8 ms·

The Middle East Friendship Chart

119 points by kumarski 12y ago

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- marvin 12y ago
  Atheists often bring up religion as a source of conflict, and there is some truth to this. But it isn't the whole picture. Religion is often just another expression of cultural differences, which along with conflicts for resources is the biggest driver for conflict. Religion is just part of the package. A non-religious example which often shows up among atheists is feminism, which is really just an expression for different value systems and opinions about what constitutes a better world. Similar conflicts of morality and interest show up between people of differing religion as well, and don't necessarily have anything to do with beliefs in different gods. Remember, religion is deeply intertwined with culture and not a separate entity. In pre-scientific times, religion has also had an important role in bringing vital knowledge to the next generation (e.g. don't eat pork in hot climates; don't eat animals that have been dead for a long time). We wouldn't have world peace if everyone just became atheists tomorrow. There are too many interactions between religion and culture in general. If two cultures are compatible, it's often because they interact a lot. If cultures interact a lot, they often end up with the same religion anyway. Etc. Remember, cultural boundaries are not static. Blaming religion above everything else betrays a limited understanding of the problem. It is really about communication, values and culture.
  - waps 12y ago
    > If cultures interact a lot, they often end up with the same religion anyway. This is what people always seem to forget. "Diversity" within a culture does not bring diversity, ironically, but merely causes one side to be assimilated into the other, losing it's distinct identity.
    - shortsightedsid 12y ago
      Not necessarily. India for example was ruled primarily by Muslim rulers for over a thousand years but still ended up with a huge Hindu population and a significant Muslim population. If you consider the whole of South Asia, that "Diversity" in religion is even more stark. Since this region has almost 2 Billion people living, it can't be considered as different. At the same time, you do have a good point. When you consider colonialism, what it represented was non-assimilation. One criticism of British Colonialism in India has been that unlike other Invasions (Greeks, Persians, Central Asian etc..), the British never did assimilate into India. The Mughals for example were conquerers from Central Asia (descendants from Mongols), but dropped their ties and forged new ones in India. That never happened in Colonialism not just by the British but every Colonial power. So, in that sense you are right about assimilation but its a bit more complex than that.
      - waps 12y ago
        The India you're talking about starts in what we today call Iraq and ends about 1/3rd into what we currently call India, encompassing Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and never reached the south of India or Madagascar. That was the area ruled by the Mughals, which was called India because, well it was. Their rule can be described as having a death toll of between 30 and 50 world war IIs. The area of the Mughal empire is most definitely both religiously and ethnically cleansed. So it the other side. Before islam northern africa was black. In all likelihood, Hannibal was black. There is no assimilation. Now in this case is was because of constant massacres, perpetraded predominantly by the muslim side (but where one side starts massacring, revenge will come). But it doesn't really matter. The European conquest of the Americas has only a few massacres, certainly not comparable to what happened in Northern Africa or India. For the most part Native American culture dissappeared because, well, frankly, because Native Americans preferred European culture above their tribes (and in a lot of cases, they didn't have much of a choice, having lost a duel for leadership, or a woman, according to several monks who wrote on the subject). You see the same in places where "natural" human communities still exist, like sub-saharan Africa. Just talk to the people there. You will note that they know life in the "villages" as they call it. They're not talking about some faraway town with a church but no supermarket (for one thing, they're not all that far from the cities, only 10km or so). They're talking about huts, hunting, and so on. They also know why the men leave (the women, well, mostly can't. Think about the impact on the group for 5 minutes and you'll understand why men can leave and women can't. And no, they're not prudes, the women can fuck whoever they want, kids are the village's kids, not really having any real mother or father, just a group of people who care for them (mostly the older children)). They are voluntarily abandoning the culture they have en-masse to attempt (and mostly fail) to join the third world. Having been there, I can certainly see why. Plus sometimes they get into trouble (e.g. lose a territorial battle, get half the tribe infected, run out of food, ...) and they have no choice.
  - jonahx 12y ago
    i agree, at least to a point, with you, but (non-rhetorical question): what are some examples of groups with purely cultural, that is non-religious, differences who fight with same violence we see in the Middle East and other places of ethnic/religious conflict?
    - shortsightedsid 12y ago
      Well, all you have to do is look back a few years in Europe. Until the US enforced peace in Europe, almost every country has been at war at some point or the other. WW2, WW1, 7 years war, 100 years war etc... Now you could argue that some of it was religious (Catholic vs Protestant), but in general it would be political. What you see in the Middle East isn't a phenomena that's tied to that region but it just so happens to be volatile. Since most of the Western world is peaceful currently, we then to think of everywhere else are violent.
