The seeds of conflict in the Middle East were sown in the first 60 years of the 20th century. It was then that the Western powers - Britain, France and the United States - discovered the imperatives for interventions that have plunged the region into crisis ever since. It was also then that most of the region's modern-day states were created and their regimes forged - their management by the West earning abiding resentment. with lucid analysis and anecdotes.