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It seems the most important question these days is not whether Bashar Assad survives but whether Syria survives as a state. Syria, in its present borders, is not a homogenous entity, either historically or ethnically, but the outcome of Anglo-French imperialist arrangements made after World War I. They set the borders of the countries that formed on the Ottoman Empire's ruins.

First came the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the convoluted results of Faisal's Arab Revolt. Then came France's decision to separate Lebanon from Syria and annex areas beyond historically Christian Mount Lebanon to form Greater Lebanon. Finally, on the eve of World War II, came France's capitulation to Turkey's demands to transfer control of the Alexandretta Province (the Hatay Province ) to Turkey.