Background Information
West Asia is located at the intersection of Africa, Asia, and Europe. About half of the inhabitants of the region live in the nations of the Fertile Crescent region—Iraq, Syria, Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon. The total population of these nations is approximately sixty million people. The other half of the inhabitants live in the nations of the Arabian Peninsula—Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain—which have a combined population of approximately fifty million people.¹

West Asia represents approximately two percent of the world’s surface area and contains approximately two percent of the world’s population. This relatively small region of the world has been of central importance to several of the world’s major religions. West Asia was first politically unified by the Muslim caliphate, an empire built in the seventh century by the followers of the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam. During the Crusades (1095–1291), European Christians repeatedly invaded Jerusalem in order to control what Christians consider to be their Holy Land. In the early twentieth century, hundreds of thousands of Jews migrated from Europe to the West Asian region of Palestine, a region that had been the Jewish homeland of Judaea two millennia earlier. In 1948, Jewish people living in this region established the independent state of Israel.

West Asia also plays a key role in the world’s economic structure. It has very important economic ties to other regions because of its extensive petroleum resources. Many multinational corporations seek to own, buy, and/or transport oil from the region. For more than a century, leading military powers from elsewhere in the world have intervened in West Asia’s governance because of the importance of petroleum to their own economic interests. Competition between these powers, and efforts by West Asians to rid their countries of foreign influences, have fueled much of the region’s political turmoil.

Conflicts over religious sites, especially Mecca and Jerusalem, also continue to drive international conflict within the region. For example, after traveling to Afghanistan to expel the Soviets from that nation in the 1980s, some Arab soldiers, including a number of West Asians, founded the al-Qaeda terrorist network to battle other non-Islamic influences in what they considered to be Islamic holy lands. These influences included the Israeli control of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem and, beginning in 1990, the stationing of United States (US) military troops in Saudi Arabia.²

Like many other policy areas, West Asian public policy is influenced by various inter-related factors (e.g., political structure, religious diversity, geography, and environmental context). Differing religious practices, for example, have been an important factor in the development of the various types of governmental structures, and through them, the various public policy choices found throughout West Asia.³

Fertile Crescent
Political Structure
The political unification of West Asia first occurred during the seventh century as Muslims spread across the region. This unification created the Muslim caliphate—an empire ruled by a series of men (“caliphs”) who held political and, to some extent, religious authority in the region.

The caliphate was dismantled by non-Arabs from outside West Asia by the thirteenth century.⁴ The Mamluk armies, based in Egypt, held power in much of West Asia from 1260–1516 but were replaced by the Ottoman Empire in 1516. This new empire was ruled by sultans based in present-day Turkey.

British and French influence in this region began to grow during the nineteenth century. After defeating the Ottomans in World War I, these two European powers divided West Asia into various territories. Facing nationalist revolts in many of the territories, Britain and France chose to grant independence to various West Asian nations during the period of 1932–1971.

During their periods of independence, all of the nations in the Fertile Crescent except Jordan have been republics—nations governed by a constitution and a democratically elected assembly. Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon have followed the model of an “Arab republic,” whereas Israel is a republic led by its Jewish majority. The Arab republics have followed Egypt in establishing modernist, secular governments. These governments have often promoted the pan-Arab ideal that all Arabs should unite into a single state. Pan-Arabism has faltered since the 1960s, however, as leaders ranging from Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egyptian president, 1956–1970) to Saddam Hussein (Iraqi president, 1979–2003) have positioned themselves as leaders of the Pan-Arab movement but have failed to build much unity among Arab nations.

The democratic nature of a true republic has also been overshadowed in these nations by dominant rulers who have suppressed political dissent and free elections. In the worst case, republican government in Lebanon disintegrated into civil war (1975–1990), resulting in substantial control of the country by Syria.

Islamic fundamentalist movements in West Asia have assailed the region’s governments for their alliances with foreign powers, especially their involvement with the United States (US) and various US-based corporations. The revolutionary potential of Islamicists is aided by their populist critiques of corruption, privilege, foreign influence over Arab governments, and the failure of these governments to reduce poverty. Fundamentalist movements have especially grown since pan-Arabism began its decline during the 1960s. The expansion of communication through the Internet since the 1990s has also facilitated the organizational development of international fundamentalist movements.

The struggle of minority populations is a major feature of West Asian politics. The most problematic case is that of Palestinians living in territories occupied by Israel since 1967. Israeli citizens have many democratic rights and enjoy the longest-running multi-party electoral system in West Asia. The Palestinians living in the occupied territories, however, are not included in this system.

