Module 4
The Middle East and North Africa
a. Area and Population
What is the Middle East, and where is it? The term itself is Eurocentric, invented
by the British, who placed themselves in the fi gurative center of the world. They began
to use the term prior to the outbreak of World War I, when the Near East referred to the
territories of the Ottoman Empire in the eastern Mediterranean region, the East to India,
and the Far East to China, Japan, and the western Pacifi c Rim. With Middle East, they
designated as a separate region the countries around the Persian Gulf (known to Arabs as
the Arabian Gulf and in this text as the Persian-Arabian Gulf or simply the Gulf).
Gradually, the perceived boundaries of the region grew.
Sources today vary widely in their interpretation of which countries are in the
Middle East. For some, the Middle East includes only the countries clustered around the
Arabian Peninsula. For others, it spans a vast 6,000 miles (9,700 km) west to east from
Morocco in northwest Africa to Afghanistan in central Asia, and a north-south distance of
about 3,000 miles (4,800 km) from Turkey, on Europe’s southeastern corner, to Sudan,
which adjoins East Africa. The larger area is the region covered in this and its module,
where it is referred to as “the Middle East and North Africa.” The North African peoples
of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia generally do not consider themselves Middle
Easterners; they are, rather, from what they call the Maghreb, meaning “western land.”
Many geographers would place Sudan in sub-Saharan Africa and Afghanistan in central
Asia or South Asia. Both are border or transitional countries in regional terms, and in this
text, they are placed in the Middle East and North Africa with consideration given to their
characteristics refl ective of the other regions.
Thus defi ned, the Middle East and North Africa include 21 countries, the
Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the disputed Western Sahara,
occupying 5.9 million square miles (15.3 million sq km) and inhabited by about just over
500 million people in 2007. This area is about 1.8 times the size of the lower 48 United
States and is generally situated at latitudes equivalent to those between Boston,
Massachusetts, and Bogotá, Colombia.
These half-billion people are not distributed evenly across the region but are
concentrated in major clusters. Three countries contain the lion’s share of the region’s
population: Turkey, Iran, and Egypt, each with more than 70 million people. One look at
a map of precipitation or vegetation explains why people are clustered this way. Where
water is abundant in this generally arid region, so are people. Egypt has the Nile River,
and parts of Iran and Turkey have bountiful rain and snow. Conversely, where rain
seldom falls, as in the Sahara of North Africa and in the Arabian Peninsula, people are
few.
The Middle East and North Africa as a whole have a high rate of population
growth. The rapid growth is a general indication that this is a develsoping rather than
industrialized region, and also refl ects the majority Muslim culture that favors larger
families. The average annual rate of population change for the 21 countries, the
Palestinian territories, and Western Sahara was 1.9 percent in 2007. The lowest rate of
population growth (1.1 percent) is in Tunisia. The highest is 3.2 percent in Yemen,
followed closely by the Palestinian territories (consisting of the West Bank and Gaza
Strip) at 2.9 percent. These are some of the highest population growth rates in the world.
In the Palestinian territories, such rapid growth may be ascribed in large part to the
Palestinians’ poverty and perhaps to the wishes of many Palestinians to have more
children to counterbalance the demographic weight of their perceived Israeli foe.
Between these extremes are countries with modest rates of population growth of
1.1 to 1.5 percent per year; these include Israel, Morocco, Iran, Turkey, the United Arab
Emirates, Lebanon, and Qatar. Generally, their governments have regarded most of these
countries as too populous for their resources and economic base and have encouraged
family planning. They have been successful in lowering birth rates. On the other hand,
oil-rich Saudi Arabia, with its 2.7 percent annual growth rate, is a good example of how
rapid population growth is not always a sign of poverty. In this case, an oil-rich nation
has encouraged its citizens to give birth to more citizens so that in the future they will not
need to import foreign laborers and technicians and will be more self-suffi cient in their
development. Some oilrich countries of the Gulf region have more foreigners than
citizens living in them; about 75 percent of the workingage population of the United Arab
Emirates, for example, is nonnative, mainly from India and other South Asian countries.
Many of these workers complain of dreams broken by poor living conditions and low
wages.
Many developing countries have economies largely dependent on subsistence
agriculture and have low percent ages of urban inhabitants. Perhaps surprisingly,
however, the Middle East and North Africa have more urbanites than country folk. The
average urban population among the 23 countries and territories is 56 percent. The most
prosperous countries are also the most urban. Essentially a citystate, Kuwait is 98 percent
urban. The other oil-wealthy Gulf countries also have urban populations over 70 percent.
Consistent with its profi le as a Western-style industrialized country without oil
resources, Israel is 92 percent urban. At the other end of the spectrum, desperately poor
Afghanistan and Yemen have urban populations of less than 30 percent.
b. Physical Geography and Human Adaptations
The margins of the Middle East and North Africa are mainly oceans, seas, high
mountains, and deserts. To the west lies the Atlantic Ocean; to the south, the Sahara and
the highlands of East Africa; to the north, the Mediterranean, Black, and Caspian Seas,
together with mountains and deserts lining the southern land frontiers of Russia and the
Near Abroad; and to the east, the Hindu Kush mountains on the Afghanistan-Pakistan
frontier and the Baluchistan Desert straddling Iran and Pakistan. The land is composed
mainly of arid plains and plateaus, together with large areas of rugged mountains and
isolated “seas” of sand. Despite the environmental challenges, this region has given rise
to some of the world’s oldest and most infl uential ways of living.
Aridity dominates the Middle East and North Africa. At least three-fourths of the
region has average yearly precipitation of less than 10 inches (25 cm), an amount too
small for most types of dry farming (unirrigated agriculture). Sometimes, however,
localized cloudbursts release moisture that allows plants, animals, and small populations
of people—the Bedouin, Tuareg, and other pastoral nomads—to live in the desert. Even
the vast Sahara, the world’s largest desert, supports a surprising diversity and abundance
of life. Plants, animals, and even people have developed strategies of drought avoidance
and drought endurance. Migrating to avoid drought is a coping strategy that pastoral
nomads and many animals use. Other organisms, such as trees, must endure drought by
such adaptations as having very deep roots and small leaves. Populations of people,
plants, and animals are all but nonexistent in the region’s vast sand seas, including the
Great Sand Sea of western Egypt and the Empty Quarter of the Arabian Peninsula.
The region’s climates have the comparatively large daily and seasonal ranges of
temperature characteristic of dry lands. Desert nights can be surprisingly cool. Most days
and nights are cloudless, so the heat absorbed on the desert surface during the day is lost
by radiational cooling to the heights of the atmosphere at night. Summers in the lowlands
are very hot almost everywhere. The hottest shade temperature ever recorded on earth,
136 degrees F (58 degrees C), occurred in Libya in September 1922. Many places
regularly experience daily maximum temperatures over 100°F (38°C) for weeks at a time.
