Why middle east so violent

This trope is frequently turned to by those who would have the world believe that war in the Middle East is somehow innate and inevitable. In fact, imperial systems like those that ruled the Middle East for most of its history — spanning vast swathes of the globe and encompassing an immense diversity of ethnicities, faith traditions and customs — have of pragmatic necessity had to develop systems of accommodation, ways to avoid war.

As recent scholarship has shown, such strategies characterized every imperial system in world history. For empires, while diversity could certainly be the cause of conflict, it was also a source of economic and political strength. But their survival, longevity and military expansion depended on internal stability.

Indeed, the Jews of Islam enjoyed freedoms and privileges unimaginable in Christian Europe, where they faced centuries of persecution. Even the Mongols, famed for their brutality in conquest, realized the necessity for coexistence. One branch of the Mongols, the Ilkhanids, ruled over modern-day Iran and — after converting to Islam — sparked a renaissance of art and culture that directly parallels the more famous one in Italy.

And indeed, up through the Ottoman era and until the rise of political modernity, such systems thrived. In fact, the default was pragmatic coexistence. In premodern times, for example, the region fell under the sway of various competing forces, from ancient Mesopotamian and Assyrian conquerors to the armies of Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire and the Crusades.

The coming of political modernity in the 19th century introduced ideas about equal citizenship that transformed older systems that had traditionally kept tensions in check. And as I have written before , in more recent memory — at least in the memory of most people alive today — modern colonialism under the major European powers and post-colonial conflict, as seen in the American and British CIA coup in Iran or the occupation of Iraq, have meant that the region has been the recipient of externally-imposed interventions that often destabilized older political landscapes, resulting in ongoing internal violence.

Nor has modernity brought peace: in the 20th century, Europe was the point of origin of the deadliest war in the history of the world. Both the United States and the Soviet Union merely listened to the arguments of the parties concerned and assumed the position of keeping options open for the future. It can be said that these visits basically helped prepare the ground for active diplomatic moves for a settlement of the Middle East problem.

Moves over the petroleum problem centering around the oil-producing countries in the Near and Middle East became even more active than in the preceding year, and the situation throughout the world regarding the petroleum questions changed greatly.

The negotiations for participation in management started in February between Saudi Arabia's Minister of Petroleum Ahmed Zaki Yamani, who represented the six oil-producing countries on the Arabian Persian Gulf Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, Qatar and Saudi Arabia , and the major international oil companies, resulted in the conclusion of the Riyadh Agreement in January , although Iran dropped out in the course of the negotiations.

In the past, the oil-producing countries used to obtain revenues in the form of royalties and income taxes from the international oil companies operating in their countries. The Riyadh Agreement is intended to change this relationship so that the oil-producing countries also can participate in the management of the petroleum companies.

Their participation this time was limited to petroleum development and exploitation with the distribution and sale of petroleum excluded, In the words of Minister of Petroleum Yamani, it was an "Islamic-Catholic marriage" between the oil-producing countries and international oil companies this particular wording is construed as meaning that the arrangement is of Islamic style because the oil-producing countries have a majority share of 51 per cent and is compared to a Catholic marriage in that it does not allow a divorce.

The three major points in the Riyadh Agreement were as follows:. The prices of crude oil to be sold back will be determined by each country according to type of oil. The Riyadh Agreement is significant in that the governments of the oil-producing countries emerged as direct suppliers of petroleum in addition to the international oil companies, which were up to then the only direct suppliers of petroleum to the world, and this requires a major change in the world's oil supply system.

In this context, it can be said that relations between Japan, which depends on crude oil from the Middle East for more than 80 per cent of its total consumption of petroleum, and the four oil-producing countries of Saudi Arabia, which has a quarter of the world's known oil reserves and produces more than 5 million barrels per day, Iran, the second largest producer of petroleum in the Middle East after Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi, have become more important than ever.

The oil-producing countries in northern Africa, such as Algeria and Libya, carried out participation programs separately from those countries on the Persian Gulf. Algeria nationalized 51 per cent of French oil interests in , and it now sells about 80 per cent of the country's total output of petroleum by itself. Libya nationalized BP British Petroleum in Later, it concluded a agreement with ENI of Italy.

It was negotiating its demand for an immediate 50 per cent participation in management with the Oasis group which had the largest oil-producing operations in Libya. The African countries were faced with economic difficulties which stemmed from their dependence on a small number of primary industry products, and the economic gap between them and the advanced countries was widening.

In this situation, there were moves toward Africanization, which were aimed at economic development not by foreigners but by the Africans themselves, centering around the former British colonies. Such moves included Uganda's order to deport non-Ugandan Asians in August , Nigeria's Nigerian Enterprise Promotion Law in February , the Ghanian Government's declaration on participation in gold and diamond mining in December All these measures called for one or all of the following: African capital's participation in enterprises, compulsory employment of Africans and reservation of specific economic sectors for the Africans, although there were differences in degree.

It is considered that success or failure of such moves depends on how the African countries will solve the shortages in capital and talented personnel. The former French colonies also took moves toward the Africanization of their economies, but they were not so conspicuous as those in the former British colonies. In the former French colonies, there were Africanization moves of a different nature. They had maintained close relations of cooperation with France in various fields, including the monetary, financial and cultural fields, since their independence.

In recent years, however, Madagascar, Mauritania, the Congo and Niger moved to lessen their dependence on France by changing their relations with France, and negotiations were being held among the countries concerned for this purpose. President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire vigorously carried out a movement of seeking "genuineness" on the occasion of changing the name of his country from the Congo to Zaire in October Zaire changed personal names and place names into the African style and decided on the Africanization of general commercial activities in January How such moves throughout Africa will affect the domestic problems mentioned in 2 below deserves attention.

In , there were changes of government in Ghana on January 13, in Madagascar on May 25 and in Dahomey on October 26 in which the military took over power from the civilian governments. Separately, technological advances have raised concerns about lethal autonomous weapons and cyberattacks, the weaponization of bots and drones, and the livestreaming of extremist attacks.

There has also been a rise in criminal activity involving data hacks and ransomware, for example. Meanwhile, international cooperation is under strain, diminishing global potential for the prevention and resolution of conflict and violence in all forms. Globally, the absolute number of war deaths has been declining since And yet, conflict and violence are currently on the rise , with many conflicts today waged between non-state actors such as political militias, criminal, and international terrorist groups.

Unresolved regional tensions, a breakdown in the rule of law, absent or co-opted state institutions, illicit economic gain, and the scarcity of resources exacerbated by climate change , have become dominant drivers of conflict. In , more countries experienced violent conflict than at any point in almost 30 years.

At the same time, conflicts are becoming more fragmented. Furthermore, the regionalisation of conflict, which interlinks political, socio-economic and military issues across borders, has seen many conflicts become longer, more protracted, and less responsive to traditional forms of resolution.

Today, crime kills far more people than armed conflicts. In , almost half a million people across the world were killed in homicides, far surpassing the 89, killed in active armed conflicts and the 19, killed in terrorist attacks. Organised crime and gang violence vary widely across regions. Political instability engenders organised crime, including targeted attacks against police, women, journalists, and migrants.

Meanwhile political violence no longer affects only low-income states. For women and girls, the home remains the most dangerous place. Some 58 per cent of female homicides were carried out by intimate partners or family members in , up from 47 per cent in Women bear the heaviest burden of lethal victimisation, often as a result of misogynistic beliefs, inequality, and dependency, which persist globally, especially in low-in-come countries.

While terrorism remains widespread, its impact has been waning in recent years. Globally, the number of deaths attributed to terrorism dropped for a third consecutive year in , to under 19,