The difficult conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has its roots in the origins of the state of Israel. Israel was founded in 1948 when the militias of a growing Jewish population took over Palestine, which had been controlled by the British since World War I. Israel defeated Egypt, Jordan, and Syria in the Six-Day War of 1967, and thirty-six years later, still occupies the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, and Golan Heights.

Approximately three million Palestinian Arabs live in these occupied territories; for the younger generations, Israeli occupation is the only situation they have ever known. In addition to the population of the occupied territories, more than two million Palestinians still live as refugees in other West Asian nations.⁵ The long-term Israeli occupation has created hostility in the region that often erupts into various forms of conflict. Thousands of Jews and Arabs have died in Palestinian bombings and Israeli military actions during the two protracted periods of violence (1987–1993; 2000–present).

Though the scope of this violence has been less than some recent conflicts elsewhere in the world, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has remained an extremely prominent issue in the worldwide media and it has become an important issue for many foreign governments. The unusual focus on this conflict is primarily due to the economic value of West Asian oil and the historical significance of Jerusalem to the Jewish and Muslim populations of West Asia, Europe, and the United States. There are three leading issues in resolving the conflict:

1. The borders of a new Palestinian nation-state.
   
   
2. The governance of holy sites.
   
   
3. The right of Palestinians to return to their pre-1948 properties inside Israel.

Borders of A New Palestinian Nation
In 1947, the United Nations (UN), which had been assembled two years earlier by the victorious American and European powers of World War II, approved borders for new, separate Jewish and Arab nations (Israel and Palestine, respectively) within the then British-controlled region. In the war of 1948, Egypt and Jordan took over the territories designated for the new Palestinian nation, but failed to stop the establishment of the state of Israel. In 1967, Israel invaded and occupied those Palestinian territories as well as Syria’s Golan Heights and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in a 1977 peace agreement. The other territories remain occupied by Israel, in opposition to UN resolutions that call for the return of all occupied territories to the Palestinians.

The Israeli government has proposed that the territory of a Palestinian state should consist of small portions of Israeli land and most of the occupied territories, including some neighborhoods of Jerusalem. The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), an organization that has utilized guerilla and terrorist warfare tactics in past decades to resist Israeli occupation, has rejected all Israeli proposals that fail to meet the relevant UN resolutions.

Governance of Holy Sites
The preeminent holy site in Jerusalem for both Muslims and Jews is thirty-five acres of land called the “Noble Sanctuary” by Muslims and the “Temple Mount” by Jews. The current structures comprising the Sanctuary include two mosques, the Dome of the Rock, one of Islam’s three sites of pilgrimage, and the al-Aqsa Mosque, an historic site of worship and teaching. The Sanctuary sits atop the ruins of the ancient Israelite Second Temple of Jerusalem, which was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. The Western Wall of the Temple still exists and is the holiest site in Judaism.

In 1947 the United Nations planned international administration of Jerusalem, but after the 1948 war Jersualem was split between Israel and Jordan, and neither side moved to implement the UN plan. Since 1967 Israel has controlled all of Jerusalem, including the buildings of the Noble Sanctuary. Creating a plan for dividing or sharing sovereignty of this holy site is a critical challenge for any negotiated peace settlement.

Palestinian Right of Return
The right claimed by Palestinians to return to the properties they lost during the 1948 war is called the “right of return.” Most Israelis oppose Palestinian return, primarily because it could hasten the time in which Israel is no longer a majority-Jewish nation. Peace activists on both sides have proposed a limited right of return, in which all refugees could return to a new Palestinian country, and a limited number could return to their original home regions within Israel. Few of the original 1948 Palestinian homes remain intact and unoccupied, and most of their lands have been developed by Israelis for other purposes. Thus, under some peace proposals, most Palestinians would be compensated for their loss of property, rather than having their original properties returned to them.

The other major West Asian conflicts in recent years have focused on Iraq. In the 1980s Iraq fought an extensive, devastating war with its non-Arab neighbor, Iran. This conflict was fed by nationalism, struggles over the control of oil fields, religious differences, and Cold War allegiances. By the end of the Iran-Iraq War, the Soviet Union was aiding Iran and the United States was aiding Iraq.

During the 1980s the Iraqi government strengthened its repression of two populations within Iraq because of insurgent groups operating within each of these populations. These were Iraq’s Kurdish minority in northern Iraq and certain fundamentalist Shi’ite Muslim communities in southern Iraq.⁶ Under the Ba’th Party (1968–2003), Iraq was governed by secularist Sunni Muslims with support from relatively secular Shiites. When the long-standing Ba’th leader, Saddam Hussein, sought to extend Iraq’s power through an invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the US turned against its former ally, leading a multi-national force in bombing Iraq and re-establishing Kuwait in 1991.