Human settlements located near the sand seas often experience the unpleasant
combination of high temperatures and hot, sand-laden winds, creating the sandstorms
known locally by such names as simuum (“poison”) and sirocco. Only in mountainous
sections and in some places near the sea do higher elevations or sea breezes temper the
intense midsummer heat. The population of Alexandria, on the Mediterranean Sea coast,
explodes in summer as Egyptians fl ee from Cairo and other hot inland locations. In
Saudi Arabia, the government relocates from Riyadh to the highland summer capital of
Taif to escape the lowland furnace.
Lower winter temperatures bring relief from the summer heat, and the more
favored places receive enough precipitation for dry farming of winter wheat, barley, and
other cool season crops. In general, winters are cool to mild. But very cold winters and
snowfalls occur in the high interior basins and plateaus of Iran, Afghanistan, and Turkey.
These locales generally have a steppe climate. Only in the southernmost reaches of the
region, notably Sudan, do temperatures remain consistently high throughout the year. A
savanna climate and biome prevail there.
There are three principal mountainous regions of the Middle East and North
Africa. In northwestern Africa between the Mediterranean Sea and the Sahara, the Atlas
Mountains of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia reach over 13,000 feet (3,965 m) in
elevation. Mountains also rise on both sides of the Red Sea, with peaks up to 12,336 feet
(3,760 m) in Yemen. These are the result of tectonic processes that are pulling the
African and Arabian plates apart, creating the northern part of the Great Rift Valley. The
hinge of this crustal movement is the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon, where the widening fault
line follows the Jordan River Valley southward to the Dead Sea. This valley is the
deepest depression on the earth’s land surface, lying about 600 feet (183 m) below sea
level at Lake Kinneret (also known as the Sea of Galilee or Lake Tiberius) and nearly
1,300 feet (400 m) below sea level at the shore of the Dead Sea, the lowest point of land
on the planet. The rift then continues southward to the very deep Gulf of Aqaba and Red
Sea before turning inland into Africa at Djibouti and Ethiopia.
In the 1960s, the American geographer Paul English developed a useful model for
understanding relationships between the three ancient ways of life that still prevail in the
Middle East and North Africa today: villager, pastoral nomad, and urbanite. Each of these
modes of living is rooted in a particular physical environment. Villagers are the
subsistence farmers of rural areas where dry farming or irrigation is possible; pastoral
nomads are the desert peoples who migrate through arid lands with their livestock,
following patterns of rainfall and vegetation; and urbanites are the inhabitants of the large
towns and cities, generally located near bountiful water sources but sometimes placed for
particular trade, religious, or other reasons. Describing these ways of life as components
of the Middle Eastern ecological trilogy, English explained how each of them has a
characteristic, usually mutually benefi cial, pattern of interaction with the other two.
The nomads provide villagers with livestock products, including live animals,
meat, milk, cheese, hides, and wool, and with desert herbs and medicines. Educated and
progressive urbanites provide technological innovations, manufactured goods, religious
and secular education and training, and cultural amenities (today, including fi lms and
music). There is little direct interaction between urbanites and pastoral nomads, although
some manufactured goods such as clothing travel from city to desert and some desert folk
medicines pass from desert to city. Historically, the exchange has been violent, as urban-
based governments have sought to control the movements and military capabilities of the
elusive and sometimes hostile nomads. Pastoral nomads once plundered rich caravans
plying the major overland trade routes of the Middle East and North Africa. Governments
did not tolerate such activities and often cracked down hard on the nomads they were
able to catch.
Agricultural villagers historically represented by far the majority populations in
the Middle East and North Africa; only in recent decades have urbanites begun to
outnumber them. In this generally dry environment, the villages are located near reliable
water sources with cultivable lands nearby. They are usually made up of closely related
family groups, with many fi elds owned by an absentee landlord. Villagers typically live
in closely spaced homes made of mud brick or concrete blocks. Production and
consumption focus on a staple grain such as wheat, barley, or rice. As land for growing
fodder is often in short supply, villagers keep only a small number of sheep and goats and
rely in part on nomads for pastoral produce. Residents of a given village usually share
common ties of kinship, religion, ritual, and custom, and the changing demands of
agricultural seasons regulate their patterns of activity.
Pastoral nomadism emerged as an offshoot of the village agricultural way of life
not long after plants and animals were fi rst domesticated in the Middle East (about 7000
b.c.e.). Rainfall and the wild fodder it brings forth, although scattered, are suffi cient
resources to support small groups of people who migrate with their sheep, goats, and
camels (and in some locales, cattle) to take advantage of this changing resource base (see
Perspectives from the Field, page 218). In mountainous areas, they follow a pattern of
vertical migration (sometimes referred to as transhumance), moving with their fl ocks
from lowland winter to highland summer pastures. In the fl atter expanses that comprise
most of the region, the nomads practice a pattern of horizontal migration over much
larger areas where rainfall is typically far less reliable than in the mountains. In addition
to selling or trading livestock to obtain food, tea, sugar, clothing, and other essentials
from settled communities, pastoral nomads hunt, gather, work for wages, and where
possible, grow crops. Many now work in the tourist industry, as Westerners hungry for
insight into traditional cultures seek them out. Their multifaceted livelihood has been
described as a strategy of risk minimization based on the exploitation of multiple
resources so that some will support them if others fail.
The city was the fi nal component to emerge in the ecological trilogy, beginning
in about 4000 b.c.e. in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and 3000 b.c.e. in Egypt. Though
they resembled villages in many ways, the early cities were distinguished by their larger
populations (more than 5,000 people), the use of written languages, and the presence of
monumental temples and other ceremonial centers. The early Mesopotamian city and,
after the 7th century c.e., the classic Islamic city, called the medina, had several structural
elements in common. The medina had a high surrounding wall built for defensive
purposes. The congregational mosque and often an attached administrative and
educational complex dominated the city center. Although Islam is often characterized as
a faith of the desert, religious life has always been focused in, and diffused from, the
cities. The importance of the city’s congregational mosque in religious and everyday life
is often emphasized by its large size and outstanding artistic execution.
A large commercial zone, known as a bazaar in Persian and a suq in Arabic and
recognizable as the ancestor of the modern shopping mall, typically adjoined the
ceremonial and administrative heart of the city. Merchants and craftspeople selling
various commodities occupied separate spaces within this complex, and visitors to an old
medina today can still fi nd sections devoted exclusively to the sale of spices, carpets,
gold, silver, traditional medicines, or other particular goods. Smaller clusters of shops and
workshops were located at the city gates.
c. Cultural and Historical Geographies
Cultures of the Middle East and North Africa have made many fundamental
contributions to humanity. Many of the plants and animals on which the world’s
agriculture is based were fi rst domesticated in the Middle East between 5,000 and 10,000
years ago in the course of the Agricultural Revolution. The list includes wheat, barley,
sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs, whose wild ancestors were processed, manipulated, and
bred until their physical makeup and behavior changed to suit human needs. The
interaction between people and the wild plants and animals they eventually domesticated
took place mainly in the well-watered Fertile Crescent, the arc of land stretching from
Israel to western Iran.
