Conflicts in the Middle East

9 Key excerpts on "Conflicts in the Middle East"

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  An Atlas of Middle Eastern Affairs

  • Ewan W. Anderson, Liam D. Anderson, Ian Cool(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Held (2000) , related to religion, infrastructure, natural resources, strategic features, culture, art and conflict.

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  Geographical background

  DOI: 10.4324/9780203805510-3

  The present landscape of the Middle East, more than that of any other world region, illustrates the sharpest contrast between the works of nature and the works of man. Landscapes in the temperate zone are basically the product of natural variables and human factors. Mountainous areas may have been little affected by human activity while urban areas may seem little influenced by nature, but in general there is a clear interplay between the two. In the Middle East there are vast areas, some mountainous but mainly comprising desert, in which any effect of human life is difficult to detect. In contrast, the valleys of the Nile, the Tigris and the Euphrates have been moulded by human action over millennia. Given this contrast, it is appropriate to separate considerations of physical geography from those of human geography.

  Physical geography

  As indicated above, physical geography is important in any consideration of Middle Eastern affairs in that it places obvious constraints on human activity. To name but a few aspects, agriculture, movement and indeed permanent settlement are all severely limited in the Middle East. However, the geological conditions for the formation of petroleum and natural gas, the river valleys with their possibilities for agriculture and settlement and the deep aquifers as a source of water all offer opportunities for human development. Thus, aspects of both the underlying structure and the surface form are of significance.

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  Exploring World History through Geography

  From the Cradle of Civilization to a Globalized World

  • Julie Crea Dunbar(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • ABC-CLIO

    (Publisher)

  Since World War II, conflict has characterized much of the Middle East’s contemporary history. The region has a number of human and environmental factors that have been at the core of much of the conflict. Some of the conflict has been internal, and some has been induced or exacerbated by foreign intervention. The West, in particular, has shown great interest in the Middle East since the advent of oil-driven machinery such as automobiles and airplanes in the early 20th century because the region is home to half the world’s oil reserves. In the 21st century, the oil is used not only for fueling transportation but also for making products such as ink, clothing, fertilizers, tires, and plastic, meaning demand for oil worldwide has only grown over the last century, and it has at times caused conflict in the region.

  The Middle East, however, is environmentally diverse. Not all countries in the region have oil resources. Those that do, such as the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, have economies centered on oil. There is a massive wealth inequality between the Middle East’s oil-rich states and those that don’t have oil, and there is also inequity within the states, as the rich, oftentimes high-ranking government officials and royal family members, control all of the wealth in both oil-rich and oil-free states. Between 1990 and 2016, 64 percent of the region’s wealth was controlled by the top 10 percent of the income earners (as compared to 37 percent of the wealth in Western Europe and 47 percent in the United States). In fact, the top 10 percent received six times as much money during this period as the bottom 50 percent of the population (Assouad 2020). Inequity too has been a factor in conflict.

  The Middle East is the birthplace of many religions, including three of the world’s largest: Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Throughout history, this factor has been the cause of much tension, as well as outright war, both by internal and external forces. It remains so today. The region has the highest rate of religious conflict in the world (Kishi and Theodorou 2016). Islam remains the dominant religion in the modern era—almost 30 percent of the world’s Muslims live in the region. However, divisions within Islam continue to cause conflict, particularly between Sunnis and Shias.

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  Frontiers of Peace Economics and Peace Science

  • Manas Chatterji, Chen Bo, Rameshwar Mishra, Manas Chatterji(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Emerald Group Publishing Limited

    (Publisher)

  BRIEF INTRODUCTION Because of its geographical location, huge oil reserves, and strategic importance to the main players in international politics, the Middle East has been regarded as one of the hottest boiling points in the entire world. At the heart of the region’s troubles is the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, which has dominated domestic, regional, and world politics for more than five decades. The region has also hosted three wars not involving Israel (Iraq–Iran, 1980– 1988; Iraq–Kuwait, 1991; and Iraq, 2003). The region is, moreover, surrounded by other long-term conflict zones such as Sudan, Afghanistan, and the Caucasus. In this chapter, we will provide empirical analysis for the economic causes of conflicts of nine Middle Eastern countries. The main strategy of our research is to identify the factors that might have contributed to dramatic changes in the number of conflicts in the Middle East between 1963 and 1999. The empirical analysis is performed using a unique panel of inequality estimates that cover 10 countries over the selected period. This chapter estimates the effects of inequality and other variables on the intensity and level of conflicts by applying two different measures. We look for specific economic and noneconomic factors that can determine changes in conflicts in the region. A few observations are in order: first, our results indicate that inequality bears a negative relation with conflicts. The negative sign on the inequality variable indicates the special characteristics of a very imbalanced society where all opposition is crushed through heavy military presence, and/or the very poor do not have the assets essential to initiate an armed rebellion. Second, a host of macroeconomic variables like inflation, military expenditure, and immigration have a positive relation with conflicts.

