Imperial blowback and WWI.

 

Gertrude Bell - The Queen of the Desert

Britain and France redesigned and redrew the boundaries of the Middle East after the end of WWI in 1918 with the Sykes-Picot Agreement. They basically carved up between themselves what was left of the Ottoman Empire. 

The English half spy and half archaeologist, Gertrude Bell, in her letters described walking through the desert after WWI, tracing the new boundary of Iraq and Saudi Arabia, with her walking stick. Sir Percy Cox fatefully determined that a portion of Iraq, would henceforth, be known as Kuwait. Much later, Sir Cyril Radcliffe, fixed the frontiers of India and Pakistan, to carve out a Pakistani state. All these regions have experienced what George Monbiot calls "imperial blowback." 

At the time of WWI, most British people had no clear idea what they were fighting for on the Western Front in France. Millions were dying to grab a few hundred yards of land. They knew that Britain was fighting the 'Hun' but it was never a war aim of Imperial Germany, to invade Britain. There were calls for the British government to declare what their war aims were in continuing to propagate a war against Imperial Germany. The German Kaiser, wanted to build a railway line from Berlin to Baghdad and paid for the restoration of the tomb of Saladin. He also told the Muslim Arabs that Germany wanted to join a jihad against the infidel. 

After WWI the British invaded Mesopotamia/Iraq, to grab the oil fields and bombed and fought the Arabs. Imperial conquest and grabbing colonies were really what WWI was about.