      - marvin 12y ago
        Not to mention the American civil war, which had only superfluous regligious motivation (the interpretation of slavery in the Bible). I am European and haven't read in detail about this conflict, but my impression is that it was to a large degree caused by cultural disagreement and to a lesser extent about territory. >600,000 dead.
        jonahx 12y ago
        Great example. Thanks.
lobotryas 12y ago
Huh, where's Afghanistan? Or do they kind of not matter any more in this scheme of things?
- SuperChihuahua 12y ago
  According to Wikipedia, Afghanistan is not a part of the Middle East
  - ulfw 12y ago
    According to Wikipedia, the United States is not a part of the Middle East either. Odd...
- berkay 12y ago
  Afganistan is not in the middle east. That's a whole another cluster..ck.
- cturner 12y ago
  There were gaps closer to home - the non-ISIS Syrian opposition (on the ground, not the overseas committee), the Kurds.
hackerboos 12y ago
Iraq: The most friendly country in the middle east.
- keerthiko 12y ago
  Obviously the more friendly countries in the Middle East aren't mentioned here: Oman, UAE, Qatar, because they aren't involved in any conflicts or political standoffs.
  - waps 12y ago
    Oman, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are only friendly because they have done religious cleansing 30-50 years ago (all three used to have significant Shi'a populations, Saudi Arabia still has some), and back then nobody was watching. So not that much is really known about those events. Currently, yes, they are mostly peaceful. Bahrain and UAE are peaceful, but certainly have political standoffs that could explode.
    - antocv 12y ago
      Bahrain smashed their Shia rebellions during arab spring with tanks, but that was blessed by USA as opposed to the attempted smashing by Syria and Lybia of their own rebellions.
      - waps 12y ago
        With Saudi Arabian provided mercenary tanks (because Bahrain's own army is at least partly Shi'a), and this was definitely not "blessed" by the USA. Tolerated, maybe, in the sense that the US was not going to create a shooting war with Saudi Arabia to stop this, yes. Don't oversimplify it. The USA is constantly pressuring Bahrain into allowing the Shi'a a voice in government, and every 6 months or so, Bahrain expels yet another American diplomat for mentioning the Shi'a.
- joosters 12y ago
  A big problem here is that Iraq is so factionalised that you can't easily categorise it. The chart doesn't break out Iraq and Kurdistan, yet the Kurdish controlled areas are effectively a separate country. So which group's political affiliations do you use when drawing up the chart?
ulfw 12y ago
Frankly it's not really accurate. And with most things in the Middle East, you could make this chart a ton easier by just labeling every relationship as Yellow/It's complicated
- robzyb 12y ago
  Props to them, though, for adding comments to each cell.
- Kiro 12y ago
  What's inaccurate?
tdsamardzhiev 12y ago
So, no love for ISIS in the Middle East?
- stickydink 12y ago
  You might consider it a ... Danger Zone? In fairness, I wasn't aware what the real ISIS was myself until a couple of weeks ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_L...
parham 12y ago
Since when did Iran and Turkey become enemies?
- waps 12y ago
  Different religions. Turkey is "sunni"/secular. Iran is Shi'a/secular. (but the other way round, Turkey's population is "moderately" sunni muslim, the state is aggresively secular. Iran, the population, I think is fair to say, is secular, the state is aggresively Shi'a muslim). The sunnis are the ones that are organising things like ISIS, and the religious cleansings ISIS is doing. Problem is that one of the values of islam is to militarily dominate, so aside from Lebanon (and formerly Iraq), there is no example of a state with powre sharing. Even in Lebanon there is only power sharing between Christians and muslims, not between different sects of muslims. (the difference being that Christians don't see the need to exterminate muslims (just convert them, eventually), nor do muslims want to exterminate Christians, just dominate them (talking about the values of the religions here). Sunni's do want to exterminate Shi'as and vice-versa. To put it bluntly: sharia is pretty clear on the need to kill any muslim who is not the same sect as you are. But Christians/Jews can get the choice dhimma or death. So Lebanon will not blow up as easily as Iraq will)
  - nl 12y ago
    Turkey is probably about as strong an opponent of ISIS as there is in the middle east. Edit: the parent comment was edited while I was writing that. There is a lot I disagree with now, bit the biggest factual problem is the idea that Lebanon "won't blow up like Iraq" seems to ignore 2 decades of civil war in Lebanon.
