one of the major mistakes of the British, was allowing the dying Ottoman empire together with their own actions to carve up the Kuridsh land between the modern Middle East states, whose artificial borders were drawn in many cases by Britain and France.
Most of the tension in the ME is a direct result of arbitrary political boundaries that don’t account for the on-the-ground realities. Why should tribes be forced to live together. This applies to Africa and other post-colonial countries.