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features:
• Relief map of the region with international boundaries, capitals, and selected cities
• Each country's population, gross national product per capita, oil reserves, troops, tanks, and combat aircraft - 1991 data
• A brief overview of each country
• Military facilities, transients camps, nuclear reactors, and chemical plants
• Three historical maps showing the chain of alliances in 1900, European imperialism in 1919, and the rise of nationalism in 1948
• A brief history of the Gulf War
• Oil fields, pipelines, refineries, and tanker terminals |
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(1991 information)
IN AUGUST 1990 the Middle East's caldron once again boiled over when Iraq invaded Kuwait, its wealthy and much smaller neighbor. Irq claimed to the asserting due sovereignty from days of the Ottoman Empire, but the real motives seemed otherwise.
Iraq's President Saddam Hussein drove his country deep into debt during the 1980-1988 war with Iran. Annexing Kuwait nearly doubled Iraq's hundred-billion-barrel petroleum reserves, as well as giving Iraq better access to the Persian Gulf through Kuwait's much longer coastline.
Iraq appeared to expect no effective oppostion and seemed to be deploying forces for another attack–on Saudi Arabia. Then in a rare and swift show of solidarity, the United Nations Security Council condemned the invasion and voted to embargo Iraqi trade–oil included. Banks world-wide froze Iraqi and Kuwaiti assets. The United States, at Saudi Arabia's invitation, committed air power and troops to that country's defense, and within weeks Britain, France, and Italy, among others, had joined the effort.
The region suddenly stood on the verge of war, yet the present crisis had roots in past European intervention.
When the Suez Canal opened in 1860, Great Britain gained better seaborne access to its most important possession, India, whose frontiers were increasingly threatened by the southward expansion of imperial Russia. Britain, by intervention in Egypt and by treaty with the small sheikhdoms of the Arabian Peninsula, strung a chain of alliances to guarantee safety of its sea routes.
With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following World War I, occupying European powers carved up the region under a mandate system established by the League of Nations. In 1920 it authorized Britain to set up a postwar government in Iraq. Britain drew the new country's boundaries according to its strategic needs, largely around old Ottoman provices. The foreign presence rallied the Iraqis and awakened a sense of nationalism that would eventually drive the British from Iraq.
Governed by the Sabah dynasty, which was founded in the18th century, Kuwait too had been part of the Ottoman Empire. Under British protection since 1899, Kuwait gained full independence in 1961.
After World War II thousands of Jews poured into Palestine. Zionists had pushed for creation of a Jewish homeland there for years. Palestinian Arabs resented the new settlers, and the resulting friction caused the UN to propose dividing the British mandate of Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states. Arabs opposed the plan, but in 1948 when the British withdrew, Israel declared itself a state.
By then Syria and Lebanon had achieved independence from France, Iraq and Jordan from Britain. The old imperial system had been abandoned.
A postwar industrial boom drastically increased the worldwide demand for energy. Foreign oil companies tapped rich fields in Saudi Arabia, as well as in Iran, Iraq, and Kuwait. Oil was eventually found in Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, and modest discoveries were made in Yemen, Egypt, and Syria. Yet Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel are energy poor and must import petroleum.
In the Middle East wealth, geography, politics and religious practices vary widely. (For instance, not all Arabs are Muslims, and not all Muslims are Arabs.) Differences have written the history of the region, and differences are what its nations most truly share.
TURKEY - NATO member Turkey has the largest non-Arab population in the Middle East. Nearly 99 percent of its people are Muslim, mostly Sunni. A strong national identity belies its ethnic diversity: Circassians, Russian Balkans, Kurds, Serbs,and Greeks, among others. Turkey's economy has been severely affected by the economic blockade of Iraq and the closing of petroleum pipelines.
SYRIA - Ancient Syria linked the civilizations of Mesopotamia and the Nile Valley. Its past shows in its varied peoples: tribl Kurds, ethnic Turks, and Armenians, as well as Arabs. Sunni Muslims are nearly 70 percent of the population; Alawite Muslims are the next largest group, at 12 percent. Syria is one of the fastest growing countries in the Middle East; nearly half the population is under the age of 20.
