OK, so you’ve seen the headlines. You’ve heard it on the news. You’ve heard other people talking about it. But as far as you can tell, the Middle East is a disturbingly complex hotbed of political and military warfare, and a subject best braved only by those who have been well briefed.
This article offers an overview of the situation now in the Middle East and its history. Please note: it is by no means comprehensive and is designed to be accessible and brief. It does not cover the problems or causes of the problems in the Middle East in the level of detail required to fully understand them, but is a guide for those who find themselves lost when discussing it. Enjoy.
THE BACKGROUND
The map above shows the political boundaries between the states of the Middle East. Most importantly, when looking at turmoil and political disruption, we have Libya in the far East, Egypt on the African border (with the Suez Canal running through it), Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran and Turkey.
You’ll notice right away something odd about the political boundaries: they’re all very straight. Unlike boundaries which have evolved organically, perhaps following natural breaks in the land, mountain ranges or rivers, these lines cut straight through the territory, as if drawn with a ruler.
That’s because they were. The whole area used to be controlled by the Ottoman Empire, which had been in possession of it pretty much since 1453. The Ottomans chose to back the Germans during World War One, and subsequently broke up when the Kaiser lost. It took about six years from the end of the war in 1918 to the relative collapse of the Empire in 1924. That’s pretty significant when you consider it had been the dominant force in the region for six centuries. The territories of Syria, Iraq and Jordan were then split between Britain and France in a deal called the Sykes-Picot agreement. The rest was divided up pretty much arbitrarily and has been ruled in majority by dictators ever since. The demise of the Ottomans also marked the end of the era of the caliphate (this is important), which was a sort of religious monarchy. It had a caliph, who ruled over the Muslims of the world – similar to the Pope and the Catholic population.
Afghanistan is displayed in the very West of the map. Afghanistan’s political history is most easily defined by events, listed below.
Iraq, it is worth mentioning, has an indigenous population of people living in the North called the Kurds. They live across the borders of Iraq, Syria and Turkey, in an area named Kurdistan. They have a very strong sense of national identity, which has at times set them apart from the rest of Iraq. They all have a fair amount of their own oil, which gives them some political leverage. They have their own capital, Erbil, and their own army, the Peshmerga. They’re very peaceful, quite wealthy and happy to be an unofficial ethnic state.
PREVIOUS IMPORTANT EVENTS
OK, so since the situation in the Middle East at the moment is a combination of many issues that have been building up over a long period of time. Here’s a list of events that define the modern context to the present-day problems.
The First Gulf War – 1990-1991
The Gulf War was a US military intervention in the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The UN Security Council, feeling that the invasion was illegitimate, mobilised coalition forces of 34 nations led by the US. They essentially threw the Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. The repercussions of this were small in comparison to, say, the second Iraq war, but it did two key things. It set a precedent for the West intervening in the Middle East, something which would become the defining characteristic of the debate for the next twenty years. Secondly it shook up the region and introduced its people to war financed by the West, something which was markedly different from the last war – Iran-Iraq in 1980-1988.
Soviet War in Afghanistan 1979-1989
The Soviet War in Afghanistan was a satellite war of the Cold War. If you’re not familiar with the Cold War, it was an ideological war between the US and the USSR (Russia). This meant that there wasn’t any fighting on either of their soils, it all took place by proxy. In Afghanistan, the USSR backed the government with arms and aid, because they had trade interests which they wanted to protect, and the Afghan government was also communist. The government was under threat from the Mujahideen, a Muslim militant group who were trying to overthrow the government. The war raged for nine years, the Afghan government backed by the Soviets won, but then were eventually overthrown by the Mujahideen in 1992 when Soviet support dried up during the collapse of the Soviet union. The reason this is important is because it’s another example of Western intervention (key theme here), but also because the dominance of the Mujahideen continued, once they changed their name to the Taliban.
9/11- 2001
Much of the events of the modern Middle East are defined by terrorism. This is what makes it complicated, because it’s not classic government-on-government warfare, and the groups are always operating illegitimately and often secretly. That’s what made the 2003 Iraq War and 2001 Afghanistan War so messy. 9/11 was the beginning of George Bush’s ‘War On Terror’, which set the stage for the majority of the following interventions. It also gave terrorism a face: that of Osama Bin Laden – the leader of Al Qaeda.