By about 6,000 years ago, people sought higher yields by irrigating crops in the
rich but often dry soils of the Tigris, Euphrates, and Nile River Valleys. Their efforts
produced the enormous crop surpluses that allowed civilization—a cultural complex
based on an urban way of life—to emerge in Mesopotamia (literally, “the land between
the rivers,” the Tigris and Euphrates) and in Egypt. Accomplishments in science,
technology, art, architecture, language, mathematics, and other areas diffused outward
from these centers of civilization. Egypt and Mesopotamia are thus among the world’s
great culture hearths.
The Middle East and North Africa are sometimes mistakenly referred to as the
“Arab world”; in fact, the region has huge populations of non-Arabs. It is true that a
majority of the region’s inhabitants are Arabs. An Arab is best defi ned as a person of
Semitic Arab ethnicity whose ancestral language is Arabic, a Semitic language spoken by
about 245 million, or 48 percent, of the region’s people. Originally, the Arabs were
inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula, but conquests after their majority conversion to
Islam took them, their language, and their Islamic culture as far west as Morocco and
Spain.
There are other very large populations of non-Semitic ethnic groups and
languages in the region. The greatest are the 60 million Turks of Turkey, who speak
Turkish, a member of the Altaic language family, and the 33 million Persians of Iran,
who speak Farsi (also called Persian), in the Indo-European language family. Both
Persian and Arabic are written in Arabic script and so appear related, but they are not.
Turkish was also written in Arabic script until early in the 20th century, but since then, it
has been written in a Latin script. The ethnic Pashtun majority of Afghanistan speaks
Pashto, a language closely related to Persian, and the country’s offi cial language is Dari
(Afghan Persian). About 30 million Kurds—a people living in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and
Syria—speak Kurdish, which is also an Indo-European language. Many people in North
Africa speak Berber and Tuareg (in the Afro-Asiatic language family). Sudan is
ethnically and linguistically a transition zone between the Middle East and North Africa
region and sub-Saharan Africa. In Sudan, particularly in the south, there are many
speakers of Chari-Nile languages, in the Nilo-Saharan language family.
Judaism, the fi rst signifi cant monotheistic faith as far as we know, is today
practiced by about 14 million people worldwide, mostly in Israel, Europe, and North
America. September 2007 marked the start of the year 5768 in the Jewish calendar, but
unlike its kindred faiths—Christianity and Islam—Judaism does not have an
acknowledged starting point in time. Also unlike Christianity, Judaism does not have a fi
xed creed or doctrine. Jews are encouraged to behave in this life according to God’s laws,
which, according to the Torah (the Jewish holy scripture, which is known as the Old
Testament in the Christian Bible), God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai as a covenant with
God’s “chosen people.” The coming of a savior known as the Messiah (“Anointed One”
in Hebrew) is prophesied in the Torah; Christians believe that Jesus was that savior, as
described in the New Testament; Jews do not recognize Jesus as the fulfi llment of that
prophecy and so do not accept the New Testament.
Another distinction that sets Christianity and Islam apart from Judaism is that
Judaism is not a proselytizing religion; it does not seek converts. Jewish identity is based
strongly on a common historical experience shared over thousands of years. That
historical experience has included deep-seated geographic associations with particular
sacred places in the Middle East—particularly with places in Jerusalem, capital of ancient
Judah (Judea), the province from which Jews take their name. Tragically, the Jewish
history also has included unparalleled persecution.
The united Kingdom of Israel lasted only about 200 years before splitting into the
states of Israel and Judah. Empires based in Mesopotamia destroyed these states: the
Assyrians attacked Israel in 721 b.c.e., and the Babylonians sacked Judah in 586 b.c.e.
The Babylonians destroyed the First Temple (at which point the Ark of the Covenant
disappeared) and exiled the Jewish people to Mesopotamia, where they remained until
conquering Persians allowed them to return to their homeland. In about 520 b.c.e., the
Jews who returned to Judah rebuilt the temple (the Second Temple) on its original site. A
succession of foreign empires came to rule the Jews and Arabs of Palestine: Persian,
Macedonian, Ptolemaic, Seleucid, and around the time of Jesus, Roman. Herod, the
Jewish king who ruled under Roman authority and was a contemporary of Jesus, greatly
enlarged the temple complex.
The Jews of Palestine revolted against Roman rule three times between 64 and
135. The fi rst revolt broke out as the profoundly monotheistic Jews refused to
acknowledge the Roman emperor as a god. The Romans quashed these rebellions in a
series of famous sieges, including those of Masada and Jerusalem. The Romans destroyed
the Second Temple, and a third has never been built. All that remains of the Second
Temple complex is a portion of the surrounding wall built by Herod. Today, this Western
Wall, known to non-Jews as the Wailing Wall, is the most sacred site in the world
accessible to Jews. Some religious traditions prohibit Jews from ascending the Temple
Mount above, the area where the temple actually stood, because it is too sacred. After the
temple’s destruction, that site was occupied by a Roman temple and then in 691 by the
Muslim shrine called the Dome of the Rock, which still stands today. The mostly Muslim
Arabs know the Temple Mount as al-Haraam ash-Shariif, the Noble Sanctuary.
Supercharged with meaning, this place has in modern times often been the spark of confl
agration between Jews and Palestinian Arabs.
Nearly 1,000 years after Solomon established the Jews’ First Temple, a new but
closely related monotheistic faith emerged in Palestine. This was Christianity, named for
Jesus Christ (Christ is Greek for “Anointed One,” the equivalent of the Hebrew word for
Messiah). Jesus, a Jew, was born near Jerusalem in Bethlehem, probably around 4 b.c.e.
Tradition relates that when he was about 30 years old, Jesus began spreading the word
that he was the Messiah, the deliverer of humankind long prophesied in Jewish doctrine.
A small group of disciples accepted that he was the Messiah and followed him for several
years as he preached his message. He taught that love, sacrifi ce, and faith were the keys
to salvation. He had come to redeem humanity’s sins through his own death. To his
followers, he was the Son of God, a living manifestation of God Himself, and the only
path to eternal life was by accepting his divinity.
Islam is by far the dominant religion in the Middle East and North Africa; only
Israel within its pre-1967 borders has a non-Muslim majority. Because of Islam’s
powerful infl uence not merely as a set of religious practices but as a way of life, an
understanding of the religious tenets, culture, and diffusion of Islam is vital for
appreciating the region’s cultural geography.