In the decade following the 1991 bombing of Iraq, there were more than 500,000 preventable deaths of Iraqi children under five years of age due to a combination of three factors:

1. The bombing of infrastructure (e.g., water and sewage systems).
   
   
2. The increase in military spending by the Iraqi government, to the detriment of human welfare programs.
   
   
3. The stringent economic embargo imposed by the United Nations (UN) from 1990 to 2003 that forbade international trade with Iraq.⁷

From 1997 through 2003, the UN permitted the Iraqi government to sell a limited amount of oil to pay war reparations and buy food, medicine, and other humanitarian supplies for its people. However, the UN still did not allow the purchase of any items that could be diverted to military purposes, including many parts needed to repair sewage systems, utilities, and other infrastructure. Thus the oil-for-food program did not completely alleviate Iraq’s health crisis, nor did it end the smuggling of goods into Iraq, a vital aspect of Iraq’s national economy during the UN embargo.

From 1991 through 2003, the United States (US) and Great Britain barred Iraqi planes from flying over the northern Kurdish and southern Shi’ite sections of the country and repeatedly bombed Iraqi air-defense sites to maintain clear military superiority over Saddam Hussein’s government. Many of these US and British missions were flown from air bases sited in Saudi Arabia. Some Muslims in Saudi Arabia opposed the ongoing US control of Iraq. They were also offended by the continuing US military presence in Saudi Arabia because they saw it as a desecration of their holy lands. This viewpoint fueled the growth of the Al-Qaeda terrorist network, which has many Saudi members.

In 2003, charging that Iraq held weapons of mass destruction that posed an imminent threat to the world, the US invaded and conquered Iraq, with support from British, Australian, Czech, Slovak, and Polish troops. After the war, the US and British governments were accused of exaggerating and fabricating the evidence used to justify the war.

Having deposed President Hussein, the US has begun to reconstitute an Iraqi government. Sunni resistance to US governance began immediately after the conquest, and many Shi’ites joined the resistance in 2004. The US has also announced that it will withdraw its troops from Saudi Arabia and create new bases in Iraq. The pullout from Saudi Arabia may affect the turmoil between the Saudi monarchy and Islamic fundamentalists who oppose US presence on the Arabian peninsula. As is indicated by the Iraqi and Saudi examples, the religious diversity of West Asia continues to affect international relations throughout the region.

Religious Diversity
The primary religious affiliation in West Asia is Islam, but there are also two significant minorities in the region: the Jewish population in Israel, and Christians, who constitute a majority in portions of Lebanon and among the Africans and East Asians working in the region. All three of these monotheistic faiths have their historical roots in West Asia.

Islam, Judaism, and Christianity share a long history of both peace and conflict in West Asia. Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was born in the city of Mecca (now in Saudi Arabia) in approximately 570 CE and proclaimed his first prophetic messages there. Muhammad named Jerusalem a holy city for Muslims, who were generally benevolent toward the remaining Jewish minority in the caliphate they quickly built. War first arose between Muslims and Christians during the Crusades of 1095–1291. During this period, Jerusalem was intermittently held by European Christians who invaded the region. New tensions between Muslims and Jews arose in the late nineteenth century, when European Jews of the Zionist movement began immigrating to Palestine with the intention of forming a Jewish nation-state.

In the twenty-first century, Islam remains split into two major groups—Sunni and Shi’ite. At least eighty percent of the Muslims in the world align themselves as Sunnis, an intentionally moderate Muslim movement that supports the teachings of the “consolidated majority” over sectarian religious teachings. Shi’a (or “Shi’ite”) Muslims comprise ten to fifteen percent of global Islam; they believe that the descendants of ‘Ali, an early Muslim ruler, should perpetually hold political power. About half of the world’s Shi’a Muslims live in Iran, where the rule of ‘Ali’s descendants has been restored. There are also several smaller Muslim sects, such as the Druze that originated from the Shi’ites in the eleventh century, and the Ahmadiyya, who considers their founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835–1908), to be either a major teacher or a prophet. Syria and Jordan are primarily Sunni Muslim countries. Iraq has a majority population of Shi’a Muslims, though Iraq was long ruled by the Sunni family of Saddam Hussein.