Afghanistan War – 2001
The war in Afghanistan can be seen as a direct result of the 9/11 attacks. In 2001, as part of George Bush’s War On Terror, the US and other key allies (such as the UK) invaded Afghanistan in order to remove the Taliban from power and hunt members of Al-Qaeda. In 2003, NATO and other Western nations joined the war. The Taliban (in government) refused to extradite Bin Laden from the beginning, claiming that evidence of his involvement in 9/11 was questionable. In response, the war that followed forced them from government, destroyed the country’s political system, established a new Afghan government and killed Osama Bin Laden. In 2014, the US and all other nations pulled out of Afghanistan, handing over power to the new government and relinquishing military control.
Iraq War – 2003
The Iraq War, or Second Gulf War, was primarily an intervention to overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein. He was an oppressive dictator who committed genocide against the people of Kurdistan, the region in the north of the country. A suspiciously unfounded ‘dodgy dossier’ in the UK pointed to a cache of WMDs held by Saddam that could be used to threaten the West. These turned out to be non-existent, and politicians and activists have since debated whether the report was falsified to justify to the UK an illegitimate war. Notably, the war in Iraq was unsanctioned by the UN, and so remains illegal under international law. The US responded to Saddam by invading Iraq, in a war that deposed him, but led to widespread instability in the region. This led to prevalence of US and UK troops on the ground in Iraq, until the UK left in 2009 and the US in 2011. Iraq as a nation was steeped in turmoil by the removal of a dictator who had maintained a level of political stability. History had shown (particularly in 1979) that political turmoil in the Middle East leads to political extremism in the form of Islamic jihadists. The current situation in Iraq with IS can be seen as a result of the long-term political stability in Iraq, anti-Western sentiment and the rise in popularity of Islamic extremism.
The Arab Spring – 2010-12
The Arab Spring was a wave of anti-governmental protests which began on 18th December 2010 in Tunisia and continued throughout northern Africa. In Tunisia and Egypt, the government was overthrown by protesters. In Egypt, the military took over the new government again and has since been accused of establishing a new dictatorship. In Syria, the protests turned into a civil war between Syrian rebels and the government of Bashar al-Assad, which continued at the time of publication. The map below shows the various levels of conflict in the Middle East and northern Africa at the time of the Spring.
THE SITUATION NOW
The most prolific issue in the Middle East right now is the rise of Islamic State – the hardline jihadist military group. But they differ from other groups such as Al-Qaeda in one key way. Whereas previous jihadist groups had operated within cells in the Middle East and launched attacks on Western nations, Islamic State aims to establish a literal state, or nation of Sunni Islam. They use the rhetoric of the ‘caliphate’ of Mohammed and later the Ottoman Empire, to proclaim their leader (Abu Bakr al-Bagdhadi) as the new ‘caliph’, or king of Muslims. The difference is that where previous groups claim to fight jihad on behalf of Muslims, IS claims to rule them, and thus represent them. Whilst Muslims at large have decried the brutal modus operandi of IS, they profess that al-Bagdhadi remains the legitimate leader of their faith. Whereas the previous groups operated under the banner of an ideological conflict, IS fight a territorial one too – trying to take over land in the Middle East. Their initial name of ISIS means the Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham (Greater Syria). They have since changed it to IS, but the Daily Telegraph still refers to them as ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant). Regardless, they fight for land for their new theocratic state, and kill Shia Muslims and Western journalists along their way.
There has been an ongoing conflict in the Kurdish area of northern Syria between the Kurdish People’s Protection Units and Islamic State. Allegedly supported by the Islamic government in Turkey, IS have been launching attacks on the Kurdish people since 2013. The Peshmerga, or army of the Kurdish people, has been a popular group for people wishing to fight against IS. This conflict has been particularly well-reported, since it has been easy for Western journalists to wait on the Turkish border to watch.
In Syria, the Shia government of Bashar al-Assad has actively opposed IS, which has led to Western confusion over which side they should take in the Syrian civil war. As rebels fight against Assad’s brutal dictatorship, the dictatorship fights a group with arguably more sinister motives. The Middle East has become a hotbed of fighting and confused motive. The graphic below from the Economist shows the allegiances in the area.
The situation in the Middle East is highly complex, and comes about as a result of political and religious conflict stretching back hundreds of years. Western involvement has been sporadic and, at times, inconsistent, and the region is divided along many lines. The ongoing fighting in Syria, Iraq, areas of northern Africa and Afghanistan cannot be solved easily, and is only hindered by the brutal. It may be a long time before peace is achieved, if at all.
Tony Diver, Offbeat Editor