International Politics of the Middle East JM

While doing research for my final essay, one thing stood out to me: how issues of border security are so interconnected. My topic is North Africa borders and security, and I chose to write about the narcotics trade in North Africa. After doing some initial research, it quickly became apparent that many other regions were involved in this issue. This seems obvious, drugs need to be made somewhere and transported somewhere with stops in between, but I never knew the full extent of the networks.  I found myself reading about the US, Spain, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Senegal, and others when my topic was about North Africa. It really put into perspective how expansive these drug trafficking networks are and how interconnected the world is today.

https://www.voanews.com/africa/un-reports-alarming-trends-drug-trafficking-africa

This map shows how interconnected the drug trade is, and it leaves out a huge part of the world. I never expected to be reading about South American countries or of Spanish-American cooperation to tackle drug smugglers in a class about the Middle East and North Africa. It was all very interesting, and I’m glad I chose the topic I did. It helped me gain a larger perspective on how different things on different sides of the world can affect so much.

One of the most interesting topics in this course in my opinion was Iraq’s history, mostly their past 40 years. Iraq is a country that every American knows about and it tends to be a very controversial subject. While reading about Iraq, it occurred to me almost immediately that I knew basically nothing about the country or its recent history. I had learned about the 2003 Iraq war as well as the Persian Gulf war in 1991-1992, but from an International Studies/American perspective. I knew nothing of the Iraq-Iran war and only some vague notions about nuclear inspections and sanctions in Iraq in the 1990s. I was surprised to learn of the extent of the Iraq-Iran war and how devastating it was and its many long term effects on the region. It was also interesting to learn about the hardships Iraq suffered as the consequences of the Iran-Iraq war and the Persian Gulf war.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34444337

Reading about the lead-up to the Persian Gulf war really put into perspective the causes of Iraq’s initial invasion of Kuwait. I had never really stopped to consider why exactly Iraq initially invaded Kuwait beyond the usual answers of “oil” or “because Saddam Hussein is bad”. But to learn of the devastation that Iraq suffered from such a long war with a peer adversary, especially to their economy through the destruction of oil fields and the huge amount of money being borrowed and spent on weapons. The other huge effect of that war was its effect on the Iraqi psyche. Iraq and its regime had taken a huge hit, as they had just fought a long and costly war and gained nothing. The economic and morale reasons make it easier to understand why Iraq invaded Kuwait. Another reason to consider that is similar is regime security. It was fascinating to read about Saddam Hussein’s paranoia, especially in the post-Persian Gulf war period.

https://www.dw.com/en/the-first-iraq-war-1990-1991/a-16763334

The strange handling of the sanctions and nuclear inspections of the period between the Persian Gulf war and the 2003 Iraq war was also fascinating to read about. Saddam Hussein’s paranoia surrounding the fall of eastern European dictators and the feel that the world is against Iraq leading to his strange actions of trying to make the West think he possessed WMD even though he didn’t was something that I had never read about or considered before. But overall, reading about Iraq’s past 40 years made me feel bad for the people living there. They had to live through multiple wars, economic hardships, and under an authoritarian dictator. Hopefully the situation there improves in the coming years, and their democracy endures.

While researching our North Africa presentation for last Friday, I read a lot about the issue of smuggling in North Africa. My paper is on the narcotics trade in North Africa, but I didn’t know the full extent of smuggling in North Africa until I started to research Libya. I read this article in my research from the Carnegie Peace Endowment: https://carnegieendowment.org/2018/08/21/tunisian-libyan-border-security-aspirations-and-socioeconomic-realities-pub-77087

While thinking of illegal border activities and smuggling, I first thought of obvious narcotics or people smuggling operations. I never even considered that more normal goods were being smuggled. It never occurred that things like cigarettes, fuel, or other “consumer goods” would be smuggled so much across borders. Learning that around half of Libyan money is made from “informal” methods was a surprise to me, although maybe it shouldn’t have been. You always here about the situation in Libya on the news, but it is usually focused on things like terrorism. When doing further research and thinking about it more, it makes sense that a lot of business in Libya is conducted illegally. It is a failed state, where the west backed central government holds little territory and the rest of the country is being fought over by many different factions. The Libyan borders were already a hot spot for illegal smuggling before the civil war just because the borders are long stretches of desert with little people living there, making them hard to police. With the civil war, smuggling has become more encouraged. Different groups control different sections of the border and often make a profit from the illegal smuggling there because it makes more money than legal economic activities.

https://www.polgeonow.com/2018/07/libyan-civil-war-map-libya-who-controls-what.html

Here is a map of who controls what in Libya as of July 19, 2018. It really puts into perspective the instability of the country, and how control of the borders would help one group in power gain over another. You can see the long sections of the yellow or mixed/unclear control to see that much of the border is contested for obvious reasons. Those reasons being that the border is so important and constantly being fought over, or also because little people live there so it is unclear who controls the area.

The readings about the Arab-Israeli conflict over the past few weeks have shown the complex history of Israel and Palestine. I remember always hearing about Israel in the news growing up but I never really knew that much about the history. That being said, know that I know a little more I can see why this is a problem that has lasted so long and has been seemingly impossible to solve over the years. One pattern that I noticed while reading about the history of Israel and Palestine peace negotiations was that right after any kind of “forward progress” or step forward in the peace process was made, it was often met with intense and violent backlash. The backlash on the Palestinian side would be extremist terrorist groups firing rockets into Israel or blowing up buses or committing some other act of terror in protest of negotiations with who they saw as an existential threat which needed to be destroyed. On the Israeli side the backlash seems to be an overreaction to Palestinian attacks or threats with hawks in the government supporting “punishment” on Palestinian communities.