Living within this primarily Muslim region are two sizable religious minorities, Jews and Christians. The region’s Jewish population is particularly notable because about half of the world’s Jewish population lives in Israel. According to the Hebrew scriptures, Judaism began approximately 3,500 years ago in Canaan (now geographically located within Israel and Lebanon). In 66 CE the Jewish people rebelled against the Romans, who destroyed the Second Temple of Jerusalem in 70 CE. A second Jewish rebellion in 135 CE led to their general expulsion from West Asia. The Jewish communities scattered across West Asia were all very small until the late nineteenth century, when a sizable number of Jews began to establish homes in Palestine.

Currently, most Israelis are secularist Jews, but the state-supported Orthodox rabbinate holds considerable power. The Conservative and Reform Movements of Judaism, widespread in the United States, lack official standing in Israel and have relatively little social influence there. For example, under Israeli immigration law, individuals who converted to Judaism through processes initiated by rabbis of the Conservative or Reform traditions are not considered Jewish citizens.

Israel has maintained a large Jewish majority through high rates of Jewish immigration. Nearly all Jews from abroad are welcome to immigrate to Israel, where they are automatically considered citizens. Except for close relatives of Jews, very few non-Jews have been accepted for immigration. Approximately one-sixth of Israel’s population is non-Jewish—mostly ethnic Arabs, and their descendants, who remained within Israel through the 1948 war rather than fleeing and becoming Palestinian refugees. The Israeli Arabs are accorded nearly full rights of citizenship. Most Arabs living in Israel are Muslims, but a minority are Christians.

Christianity was formed in the first century CE by Jewish and non-Jewish followers of Jesus of Nazareth, a Jew who lived under the long Roman occupation of much of West Asia. Christians were persecuted by the Romans until the fourth century, by which time the center of Christianity had moved from West Asia to Europe.

Christians are notable minorities in many West Asian nations, only holding significant political power in Lebanon. Today Lebanon is the most religiously diverse nation in West Asia, with three major religious groups of nearly equal size—Shi’a Muslims, Sunni Muslims, and Marionite Catholic Christians. Since 1943 many government posts have been reserved for members of each religious community. Smaller religious minorities, such as the Druze Muslims, Greek Catholic Christians, and Greek Orthodox Christians, have also played significant roles in the political turmoil of Lebanon since it became fully independent from France in 1946.

For centuries, the relative isolation of the Lebanese mountains provided shelter for persecuted Christian and Muslim minority groups. The entry of Palestinian refugees following the 1967 Arab-Israeli War led to Israeli and Syrian invasions that helped bring about the Lebanese civil war. A large refugee community remains in Lebanon but these individuals have not been incorporated into the political life of the country.

A fourth, smaller religious community that finds importance in West Asia is the Baha’i Faith, which originated in Iran in the 1860s and is now headquartered in Haifa, Israel. The approximately seven million Baha’i adherents are active in nearly every nation of the world, making Baha’i one of the most geographically widespread religions.⁸

Geography
West Asia is an arid region containing deserts, highland regions, and alluvial plains. Each of these ecosystems has supported unique types of flora, fauna, and human settlements.

The Fertile Crescent is named for the shape formed by the three major rivers of West Asia—the Tigris, Euphrates, and Jordan—and their vast alluvial plains. These rivers have been central to the historic development of agriculture and human settlements in the region. Trees and tall grasses are common in the Tigris and Euphrates alluvial plains, including willow, poplar, and papyrus. Farther from the rivers, desert and semi-desert ecosystems fill much of the land of the Fertile Crescent nations.

Several highland regions are scattered throughout West Asia, including the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon Mountains. In portions of Lebanon, Syria, and Israel along the Mediterranean Sea, relatively abundant moisture supports intensive agriculture. The Lebanese flag features the mighty cedar tree of the Lebanon Mountains, a reminder that this region once suppored thick forests, though few such trees remain now, after centuries of deforestation.

The Jordan River flows into the Dead Sea, which is the lowest point on Earth at approximately 1,358 feet (414 meters) below oceanic sea level. The lack of water outflow from the Dead Sea causes it to possess the highest salt concentration of any body of water in the world. The water level of the Dead Sea is declining by as much as one meter per year due to increased use of Jordan River water upstream.⁹

Environmental Issues
West Asia is a region of small nations facing enormous environmental challenges. Urbanization, overfishing, ground and water pollution by the petroleum industry, the scarcity of freshwater, environmental degradation through warfare, and desertification are among the issues facing West Asian policymakers.

