The Peace on The Horizon - 75 Years after The World War 2 in the Middle East (181)

 

(Japanese Version)

(Arabic Version)

 

(contents)

 

Chapter 7: The "Arab Spring" - A fleeting dream ( 14)

 

181 Deep chaos in the Middle East (1/3)

During several decades after World War II, the Middle East was a world where Arab and Israel conflicted. It was easy to define who was enemy or who was ally. Israel was the only one enemy of Islamic countries which consisted of not only Arabs but also Iran and Turkey although the ethnicity, language and culture were different each other. They believed that they were unified ally against Israel. Most of the Middle Eastern countries considered the United States as the enemy because United States was a close ally of Israel. That is, the enemy 's ally is an enemy. However, the United States is geologically too far from the Middle East. Shah of Iran was US close ally, while Nasser of Egypt relied on the USSR.

 

Four Arab-Israeli wars in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973 and the Iranian Revolution in 1979 had entirely changed the meaning of enemy or ally in the Middle East. After the Arab-Israeli wars, new type of tension was intensified in the Middle East. It was the tension between secular military states and religious pretended monarchy states. When the Khomeini regime of Shiite sect was born in Iran in 1979, sectarian conflict took place between Shiite and Sunni. Shiite countries of Iran and Syria has antagonized against Sunni countries. Syria, Iraq and Bahrain made the problem more complicate in religious aspect. In Syria an autocratic government by Alawi sect of Shiite minority oppressed the Sunni and Kurdish people. In Iraq and Bahrain the minority Sunni ruled majority Shiite.

 

(To be continued ----)

 

 

Areha Kazuya

(From an ordinary citizen in the cloud)