Chapter 1 Objectives and Tools of World Regional Geography

EG.Oil and Upheaval in Iran

43. Turkey: Where East Meets West

44. Rugged, Strategic, Devastated Afghanistan

One of the world’s most intractable disputes is the Arab-Israeli conflict. Deeply felt religious beliefs and access to land and water are some of the reasons no solution has yet been presented both sides will accept. After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, the British received the mandate for Palestine. The British made conflicting promises to both Jews (who had been immigrating to the region for decades) and Arabs over ownership of that land. The British withdrew in 1947 and left the fate of Palestine up to the United Nations. The UN plan was flawed, and war broke out as Israel declared independence. Israel won that war and took over most of the land of the former Palestine. In a subsequent war in 1967, Israel took the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai. Palestinian Arabs fled during both wars, but were never welcomed in other Arab countries and languished in refugee camps. The right of return of these Palestinians has been one of the main sticking points of a peace agreement. Several attempts at peace treaties have been attempted over the years, but they have all broken down over time. Palestinian anger has fueled two intifadas, or uprisings, against Israel; this has provoked Israeli military responses against Palestinian terrorist cells. Israel has also constructed a security fence around the West Bank and Gaza to prevent would-be Palestinian suicide bombers from infiltrating Israeli territory.

Israel is a small country of 7 million people that grants citizenship to any Jew who wishes to live there. It also has an Arab minority consisting of 20 percent of the population. About 4 million people, mostly Palestinians, live in the Occupied Territories; there are scattered Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Both Israel and the Palestinians claim Jerusalem as their capital. Until 1967 the West Bank was owned by Jordan, a desert country whose population is 50 percent Palestinian. The southern portion of Lebanon, formerly the stronghold of the PLO, was occupied by Israel until 2000. Lebanon has been torn with ethnic and religious strife since 1975. Lebanon was once part of Syria, which never accepted the loss of this territory and maintained troops and some degree of political control over Lebanon for many years.

Egypt, with 78 million people, is the most populous Arab country, and 95 percent of its people live within the delta or floodplain of the Nile River. Egypt receives large amounts of foreign aid from the U.S. and controls the vital Suez Canal. Sudan is a country straddling the cultural border of the Middle East and black Africa; the Arab government in Khartoum has been fighting rebels of oil-rich southern Sudan for decades. Libya is largely desert, but has plans to make itself agriculturally self-sufficient by pumping fossil waters from below the Sahara to the populated Mediterranean coast. Tunisia is regarded as one of the more open and progressive Arab nations. Algeria has oil reserves and other mineral wealth, but has faced an insurgency since the Algerian government canceled the results of an election. Morocco occupies the Western Sahara, whose Saharawi people desire independence.

Saudi Arabia is the largest country on the Arabian Peninsula, and controls over 25 percent of the world’s total oil reserves. The country has become wealthy from oil exports but is struggling to diversify its economy and find jobs for its rapidly growing population. Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates are smaller oil-rich nations along the Persian Gulf. Oman is also oil-dependent, and is a valuable Western ally because of its strategic position along the Strait of Hormuz. Yemen is a very poor nation, with a population growing very quickly and only meager oil production. The important port of Aden is located in Yemen.

Kuwait is a small, oil-producing country that was invaded by Iraq in 1990. A coalition of countries led by the U.S. forced Iraqi troops back the following year during the Gulf War. Iraq had for decades been under the regime of Saddam Hussein, and just prior to the Kuwait invasion, Iraq had been fighting a bitter but ultimately unsuccessful war with Iran. After the Gulf War, Iraq was essentially partitioned into three sections by no-fly zones, where majority (but oppressed) Shi’ites to the south and Kurds in the north had some level of autonomy from Baghdad. Iraq was long thought to be hiding production of weapons of mass destruction, and the U.S. invaded Iraq again in 2003 after deeming Hussein uncooperative in revealing and halting Iraq’s WMD program. Hussein was toppled and a provisional Iraqi-run government is now in place.

Iran is a large, non-Arab oil producing country. It was once an ally of the U.S., but a revolution in 1979 overturned the Western-oriented Shah and installed the ayatollahs in control of the country. Relations between the U.S. and Iran remain strained, though many analysts perceive a more accommodating attitude recently towards the West among the Iranian people.

The Iranian shah based his modernization efforts from those undertaken earlier in Turkey after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey aspires to be an EU member, and it has been working to improve its economy, political process, and human rights record in order to do so. Turkey is the only Middle Eastern country to separate church and state.

Afghanistan is a devastated country, wracked by war for decades. The Soviet Union attempted to control the country for a decade until withdrawing. Afghanistan was quickly torn by civil warfare, and the fundamentalist Taliban regime eventually took control over much of the country. The Taliban gave safe haven to Osama bin Laden and al-Qa’ida, and were driven from power by the U.S. in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks.