Desertification continues to threaten the relatively few agriculturally productive regions of the Fertile Crescent. There have been agricultural settlements along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers for thousands of years, and the Bedouin nomads have used much of West Asia’s land for grazing since the rise of Islam in the seventh century. Rainfall is scarce in most of West Asia, which puts much of the region’s farmland at risk for degradation. In the twentieth century, war and quickly rising human population levels have overstressed many lands, threatening the livelihood of both farmers and shepherds. Agricultural nutrients have been depleted and vegetation has been overgrazed, leading to widespread desertification.¹⁰

Arabian Peninsula
Political Structure
The largest West Asian group to escape external political control by European powers was the Wahhabi religious movement. This Islamic sect began to build an empire on the Arabian peninsula in conjunction with the Saudi royal family during the eighteenth century, and this empire still exists to this day. Its contemporary name is the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Long-standing monarchies—governments led by a king or royal family—dominate the politics of the Arabian Peninsula. Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain are all governed by royal families that have ruled their nations for several centuries. In the Fertile Crescent region, only Jordan is a monarchy; on the Arabian Peninsula, only Yemen is a republic. The six Arabian Peninsula monarchies have formed the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to pursue common interests.

Tensions between various republics and monarchies have led to some of West Asia’s most violent conflicts. The first major example was the military interventions of the Egyptian republic and the kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the Yemeni civil wars (1962–1967). As a result of this conflict, the British abandoned their portions of Yemen but the country remained split into two different governmental structures: a republican North and an eventually Marxist South. When Soviet support of South Yemen ended in 1989, the two Yemeni governments quickly united.

The second major example of conflict between a monarchy and a republic occurred between Kuwait, which was ruled by an emir, and Iraq, which maintained a republican form of government, though president Saddam Hussein held a significant amount of power. Iraq and Kuwait were allies through the Iran-Iraq War, but financial disputes between the two nations over war debts soon made the invasion of Kuwait an attractive option for Iraq. Before invading Kuwait in 1990, Iraq also re-introduced its long-standing claim that under international agreements dating to the nineteenth century, Kuwait was legally a province of Iraq.

Few republics and no monarchies in this region have made substantial progress in respecting civil rights and democratic procedures. In some of the monarchies, women are denied many basic civil rights, including, in Kuwait, the right to vote. There are no elections at all in Saudi Arabia, and even if there were, women would not be likely to receive the right to vote. Additionally, the United Arab Emirates does not hold elections. Discrimination against women in culturally conservative Arab nations stems from dominant religious beliefs regarding gender roles in society.

The lack of a pluralistic, democratic culture in most West Asian nations arises in part from a traditional preference for order and stability. In general, Islamic political theorists have traditionally valued government stability over the “chaos” of revolution and regime change.¹¹ Many religious leaders also believe human laws have been divinely revealed, and thus democratic legislatures are unnecessary.

Overall, West Asia’s record of unelected leadership is not much different than other postcolonial regions elsewhere in the world. Currently, the major challenge to centralized authority in West Asian nations is not from democratic activists, but from fundamentalist Islamicists who wish to institute more theocratic forms of governance.
Like the Palestinians in the Fertile Crescent region, there is a large minority population on the Arabian Peninsula. These are the nine million “foreign workers” living in West Asia, primarily in the nations with large middle classes—Israel and the Arabian Peninsula monarchies. These foreign workers have migrated to and within West Asia in search of economic opportunities. Foreign workers represent various proportions of West Asian populations, ranging from two percent of the population in Israel (including Palestinians commuting from the occupied territories) to approximately eighty percent in Qatar.¹²

Generally, foreign workers cannot become citizens, cannot vote, are not effectively protected by minimum-wage and sexual-harassment laws, and in some cases, have not been able to leave the country without the approval of their employers, who have confiscated the workers’ passports. Most foreign workers come from other, poorer Arab nations such as Egypt and Yemen, though some are from Pakistan, India, the Philippines, and other Asian nations.

Religious Diversity
Sunni and Shi’a Muslims mix on the Arabian Peninsula and this has caused some conflict. Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Qatar are primarily Sunni Muslim countries. Oman and Bahrain have majority populations of Shi’a Muslims. In Saudi Arabia, the religious practices of Shi’a Muslims, Christians, and other faiths are outlawed.

Each year in the same week, about two million Muslims from various Muslim religious movements make a pilgrimage (the “hajj”) to Mecca. Every adult Muslim is required to make the pilgrimage at least once in his or her lifetime. Mecca, therefore, is a central symbol in this tradition as seen by the fact that Muslims around the world pray five times each day with their bodies oriented toward Mecca.

