I know this may be looking rather too far into the past for your purposes, but I recommend highly these two books which may help to give you a historical perspective on what is happening now.
'A Line in the Sand' by James Barr which describes how Britain and France agreed to divide up the Middle East after WW1 and the fall of the Ottoman Empire:-
https://www.sce.cornell.edu/sce/alts...120212_455.pdf
'Queen of the Desert' by Georgina Howell. This is a biography of Gertrude Bell who was an advisor to the British government when setting up the new state of Iraq.
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/b...w/Worth.t.html
Western ignorance of this area of the world then and now has much to answer for as a cause of our present troubles.