Islam is a monotheistic faith built on the foundations of the region’s earliest
monotheistic faith, Judaism, and its offspring, Christianity. Indeed, Muslims (people who
practice Islam) call Jews and Christians People of the Book, and their faith obliges them
to be tolerant of these special peoples. Muslims believe that their prophet, Muhammad,
was the very last in a series of prophets who brought the Word of God to humankind.
Thus they perceive the Bible as incomplete but not entirely wrong—Jews and Christians
merely missed receiving the entire message. Muslims do not accept the Christian concept
of the divine Trinity (God manifested in the form of the Father, his son Jesus, and the
Holy Spirit) and regard Jesus as a prophet rather than as a manifestation of God.
Muhammad was born in 570 c.e. to a poor family in the western Arabian (now
Saudi Arabian) city of Mecca. Located on an important north-south caravan route linking
the frankincense-producing area of southern Arabia (now Yemen and Oman) with
markets in Palestine (now Israel) and Syria, Mecca was a prosperous city at the time. It
was also a pilgrimage destination because more than 300 deities were venerated in a
shrine there called the Ka’aba. Muhammad married into a wealthy family and worked in
the caravan trade. Muslim tradition holds that when he was about 40 years old,
Muhammad was meditating in a cave outside Mecca when the Angel Gabriel appeared to
him and ordered him to repeat the words of God that the angel would recite to him. Over
the next 22 years, the prophet related these words of God (whom Muslims call Allah) to
scribes who wrote them down as the Qur’an (or Koran), the holy book of Islam.
During this time, Muhammad began preaching the new message, “There is no god
but Allah,” which the polytheistic people of Mecca viewed as heresy. As much of their
income depended on pilgrimage traffi c to the Ka’aba, they also viewed Muhammad and
his small band of followers as an economic threat. They forced the Muslims to fl ee from
Mecca and take refuge in Yathrib (modern Medina), where a largely Jewish population
had invited them to settle. There were subsequent skirmishes between the Meccans and
Muslims, but in 630, the Muslims prevailed and peacefully occupied Mecca. The
Muslims destroyed the idols enshrined in the Ka’aba, which became a pilgrimage center
for their one God.
After Muhammad’s death in 632, Arabian armies carried the new faith far and
quickly. The two decaying empires that then prevailed in the Middle East and North
Africa—the Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire, based in Constantinople (Istanbul), and
the Sassanian Empire, based in Persia (Iran) and adjacent Mesopotamia (Iraq)—put up
only limited military resistance to the Muslim armies before capitulating. Local
inhabitants generally welcomed the new faith, in part because administrators of the
previous empires had not treated them well, whereas the Muslims promised tolerance.
Soon the Syrian city of Damascus became the center of a Muslim empire. Baghdad
assumed this role in 750 c.e.
Arab science and civilization fl ourished in the Baghdad immortalized in the
legends of The Thousand and One Nights. Important accomplishments and discoveries
were made in mathematics, astronomy, and geography. Scholars translated the Greek and
Roman classics, and if not for their efforts, many of these works would never have
survived to become part of the modern European legacy. It was an age of exploration,
when Arab merchants and voyagers visited China and the remote lands of southern
Africa. Many important discoveries by the Arab geographers were recorded in Arabic, a
language unfamiliar to contemporary Europeans, and had to be rediscovered centuries
later by the Portuguese and Spaniards. Arab merchants carried their faith on the spice
routes to the East. One result, surprising to many today, is that the world’s most populous
Muslim country is not in the Middle East and North Africa, and its people are not Arabs;
it is Indonesia, 5,000 thousand miles (8,000 km) east of Arabia.
d. Economic Geography
Overall, the Middle East and North Africa is a poor region; per capita GNI PPP
for the 23 countries and territories averages only $7,980. This may seem surprising in
view of the “rich Arab” stereotype. Only the oilendowed states around the Persian-
Arabian Gulf deserve the reputation for wealth, and by most measures other than per
capita wealth, only non-Arab Israel is truly a more developed country (MDC). Israel’s
prosperity comes from its innovation in computer and other high-technology industries,
the processing and sale of diamonds, large amounts of foreign (mostly U.S.) aid, and
investment and assistance by Jews and Jewish organizations around the world.
By coincidence, the countries rich in oil tend to have relatively small populations,
whereas the most populous nations have few oil reserves; Iran is an exception. All but
about 1 percent of the Persian Gulf (Arabian Gulf) oil region’s proven reserves of crude
oil are located in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE),
with smaller reserves in Oman and Qatar. Saudi Arabia, by far the world leader in
reserves, has about 20 percent of the proven crude oil reserves on the globe. Canada is in
second place with almost 14 percent of the world’s proven oil; the next four are all along
the Persian Gulf (Arabian Gulf): Iran (10 percent), Iraq (9 percent), Kuwait (8 percent),
and the UAE (8 percent). Venezuela has 6 percent of world reserves, Russia another 5
percent, and the world’s largest oil consumer, the United States, only 2 percent.
Production, export, and profi ts of Middle Eastern and North African oil were
once fi rmly in the hands of foreign companies. That situation changed after 1960 when
most of the Gulf countries and other exporting nations formed the Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) with the aim of taking joint action to demand
higher profits from oil. It changed again after 1972 when the oilproducing countries
began to nationalize the foreign oil companies. OPEC was relatively obscure until the
ArabIsraeli war of 1973, after which the organization began a series of dramatic price
increases. In 1980, the organization’s price reached $37 (U.S.) per barrel, compared with
$2 a barrel in early 1973. Adjusted for infl ation, that $37 would have been the equivalent
of $100 per barrel in 2007, so the price hikes were truly titanic.
These events had enormous repercussions for the world economy. Immense
wealth was transferred from the more developed countries to the OPEC countries to pay
for indispensable oil supplies. The skyrocketing cost of gasoline and other oil products
helped cause serious infl ation in the United States and many other countries and
contributed to the 1973 energy crisis in the United States. Desperately poor, less
developed countries (LDCs) found that high oil prices not only hindered the development
of their industries and transportation but also reduced food production because of high
prices for fertilizer made from oil and natural gas. In the Gulf countries, the oil bonanza
produced a wave of spending on military hardware, showy buildings, luxuries for the
elite, and ambitious development projects of many kinds. Per capita benefi ts to the
general populace were greatest in the Arabian Peninsula, where small populations and
immense infl ows of oil money made possible the abolition of taxes, the establishment of
comprehensive social programs, and heavily subsidized amenities such as low-cost
housing and utilities, including freshwater distilled from the salty Gulf in desalination
plants.
Then, as the 1980s began, the era of continually expanding OPEC oil production,
sales, and profi ts seemed to come to an end. After 1973, the high price of oil stimulated
oil development in countries outside OPEC. Oil conservation measures such as a shift to
more fuel-effi cient vehicles and furnaces were instituted. Substitution of cheaper fuels
for oil increased. Coal replaced oil in many electricity-generating stations. Oil refi neries
were converted to make gasoline from cheaper “heavy” oils rather than the more
expensive “light” oils previously used. Meanwhile, the world entered a period of
economic recession due in part to high oil prices. Decreased business activity reduced the
demand for oil. Profi ts of the world oil industry (and taxes paid to governments) were
severely cut, large numbers of refi neries had to close, and much of the world tanker fl eet
was idled.