Geography
The largest unbroken expanse of desert sand on Earth, the Empty Quarter Desert, is the hottest region of the world. The Empty Quarter lies primarily in Saudi Arabia, at the heart of the Arabian Peninsula. Desert and semi-desert also cover much of the five smaller Gulf Cooperation Council countries (Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain). The arid conditions and lack of forest cover provide appropriate conditions for jerboas, Houbara bustards, and several species of gazelles. Wildflowers appear after rains. Key domesticated species, especially the camel, have been central to nomadic human cultures, such as the Bedouin, who still traverse the Arabian Desert.The Arabian Peninsula is not uniformly desert. The monsoonal climate of the Asir Mountains in Saudi Arabia and the Yemen Highlands support evergreen forests, a wide variety of migratory raptors, and many African species that have spread across the narrow Red Sea.

In terms of international geography, West Asia’s proximity to the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and Mediterranean Sea has made it a central transportation point for trade, especially trade in the petroleum industry. The economies of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman have been transformed by oil exports, leading to wealthy elites and sizable middle classes in each of these countries. More than half of the world’s reserves of crude oil lie in West Asia, and oil production is one of many causes of environmental degradation in this region.¹³

Environmental Issues
All ways of life have had to compete for the most threatened resource of all in West Asia—water. Competition for oil and water has aided in the instigation of many wars in this region, and the institution of those wars has only served to worsen West Asia’s environmental degradation.

Food production is driven by the availability of water and the development of various technologies that are able to utilize this resource effectively. As people adopt modern consumption patterns, most West Asian nations find themselves without the soil or water resources that are necessary to approach even minimal self-sufficiency in regard to their food production needs. Countries reliant on petroleum exports to pay for food imports are extremely vulnerable to dips in world oil prices, and these nations are extremely reliant on the continual exploration and discovery of newer oil reserves in order to sustain their long-term economic viability. Mary Morris, a Middle Eastern scholar, comments that “[g]overnments [in this region] are wary of dependency on food imports because of the heavy financial burdens they entail and the potential for strategic vulnerability that they imply. National security thus translates into food security, and food security translates into water security.”¹⁴

International conflict over water usage stems mainly from the use of riverine water. The Tigris, Euphrates, and Jordan Rivers cross or run along various international borders in this region. The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers both start in Turkey and then flow through Syria and into Iraq. The Jordan River serves as the border between Israel and Syria in the north and Israel and Jordan farther south.

In its Southeast Anatolia Project, Turkey is now building a total of twenty-two dams on the two rivers, dams that will divert and control the flow of water to downstream countries that use the water for vital irrigation. The three nations have, on different occasions, either negotiated or threatened invasions of each other when a downstream nation has accused an upstream nation of taking too much water from a river.

The diversion of water from the Jordan River has influenced political conflicts in the region. Israel first built a dam on the Jordan in 1964, retaliatory water projects were begun in Lebanon and Syria in 1965, and Israel attacked the projects, precipiating the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. The ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict is further exacerbated by the reliance of Israel on water from outside its original borders. Nearly two-thirds of the water Israel now uses originates in occupied territories such as the West Bank and the Golan Heights. Water is a great complication in the efforts to negotiate an end to Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

The shortage of water, however, has not always resulted in war. In 2002 Israel and Jordan announced plans to construct a pipeline from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea, in order to reverse the ongoing decline in the Dead Sea’s water level. Such agreements could provide examples for broader peace agreements between West Asian nations, though some Arab nations have assailed Jordan for signing treaties with Israel while it refuses to end its occupation of Palestinian territories.¹⁵

Environmental Damage from War
Violent conflicts in West Asia are typically driven by the desire to own valuable natural resources (e.g., water, oil, land), yet the resulting conflicts often lead to the depletion and/or pollution of the very natural resources that they seek to preserve. For example, the Iraqi military created the world’s largest oil spill when it released petroleum from hundreds of Kuwaiti wells into the Persian Gulf during the 1991 war. The spill devastated the Gulf’s shrimp and fishing industries for years and brought international attention to the potential for wars to create massive environmental destruction. Lesser known environmental damage from conflicts in this region include the various conflicts involving Iraq from the 1970s through 2003. For example, the US bombing of Iraqi wastewater treatment plants led to heavy pollution of Iraqi rivers, and Iraq drained the Iraqi and Iranian Mesopotamian marshlands in order to eliminate any rebellion from Marsh Arabs who live within that ecosystem.

