Study Sheet on Conflicts in the Middle East

What seems clear is that the attacks are rooted in the Middle East, an area of southwest Asia that includes Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Syria, and Afghanistan. The Greeks called the region the Near East to differentiate it from the Far East of China and Japan. England, France, and Germany came to be known as the West. The discovery of America added to the western world.

The Middle East is often called "the crossroads of the world."  This sparsely populated region produced three religious faiths practiced by half of the world inhabitants: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.  The Middle East is a gateway to India, the Far East, sub-Saharan Africa, and southeast Europe. 

In recent years, this region has been one of the most chaotic parts of our world.  Many brilliant ideas came from the Middle East, but it is also a land of long standing hatred and revenge. This unit is an attempt to explain some of the causes of the many conflicts in the Middle East. 

Under strict Shariah law, people may not consume alcohol, borrow money at interest, or allow women in their family to go out in public without a veil. Shariah law allows a man to take as many as four wives, provided his first wife agrees and he is able to support all of his wives and children. This provision of the Shariah is not often employed in even the most traditional Muslim societies.

Saudi Arabia is the only nation that closely adheres to Shariah law. Criminals who commit murder, rape, or other violent crimes in Saudi Arabia face public amputation of arms or legs, or beheadings. While Westerners treat morality and behavior as an individual matter, the Saudis believe they are the responsibility of the entire society. The result is a nation that is close to being crime free. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.), there were 15,517 murders and 90,186 forcible rapes in the United States in 2000, while these crimes are almost unheard of in Saudi Arabia. Amnesty International reports that Saudi Arabia executed about 766 criminals between 1990 and 1999. The United States, with about thirteen times the population of Saudi Arabia, executed 85 prisoners in 2000 including 40 in Texas alone. Many Americans live in gated communities with expensive security systems. It is not uncommon to see American homeowners place bars over their windows. Americans may feel Saudi justice is cruel, but they take for granted precautions most Saudi people have never considered.

Change is slowly taking place even in Saudi Arabia. Most Saudi women are not allowed to work outside the home. The ruling Saud family is balancing the traditional values of their nation with pressure to modernize.

Devout Muslims defend their values because they have served them well for over one thousand years. Saudi professor Hend Khuthaila said, "The West may be more advanced in some areas like science, but I have never believed for a minute that your culture is better than ours…We go to the United States and see playgrounds, so we build swings for five thousand dollars and our children don’t use them. Swings are not part of our culture. We would rather spend time with our families than be on a playground with strangers."

Many people of the Middle East want to return to a fundamentalist Islamic society. 

• The forced rapid changes of recent years made some people uncomfortable. 
• Some people feel a western-like society makes it harder for Muslims to "submit to God." 
• Many Muslims feel that western values are decadent.
• Mullahs, Islamic holy men, are prominent in the region, and their declining influence is a concern to many people.

Western nations, particularly the United States, have had stormy relationships with many Middle Eastern nations because of terrorism. Islamic terrorism is rooted in the struggle between the United States and the former Soviet Union, and in America’s support for Israel. While almost all Muslims are peaceful people, the image of Islamic terrorism has become common in the minds of many Americans.

From the end of World War II in 1945 to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States and the Soviet Union were the two dominant military "superpower" nations. Both nations sought to influence the developing and underdeveloped nations of the world in what was known as the "Cold War." The United States supported the cruel Shah of Iran, despite the will of the Iranian people, in order to keep the Soviet Union from gaining influence in the region. 

The state of Israel symbolized the hopes and aspirations of Jews throughout the world, but to its neighbors, Israel is an alien presence forced upon Arab land by rich and powerful western nations. Palestinian Arabs occupied the land before the creation of the Jewish state. 

Palestinian terrorists invaded the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany, killing two members of the Israeli team and holding nine hostages in exchange for the release of 200 Palestinian prisoners in Israel. The terrorists saw themselves as "freedom fighters" who hurt innocent people to advance what they believed was a more important cause.

Moummar al-Qadaffi has controlled Libya since leading a revolution in 1967. Qadaffi has supported the destruction of Israel, and his supporters have been implicated in several terrorist attacks. Libyan sponsored terrorists bombed a nightclub in West Berlin, Germany, in 1986. Libyan agents have also been linked to a mid-air bombing of an airplane over Scotland in 1988. Many western nations, including the United States, have no diplomatic relations with Libya because of their support of terrorism.