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  Energy Developments in the Middle East

  • Anthony H. Cordesman(Author)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  Treating the Middle East as a "region," rather than as a group of dis- parate actors, often conceals far more than it reveals. The future develop- ment of energy supply in each nation and subregion will be affected by exporting different political, security, ethnic, and sectarian fault lines. The internal character and strategic interests of given nations differ sharply from state to state. In many cases, regional or national tensions have already led to war or could lead to future conflicts. In other cases, internal tensions have already produced civil conflicts. Violent religious extremism is an ongoing problem in many MENA countries, and the events of September 11, 2001, have only dramatized internal security problems and terrorism on global level that long existed on a national and regional level. A HISTORY OF CONFLICT AND TENSION MENA nations have a long history of violence and conflict. The Arab- Israeli wars of 1948, 1956, 1967, 1970, 1973, 1982, and the first and second intifadas are all cases in point. So are the Iran-Iraq War, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the Gulf War, and the Iraq War. There is little chance that the region will avoid new conflicts between the present and 2020. Many Middle Eastern states still dispute at least one border with one of its neighbors, and most countries have serious religious and/or ethnic divi- sions. Low-level conflicts and internal unrest are virtual certainties. In several cases, Middle Eastern states are either currently at war, or there is a serious risk of future conflict. Mauritania has long been the scene of a The Geopolitics and Security Dimension of Energy Exports 59 low-level race war between Arabs and Black Africans. Morocco is still in the process of a long war with the Polisario for control of the Western Sa- hara. Algeria is involved in a bitter civil war between its ruling military junta and Islamic extremists.

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  Asian Security Reassessed

  • Stephen Hoadley, Jurgen Ruland(Authors)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • ISEAS Publishing

    (Publisher)

  Geographic cultural diversity (for example, of ethnic minorities) and geographical inequality in natural resources available within countries and in different regions add to tensions. Furthermore, more economically developed regions and nations, to sustain economic growth, tend to exploit the natural resources and environments of less developed regions and nations. 5 Perhaps as a precaution against attack from neighbours, small but resource rich countries such as Brunei spend a larger percentage of their GDP on defense than some of the larger countries such as China, Indonesia and Malaysia. 6 This chapter discusses the security issues and conflicts (both external and internal) over natural resources and the environment in East and Southeast Asia. The first section briefly discusses the resources of the region. A map locates some of the natural resources discussed. The second section deals with the conflicts related to the use and control of natural resources in the region. The nature and the magnitude of the conflicts between and within countries are dealt with. The third section discusses the responses and possible remedial action for these conflicts and the fourth section concludes the chapter. OVERVIEW OF SOURCES OF RESOURCE CONFLICT Domestic and international tensions, disputes and conflicts arise over how to manage and distribute a range of natural resources including oil, natural gas, mineral resources, forests, and irrigation water. Conflicts have also arisen from the exploitation of marine resources. Some of the disputes over natural resources and the environment are straightforward zero-sum conflicts while others are far more complex. Many countries in the East and Southeast Asian region share common borders and this inevitably leads to the need to share certain resources, such as water. As a result, tensions and even conflicts can arise in the distribution of these resources.

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  Migration from the Middle East and North Africa to Europe

  Past Developments, Current Status and Future Potentials

  • Heinz Fassmann, Michael Bommes, Wiebke Sievers, Heinz Fassmann, Michael Bommes, Wiebke Sievers, Wiebke Sievers, Michael Bommes, Heinz Fassmann(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Amsterdam University Press

    (Publisher)