Environmental Ministries
Environmental law in West Asia ranks among the least developed in the world. Most countries have adopted comprehensive environmental laws, but vague statutory language has often not been complemented with sufficiently detailed regulations. In Yemen, for example, the current Environmental Protection Law, passed in 1995, has not led to comprehensive regulations to conserve endangered habitats or preserve endangered species.¹⁶

Environmental policy can be influenced by governmental and/or nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). In some cases, NGOs have partnered with governmental organizations in order to protect endangered resources. For example, Lebanese NGOs have partnered with the Lebanese Ministry of the Environment (established in 1993) in order to address various conservation and biological diversity issues in this region.¹⁷

Apart from Israel and Lebanon, the relative lack of NGO presence outside Israel and Lebanon also impacts the effectiveness of environmental legislation introduced by governmental agencies. For example, the centralized monarchy of Saudi Arabia does not encourage, facilitate, or elicit public participation in environmental policy.¹⁸ As a result of this closed process, many aspects of Saudi environmental policymaking have been deadlocked as different government agencies compete for authority, national leaders fail to address environmental issues, and public access to information remains limited.¹⁹

Saudi Arabia’s environmental conditions are so extreme that when environmental regulations have been issued, they have often been very stringent. For example, trees and shrubs are so rare and valuable in Saudi Arabia that Saudis must obtain a license in order to gather dead trees for firewood and the government prosecutes illegal tree-felling operations.²⁰

Conclusion
West Asia’s religious history and water scarcity have made the region’s conflicts particularly difficult to resolve. The discovery of major oil fields in Iraq, the Arabian Peninsula, and nearby Iran in the first half of the twentieth century placed West Asia in a position of even greater global significance. The direct control of the Ottoman Empire, Britain, and France ended after the World Wars, but by the beginning of the twenty-first century, many West Asians saw the United States as the region’s new imperialist power.

Minority populations have faced difficult struggles over the past several generations due to ongoing complications created by religious and economic issues. The five million Palestinian refugees living within and outside the occupied territories, many of them displaced since 1948, remain the world’s largest refugee group as a result of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which the sides are primarily defined by religious affiliation. The majority of the residents of several West Asian nations are foreign workers displaced from their home nations through poverty.

The reliance of several West Asian nations on major rivers for their water supplies, combined with the arbitrary national borders originally drawn by foreign empires, create an unusually strong connection between environmental issues and violent conflict in this region. Wars in the region have led to even greater environmental destruction. However, the importance of water also creates opportunities for environmental treaties that build trust between nations. In general, environmental preservation and cooperation may provide opportunities for the creative resolution of other political challenges in West Asia.

Religious leaders have often inspired military and terrorist leaders in West Asia, but they also hold the potential to lead the way to breakthroughs in peace negotiations. Reforming educational materials, overcoming stereotypes, and strengthening trust between Muslims, Jews, and Christians is widely seen as necessary to achieve true peace and environmental stability in this region.²¹

In some ways the challenges of West Asia are not unusual, particularly in terms of the challenge of globalization, which is causing rapid change in all the developing regions of the world. In the twentieth century changes in this region were extremely controversial (e.g., the creation of the state of Israel) and transformative (e.g., rapid population growth and wealth generated by oil production). As Israelis and Palestinians struggle for land and water, as the known reserves of petroleum dwindle, and as the region’s population tops 100 million, West Asia unfortunately remains a region with an unstable present and an unclear future.

Additional Information
For additional information on West Asia, consider consulting the resources listed in our West Asia Links section.

2 Magnus Ranstorp, “Interpreting the Broader Context and Meaning of Bin-Laden’s Fatwa,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 21, no. 4 (October–December 1998): 321–30.
Return to text

3 For more information about environmental policy in predominantly Islamic nations, see the Forum on Religion and Ecology’s Islamic Environmental Policy page.
Return to text

4 The term “Arab” is a designation of ethnicity. It typically refers to all Arabic-speaking people whose ancestry is primarily from the peoples living on the Arabian peninsula at the time of the foundation of Islam in the seventh century. Arabs now populate most of West Asia, the two major exceptions being the ethnically Jewish majority in Israel and the ethnic Kurds of northern Syria and Iraq. Outside of West Asia, Arabs also predominate in many nations of northern Africa and are a significant minority in Iran. All the nations of West Asia (except Israel), plus ten north African countries, comprise the membership of the League of Arab States.
Return to text

5 United Nations (UN), “Report of the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East,” UN Document A/57/13 (26 September 2002) 56.
Return to text

6 The twenty million Kurds living in West Asia, Turkey, and Iran constitute the world’s largest minority group seeking political independence. For more information about Turkey and the Kurds, see the Forum on Religion and Ecology’s Europe, Russia, and Central Asia page.
Return to text

7 United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), “Iraq—Under-Five Mortality,” updated 23 July 1999, http://www.unicef.org/reseval/pdfs/irqu5est.pdf (cited 13 December 2002).
Return to text

