Most of today’s festering conflicts can be traced to colonial-era meddling—either through partition, or worse, indiscriminately corralling unrelated ethnic groups into a single, quarrelsome country

SRI LANKA

During their 150-year rule, the British favoured Tamils and other minority ethnic groups over the majority Sinhalese. After 1947’s national elections, the Sinhalese tried to reverse the discrimination, culminating in a quarter-century-long civil war.

INDIA/PAKISTAN

When the Brits arrived, the Subcontinent was a patchwork of princely states. When they left, they divvied it up by religion, prompting mass migration and perhaps a million deaths. Kashmir, which had a Hindu leader and a Muslim majority, has been contested ever since.

IRAQ

Border disputes and ethnic tensions have been rife since 1920, when the British forged modern-day Iraq out of three Ottoman states: Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul. The Brits decamped after a 1958 revolution, but their hellish handiwork lives on.

SUDAN

A British-Egyptian alliance ruled North and South Sudan separately until 1946, when the Brits abruptly changed their minds and decided the two should merge. The north was economically and politically favoured over the south, and civil war has been on and off ever since.

ISRAEL/PALESTINE

As anti-Semitism gained ground in Europe, an influx of Jews complicated land claims, but the Brits flip-flopped on the declaration of Israel as the Jewish homeland and proposed partition, which was rejected by both sides. In 1948 they left it up to the UN.

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