Armed forces from the United Nations, led by the United States, kept Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from invading the tiny nation of Kuwait in 1991. Most Arabs and Muslims welcomed the Americans, but a vocal minority did not. They believed that non-Muslim "infidels" had no business in the Arab world. When the Saudi Arabian government allowed the Americans to send a peacekeeping force to their nation, some Muslims believe their holy land had been desecrated. The American presence in Saudi Arabia is believed to have triggered the 1998 bombing of the American embassy in Kenya and the attack on the American battleship USS Cole in 2000.

Many Arab-Americans feel they have been stereotyped by the actions of a few radicals and have decried the link between Arabs and terrorism in popular culture. "Almost all Hollywood stories about Arabs are about bad ones," wrote CBS News Middle East consultant Jack Shaheen. Arab-Americans point to many successful role models in government and entertainment. They include consumer advocate Ralph Nader, actresses Salma Hayek and Shannon Elizabeth, singers Paula Abdul and Paul Anka, radio personality Casey Kasem, and Candy Leightner, the founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Terrorism is a factor in the Middle East, but most Muslims and Arabs condemn terrorism and do not wish to be associated with it.

Iran had been a very devout Muslim nation, and many Iranians were very unhappy with the Shah’s changes. Further, many people close to the Shah were corrupt. Anyone who disagreed with the Shah was forced to leave the nation or face SAVAK, the Shah's brutal secret police force. 

In January 1979, the Iranian people revolted and forced the Shah to flee. A popular religious leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini gained control of the nation and created an Islamic republic. The Ayatollah denounced the United States as the "Great Satan." Shortly after the United States allowed the Shah to come to New York City for cancer treatment, Iranian students stormed the American embassy and held 52 Americans hostage for more than a year. Iran released the hostages in 1981, but tensions continue to exist between the United States and Iran, two nations with very different cultures.

Religious leaders changed many aspects of life in Iran after they took control in 1979

• Boys and girls attended separate classes.
• Students entering Iranian universities had to pass a test on the Muslim faith.
• Alcohol and western music were forbidden.
• Men could not wear T-shirts, short sleeved shirts, or neckties.
• Women and girls had to wear long, dark garments that covered their hair and body.
• Anyone suspected of opposing the revolution was severely punished.

The war with Iran left Iraq with great debts. Saddam needed funds to maintain his army, which he used to control Iraq. In 1990, he decided to invade Kuwait, a tiny nation about 1/25^th the size of Iraq, but with almost as much oil. A multinational military force led by the United States responded to the invasion and liberated Kuwait in January 1991. 

Saddam allowed weapons inspectors into his nation as a condition of the cease-fire. The inspectors insured that he was not building weapons of mass destruction. In 1998, Saddam accused the inspectors of spying and ordered them out of the country. The United States and Great Britain responded with four days of bomb attacks in December 1998.

The Turks and other host nations have encouraged the Kurds to give up their cultural identity and assimilate into the local populations.  The Turkish government refers to the Kurds as "mountains Turks," though their language and culture have nothing in common with Turkish.  Until recently, the Turks have banned the Kurdish language in schools.

Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against the Kurds because he said they were disloyal to him in his war against Iran.  The United Nations forced Saddam to make the Kurdish region of Iraq a semi-autonomous region after the Gulf War in 1991.

Life would be easier for many Kurds if they rejected their traditions and assimilated into the cultures of their host nations, but it is important to the Kurds that they keep their heritage.

The Jews faced pogroms, or organized massacres, particularly in Russia and Eastern Europe. In the late 1890s, writer Theodor Herzl formulated the ideas of Zionism. Zionism was a political movement to return the Jewish people to their ancient homeland to form a Jewish state. By the beginning of World War I, 85,000 Jews had returned to the land which is Israel today. 

By the end of World War II in 1945, nearly six million Jews were murdered by the German Nazis in what we now call the Holocaust. The survivors had no place to go. When the world learned of the Holocaust, there was an outpouring of support for creating a homeland for the Jewish people.

When the Jews returned to their homeland to create Israel, they displaced Arabs known as Palestinians. The British controlled the area, but the Palestinians considered themselves the rightful owners of the land and hoped to create the independent nation of Palestine.