Key Terms and Concepts

89. 
    The Ottoman Empire held what is now modern Israel, including the Palestinian Territories, until World War I, when Great Britain received the mandate for the region. British administrators promised the land to both Arabs and Jews, but these conflicting promises caused the British to withdraw from Palestine in 1947. The United Nations devised a plan for independent Arab and Jewish nations in the area, but war broke out the next year; Israel defeated a combined Arab army and expanded its territory. During that war, many Palestinian Arabs fled to neighboring countries, but after the war was over little was done to resettle them outside refugee camps. Another war broke out in 1967, after Egypt closed the Strait of Tiran to Israeli shipping; Israel took control of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights, and Sinai Peninsula after six days. Numerous Palestinians who live in camps in these areas fled again; their situations are still largely unresolved. Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt in 1979, but the other areas are still under Israeli occupation. [pp. 239-241]
    

90. 
    The Oslo II Accord implemented the withdrawal of Israeli forces from several large Palestinian cities in the West Bank in 1995. Palestinians acquired self-rule over 30 percent of the West Bank, with the rest under Israeli control. The Wye Agreement promised to transfer more Israeli-held territory to the Palestinians in exchange for increased PLO efforts to crack down on terrorists. As of 2007 the Wye Agreement has not been fully implemented, but 17 percent of the West Bank would be in complete Palestinian control, 26 percent under Palestinian civil control and Israeli security control, and 57 percent under full Israeli authority. The Gaza Strip, vacated by Israeli settlers, is currently under the control of the Palestinian Hamas party. [pp. 243-245]
    

91. 
    There are seventeen officially recognized ethnoreligious groups, or “confessions,” in Lebanon. Among the major confessions are Maronite; Greek Catholic and Greek Orthodox Christians; and Druze, Sunni, and Shi’ite Muslims. All of these groups have their own predominated areas inside the country. [p. 247]
    

92. 
    In limited areas ancient Egyptians were able to sustain perennial irrigation, which could provide more than one crop per year by using water-lifting devices. To achieve perennial irrigation on a vast scale required the construction of barrages (low barriers designed to raise the level of the river high enough that water flows by gravity into irrigation canals) and dams, which did not begin in Egypt until the nineteenth century. The Aswan High Dam is the most notable of the Egyptian dams. [pp. 249-251]
    

93. 
    Sudan’s northern areas are largely dry desert, occupied by largely Arab Muslims. Sudan’s south is a mixture of grassy wetlands and savannas, with a seasonably rainy climate; the population is a mixture of many ethnic backgrounds who practice Christianity and animistic faiths. The north rules the country, but the two areas of Sudan have been fighting each other since 1983. In 2005, a peace agreement between the government and the south’s Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) has resulted in a tentative end to civil war, and 3 to 5 million refugees in southern Sudan are returning home. However, Sudan’s westernmost province, Darfur, has come to the world’s attention because of continued clashes and the degree of ethnic cleansing; an estimated 400,000 dead by 2007. [p. 252]
    

94. 
    The Great Manmade River is designed to tap fossil waters deep in the Libyan Desert and transport that water by pipelines to Libya’s populated Mediterranean coast, where it will be used to increase Libyan agricultural production. [p. 253]
    

95. 
    The countries of the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia) have economies mainly based upon mineral extraction, though plants that assemble foreign-made components are also important. Agriculture and tourism also play small roles. The most important resources in the region are Algeria’s reserves of oil and natural gas, which make up almost all of Algeria’s exports by value. Morocco also relies upon its occupation of Western Sahara to mine and export phosphate. [pp. 254-256]
    

96. 
    Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates have the most oil in the Gulf region. Yemen has a low amount of oil production, primarily because its oil fields are located in areas contested with Saudi Arabia and are subject to violence by groups opposed to the Yemeni government. Yemen has benefited in the past from remittances sent back to that country from Yemenis working in foreign oil fields. Oman’s exports by value are based almost solely on oil; Oman also controls part of the chokepoint of the Strait of Hormuz, a vitally important waterway through which much of the world’s oil is shipped. [pp. 226, 256-260]
    

97. 
    In 1980, Saddam Hussein invaded Iran to take advantage of perceived weakness of the new Iranian government and to secure land and mineral resources on the Iranian side of the Shatt al-Arab. Iran proved to be far stronger than Hussein anticipated, and the war ended eight years later at a stalemate, with 500,000 dead but little territory or resources gained by either side. Still wanting a wider window on the Persian Gulf, Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 and attempted to absorb the country into Iraq. This prompted a coalition of United Nations members, led by the United States, to attack Iraqi forces in Kuwait and southern Iraq in 1991. The Iraqi forces were quickly driven out of Kuwait, and after the cease-fire Iraq agreed to pay reparations to Kuwait and renounce its claims on the country. Iraq was also subject to economic sanctions and later “no-fly zones” in northern and southern Iraq to provide safe havens for Kurds and Shi’ites opposed to Saddam Hussein. From the U.S.-led coalition’s military invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the removal of Saddam Hussain (who was executed in 2006 for crimes against humanity), the challenge for the U.S. has been to stabilize the country and prepare for troop withdrawal. Although a transitional national assembly was elected in 2005, the U.S. needs to make the difficult decision between a continued military presence in the country and allowing the Iraqi people to come to terms with their devolutionary ethnic and religious factions. [pp. 261-265]
    