EGYPT - Sunni Muslims make up some 90 percent of Egypt's population. Agriculture is the country's main livelihood, as it has been for millennia. President Hosni Mubarak called for an Arab solution to the crisis in the Persian Gulf, but Egypt supported the United Nations trade embargo against Iraq and has sent troops to Saudi Arabia.
LEBANON - Civil war has ravaged once prosperous Lebanon since 1975. Rival political parties based on religion, as well as external pressures from Syria, Israel, and various terrorist groups, have devastated the country and its economy. Shiite Muslims are the majority, followed by Maronite Catholics and Sunni Muslims. Other Christian groups and the Druze sect make up the rest of the population.
ISRAEL - The Jewish state of Israel was born under fire in 1948 in the region known as Palestine. Fourteen percent of the population is Muslim. The intifadah, or uprising, in the West Pank and Gaza Strip has focused attention on Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. Israel is the world's major beneficiary of U.S. aid, receiving more than three billion dollars each year.
JORDAN - Resource-poor Jordan is rich in problems.Unemployment is high. Subsidies from neighbors such as Iraq and Saudi Arabia have kept the country solvent, but the blockade agains Iraq has deeply damaged its economy. More than half the population is composed of resident Palestinians, whose high birthrate has put additional strain on the kingdom.
YEMEN - United just ten weeks before the invasion of Kuwait, Yemen abstained from an Arab League resolution to condemn Iraq. Exported labor has been a major source of income.
OMAN - The Sultanate of Oman once depended on fishing and farming. Though the majority of Omanis still work the fields and sea, those yields not contribute little to the nation's economy; oil is by far the main source of revenue. Most Omanis are Arab Muslims of the Ibadi sect. Oman conrols the Musadam Peninsula, along the strategically vital Strait of Hormu
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES - Abu Dhabi, Dubayy, Ash Shariqah, Ras al Khaymah, Al Fujayrah, Umm al Qaywayn, and Ajman–the Trucial States, formerly under British protection–became the independent federation of the United Arab Emirates in 1971. Oil was first exported in 1962, but the economy was not much changed until the 1970s, when global oil prices rose dramatically. The U.A.E. are primarily Sunni Muslim.
QATAR - Independent Qatar declined to join the United Arab Emirates in 1971. The country is heavily populated by foreign workers. After the invasion of Kuwait, Qatar granted multinational forces military access to its peninsula.
BAHRAIN - Diminishing oil wealth has forced tiny Bahrain to diversify into banking and communications that serve the rest of the region. Bahrain has cooperated with multinational forces sent to the region, allowing access to its military facilities.
KUWAIT - Pearling, not drilling, was once the main livelihood of Kuwaitis. By the 1980s oil wealth allowed Kuwait to provide its residents with one of the world's most complete welfare systems, even though about 60 percent were foreign workers rather than citizens. In August 1990 Iraq's initianl invading force numbered 100,000–five times the size of Kuwait's entire military.
IRAQ - Old cultural and religious differences persist in present day Iraq, heir to the territory of ancient Mesopotamia. More than half the population is Shiite Muslim, but members of the minority Sunni sect have traitionally ruled the nation. Tribal Kurds from northeastern Iraq, though largely Sunni, have periodically fought against Baghdad for autonomy. Long-standing boundary disputes with Kuwait quieted during Iraq's 1980-1988 war with Iran.
IRAN - Iran was home to the ancient Persians, and it is still the largest non-Arab country by area in the Middle East. Shiite Muslim revolutionaries ousted the shah in 1979, and the new government of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini declared the country an Islamic republic. War with Iraq raged from 1980 to 1988. Recently Iraq offered to return captured Iranian land and restore the mid-channel boundary of the Shatt al Arab waterway.
SOVIET UNION - Soviets suppled arms and military advisers to Iraq during the war with Iran, but the Kremlin condemned the invasion of Kuwait. The U.S.S.R. supported the United Nations trade embargo against Iraq.
