Transcript Post-Decolonization Southwest Asia

The Middle East
 Developments
in the postwar Middle
East were dominated mainly by the
following factors:
 The independence of former
colonies and mandates
 The region’s strategic and
economic importance as the
world’s key source of petroleum
-Two thirds of the world’s crude
oil is produced in the Middle East
-The Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries (OPEC),
founded in 1960, is dominated by
states from the Middle East
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Contradictions existed between the urge
to modernize and a desire on the part of
many Middle Easterners to preserve
Islamic tradition
-Islamic fundamentalism has been
dominant in countries such as Iran (after
1979) and Afghanistan (after 1989)
The destabilizing effect of the ArabIsraeli conflict since 1948
The competition between the United
States and the USSR for influence in the
region during the Cold War
The persistence of dictatorship,
authoritarian rule, or human rights
abuses, even in countries that are
technically democratic
 Independence,
oil-based wealth, and
geostrategic importance made the states
of the Middle East more assertive in the
1950s and 1960s
 The most famous example of this new Arab
nationalism appeared in Egypt, which
became an independent republic in 1952
 By 1954, Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser had
taken control of the government
 A great booster of modernization, Nasser
was an equally great proponent of panArabism
 He labored to create a United Arab
Republic that would link all Arab nations
together in a cooperative commonwealth
 This
effort failed, but Nasser was
successful in modernizing his country
 He also stood up to the West, nationalizing
foreign-owned or foreign-controlled
industries and businesses
 In 1956, Nasser took the bold step of
declaring Egyptian ownership of the Suez
Canal
 The move prompted the Suez crisis, in
which French, British, and Israeli troops
tried to seize the canal
 The United States and USSR, however,
wishing to avoid a serious armed conflict
in the region, forced the British, French,
and Israelis to withdraw, leaving the canal
in Egyptian hands
 The
end result was a huge blow to the
diplomatic prestige of France and Britain
 Because Nasser was anti-British, he chose to
strengthen ties with the Soviet Union, at
least temporarily
 Soviet advisers and engineers brought
technology and weaponry to Egypt; they also
constructed the Aswan Dam, the world’s
largest
 However, when the Soviets attempted to
exert too much control over Egyptian
politics, Nasser expelled them
 Nasser
died in 1970
 He was succeeded by Anwar el-Sadat, who
drew Egypt closer to the United States, and
in 1978, became the first Arab leader to
recognize the state of Israel
 Sadat was assassinated by Islamic militants in
1981
 Afterwards, Hosni Mubarak served as Egypt’s
president
 Along
with freedom and independence, the
most dramatic postwar development in the
Middle East has been the establishment of the
state of Israel as a homeland for the world’s
Jews
 Earlier in 1917, the British had issued the
Balfour Declaration, in which it publicly had
stated the British government’s intention to
create a Jewish homeland in Palestine – whose
population, during the late 1910s, was 90
percent Arab
 Despite the fact that the British allowed only
limited Jewish emigration to Palestine, in order
to keep from provoking the Arabs, thousands of
Jews flooded into the region, many of them
illegally
 By
1939, the Jewish proportion of the
population had risen from 10 to 30 percent
 After World War II and the horrors of the
Holocaust, however, international sympathy
for the Jews, along with strong U.S. support,
led to the establishment of the state of
Israel, in May 1948
 It
is also important to remember that it was
the journalist, Theodore Herzl, who clarified
and gave political weight to the concept of
Jewish nationalism - or Zionism - and a
national home for the Jews in Palestine at
the first Zionist Congress at Basle, in
Switzerland, in 1897
 He won wide Jewish backing for it, and tried,
at first unsuccessfully, to encourage the
British Government to support it
 Herzl had witnessed the Dreyfus Affair and
believed that Jews could never be safe in a
Christian-dominated and anti-Semitic Europe
 A Jewish homeland was needed
 In
September 1894, an anonymous note to the
German military attaché in Paris was found,
leaking French army secrets
 Panic-stricken and spurred on by a virulent antiSemitic press, the government named the
alleged culprit - a brilliant young army captain,
Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew
 Dreyfus was innocent
 It was truly a case of prejudice over facts
 Herzl witnessed mobs shouting “Death to the
Jews” in France, the home of the French
Revolution, and resolved that there was only
one solution: the mass immigration of Jews to a
land that they could call their own
 Thus, the Dreyfus Case became one of the
determinants in the genesis of political Zionism
 The
state of Israel was proclaimed by the
Jewish leader, David Ben Gurion, on May 14,
1948, and officially came into being on the
15th, after British Mandatory rule ended at
midnight
 The
founding of the modern state of
Israel in 1948 stirred up Arab outrage
and plunged the Middle East into war
 The Israelis had to fight a war in 1948
simply to keep the state that had been
given them
 This had the effect of displacing
millions of Palestinian Arabs, who
scattered to Jordan, Lebanon, and
throughout the Middle East
 In 1964, the Palestinian diaspora
gained a semblance of leadership with
the formation of the Palestine
Liberation Organization (PLO), a
terrorist group and political movement
led by Yasser Arafat
 The
Arab states fought several wars against
Israel, most notably the Six-Day War in 1967
and the Yom Kippur War in 1973
 Each time, Israel, with a supremely trained,
highly motivated army and strong backing
from the United States, defeated the Arab
coalitions decisively, taking much territory
away from several Arab states in the process
 PLO terrorism was frequent, most
infamously, a PLO squad assassinated
members of the Israeli Olympic team in 1972
 Not
until 1978, when Anwar alSadat of Egypt, encouraged by
U.S. President Jimmy Carter,
agreed with Israeli Prime Minister
Menachem Begin to recognize
Israel in exchange for the return
of the Sinai Peninsula, was there
an end to outright war in the
region
 Following Egypt’s lead, a number
of moderate Arab states began to
recognize Israel during the 1980s
 However, problems remained
 Throughout
the 1980s, the Palestinian
population of Israel staged a continuous
uprising called the intifada
 These demonstrations and protests often led
to bloodshed
 At the same time, various terrorist groups
acted against Israel as well
 This placed Israel in a difficult position: in
order to avoid utter social collapse and a
total breakdown of security, it – despite
being a democracy, theoretically committed
to human rights – roughly felt compelled to
use violence against civilian agitators who,
although hostile and sometimes dangerous,
were poorly armed and often minors
 In
1993 and 1994, the Israelis and
Palestinians signed historic peace
agreements, one of which called for
Palestinian self-rule in parts of Israel
 The United States attempted through the
1990s to mediate between the two sides
and to keep the peace process alive
 Nonetheless, tensions remained high,
and the peace effort collapsed in 2001,
amid violence from both sides
 Periodically, since 2001, peace efforts
have continued but the issues of land,
autonomy, and security have made the
peace settlement difficult
 As
a general rule, Middle Eastern regimes
tended to be authoritarian and dictatorial
 Many Middle Eastern states, such as
Morocco, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, were
monarchies
 Strongman dictatorships were also
common, as in Syria (under Hafez Assad and
his family), Libya (Colonel Muammar
Qaddafi), and Iraq (President Saddam
Hussein)
 Even in democracies such as Egypt and
Turkey, the perceived need to combat
Islamic extremism has led to a certain
heaviness of political control: elections are
not completely open, civil rights are
somewhat constrained, and the media are
not entirely free
 The
most powerful dictatorships in the
Middle East were those of Iran and Iraq
 Since 1920s, Iran had been ruled by the
secular, modernizing Pahlavi shahs
 The last shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza
Pahlavi, ruled from 1941 to 1979
 The Shah used Iran’s oil wealth to
industrialize and modernize
 Like the Turkish government, the Shah’s
regime opposed Islamic traditionalism,
encouraging Western dress, Western
education, the unveiling of women, and the
eradication of Islamic law
 The Shah became an ally of the United States
 Unfortunately,
the Shah relied on repression
to carry out his modernization campaign:
dissidents were ruthlessly suppressed by the
secret police (SAVAK), and the regime was
decidedly antidemocratic
 By 1979, the Shah was in poor health, and his
popularity had plummeted
 He left the country to seek medical
treatment, but died of cancer in 1980
 In the meantime, in 1979, the Shiite cleric
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, an Islamic