  The political transformations in some North African and Middle Eastern countries after the mass protests of 2011 have not yet resulted in the institutionalisation of democratic systems or the creation of ef fective mechanisms for preventing either domestic conflicts or conflicts between states. The f ight for resources is taking place on two fronts. First, in many cases, there is a conflict between countries – particularly regarding water – in the MENA region, 27 for example, the distribution of water from the Nile River between the bordering countries. The f ight for oil is transnational insofar as of fshore storage facilities are concerned (unclear sea borders) or when large underground f ields that lie at or on the borders (e.g., between Iraq and Kuwait) precipitate dif ferent opinions about exploration rights. Second – and this will, in the future, have the larger conflict potential – there are internal conflicts 28 about who has access to the (limited) resources (water, land, food) of a country. Globally speaking, the amount of farmland per capita will sink from 0.25 ha (in 2000) to 0.19 ha (by 2025), the decline in the MENA countries being even more dramatic (Breisinger 2012). Nearly all MENA states have an acute water def ic it, especially of drinking water, which thus carries great conflict potential because of the constant degradation of potable-water resources. The MENA countries consist of about 95 per cent desert, are exposed to intensive solar radiation and have few freshwater reserves (Arab Water Council 2009). The yearly rainfall quotas are small, so that agricultural production is highly dependent on the climate (and the danger of drought). The already precarious food-supply situation with a high level of imports (Algeria, Libya, Mauretania, the Gulf countries etc.) is exacerbated by the continual increase in the population and growing en-27 The triggers for such conflicts are often (reservoir) dams that stop the flow of water to third countries.

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  Peace and Conflict Studies

  Perspectives from South Asia

  • Anindya Jyoti Majumdar, Shibashis Chatterjee, Anindya Jyoti Majumdar, Shibashis Chatterjee(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge India

    (Publisher)

  6

  Geopolitics, Conflicts and Peace

  Anindya Jyoti Majumdar and Sohini Bose

  Geopolitics is an attempt to understand the world's political relations and possible political behaviour of states based on the geographical lay out and arrangements of lands and seas. Geopolitics presupposes geography's conditioning influence upon history and politics. However, with time, understanding of geopolitics changed and deterministic laws of classical genre gave way to new interpretations. Instead of seeking out universal principles emanating from the physical geographical realities, constructing narratives that would influence policy-decisions towards attainment of particular objectives became important. Hence, more than being merely physical and a product of nature, geography as the product of contests of narratives in order to establish control over space becomes relevant in contemporary times and as a result geopolitics is inherently intertwined with conflicts and peace. In fact, geopolitics itself is considered to be a cause for conflicts and as such geopolitics has often been criticized as a dubious concept or an unconvincing field of study. “Few modern ideologies”, according to one analyst, “are as whimsically all-encompassing, as romantically obscure, as intellectually sloppy, and as likely to start a third world war as the theory of ‘geopolitics’” (Clover 1999).

  The tendency to have a simpler model of the complex world often ignores particularities as areas are branded with specific labels generating corresponding intended identities. The tags and labels attached to the vast tracts of territory emanate from the renewed focus on a particular area at a particular point of time by the dominant powers of a particular epoch. Narratives constructed and used by policy-makers in pursuit of national interests lead to imaginative geographies affirming particular political perspectives and legitimizing foreign policy decisions. The interplay of imagined spaces and imposed identities, changing perceptions of emerging geopolitical realities and the continuous attempts to construct and tag new regions suitable to the preferences of the major powers of the day determine the probabilities of conflicts and feasibility of durable peace. “The ‘geo’ in geopolitics is never settled” says Chaturvedi, “in the sense that it is the manifestation of a complex interplay between the ‘facts’ and features of material-physical geographies (location, topography, resources etc.) and the myths and mental maps of symbolic-imagined geographies” (Chaturvedi 2012: 150). In effect, geopolitics is an intriguing concoction of reality and imagination.

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  New Geographies of the Globalized World

  • Marcin Wojciech Solarz(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  maras – in Guatemala). In recent years, the intensity of the violence in Mexico has lessened somewhat, and in 2016, the government of Peña Nieto, president since 2012, succeeded in capturing Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán, the leader of Mexico’s most powerful Sinaloa Cartel; however, the scale of the fighting is still at a level which hitherto has characterized only politically motivated conflicts with no criminal origins. Undoubtedly, Mexico’s location as a transit country on the route to the most attractive drug market in the world – the USA – has played a considerable role in this. It is also possible that the case of Mexico indicates the direction of the future evolution of armed conflict.

  Europe is an interesting case, as its generally low number of recorded conflicts and absence of rivalry between non-state actors of an intensity exceeding the armed conflict threshold allows us to describe the vast majority of the region as being free of organized violence. The armed conflicts recorded in Europe have occurred only on the region’s periphery – the Balkans (the Macedonian–Albanian conflict in 2001), and above all in the post-Soviet area, mainly in the Russian Caucasus (and also the 2014–onwards conflict in eastern Ukraine, which as pointed out above, is a clear outlier in terms of intensity compared to the European average).

