The Anglo-French powers shaped five new states in the region and provided them with borders, rulers, and institutions of modern governance – assemblies, councils of ministers, bureaucracies, and elements of local government and municipal services. And, whatever the dubious circumstances of their birth, these states have endured, with borders intact. This endurance is remarkable since the borders were drawn by discredited colonial masters with little local knowledge and even less sensitivity to the area’s conditions, so that communities with shared identities and interests were divided, and
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