Conflicts in the Middle East
The Middle East has been a region of significant geopolitical and religious conflicts, including the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Iran-Saudi Arabia rivalry, and the ongoing civil war in Syria. These conflicts have been fueled by historical, religious, and territorial disputes, as well as competition for regional influence and control of valuable resources such as oil. The complex nature of these conflicts has had far-reaching implications for the region and beyond.
6 Key excerpts on "Conflicts in the Middle East"
eBook - ePub- Ewan W. Anderson, Ian Cool, Liam D. Anderson(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Middle Eastern affairs may result not only from the current combination of factors but may entail a significant historical legacy. For convenience and because they represent different viewpoints, one focusing on place and the other on time, the geographical and historical perspectives will be considered separately although it must always be borne in mind that they are intimately entwined. This relationship is clearly indicated by the persistent patterns, identified by Held (2000), related to religion, infrastructure, natural resources, strategic features, culture, art and conflict. 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...
eBook - ePub- Beverley Milton-Edwards(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Polity(Publisher)
...CHAPTER FOUR Conflict and Lack of Peace Introduction The Middle East has been characterized as a battleground. From this region – more than any other – opinion in the West has crystallized around the issue of conflict, terrorism and war. In the twenty-first century, the region has become synonymous with conflict and terror. Conflict in the region has taken place at a number of levels: first, long-standing regional conflicts; second, short-lived conflagrations within the region; third, localized disputes; fourth, the rising terrorism phenomenon; and, finally, wars waged by external actors. There have been conflicts between states as well as between ethnic groups at all levels. Regional conflict has been primarily shaped by the Arab–Israeli conflict, while conflict between actors within the region and outside it is illustrated by the Suez Crisis of 1956, when Nasser of Egypt challenged both the French and the British, or the allied attack on Iraq in 2003. Intra-state conflict is currently epitomized by the sectarian conflict that has scarred Syria since 2011 and in the past dispute in Lebanon that led to fifteen years of civil war from 1975 to 1990. Today, terrorism within and from the region is commonly associated with ISIS and al-Qaeda. Debates about conflicts in the region have examined such factors as traditional state-to-state rivalries, conflicts over natural resources such as oil or water, sectarian and ethno-national disputes and the role of external factors such as international actors, particularly in proxy wars. In addition, academics have raised questions over the legitimacy of certain regimes whose leaders have attempted to create a sense of cohesion by playing the nationalist card in times of crisis – an example of this was President Saddam Hussein of Iraq in the 1990s...
eBook - ePubThe 25 Issues that Shape American Politics
Debates, Differences, and Divisions
- Michael Kryzanek, Ann Karreth(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...24 Conflicts in the Middle East Issue Focus Conflict and the Middle East often are linked together. Whether Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and the pseudo-state of ISIS, the Middle East has been a region wracked by war, destruction, human suffering, and often little hope. Major powers have attempted to bring order to the region, only to find their troops and officials bogged down in a quagmire of unending involvement. While some of the states in the region like Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the tiny United Arab Emirates have remained relatively stable, in part because of either oil wealth or strong royal government, they have been overshadowed by the constant state of instability and unrest in the rest of the Middle East. Currently, the focus of conflict is on Syria, where the bloody regime of Bashar al Assad has crushed the rebellion with unbelievable cruelty, and in the diminishing so-called radical Islamic caliphate of ISIS in parts of Syria and Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, and hundreds of thousands more have been left homeless to seek peace and security, primarily in Europe. There is little evidence that the conflict in the Middle East will come to an end or at least diminish. Diplomats have tried to bring peace to the region but have failed to find a recipe for a cessation of hostilities. The only certainty is that the conflicts will continue and perhaps spread to those countries that have been spared the chaos to date...