  Among all the geostrategic regions, the most balanced geographical distribution of armed violence is found in the Middle East. Nevertheless, even there, especially in recent years, we can observe a concentration of violence in two countries: Syria and Iraq (nine and five conflicts respectively, bearing in mind that Syria has been a field of battle only since 2011). However, the frequency of conflicts is also increasing throughout the region, although more slowly than in Iraq and especially Syria which saw no fewer than six new armed conflicts in 2013. The region-wide tendency is evidenced by the fighting erupting in Yemen, Lebanon and Egypt.3 On the other hand, the countries of the Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula (with the exception of Yemen) can be considered ‘calm’, that is, free from regular armed conflict.

  The geography of terrorism: explosive Asia and Middle East, African slippery slope, not-so-calm Europe and ‘America feliz (?)’4

  The twenty-first century to date has come to be rather widely regarded as an ‘era of terrorism’. Undoubtedly, the 11 September 2001 Al-Qaeda attacks on the east coast of the United States, which can be considered to represent the symbolic beginning of the new century, has had a huge impact on the direction of the evolution of the international order. This was not only due to their unprecedented scale and psychological effect (2,997 people were killed in four simultaneous attacks, the largest ever number of victims of a single terrorist operation). Also important was the exceptional character of the response made by the United States, which considered the attacks as an act of aggression justifying self-defense, including in the form of military action, and so, as ‘an unintended by-product’, dignified terrorism by identifying it as one of the key threats to global security (although it must be said that this happened with the tacit approval of a large section of the international community and the active collaboration of many countries, as evidenced by the widespread participation in the anti-terrorist coalition formed at that time and support for UN Security Council resolutions 1268 and 1273 adopted following the September 11 attacks) (Schrijver 2004: 55–74). Somewhat paradoxically, however, this ‘appreciation’ of terrorism as a threat to international stability, as well as the decisive reaction to its development, has not actually led to any significant decrease in terrorist activity. On the contrary, the war on terrorism has most likely contributed to its growth in essentially all regions of the world.

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  Making Geographies of Peace and Conflict

  • Colin Flint, Kara E. Dempsey, Colin Flint, Kara E. Dempsey(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  13 Geographies of environmental peace and conflict Shannon O’Lear

  DOI: 10.4324/9781003345794-13

  Oil wars. Conflict diamonds. Climate change exacerbated conflict. Environmental features are frequently associated with violence and conflict, but how well do we understand these connections? A geographic perspective is valuable for critiquing assumptions about how environmental features are related to conflict. This chapter reviews key themes in scholarship on resource-related conflict. It also considers how different ways of managing and valuing environmental resources can create multiple geographies of haves and have-nots and of environmental benefits and harms. Even seemingly peaceful relationships involving natural resources warrant close attention through a geographic perspective: What may appear to be peaceful at one spatial scale or through the eyes of particular actors may not be as peaceful from another vantage point.

  This chapter connects with the overarching themes of this book in several ways. Human interactions with environmental systems involve various forms of agency: Who gets to decide how environmental resources are valued or devalued, who gets to benefit from their use, and who faces negative impacts of these decisions without any agency. Importantly, a critical aspect of human agency in regard to environmental features has to do with our understanding of environmental features and resources and how that understanding informs behavior and practice. This chapter includes examples of how certain ideas about environmental features were formed and how those ideas have continued to shape how we utilize (or disregard) environmental resources. How we value or disregard particular aspects of “the environment” contributes to another theme of this book, namely, multiple geographies. Humans have altered the surface of the planet in many ways with a multitude of results and impacts and at a variety of spatial scales. Yet there are also different approaches to understanding environmental features and how human systems interact with, draw from, or alter environmental systems. Much of the Western world’s relationship to environmental features is grounded in othering and partitioning, which is deeply rooted in the notion that humans and environmental features are separate and distinct. Other ways of understanding the world view humans and environmental features as integrated and dependent on each other for survival. Spaces that are constructed through human interactions with their environmental surroundings reflect variations in political power: power to shape how environmental resources and systems are valued, power to impose a particular set of values on a landscape or waterway, and power to voice alternative ways of valuing environmental systems and our relationship to them. These themes of agency, multiple geographies and spatial scales, partitioning or inclusive views of environmental features, and political aspects of how humans value and (de)value environmental features all come into play in this chapter’s consideration of geographies of environmental peace and conflict.

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