BRATTLEBORO — In a presentation that seeks to place the current unrest in the Middle East into historical context, former Ambassador Peter W. Galbraith will discuss “The New Map of the Middle East: The Disastrous Centennial of the Disastrous Sykes-Picot Agreement” on Friday, June 10, at 7 p.m., at the Marlboro College Graduate Center at 28 Vernon St., according to a news release.
In May 1916, as the World War I raged, diplomats Mark Sykes of Great Britain and Francois Georges-Picot of France secretly reached an accord, known as the Sykes-Picot agreement, dividing the Arab lands that were under the rule of the soon-to-be toppled Ottoman Empire.
Galbraith will discuss some of the reasons that, one hundred years later, the area divided by the agreement is wracked with conflict and violence.
The event is sponsored by the Windham World Affairs Council (WWAC) and will start 30 minutes earlier than usual, as the group expects a long and lively question-and-answer period.
A WWAC members-only annual meeting will precede this talk at 5:30 p.m., followed by coffee, tea, and conversation at 6:30 p.m. Refreshments will be served on the patio during a short business meeting. Anyone who isn't yet a member is invited to join at this time.
Galbraith is an author, academic, commentator, politician, policy advisor, and former United States diplomat. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he helped uncover Saddam Hussein's gassing of the Kurds. From 1993 to 1998, he served as the first U.S. Ambassador to Croatia, where he was co-mediator and principal architect of the 1995 Erdut Agreement that ended the war in that country.
Beginning in 2003, Galbraith acted as an advisor to the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq. As an author and commentator, he argued that Iraq had broken up and that the U.S. shouldn't try to build a strong central government over Kurdish objections.
In 2009, Galbraith was appointed United Nations' Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan, where he contributed to exposing the massive fraud that took place in that year's presidential election in Afghanistan.
Galbraith served as chairman of the Vermont Democratic Party from 1977 to 1979. In 2010, he won election to the Vermont State Senate from Windham County as a Democrat. He was reelected in 2012. He didn't run for a third term in 2014. Galbraith announced in March 2016 that he would be a candidate for the Democratic nomination for Governor of Vermont in 2016.
For more informaton about this talk, visit www.windhamworldaffairscouncil.org.