eBook - ePub- Bruno Charbonneau, Adam Sandor, Bruno Charbonneau, Adam Sandor(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...From 2012 onward, the Middle East began to eclipse sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia in terms of conflict-related deaths worldwide, a first for the region since the end of the Cold War. The widespread violence across the region that followed the 2011 ‘Arab Spring’ moreover helped to increase the number of ongoing armed conflicts worldwide to unprecedented levels. The fifty-three distinct and active episodes of armed conflict registered in 2016 was a world record for the international order established after WWII (Allansson et al. 2017, Pettersson and Eck 2018). As a result of this surge in conflict, half of the recorded terrorism events in the world have likewise occurred in the Middle East since 2011 (START 2018). Thus, despite all the rhetoric and theorization of the post-9/11 counterterrorism initiatives of the United States as a kind of ‘everywhere war’ (Gregory 2011, Scahill 2013), the geography of this sprawling campaign, whether measured in terms of combatant and civilian fatalities, other humanitarian costs or US military expenditures, is overwhelmingly in and around the Middle East. Historically, it is also worth noting that a third of all wars between states since 1970 have occurred in the Middle East while nearly forty per cent all internationalised civil wars have occurred there as well during the same period (Sarkees and Wayman 2010; see also Pettersson and Eck 2018). This highly internationalised character of Middle Eastern conflicts is likewise revealed in the extraordinary number of wars of imperial conquest and resistance to occupation in the region. Not only has the Middle East experienced a quarter of all such conflicts over the past two centuries, half of those that have occurred since WWII were in the Middle East...
eBook - ePubPeace and Conflict Studies
Perspectives from South Asia
- Anindya Jyoti Majumdar, Shibashis Chatterjee, Anindya Jyoti Majumdar, Shibashis Chatterjee(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Routledge India(Publisher)
...Contemporary geopolitics, on one hand, includes issues of climate change, displacement and migration, epidemics and the like – each having the element of conflict ingrained in it – and, on the other, instigates intense competition over physical connectivity on the ground; developing roads, railways, ports and infrastructure to pursue prosperity, influence and dominance. This chapter explores the evolution of the idea of geopolitics and the state of contemporary understanding of geopolitical prescriptions and defines how conflicts and peace are dependent on the dominant geopolitical narratives of the day. The idea of geopolitics Geopolitics began as a study of the geographical layout of the earth; the attributes and advantages of places. Out of this, principles were derived with universal applicability creating a simpler model of the world and geopolitical codes for action. Universal rules and simpler models required imposing strategic values onto certain places and an assessment of how states are positioned in respect to these strategic locations. While physical geographical realities do not change frequently, the interpretations and narratives do alter as political situations change over time. As a result the geopolitical narratives evolve and mutate by highlighting imagined geographical compositions imposing particular identities on the areas as required by a specific narrative of the day. The process therefore involves division of the world into vast areas, with particular labels for each, representing once again a constructed geographical reality. Geopolitics however continues to be most popularly understood as the politics of international relations conditioned by overarching geographical factors. Even in the age of technological innovations, Robert Kaplan maintains that, “A state's position on the map is the first thing that defines it, more than its governing philosophy even” (Kaplan 2012: 28). Therefore, it remains as a ‘recipe for statecraft’...
- Ashok Swain, Joakim Öjendal, Ashok Swain, Joakim Öjendal(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...As a result, the number of refugee movements has increased and simultaneously amplified the threat to the environment in the regions of their settlement. Environmental stress and violent conflicts Environmental destruction, while not immediately intuitive, can also be the cause and not merely the consequence or premeditated consequence of violent conflicts. In the last decade, findings of several major research projects have proved that environmental scarcities are already contributing to violent conflicts, particularly in the developing world. Applying different methodologies and studying disparate cases, all these research efforts have tried to establish the conflict-inducing potential of environmental scarcity. Environmental changes have drastically reduced the availability of cultivable land, green forests, freshwater, clean air, and fish resources. The effects of this reduction are becoming more acute due to the increasing demand for resources to meet the needs of a growing population, and changing consumption behavior. Conflicts over renewable natural resources have grown more potent as demand for essential commodities increases day by day and as the supply-side looks more and more insecure. Most states depend greatly on renewable resources – soil, water, fish, and forests – that sustain much of their economic activity. When one state works for ‘development’ by acquiring or exploiting more than its share of these resources, it often affects the interests of other states. Conflicts over renewable resources have already shown their presence in most parts of the world. Besides fisheries, river water resources have the massive potential of bringing various state actors into a conflictual situation. Almost all the major river systems, which are the paramount suppliers of water to mankind, are shared by more than one state...
