The Middle East [individual assignment]
The Near East is a region rich of oil. This factor played crucial role in its political development. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), founded in 1960, consists largely of states from here. Having the oil strategic resources near east states played between superpowers during the Cold War. For example, in 1956, leader of Egypt Gamal Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal owned by foreign industries. Subsequent invasion by the British, French and Israeli was repulsed by the U.S. and USSR. Nasser used a support from USSR, but, when the USSR became to controlling, he expelled it from Egypt. His successors drew closer to the U.S. and first of Arab states recognized Israel in 1978.
Turkey, Iran and Israel pursued the modernization. In political life Turkey followed the principles of Ataturk (secular democracy protected by army). Iran and Iraq tried to build the most authoritarian regimes. Both of them were eventually involved in war against each other from 1980 to 1988. Iran was ruled by Shiite cleric Ayatollah Khomeini since the revolution of 1979, when leftist dictator Shah Pahlavi was overthrown. The Islamic Fundamentalism hindered modernization and negatively affected the status of women in Iran. Meantime, Iraq was under the control of Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein since 1979. Apparently, one of the roots of the Iran-Iraq conflict was religious (Shiite versus Sunni).
During the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam Husein used poison gas, drafted teenagers for combat, and targeted civilians. He persecuted Iraq’s Kurdish minority. In 1990, he invaded the oil-rich state of Kuwait and appeared ready to move against Saudi Arabia. In the first major conflict of the post-Cold War era, the Gulf War (1991), a U.S.-led coalition launched Operation Desert Storm to push Hussein out of Kuwait. Between 1991 and Hussein’s overthrow in 2003, the international community strove to contain Iraq and prevent its development of weapons of mass destruction.
Another issue of the Near East was and is Arab-Israeli conflict. Israel as a state was founded in 1948 partly due to the international community’s support resulting from the regret for Holocaust. Conflict between the Jews and Arabs arose from the territorial disputes over Palestine. Numerous Arab states’ military actions were not successful. The most known of them are the Six-Day War in 1967 and the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Israel was backed by the U.S. The Palestinians conducted their own liberation war against Israel. In 1964, they founded the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) under the leadership of Yasser Arafat. The 1980s and 2000s were marked with the First and Second Infidatas respectively – uprisings of the Palestinian population against Israeli authorities. The Infidata-related violence and terrorism were organized by the PLO, the Palestinian radical group Hamas, and the Shiite movement Hezbollah.
Questions for experts
1. What were the most significant events in the region? Why have you chosen them?
2. What factors influenced on the development of the given region?
3. What is common and different between the region and other regions and countries considered in this topic? (Before answering read about other region in the topic 12-2).