The contours and regimes of the Mideast are rooted in the 1916 Sykes-Picot accord, named after the two British and French diplomats, Mark Sykes and Francois Georges-Picot, who negotiated it in complete secrecy.
Under the deal, London and Paris carved up Ottoman Empire's Middle Eastern lands into spheres of influence. A series of later treaties after the end of World War I set the final boundaries, eventually creating Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and a British mandate in Palestine that paved the way for the creation of Israel. The lines were drawn according to British and French interests with little regard to realities on the ground.
For example, mainly Sunni Mosul - along with Kurdish areas further north - was thrown together with Baghdad and the overwhelmingly Shiite south to form Iraq.
Syria was cobbled together from what had been the Ottoman provinces of Aleppo and Damascus, along with the long-separate coastal areas dominated by Alawites, an offshoot of Shia Islam.
Lebanon was broken away as a French-protected Christian protectorate, and Sunni and Shiite Muslim areas were added, creating a sectarian mix that has erupted into civil war and constant turmoil.
Cities like Acre, Haifa, Nazareth - which by administration, trade and clan were long connected to areas now in Lebanon and Syria - were instead looped into Mandate Palestine and now are in Israel.
Perhaps the most artificial creation was Jordan. An old joke has it that a strange zigzag in Jordan's border with Saudi Arabia was the result of a tipsy Winston Churchill hiccupping as he drew the line on the map. Its main population centers like Amman had historically been a hinterland for Syria and Palestine, but they were broken off and handed stretches of desert to the east and south to form a new entity under a king installed by Britain.
Ironically, for all its arbitrariness, Jordan looks at the moment like the most stable of the post-World War I creations.
Despite the foreign-drawn lines, the countries that resulted were relatively stable for the next century. In part, that's due to the grip of autocratic regimes. But also, people developed true identities as Jordanians, Iraqis, Lebanese or Syrians - even if at the same time they considered the borders illegitimate colonial creations.
That makes the sense of nationhood more durable than it looks.
Take Lebanon, for example. During its 1975-1990 civil war, some predicted it would break up into Christian, Sunni or Shiite mini-states, but it never happened. Syria dominated it for years, and Hezbollah still bridges both countries, making the border hazy. Yet, "odd and dysfunctional as it is, it still is a border that is real and meaningful," said Paul Salem, vice president of the Washington-based Middle East Institute.
World powers have no desire to see borders rearranged. The United States and Turkey would both sharply oppose any Kurdish declaration of independence in Iraq, for example, Salem said.
But informal and de facto enclaves are entirely possible. The lines being drawn by Islamic State fighters are "unrecognized but real," he said. "Taxes are levied, an armed force is in control, there's just no formalization."
Gerges said the dissatisfaction over the current order is generating debate over what the new Mideast should look like.
For the Islamic State and other extremists, there should be a caliphate - a ruler implementing Islamic law. Others want the Levant unified as it was under the Ottomans, but under Arab rule. Others dream of something resembling the European Union, he said.
Creating federalist systems in the existing states has been touted as a cure. Effectively, it's controlled decentralization: Give ethnically or religiously distinct regions enough autonomy to meet yearnings for self-identity while still being part of a cohesive state.
The Americans infused that idea into Iraq's post Saddam Hussein constitution, and some have called for it in Libya as well.
But there is also resistance among governments and some in the public who fear "federalism" is a code word for dismembering their country.
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Lee Keath is AP's Middle East enterprise editor. Ryan Lucas is a Middle East correspondent based in Beirut.