Oil prices rose temporarily in 1990–1991 when the fl ow of Iraqi and Kuwaiti oil
was cut off following Iraq’s military takeover of Kuwait, but the prices soon fell again. In
the 1990s, Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich Gulf states adopted economic austerity
measures for the fi rst time. However, the immense oil and gas reserves still in the ground
guaranteed that the Gulf region would continue to have a major longterm impact on the
world and would remain relatively prosperous as long as these fi nite resources are in
demand in the MDCs. The lasting economic clout of the region was apparent early in the
21st century as the price of oil once again climbed to record levels, due especially to
OPEC decisions to reduce production, and to explosive economic growth and energy
demands in China and India.
There are of course other resources and industries in the region’s economic
geography—remittances (earned income) sent home by guest workers in the oil-rich
countries, revenues from ship traffi c through the Suez Canal, and exports of cotton, rice,
and other commercial crops, for example— but oil dominates the region’s economy and
is central to the global economy. The economies of the respective countries are described
in more detail in Module 6.1. Here the focus remains on Middle Eastern oil and its crucial
role in geopolitical affairs.
e. Geopolitical Issues
This has long been a vital region in world affairs and a target of outside interests.
Its strategic crossroads location often has made it a cauldron of confl ict. From very early
times, overland caravan routes, including the famous Silk Road, crossed the Middle East
and North Africa with highly prized commodities traded between Europe and Asia. The
security of these routes was vital, and countries at either end could not tolerate any threat
to them. In more recent times, geopolitical concerns have focused on narrow waterways,
access to oil, access to freshwater, and terrorism.
One of the striking characteristics of the geography of the Middle East and North
Africa is how many seas border and penetrate the region. In many cases, these seas are
connected to one another though narrow straits and other passageways. In geopolitical
terms, such constrictions are known as chokepoints—strategic narrow passageways on
land or sea that may be easily closed off by force or even the threat of force. Chokepoints
must be unimpeded if world commerce is to carry on normally. Keeping them open is
therefore usually one of the top priorities of regional and external governments.
Similarly, closing them is a priority to a combatant nation or a terrorist entity seeking to
gain a strategic advantage. Many notable events in military history and the formation of
foreign policy in the Middle East focus on these strategic places.
The Suez Canal and other chokepoints, the cotton of the Egypt’s Nile Delta, and
the strategic location of the region were important during colonial times and have
remained so ever since. But oil has been and will remain (as long as fossil fuels drive the
world’s economies) what keeps the rest of the world interested in the Middle East and
North Africa. The region’s oil fl ows to many countries, but most of it is marketed in
western Europe and Japan. The United States also imports large amounts of Gulf oil, but
has a smaller relative dependence on this source than Japan and Europe do; 22 percent of
its imported oil came from the Gulf in 2007. However, the Gulf region is very important
to the United States because of the heavy dependence of close American allies on Gulf
oil and because of the importance of the oil as a future reserve. American companies are
also heavily involved in oil operations and oil-fi nanced development in the Gulf
countries. Gulf “petrodollars” are spent, banked, and invested in the United States,
contributing signifi cantly to the U.S. economy. Maintaining a secure supply of Gulf oil
has therefore been one of the long-standing pillars of U.S. policy in the Middle East.
The Gulf War was not the fi rst time the United States expressed its willingness to
use force to maintain access to Middle Eastern oil. In the wake of the revolution in Iran in
1979, the Soviet Union invaded neighboring Afghanistan. U.S. military analysts feared
that the Soviets might use Afghanistan as a launch pad to invade oil-rich Iran. The United
States deemed this prospect unacceptable, and President Jimmy Carter issued the policy
statement that came to be known as the Carter Doctrine: the United States would use any
means necessary to defend its vital interests in the region. “Vital interests” meant oil, and
“any means necessary” meant that the United States was willing to go to war with the
Soviet Union, presumably nuclear war, to defend those interests.
Some of the most serious geopolitical issues in the Middle East and North Africa
relate to hydropolitics, or political leverage and control over water. In this arid region,
where most water is available either from rivers or from underground aquifers that cross
national boundaries, control over water is an especially diffi cult and potentially
explosive issue. An estimated 90 percent of the usable freshwater in the Middle East
crosses one or more international borders.
Water is one of the most problematic issues in the Palestinian-Israeli confl ict.
Freshwater aquifers underneath the West Bank supply about 40 percent of Israel’s water.
Palestinians point to Israel’s control over West Bank water as one of the most troubling
elements of its occupation. The average Jewish settler on the West Bank uses 74 gallons
(278 l) per day, whereas the average West Bank Palestinian uses 19 (72 l). (The World
Health Organization calculates that 13 gallons or 50 liters per person per day is needed
for minimal health and sanitation standards.) Israeli policies prohibit Palestinians from
increasing their water usage. Many Israeli policymakers insist that water resources in the
West Bank must remain under strict Israeli control and on these grounds oppose the
creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank. Critically, it is estimated that the West
Bank aquifers will not contain enough water to support the region’s population at current
levels of consumption for more than a few more years (even taking into account
anticipated replenishment from rainfall).
More promisingly, Jordan and Israel are working on agreements to share waters
from the Jordan River (which forms a portion of their common border) and its tributary,
the Yarmuk River. They are discussing a joint venture to build the Red-Dead Peace
Conduit, which would send seawater from the Gulf of Aqaba to the Dead Sea via a
network of canals and pipelines. This would replenish the Dead Sea, which has retreated
by about 3 feet (c. 1 m) per year for the last 25 years. The gravity fl ow of seawater to the
Dead Sea would run generators to produce electricity, some of which would be used to
desalinate the water. The two nations, and potentially the Palestinian Authority, could
share this water and power.
Historically, the same has been true of Egypt. It is the ultimate downstream
country, at the mouth of a great river that runs through fi ve countries and sustains about
160 million people. However, it has long been the strongest country in the Nile Basin and
has threatened to use its greater force if it does not get the water it wants. In 1926, when
the British ruled Egypt and many other colonies in Africa, 10 countries located on the
Nile or its tributaries upstream of Egypt were compelled to sign the Nile Water
Agreement. This guaranteed Egyptian access to 56 billion cubic meters of the Nile’s
water, or fully two-thirds of its 84 billion cubic meters—even though barely a drop of the
Nile’s waters actually originates in Egypt. The treaty forbids any projects that might
threaten the volume of water reaching Egypt, prohibits use of Lake Victoria’s water
without Egypt’s permission, and gives Egypt the right to inspect the entire length of the
Nile to ensure compliance. In recent years, however, one country after another has defi ed
the treaty, calling it an outmoded legacy of colonialism. Kenya and Tanzania have plans
to build pipelines to carry Lake Victoria waters to thirsty towns and villages inland.