The book portrays the peace process as getting hampered or sabotaged by extremists on either side who will refuse to negotiate or view the other side as a group with any validity. With all of this being said, in the current state of Israel and Palestine, peace looks to be further in the distance. Israel has continued to elect nationalist leaning governments who have shown that they either can’t or won’t take peace as seriously through negotiations as some past Israeli presidents have. Meanwhile Palestine’s leadership is fractured and plagued with terrorist groups supported by larger powers that continue to undermine the peace process. Couple this with the current US government being clearly pro-Israel, making it hard to be a neutral arbitrator as well as the EU being focused on their own internal problems, and finally Russia is experiencing its own problems with Ukraine. So many external actors are distracted by other things and the leadership in Israel and Palestine doesn’t seem willing to engage in the peace process seriously enough to make any real progress, making it look unlikely that peace will happen soon barring a major shift in one of these factors.

When I measured my water consumption, I wasn’t sure what to expect for the outcome. My consumption turned out to be around average for an American. The most surprising aspect to me was that the vast majority of my water consumption came through virtual water eating meat.

Countries in North Africa use a lot less water on average than Americans, which didn’t surprise me. Some, like Algeria or Egypt use much less while countries like Tunisia are a little closer to the US. One economic implication I can think of is that meat would be produced and consumed less, unless there was an extremely reliable country to import it in. Also there may be more money and interest to invest in things like dams and water desalination plants than in countries with plenty of water access.

A few social implications I thought of were: an overall difference in the national attitude towards water, diet consisting of foods that require little water to grow, and  water not being as readily available as in other countries. A different attitude towards water might be that people in water-poor countries take shorter showers or take them less often, they don’t use machines that waste a lot of water often (washing machine, dishwashers, etc.), and they probably think much more about their water usage than Americans do. Diets consisting of foods that require little water to grow seems like an obvious and straight forward social implication. As an American, its hard not to imagine a restaurant giving free water or many stores selling bottled water or water taps virtually everywhere, but in water-poor countries I imagine water would not be as easy to find and it would only be given as needed because it is so scarce.

The effects of limited water might induce some cultural shifts to adapt to the short water supply as well as cause some political tension. As for sustainability of life, humans need water, and if there is not enough to support the people in a country then people are going to move elsewhere if they can or die. If water becomes scarcer and scarcer, then it could cause political upheaval if governments are seen as not doing enough to solve the problem. In North Africa and other areas of the Middle East, political upheaval often leads to the rise of terrorist organizations and other threats. All in all, since water is so vital for human life, access to it will have a vital impact on the future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first group of people that came to my mind when I thought of thinking of people as a group rather than as individuals were non-Americans. This is a pretty general group of people, but I think that culture plays a big role in the way people think about and view others. It is (relatively) easy for me to interact with Americans no matter where they’re from in the country, their religious or ethnic backgrounds, or political views because we share and understand the same culture. While interacting with someone who is not American, there tends to be more awkwardness and maybe more misunderstandings due to a difference of culture. But when you start actually interacting with individuals who belong to these groups, you begin to see them as individuals rather as a mysterious group.

If you don’t interact frequently with “outsider” groups, then you will not be able to understand their culture. This can lead to some animosity or perceptions of “weirdness” as people can see cultural differences as being rude or impolite. It also allows for people to see a group rather than a set of individuals because their defining characteristics to you may be their physical appearance or their different culture because you don’t know anything else about them. This may lead to a dehumanizing effect on that group of people if you treat them as a monolith.

The social practice of “othering” can lead to exclusion and misunderstandings between groups of people. This can lead to feelings of resentment in both the majority and minority groups as well as promoting a kind of social segregation between groups. It can also lead to the dismissal of people’s culture because it is not understood. Another effect might be poor decisions being made in relation to a group because they’re not properly understood. On a large scale, this can be seen in the American wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan where common complaints are/were that the local situation wasn’t properly understood before entering these areas, making the initial American goals in these areas very difficult to achieve.

 

I grew up in a suburban town in northern Virginia outside of Washington DC. Some environmental factors that are different between there and the Middle East would be the ethnic make-up of the population, majority religion, and the climate, among many others. Where I live grew up the majority of people are Caucasian, (of European descent) but also with large minority populations of Asian-Americans(mostly from east Asia) and Hispanics(mostly from central America).  In the Middle East there are probably a good amount of Caucasian people, but they would be in the minority, not the majority. It is doubtful that the Asian or Hispanic populations would be significant there. Another large difference is the majority religion. Where I grew up it is majority Christian, and the Middle East is majority Muslim. The climate in each place is very different, with the Middle East being hotter year round with little to no seasons and very arid, while in Virginia there are all four seasons and it is usually very humid. Another difference is that the buildings, cities, and settlements in the Middle East are much older than in the US. Also, the US is a democracy whereas many middle eastern countries are not. These are just a few of the many differences between these two places.

These differences would lead to a lot of differences in day to day life, and thus a lack of understanding between cultures. The huge differences in culture would reflect differences in the clothes people where, how people entertain themselves, what people eat, etc. The climate difference would also heavily impact these things. The worldviews of people in these two places would be different because of their different governmental systems, history, and culture.

Some resources to use to help increase understanding of the Middle East are the news (diversified sources, not just western), historical books about the Middle East and its culture, and meeting people who are from the Middle East (either visiting it physically or meeting people in the US who come from there).

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