Date: June 4th 2008

Riding back South across the border into Jordan we arrive in Amman. Our driver jokes every time we pass a picture of the blue-eyed Jordanian King Abdulla that he must be the "King of Denmark." In reality, the king's mother is American.
To the north in Syria we had been surrounded by pictures of the Ophthalmologist from London who is now President of Syria, Bashar Assad. As I said, people in these parts of the world know better than to associate people with the governments which rule them.

Walking down the early afternoon street in Amman on our way to a coffee shop we look up to the sky as the incredible roar of US fighter jets buzz the city on their way to Iraq, enforcing the rules of the American empire.

How many empires have preceded? egyptians, hittites, israelites, assyrians, babylonians, persians, macedonians, romans, byzantines, sassanids, umayads, abbasids, seljuk turks, crusaders, saladin, mongols, ottoman turks, etc... to name a few...

Check out the History of Empires in Middle East in 90 Seconds
http://www.mapsofwar.com/ind/imperial-history.html

Notice the Age of Nations and Borders which began under European Colonialism. This animated history of Empires in the Middle East in 90 Seconds is well done but it is actually an extreme simplification of a much more complex history. Each "empire" left a legacy of scattered villages wherein the population preserved certain languages and ways of living.

Although taxes were demanded afresh by each new empire and a certain amount of violence erupted as new conquerors confronted old rulers, it wasn't until the age of "Nation States and Borders" appeared in the 20th century that large numbers of people were suddenly trapped, frozen in place, behind artificial borders created by foreign mapmakers in ways that separated brother from brother and tribal member from tribal member.

Referring to the nomadic nature of local populations, a member of the Saud family, reportedly in tears, told the Europeans in Paris in 1925 that the seeds for hundreds of years of conflict would be sown if borders were drawn in the Middle East. The European powers went ahead and drew the borders anyway.
Are we witnessing the consequences of this border-drawing map-making frenzy?

More soon about our current work back here in Jordan.

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