Uganda is building its controversial Bujagali Dam on the Nile, mainly for
hydroelectricity production. With Chinese assistance, Ethiopia is building the huge
Tekaze Dam, for hydropower and irrigation, on a tributary of the Blue Nile. Sudan is
building the Merowe (Hamdab) and Kajbar Dams on its northern stretch of the Nile.
Predictably, Egypt has had a bellicose response to these developments.
f. The Arab-Israeli Conflict and Its Setting
The Arab-Israeli confl ict is above all a confl ict over who owns the land—
sometimes very small pieces of land—and is therefore of extreme interest in the study of
geography. It is also a confl ict that has repercussions far beyond the boundaries of the
small countries and territories involved. As long as it simmers or boils, there are other
countries and entities that will use the unresolved Arab-Israeli confl ict to advance their
interests at the expense of others; both al-Qa’ida and Iran, for example, derive much
benefi cial propaganda value from it. A United Nations–sponsored group called the
Alliance of Civilizations concluded in 2006 that the Palestinian-Israeli confl ict is the
largest force behind global tensions.
The modern state of Israel was carved from lands whose fate had been
undetermined since the end of World War I. The Ottoman Empire, based in what is now
Turkey, had ruled Palestine (roughly the area now made up of Israel and the Palestinian
territories) and surrounding lands in the eastern Mediterranean since the 16th century.
After the British and French defeated the Ottoman Turks in World War I and destroyed
their empire, they divided the region between themselves. The British received the
“mandate” (authority to establish a government) for Palestine, Transjordan (modern
Jordan), and Mesopotamia (Iraq), while the French received the mandate for Syria (now
Syria and Lebanon).
During World War I, British administrators of Palestine had made confl icting
promises to Jews and Arabs. They implied that they would create an independent Arab
state in Palestine and yet at the same time vowed to promote Jewish immigration to
Palestine with an eye to the eventual establishment of a Jewish state there. The
Palestinians—Arabs who historically formed the vast majority of the region’s inhabitants
—did not welcome the ensuing Jewish immigration and rioted against both the migrants
and the British administration. Militant Jews attacked British interests in Palestine,
hoping to precipitate a British withdrawal.
Placing themselves in a no-win position with these confl icting promises and
under increasing pressure from both Jews and Arabs, in 1947 the British decided to
withdraw from Palestine and leave the young United Nations with the task of determining
the region’s future. The United Nations responded in 1947 with the two-state solution to
the problem of Palestine. It established an Arab state (which would have been called
Palestine) and a Jewish state (Israel). The plan was deeply fl awed. The states’ territories
were long, narrow, and fragmented, giving each side a sense of vulnerability and
insecurity. When Israel declared itself into existence in May 1948, the armies of the
neighboring Arab countries of Transjordan, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon mobilized.
In what Israelis call the War of Independence and Palestinians call the Catastrophe (al-
Nakba), the smaller but better-organized and more highly motivated Israeli army defeated
the Arab armies, and Israel acquired what have come to be known as its pre-1967 borders
(the 1949 Armistice Agreement.
In addition to issues of land, water, politics, and ideology, the Palestinian-Israeli
confl ict is about sheer numbers of people. Each side has wanted to maximize its numbers
to the disadvantage of the other. To realize the Zionist dream of establishing a Jewish
state, Jews began immigrating to Palestine around the start of the 20th century. Jews
made up 11 percent of Palestine’s population in 1922, 16 percent in 1931, and 31 percent
in 1946, on the eve of Israel’s creation. In keeping with national legislation known as the
Law of Return, the state of Israel has always granted citizenship to any Jew who wishes
to live there. Following the 1948–1949 war, waves of new immigrants from Europe
(Ashkenazi Jews) joined the Middle Eastern Sephardic Jews who had inhabited Palestine
and other parts of the Middle East (and until 1492, Spain) since early times.
Israel is much more than a country in a perpetual state of confl ict. It is a
physically and culturally diverse and vibrant nation with a promising future, especially if
relations with its Arab neighbors improve. One of Israel’s greatest achievements since
independence has been the expansion and intensifi cation of agriculture within its small
territory; it is almost self-suffi cient in agriculture, excluding grains. Production
concentrates on citrus fruits (including the famous Jaffa oranges), which provide export
revenue, and on dairy, beef, and poultry products, as well as fl owers, vegetables, and
animal feeds. Israel’s intensive, mechanized agriculture resembles the agriculture of
densely populated areas in western Europe. Collectivized settlements called kibbutzim
(sing., kibbutz) are a distinctively Israeli feature on the agricultural landscape. Many of
these lie near the frontiers and have defensive as well as agricultural and industrial
functions. They have also been important in the development of Israeli identity, instilling
a sense of work for the common good and reminding Israelis that their ancestors were
often deprived of the right to own and till the land. Far more numerous and important in
Israel’s agricultural economy are other types of villages, including the small farmers’
cooperatives called moshavim (sing., moshav) and villages of private farmers.
The economic and political situation of Jordan has always been precarious.
Throughout his long reign, ending with his death in 1999, the country’s King Hussein
withstood various crises. Many of these related to the large numbers of Palestinian
refugees in Jordan. Palestinians still make up about 52 percent of Jordan’s population of
5.7 million, but most are refugees without citizenship. After the 1967 war, Jordan was the
chief base for military operations of the PLO against Israel, but in 1970 and 1971, the
king expelled the armed Palestinian forces, which relocated to Lebanon. Jordan’s
monarchy has always walked a tightrope between its pro-Western stance and the need to
satisfy its anti-Israeli and anti-American inhabitants and neighbors. Its support of the U.S.
war in Iraq put Jordan on al-Qa’ida’s target list; in 2005, the organization carried out
merciless bombings (including one on a wedding party) at three Western-owned hotels in
Amman.
g. Egypt: The Gift of the Nile
The Nile Valley may appropriately be described as a “river oasis,” for stark,
almost waterless desert borders this lush ribbon. Only 3 percent of Egypt is cultivated,
and nearly all this land lies along and is watered by the great river. The conversion of the
original papyrus marshes and other wetlands along the Nile to the thickly settled,
irrigated landscape of today is a process that has been unfolding for more than 50
centuries. It is diffi cult to imagine that in the time of the pharaohs, crocodiles and
hippopotamuses swam in the Nile and game animals typical of East Africa roamed the
nearby plateaus.
