You’re right about the war statement not being clear. What I should have said is that they regarded us as a “tool of war” that can be used to meet their end goal.

And you’re definitely right about their dividing of the people through focusing on differences, but some additional differences did stem solely from these border divisions.

As an example, many Lebanese & North African Arabic colloquial words for something are just the French word for it. I’m not saying that those are the kind of differences that could rip a nation apart, but that the differences instilled by British & French colonialism still remain to this day