fundamentalist the Shah had exiled years
before, returned to Iran and took control of
the country
 This
Iranian Revolution transformed the
country into an anti-Western (particularly
anti-U.S.), theocratic dictatorship
 The new regime held American hostages
captive for a number of months in 1979 and
1981
 At the same time, Iran went to war with
neighboring Iraq
 The Iran-Iraq War lasted from 1980 to 1988,
and devastated both countries
 Khomeini died in 1989
 The theocracy he created remains in place,
although periodic protests against it have
occurred
 In
June 2009, the controversial presidential
election in Iran provoked what is now known
as the "Green Movement”
 The disputed election produced a second
term for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
 As the controversy raged, Iran's supreme
leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei decreed that
the election result was valid
 Ahmedinejad was thus sworn-in in August
 However, the election split the Iranian polity
deeply
 There are many Iranians who want greater
political freedoms and liberties
 Yet the theocratic government still rules
 Iraq
came under the control of Saddam
Hussein in 1979
 Although his title was “president,” Hussein
was one of the most powerful dictators of
the Middle East
 Originally sponsored by the United States
because of his opposition to Iran, Hussein
turned his brutality against his own people,
his neighbors, and the United States
 During his war with Iran, he used poison gas,
drafted teenaged children to fight in his
armies, and killed many civilians
 He viciously persecuted his nation’s Kurdish
minority
 In
1990, he invaded the oil-rich state of
Kuwait and appeared ready to do the same
to Saudi Arabia
 In the first major conflict of the post-Cold
War era, the United States led a military
coalition that pushed Hussein out of Kuwait
in the Gulf War (1991)
 Casualties were estimated to be over 85,000
 Beginning in 1991, United Nations trade
sanctions were put in place, in an effort to
force Hussein to comply with the terms of
the 1991 cease-fire agreement, which
included the abolishing of chemical and
biological weapons programs
 Due
to Hussein’s continued refusal to
cooperate with United Nations’ inspectors in
their search for weapons of mass
destruction, the United States invaded Iraq
in 2003
 After a trial, Saddam Hussein was executed
in 2006 for crimes committed in a brutal
crackdown during his regime
 Religious
fundamentalism experienced a
revival during the late 1900s and early 2000s
 In Afghanistan, Islamic fundamentalism led to
the creation of a strictly theocratic
government under the Taliban
 Though the Taliban was toppled by the
United States military after the events of
9/11, the organization still exists and is still
trying to regain power in Afghanistan
 The
world first became aware of the Taliban in
1994 when they were appointed by Islamabad to
protect a convoy trying to open up a trade route
between Pakistan and Central Asia
 The group - comprised of Afghans trained in
religious schools in Pakistan along with former
Islamic fighters or mujahedin (fighters against
the Soviet invasion) - proved effective
bodyguards, driving off other mujahedin groups
who attacked and looted the convoy
 They went on to take the nearby city of
Kandahar, beginning a remarkable advance
which led to their capture of the capital, Kabul,
in September 1996
 The
Taliban's popularity with many Afghans
initially surprised the country's warring
mujahedin factions
 Ordinary Afghans, weary of the prevailing
lawlessness in many parts of the country,
were often delighted by Taliban successes in
stamping out corruption, restoring peace and
allowing commerce to flourish again
 Their refusal to deal with the existing
warlords whose rivalries had caused so much
killing and destruction also earned them
respect
 The
Taliban said their aim was to set up
the world's most pure Islamic state,
banning frivolities like television, music
and cinema
 Their attempts to eradicate crime were
reinforced by the introduction of Islamic
law including public executions and
amputations
 A flurry of regulations forbidding girls
from going to school and women from
working quickly brought them into
conflict with the international community
 Such issues, along with restrictions on
women's access to health care, also
caused some resentment among ordinary
Afghans
 And
while the Taliban have been removed
from power, their continued existence raises
an important question: Can the conflict
between the forces of modernization and
forces of traditionalism be reconciled or will
continued conflict be the rule of the day?