At the end of World War II, representative of fifty countries formed the United Nations (U.N.) to "save succeeding generations from the scourge of war." In 1947, a U.N. committee recommended that Britain withdraw from Palestine and that it be divided into Jewish and Arab sections.

The United Nations declared Israel an independent Jewish homeland on May 14, 1948. The same day, troops from several Arab nations declared war. The Israelis won that war and two others started by Arab nations in 1967 and 1973. Israel conquered Arab land in the three wars. Despite living with hostile neighbors, Israel became a very modern nation with industry and wealth. 

In 1977, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat took a courageous step when he became the first Arab leader to agree to peace with Israel. Sadat met with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin at a conference organized by American President Jimmy Carter. Carter helped Israel and Egypt negotiate a formal peace treaty at Camp David, Maryland on March 26, 1979, ending more than thirty years of war. Israel agreed to return land claimed in war to Egypt, and Egypt agreed to respect Israel’s borders. Two years after signing the peace treaty with Israel, Sadat was murdered by a fellow Egyptian who did not want peace with Israel.

Palestinians living along the West Bank of the Jordan River and in a section of Israel called Gaza began an intifada, or uprising, in 1979. The dispute continued until 1993, when Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat signed the Oslo Accords. The Palestinian Arabs agreed to recognize Israel’s right to exist, and the Israelis allowed the Arabs partial self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza.

The Middle East peace process continues despite many setbacks. Palestinians control much of Gaza and the West Bank. They have the right to vote and may yet achieve peaceful coexistence with Israel. While Israel continues to be threatened by radical groups, many of the nation’s former enemies, including Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, have begun to move toward peace.

The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. More than 100,000 Soviet troops used sophisticated weapons and brutal repression to control the cities and transportation routes, but the Soviet army was no match for the mujahedeen, the Afghan warriors who used their knowledge of the land to inflict damage on the Soviet forces.

The Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989 and would soon cease to be a world power. The war was a tremendous drain on Afghanistan, and about a third of the population fled. The Soviet legacy in Afghanistan would be thousands of land mines. The small explosives were designed to control the mujahedeen, but today they destroy the lives of the Afghan people as they search for firewood or tend to their animals.

The withdrawal of Soviet troops led to a civil war in Afghanistan. A civil war is a war within a nation. Several competing interests fought for control of Afghanistan after the Soviets withdrew their troops. A group of fundamentalist Islamic militants known as the Taliban became popular with many Afghan people. Taliban is an Arabic word that means "students." Many Afghan people initially supported the Taliban because they hoped a return to the traditional customs of their ancient land would erase the unhappiness of the civil war.

Afghanistan is a traditional nation, where many women wear burquas. A burqua is a cloak that covers all but a woman’s hands and feet. A small crocheted area allows her to see, but covers her body in modesty. In the last fifty years, many women have stopped wearing burquas, and have gone against the traditional customs of Afghanistan by being educated, or taking jobs outside the home.

Once the Taliban took power in most of Afghanistan, they began a violent, puritanical rule. The Taliban outlawed television, radio, even kite-flying. Women seen in public without their burqua faced severe beatings or death.

When the United States was attacked on September 11, 2001, the American government traced the attack to a group of Saudi Arabians who had taken refuge in Afghanistan. The Americans demanded that the Taliban turn over the suspected terrorists, but the Taliban refused. The United States led a multinational bomb attack that forced the Taliban from power in Afghanistan.

The United States is the world’s richest nation. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union more than a decade ago, America is the only military superpower. America is a model for tolerance, diversity, and democracy. Nevertheless, many people believe American values are bad.

In traditional cultures with low crime and a strong family structure, many people around the world see America as a violent, permissive society. In his 1995 book, Jehad vs. McWorld, Benjamin Barber argues that the culture of the United States and other western nations has replaced the traditional values of some societies. Young people around the world are wearing western clothes, listening to western music, and adopting western attitudes. 

In 1873, Jules Verne wrote an adventure story titled "Around the World in Eighty Days." Today it is possible to circle the globe in less than a day. The very words you are reading are part of a website that has been viewed by people in at least 143 nations. People who were once isolated from one another are now part of a global community. Through television and the Internet, we have instant access to almost any part of the world. With that access comes a responsibility to understand other people and cultures. By learning about and understanding one another, we can hope that the citizens of the world can develop a sense of tolerance and respect for one another.