Achieving perennial irrigation on a vast scale—and thus boosting crop production
enormously—required the construction of barrages and dams, which were innovations of
the 19th and 20th centuries in this part of the world. Late in the 19th century, French and
British colonial occupiers of Egypt, anxious to raise Egypt’s exports of cotton (a summer
crop demanding perennial irrigation), began Egypt’s conversion from basin to perennial
irrigation by constructing a number of barrages, or low barriers designed to raise the level
of the river high enough that the water fl ows by gravity into irrigation canals. Barrages
are not designed to store large amounts of water, a function now performed by two dams
in Upper Egypt and several others along the Nile and its tributaries in Sudan and Uganda.
The Aswan High Dam has also had drawbacks. The dam has caused the water
table to rise, making it harder for irrigated soil to drain properly. When farmers use too
much water, standing water evaporates and leaves a deposit of mineral salts—a problem
known as salinization—that causes the once-fertile soil to lose its productivity. In
addition, perennially available canal waters are ideal breeding grounds for the snail that
hosts the parasite that causes schistosomiasis, or bilharziasis, a debilitating disease
affecting a large proportion of Egypt’s rural population. Mediterranean sardine
populations, now deprived of the rich silt that nurtured their feeding ground, have
plummeted off the Nile Delta, and the sardine industry has faltered. Without the free
fertilizer the silt offered, Egypt’s bill for artifi cial fertilizers has increased. Generally,
however, Egyptians are very proud of the High Dam. It has increased domestic food and
crop export production dramatically.
Egypt’s industries are concentrated in Cairo and in the Mediterranean port of
Alexandria. They include cotton textiles, food processing, clothing manufacture,
chemical fertilizers, and cement. Automobiles and other consumer durables are
assembled primarily from imported components. The country is self-suffi cient in some
vital minerals, including oil, and exports some oil. But Egypt lacks the mineral wealth to
support extensive industrialization, and for its development, the country depends heavily
on foreign loans and grants. Income from tourism, particularly to the outstanding temples
and tombs of ancient Egypt and to the world-famous scuba-diving sites on the Red Sea
and Gulf of Aqaba, helps redress the unfavorable trade balance, as do transit fees from
ships using the Suez Canal. However, tourism is a very vulnerable resource, as the
number of visitors plummets each time violence—including al-Qa’ida attacks on resorts
in the Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula—rocks the Middle East.
The United States is Egypt’s chief non-Arab ally, lavishing huge sums of civilian
and military aid in support of the autocratic regime led by President Hosni Mubarak. To
quell real and perceived threats by Islamists, Mubarak has maintained a state of
emergency for more than two decades and has effectively stifl ed most opposition. The
ranks of outlawed and grassroots Islamist movements have grown at the same time.
Egyptian society has generally reembraced traditional Islamic values in dress, education,
relations between the sexes, and other social and cultural practices. A radical fringe has
periodically attacked the interests of Egypt’s 6 million Coptic Christian minority and
foreign targets such as the tourism industry
h. Sudan: Bridge between the Middle East and Africa
Egypt is bordered on the south by Africa’s largest country, the vast, tropical, and
sparsely populated republic of Sudan (population 38.6 million. Formerly controlled by
Britain and Egypt, Sudan gained its independence Juba in the deep south. Most of the
country lacks railways or good highways. The main route for rail freight connects
Khartoum with Port Sudan, a modern, well-equipped port that handles most of Sudan’s
seaborne trade.
About 7 percent of Sudan is cultivated, but agricultural productivity is low. The
largest block of irrigated land is found in the Gezira region between the Blue and White
Niles. The country’s main cash crop is irrigated cotton. Many Sudanese support
themselves by raising cattle, camels, sheep, and goats. The country’s industries are
meager. The most important resource is oil, which Sudan began exporting in modest
quantities in 1999. Sudan’s reserves are not large, but a sudden infl ow of oil money ever
since then has made Sudan one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. The
government has used substantial resources to improve the country’s infrastructure, but
deep poverty— and a growing gap between the newly wealthy minority and the vast poor
majority—remains widespread.
Much political friction exists between north and south. A civil war raged between
the two sections from 1983 to 2003, with southern factions of the Sudanese People’s
Liberation Army (SPLA) engaging government army troops from the north. As many as
2 million people, mostly civilians, died, and another 4.5 million were driven from their
homes. Among the reasons for this confl ict were historical antagonisms and economic
disparities between the more developed north and the less developed and poorer south,
along with efforts by the Arab-dominated government to impose Islamic law (sharia) and
the Arabic language on the south and to exploit the south economically. The confl ict
helped keep Sudan mired in poverty. SPLA rebels repeatedly attacked the country’s
single export pipeline leading from the oil-producing area around Bentui to the coast at
Port Sudan. Bentui is close to the southern SPLA stronghold, and the county’s largest oil
reserves are within SPLA territory.
A new humanitarian crisis emerged in 2004 when government-backed militias
called Janjawiid and Sudanese army regulars began to carry out ethic cleansing in
Sudan’s westernmost province, Darfur. The victims (as many as 400,000 dead by 2007)
were blacks of the Zaghawa, Massa liet, and Fur tribes. They were targeted because of
competition with Arabs over access to land and water and initially because of
government fears that these groups might link up with antigovernment rebels in the south.
Early on, the crisis in Darfur went relatively unnoticed by the international community,
but it gradually acquired visibility as the situation worsened. The United States and other
countries accused Sudan’s government of genocide. African Union (AU) forces were
called in as peacekeepers to quell the violence, but their effectiveness proved limited.
Sudan’s foreign relations have changed dramatically twice since 1989, when an
Islamic military regime overthrew an elected government. The new rulers allied
themselves with militant Iran and also briefl y provided refuge for Osama bin Laden. In
1993, after obtaining information linking Sudanese offi cials with the fi rst bombing of
New York City’s World Trade Center, the United States branded Sudan a terrorist nation
and halted economic aid. Following the analysis of intelligence information about
bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in August 1998 American cruise
missiles obliterated a pharmaceutical factory, alleged to be a chemical weapons factory,
in Sudan’s capital. After that, and especially after 9/11, Sudanese relations with the West
improved considerably, and the United States came to regard Sudan as an ally in its war
on terrorism.
i. Libya: Deserts, Oil, and a Reformed Survivor
Egypt’s neighbor to the west, Libya—formerly an Italian colony—became an
independent kingdom in 1951. In 1969, Libya became a republic after Colonel Muammar
al-Qaddafi and other army offi cers led a coup against the monarchy. Some 97 percent of
the country’s people are Muslim Arabs and Berbers.
Most of Libya lies in the Sahara and is too dry to support cultivation except in
scattered oases watered by wells and springs. The country is sparsely inhabited; its 6.2
million people are heavily concentrated in coastal lowlands and low highlands along the
Mediterranean, where limited winter rains and irrigation with groundwater allow
smallscale cultivation of typical Mediterranean crops. Thanks to center-pivot irrigation—
a method in which the irrigation equipment rotates around a pivot, creating a circular
crop pattern—wheat is grown in southern Libya. Deep wells there tap nonreplenished
fossil waters that accumulated in deep limestone aquifers in ancient times when rains fell
abundantly in what is now the Sahara. In an ongoing project called the Great Manmade
River, these same fossil waters are diverted from wells 1,155 feet (347 m) deep around
Tazirbu in east central Libya and Hasquina in west central Libya by pipelines 13 feet (4
m) in diameter stretching hundreds of miles to the Mediterranean. The goal of this effort,
which Colonel Qaddafi calls “the eighth wonder of the world” and critics abroad decry as
“Libya’s pipe dream,” is agricultural selfsuffi ciency through the irrigation of fruits,
vegetables, and wheat in northern Libya.
