A common refrain of Western commentators writing about the Middle East is that its problems stem in part from the supposedly artificial borders drawn up by Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot in the 1916 agreement that bears their names. However, David Siddhartha Patel explains, not only was the agreement never implemented, but the order that existed prior to 1914 was neither wholly imposed from without nor wholly artificial:

Europeans did not draw borders willy-nilly, without regard to local factors. Local actors and historical precedents played important roles in determining not only what borders were drawn but even which proposed states survived and which did not. The Sykes-Picot agreement, for example, awarded much of south-central Turkey . . . to the French zone of direct influence; these and later efforts to carve up Anatolia were stymied by [the Turkish ruler] Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Local actors and politics [also] heavily influenced the specific location of the Iraq-Syria border. . . .

Local precedents for seemingly “artificial” states also mattered more than analysts often recognize. For example, scholars have demonstrated the extent to which the modern state of Iraq had Ottoman administrative roots.

As for erasing the established borders, writes Patel, the idea is nothing new. But while many Western observers have proposed the creation of new and smaller national or sectarian states as an antidote to current conflict, many residents of the Middle East envision the opposite:

Islamic State’s rhetoric of erasing borders is similar to that of other post-Ottoman supra-nationalist movements in the region, including the Baath parties of both Iraq and Syria, Gamal Abdel Nasser’s pan-Arabism, and the Syrian Social Nationalist party, which advocates a Greater Syria encompassing the Levant and Mesopotamia, from Lebanon to Kuwait. . . . In [a] sense, Islamic State’s transnational Islamism echoes Arab nationalists’ calls, with “Muslim” substituted for “Arab.” . . .

For most Arabs, the true “end of Sykes-Picot” would mean the end of imperial-era divisions created deliberately to ensure the region’s long-term dependence on and subordination to the West. Existing states would not collapse down to atomistic ethnic and sectarian groups; rather, populations would unite. . . . Arabs, and perhaps the wider Islamic world, would cease to be divided into distinct [political] entities. Both the Western and Arab views see the borders of the Middle East as artificial, but they differ considerably in their expectations of whether those borders would dissolve through expansion or retraction.

Here at Mosaic, we’ve published quite a lot about many Arab states, but one that’s barely received mention is Oman, located at the southeastern corner of the Arabian Peninsula. The sultanate has stayed out of the recent conflicts of the Midde East, and is known to have sub-rosa relations with Israel; high-ranking Israeli officials have visited the country clandestinely, or at least with little fanfare. For precisely this reason, Oman has held itself out as an intermediary and host for negotiations. The then-secret talks that proceeded the Obama administration’s fateful nuclear negotiations with Iran took place in Oman. Ari Heistein explains the similar, and troubling, role Muscat is playing with regard to the Houthis in neighboring Yemen:

For more than three decades, Oman has served in the role of mediator for the resolution of disputes in Yemen. . . . Oman allows for a Houthi office in the capital, Muscat, reportedly numbering around 100 personnel, to operate from its territory for the purported function of diplomatic engagement. It is worth asking why the Houthis require such a large delegation for such limited engagement and whether there is any real value to engaging with the Houthis.

Thus far, efforts to negotiate with the Houthis have yielded very limited outcomes, primarily resulting in concessions from the Saudi-led coalition and partial de-escalation when it has served the terror group’s interests. Rarely, if ever, have the Houthis fully abided by their commitments after signing off on international agreements. Presumably, such meager results could have been achieved through other constellations that are less beneficial to the recently redesignated foreign terrorist organization.

In contrast, the malign and destabilizing Houthi activities in Oman are significant. They include: shipment of Iranian and Chinese weapons components [and] military-grade communications equipment via Oman to the Houthis; the smuggling of senior officials in and out of Houthi-controlled areas via Oman; and financial activities conducted by Houthi shell corporations to consolidate the regime’s control over Yemen’s economy and subsidize the regime.

With this in mind, there is good reason to suspect that the Houthi presence in Oman does more harm than good.