98. 
    Shi’ite Arabs represent 52 percent of Iraq’s population and live largely in the country’s southern areas. Thirty percent of the population is Sunni Arabs, who live mainly in central Iraq. The other major ethno-religious group in Iraq is the Kurds, who live in the northern reaches of the country and comprise 16 percent of Iraq’s population. Several other smaller groups make up the remainder of the population. Because Iraq is essentially divided into three distinct regions (with noticeable overlap around the margins), the United States reasoned that a unified Iraq under Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship was better than having the nation fragment into three different nations, some or all of which might be hostile to U.S. interests in the area. [pp. 261-263]
    

99. 
    The Kurds are a non-Arab, Sunni Muslim group that mainly lives in southeastern Turkey, northern Iraq and western Iran. They are the world’s largest ethnic group without a country; Kurds were promised a homeland after World War I, but it was never created. Kurds have suffered persecution in both Turkey and Iraq, though after the creation of the northern no-fly zone in Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, Iraqi Kurds enjoyed prosperity and a degree of autonomy. [p. 263]
    

100. 
     The Shah of Iran attempted to Westernize and modernize Iran as Kemal Ataturk had done for neighboring Turkey. Shi’ite beliefs regarded the Shah’s monarchy as illegitimate, and strikes and demonstrations occurred across the country in 1978, prompted by the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini. An already restless populace, driven to Tehran and other cities from the countryside where agricultural reforms had generally failed, was sympathetic to the Ayatollah’s stands against modernization, corruption, the police, exploitation of the poor, and other issues. The revolution intensified in 1979, and the shah was forced to abdicate his throne and flee the country; Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran and assumed control of the country. Since his election in 2005, Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has asserted himself as an outspoken critic within the region and beyond. For example, he has offended Israel by insisting that the Holocaust never happened, and his determination to go forward with a nuclear program (capable of producing weapons-grade nuclear material) has concerned many in the international community. [pp. 265-267]
     

101. 
     Turkey is a country “in between” the Middle East and Europe in ways more than geographical. Turkey was the home of the Muslim Ottoman Empire for centuries, but after its dissolution after World War I, Turkey’s founder Kemal Ataturk instituted social and political reforms designed to open the way for modernizing and Westernizing the nation. Turkey is the only Middle Eastern nation to officially separate church and state, and the Roman alphabet replaced the Arabic script the Turkish language had originally used. Western legal codes were implemented and secular schools were established. However, Turkey has vacillated between military and democratic civilian rule; the military plays a large role in national politics. Turkey is a mainly Muslim nation but restricts religious expression. Turkey is poor and rural compared with European nations, but it is richer than most of the world’s LDCs. It is a member of NATO but has been criticized by human rights activists for its treatment of the minority Kurdish population. [pp. 267-269]
     

102. 
     The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, and the resulting war devastated the country. The war ended in 1989 with a Soviet withdrawal, but over 1 million Afghans had been killed and 6 million had fled the country. A Communist government then took control of Afghanistan, but it was ousted in 1992 by the mujahadiin that had successfully repelled the Soviet invasion. Civil war ensued between rival factions, and by 1996 the most successful group, the Taliban, gained control over most of the country. It instituted a strict code of Islamic law and provided safe haven for Osama bin Laden and his fighters and training camps, both before and after September 11, 2001. A month after 9/11 the United States was waging an air war against the Taliban, with ground support supplied by the Northern Alliance. The Taliban was driven from power quickly, and a new government headed by Hamid Karzai was put in place. Afghanistan continues to harbor Taliban fighters, and the fact that it produces most of the world’s opium (an estimated 92 percent as of 2007), perpetuates political and economic instability [pp. 269-273]
     

This chapter should enable your students to…

• 
  Understand and explain the mostly beneficial k relationships between villagers, pastoral nomads, and city dwellers in an environmentally challenging region
  
• 
  Know the basic beliefs and sacred places of Jews, Christians, and
  
• 
  Muslims
  
• 
  Recognize the importance of petroleum to this region and the world economy
  
• 
  Identify the geographic chokepoints and oil pipelines that are among the world’s most strategically important places and routes
  
• 
  Appreciate the problems of control over freshwater in this arid region
  
• 
  Know what al-Qa’ida and other Islamist terrorist groups are and what they want
  

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