8 Baha’is consider the man who founded their faith in the mid-nineteenth century, Bahá'u'lláh, to be a messenger from God. Bahá'u'lláh’s “central theme” was that “humanity is one single race and that the day has come for its unification in one global society.” A central goal of the Baha’i faith is to break down prejudice among the world’s different cultures. Baha’i adherents promote principles that they believe will lead to greater international peace and cooperation. “The Baha’i Faith,” updated 2002, http://www.bahai.org/article-1-2-0-1.html (cited 1 September 2003).
Return to text

9 State of Israel, Ministry of the Environment, The Environment in Israel 2002, updated 2002,
http://english.sviva.gov.il/Enviroment/bin/en.jsp?enPage=e_blankPage&enDisplay=
view&enDispWhat=Zone&enDispWho=Environment_Israel_2002&enZone=
Environment_Israel_2002& (cited 16 December 2002) 83.
Return to text

10 Clive Agnew, “Environmental Change and Environmental Problems in the Middle East,” in The Middle Eastern Environment: Selected Papers of the 1995 Conference of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, ed. Eric Watkins (Cambridge: St. Malo Press, 1995) 21–34.
Return to text

11 Mansoor Moaddel, “The Study of Islamic Culture and Politics: An Overview and Assessment,” Annual Review of Sociology 28, no. 1 (2002): 359–86.
Return to text

12 “Israel’s Foreign Workers,” Migration News 5, no. 9 (September 1998), updated n.d., http://migration.ucdavis.edu/mn/more.php?id=1638_0_5_0 (cited 4 May 2004); Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, “Labour & Wages: Selected Statistics: Current Main Indicators,” updated 13 October 22, http://www.pcbs.org/inside/selcts.htm (cited 6 December 2002); Ali Kadri and Malcolm MacMillen, “The Political Economy of Israel’s Demand for Palestinian Labor,” Third World Quarterly 19, no. 2 (June 1998): 297–311; Nathaniel Parker, “Temporary Workers Leave Lasting Imprint on Gulf,” Christian Science Monitor 92, no. 89 (30 March 2000): 7.
Return to text

13 United States Energy Information Administration, “Table 8.1—World Crude Oil and Natural Gas Reserves, January 1, 2001,” updated 23 April 2002, http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iea2002/table81.xls (cited 16 December 2002).
Return to text

14 Mary E. Morris, “Water and Conflict in the Middle East: Threats and Opportunities,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 20, no. 1 (January-March 1997): 1–13.
Return to text

15 Lisa M. Pinsker, “Pipeline Proposal Promises New Life for Dead Sea,” Geotimes 47, no. 11 (November 2002): 9–10 [This document is available online at: http://www.geotimes.org/nov02/NN_dead.html (cited 1 September 2003)]. For additional information see: Alwyn R. Rouyer, Turning Water into Politics: The Water Issue in the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict (Houndmills, U.K.: Macmillan Press, 2000).
Return to text

16 Biodiversity Planning Support Programme, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)/United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)/Global Environment Facility (GEF), “The Integration of Biodiversity into National Environmental Assessment Procedures: National Case Studies—Yemen,” Case Study 15 (September 2001): 18. This document is available online at: http://www.unep.org/bpsp/EIA/Case%20Studies/Yemen%20(EIA).pdf.
Return to text

17 Paul Kingston, “Patrons, Clients and Civil Society: A Case Study of Environmental Politics in Postwar Lebanon,” Arab Studies Quarterly 23, no. 1 (Winter 2001): 55–72.
Return to text

18 Ahmad Al-Gilani and Seamus Filor, “Reforming the National Framework for Environmental Policies in Saudi Arabia,” Journal of Environmental Planning & Management 42, no. 2 (March 1999): 253–69.
Return to text

19 Ahmad Al-Gilani and Seamus Filor, “Policy and Practice: Environmental Policies in Saudi Arabia,” Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 40, no. 6 (November 1997): 775–88.
Return to text

20 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, “Forests,” National Report to the United Nations Division for Sustainable Development (October 1999), updated n.d., http://www.un.org/esa/agenda21/natlinfo/countr/saudi/natur.htm#forests (cited 1 September 2003); Saud L. R. Al-Rowaily, “Rangeland of Saudi Arabia and the ‘Tragedy of Commons,’” Rangeland 21, no. 3 (June 1999): 27–29. This document is available online at: http://uvalde.tamu.edu/rangel/jun99/alrowaily.pdf.
Return to text

21 United States Institute of Peace, “Building Interreligious Trust in a Climate of Fear: An Abrahamic Trialogue,” special report no. 99 (February 2003), updated n. d., http://www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr99.html (cited 8 July 2003).
Return to text