Larry and Mary Anne both make a number of good points. Mary's point on artificial borders is a good one, and is not considered very often. There is a school of thought that claims that much of the Mideast conflict is due to improper border design when that area was carved up by the West.

Mary Anne's theory on British colonies also sounds plausible.

The first point in Larry's post seems to blame colonialism for the conflict in these areas:

My wife is a native of the Philippines, which was a former colony of Spain. She has an interesting observation - no former colony of Spain has ever amounted to very much. Off hand, I can't think of an exception. She claims it had to do with the way Spain ruled their colonies and the attitudes that infected the populace.



How many former European colonies went on to have stable governments and prosperous economies? The number probably isn't very high. It just goes to show that the "enlightened" Europeans with their superiority complex really aren't as great as they think.



It might be worth noting that many of these areas of the world were quite primitive before colonization, and warfare was not unknown before the Europeans got there. It's likely they didn't have stable governments and prosperous economies--unless you count subsistence-type economies--before the Europeans either. This is not to say colonization by military force of inhabited areas is morally justifiable.