Crude oil, petroleum products, and natural gas represent nearly all of Libya’s
exports (primarily to western Europe) and have brought prosperity to the country since
the 1960s. The government spends much of the oil revenue on public works, education,
housing, aid to agriculture, and other projects for social and economic development. The
country has also spent large sums on weapons.
Libya’s revolutionary government was long involved in an exchange of hostile
rhetoric and sometimes hostile action with the United States, its Western allies, and
Israel. In 1986, U.S. warplanes bombed Tripoli and Benghazi in reprisal for alleged
terrorist acts against American citizens instigated by Libya. After Western intelligence
authorities linked two Libyans to the 1988 bombing of Pan American Airlines’ Flight 103
over Lockerbie, Scotland, Libya was subjected to an international air embargo.
Apparently conceding that his country’s isolation was devastating the economy,
Colonel Qaddafi decided to make amends with the West. Libya admitted to its role in the
Flight 103 bombing and agreed to pay billions of dollars in restitution to the victims’
families. Libya also announced that it was giving up development of weapons of mass
destruction, including nuclear weapons. That proclamation led to much praise from
Western governments and to the progressive renewal of diplomatic and economic
relations. The U.S. removed Libya from its list of “terrorist states” in 2006, and American
oil companies are getting back to work in this oil-blessed country. Growing numbers of
international tourists are visiting Libya’s outstanding Roman sites, pristine beaches, and
desert wilderness.
j. Northwestern Africa: The Maghreb
Arabs know the northwestern fringes of Africa as the Maghreb (meaning “western
land”). Most of this area’s people are Muslim Arabs. The ethnically distinct Berbers, who
are most numerous in Morocco and Algeria, converted to Islam after the Arabs brought
the new faith into the region in the 7th century. Many Berbers now speak Arabic, and
most have adopted Arab customs. Majority Arabs discriminate against them in some
countries. Berbers in Algeria, who make up 10 percent of the population, have demanded
that the government recognize the Berber language and help the economically
disadvantaged Berbers achieve better working and social conditions.
The Maghreb includes four main political units: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and
the disputed Western Sahara. Islamic influences crossed the strait beginning early in the
8th century and prevailed in southern Spain until 1492, when Spain’s monarchs ordered
both Jews and the Muslim Moors out of the country. France became the dominant power
in the Maghreb during the 19th and early 20th centuries. French investment developed
mines, industries, irrigation works, power stations, railroads, highways, and port
facilities, but French rule was very unpopular. In 1956, after long agitation by local
nationalists, Tunisia and Morocco secured independence. In Algeria, independence in
1962 came only after a bitter civil war lasting eight years.
Inland, the Atlas Mountains extend in almost continuous chains from southern
Morocco to northwestern Tunisia, with the highest peaks in the High Atlas Mountains of
Morocco. They block the path of moisture-bearing winds from the Atlantic and the
Mediterranean, and some mountain areas receive 40 to 50 inches (c. 100 to 130 cm) of
precipitation annually, sometimes more. The precipitation nourishes forests of cork oak
or cedar in some places. In Algeria, the mountains form two east-west chains: the Tell
Atlas nearer the coast and the Saharan Atlas farther south.
All the countries reach the Sahara to the south. Some pastoral nomadic
tribespeople, including the legendary Tua reg, still migrate through the Sahara with their
camels, sheep, and goats. Clusters of oases exist in a few places, such as in the dramatic
sandstone Ahaggar Mountains of southern Algeria, which rise high enough to catch
moisture from the passing winds. A line of oases fed by springs, wells, mountain streams,
and foggaras (tunnels from mountain water sources, known as qanats in Iran) lies along
or near the southern base of the Atlas Mountains. Several large areas of sandy desert
(ergs) and a barren gravel plain, the Tanezrouft, occupy portions of the Algerian Sahara.
The Maghreb economies benefi t from a valuable mineral endowment. Algeria’s
oil and natural gas, located in the Sahara, are the region’s greatest assets. The oil fl ows
through pipelines to shipping points on the Mediterranean in Algeria and Tunisia, and
two pipelines carry Algerian natural gas to Europe. Petroleum products, crude oil, and
natural gas make up almost all of Algeria’s exports by value. Morocco’s exports also
include some minerals, notably phosphate, plus agricultural exports and clothing.
Consumer industries, including plants that assemble foreign-made components, are the
second-leading industries in the Maghreb countries.
Algeria’s oil boom went bust in the 1980s, but population growth continued,
fueling an economic crisis and shortages of food and consumer goods that contributed to
widespread unrest in the 1990s. Algeria built up a staggering foreign debt that
exacerbated the instability. Discord in Algeria reverberated through the entire Maghreb
and across the Mediterranean to the region’s former colonial power, France. During
almost eight years after 1992, when Algeria’s military government nullifi ed the results of
parliamentary elections that would have given a majority of the seats to the Islamic
Salvation Front (FIS), civil strife claimed an estimated 150,000 Algerian lives. Violent
sympathizers of the FIS also carried their insurgency to France in the 1990s, bombing
government and civilian targets to protest France’s support of the military government in
Algiers. The 2000s have seen Algeria’s 34 million people reconciling with the West and
enjoying the strong economic growth prompted by high energy prices.
Such questionable actions led the United Nations to repeatedly suspend the
referendum and fi nally call it off in 2000. Morocco continued to assert its claim to
Western Sahara. It sold Western Sahara’s offshore fi shing rights to European countries.
To stave off Algerian interests, Moroccan technicians also erected a 1,500-mile (2,400-
km) sand barrier parallel to Western Sahara’s border with Algeria, reinforcing it with
land mines and 150,000 troops. West of this berm, in Morocco-held territory, is the
world’s largest reserve of phosphate, used in fertilizers, toothpastes, and detergents. The
United Nations wants to help to establish limited Western Saharan autonomy under
Moroccan rule, but 75 countries recognize the Polisarioproclaimed Saharawi Arab
Democratic Republic as a country with a government in exile. While the status of
Western Sahara remains unresolved, more than 165,000 Saharawis (as the indigenous
people of Western Sahara are known) live in refugee camps in the Algerian desert, as
they have for decades. Despite their bleak conditions, the Saharawis have achieved a 95
percent literacy rate and have a representative government with a constitution that insists
on religious tolerance and gender equality.
