to ensure those territories do well. Especially considering this would have included land swaps between European countries who were not on good terms diplomatically. Additionally, the Europeans were extremely nice to withdraw without large scale genocide and destruction, which they could have done as well, and was par for the course for most of the history of mankind when a stronger civilization overwhelmed a weaker one.

>>623708
>What does he have to gain from meddling in a failed state
Keeping it failed.

>surpressing a important minority in his country
Minorities are dangerous, specially when they held literal terrorist groups. You can disagree with that but it's clearly not the vision of the turks, and Erdogan is president of the turks.

>alienating russia
Why would he want to get close to Russia?

File: 1453771720797.jpg (20KB, 267x179px) Image search: [Google]

20KB, 267x179px

>>623775
>Keeping it failed.
Keep those sweet refugees flowing and the minorities you deem dangerous ( despite turkey was on the best way to actually integrate the kurds prior to recent events) running wild. Face it dude, Erdogans policy isn´t rationale and sure as hell no realpoltik. He is trying to secure its power. With his nationalist strongman policies he gains votes and approval of nationalist parts of turkish society. Good to see at the recent election. The blowback of this will be ugly, costly and seriously hamper with the good progress turkey made. Similiar with putins russia. Its the 21st century, policies more suited to the 19th century are going to fail miserably.

>>623814
"Realpolitik" is always a kind of stupid idea because it assumes there is some universally agreed best course of action, If there were we wouldn't have political disagreements. The fact is everyone acts according to what they think is the most rational course of action, but everyone has incomplete information, biases both cultural and personal, and the fact that some people are just stupid and thus make stupid decisions.

>>623981
>"Realpolitik" is always a kind of stupid idea because it assumes there is some universally agreed best course of action,

That's the exact opposite of what it assumes. Two countries can both follow a realpolitik strategy while disagreeing about nearly everything.

>>623459
Most is oral and in the parts that have written scripts on paper too. Colonization did not wipe out shit like you think it did

File: 1443569467896.gif (464KB, 500x370px) Image search: [Google]

464KB, 500x370px

Well, over time they probably would have made their own boundries, however there would still be tons of war over resources. Since colonizers offered guns and other fine goods in trade for ivory and what not. There might be slightly less regional conflict, but there would still be war. See the French Indian war as a prime example of colony disputes. Africa is a hell hole due to disease and terrible soil which is bad for farming. We joke about how everything in Australia will kill you, but in reality, literally everything will kill you in Africa.

This is just an example of one of the many infliction upon the African population that pretty much no one else has to deal with.
WARNING: THIS VIDEO CONTAINS NON WORK SAFE MATERIAL, IT'S FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-df_GvUutwI

>>623727
Oral, written and historical reports. Government reports and testimony and finally archeology but that is based off climate.