Defining the Middle East
A few days ago, I mentioned Robert Kaplan’s piece in the NYT on his idea that the Middle East needed redefining. It got me thinking about other authors’ definitions. Here are a few:
In The Foreign Policies of Middle East States (2002), Hinnebusch and Ehteshami have a map labeled “The Middle East (the Arab League plus Iran, Israel and Turkey).” There are 22 countries in the Arab League. They stretch from Mauritania in the far west of Africa to Oman, east of Saudi Arabia. The League includes Sudan, Djibouti and Somalia, the Comores in the Indian Ocean and three observer states Eritrea, India, and Venezuela. To be fair, the Arab League’s observers were added in 2003, 2006 and 2007.
The map in Politics in the Middle East (2000) by Bill and Springborg shows an area that stretches from Morocco (including Western Sahara) to Pakistan. It excludes Somalia and Djibouti and includes Turkey, Israel, Iran and Afghanistan.
The cover on State, Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East (2004) by Roger Owen, shows Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, part of Afghanistan and part of Pakistan. Inside, there’s a 20th century inter-war map of the Middle East, showing an area from Morocco to Iran and from Turkey to Sudan.
Monte Palmer’s The Politics of the Middle East (2006) has a map bounded on the west by Egypt and Sudan, on the east by Iran, on the north by Turkey on the south by Yemen.
Read the rest at Causes of Conflict.
David Hulme