    - waps 12y ago
      Not really. Let's say that Erdogan and ISIS agree on goals, absolutely not on means, and Erdogan stands to lose a LOT if ISIS doesn't back down. They are not enemies, even if you have a point that they're absolutely not friends either. You're right of course that Lebanon hasn't been very stable.
zokier 12y ago
I suspect there could be some more insightful ordering of the entities to make the situation slightly less clusterfuck-like. edit: http://i.imgur.com/PgXt8Md.png http://i.imgur.com/PgXt8Md.png is bit better, there arises two kinda clear clusters of friends.
- waps 12y ago
  Your chart could be summarized as Sunni versus Shi'a, and muslims versus the world, with the religious cleansing in Sunni-Shi'a warfare taking priority. Which is kind of accurate.
  - scaramanga 12y ago
    Or more accurately. US foreign policy objectives and military aid versus independence.
higherpurpose 12y ago
Relevant (and funny): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vZLWbqpDyQ&feature=youtu.be&t=2m25s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vZLWbqpDyQ&feature=youtu.be...
antocv 12y ago
According to chart, Iran is "its complicated" with Al-Qaueda, haha. Yeah sure. Iran is enemies with terrorist groups, except for hezbollah which are somewhat less terrorists than hamas, but not in the same league as al-qaueda, or various terrorists sponsored by USA in Syria. And according to chart ISIS has no friends only enemies, which is not true, as Saudi Arabia is at least complicated with them unless their friends. Where is Qatar, Bahrain etc, and the various groups that were smashed with tanks during arab spring?
- waps 12y ago
  No ISIS is Sunni, Hezbollah is (mostly) Shi'a (and works mainly in a country that has a long history of religious toleration). Hamas is sunni. Egypt is also Sunni, but hamas and the muslim brotherhood are somewhere between allied and the same thing, and the muslim brotherhood is the mortal enemy of the current Egyptian state (they got control of the state, and used it to start to kill some groups and loot, at which point the army saw the risk of food supplies to the country getting interrupted, and started shooting the muslim brotherhood - not that they were friends before) So ISIS want to kill every last Iranian. Iran, by contrast, shares it's religion (and half of it's government), with the dominant faction in the Iraqi government. So Iran is naturally allied with the Iraqi government, and, for the moment, with America (they have toned down the rhetoric at least. And keep in mind they are allied with America for short-term strategic reasons - keep Iraq from falling over. They very -very- much disagree with America's proposal to share government power between factions in Iraq, they'd rather just subjugate the sunni's like they've done in Iran, you know, force their kids to go to Shi'a schools and the like (which isn't nice, but keep in mind those sunnis would like to murder them)). Keep in mind ISIS represents the majority sunni in Syria and the minority sunni in Iraq, and wants to exterminate all other factions in both places. That's what they're fighting for.
dodyg 12y ago
1. Egypt is not "enemy" with Syria. Morsi last year did call for a Jihad against Bashar al-Assad but this is one of the few reason he got overthrown. Egypt's policy toward Syria is non interference. 2. Egypt is not "enemy" with Turkey. The relationship is definitely strained but marking the relationship as "enemy" is wrong.
- emilsedgh 12y ago
  I think the word 'Hostile' would've made much more sense in many cases.
3rd3 12y ago
Could someone explain the first couple of principal components of this conflict to a historically illiterate like me?
- joosters 12y ago
  It all comes down to 'Whose land is it anyway?'
  - shortsightedsid 12y ago
    Some of the issues go back thousands of years. In a sense, it also shows the genius of Prophet Mohammad. From a historical point of view, one of his greatest achievements was to unite the Arabs. That's something that was never done before or since. So, simplifying it as just a land dispute isn't right.
  - slashdotaccount 12y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-evIyrrjTTY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-evIyrrjTTY
- nl 12y ago
  Israel, Oil, Shia vs Sunni conflict, US ambitions, old school dictators vs democratic movements vs religious fundamentalists. I think that covers most things, except Turkey. Turkey has a whole secular vs religious plus embrace Europe and the West vs embrace the Middle East thing going on. Basically a short summary is difficult because the history is enormous and intertwined.
  - jqm 12y ago
    Proxy wars among larger powers. Syria demonstrates this principal most clearly. It's the US (or the West if you prefer) vs Russia for controlling influence in the region.
joosters 12y ago
The chart highlights one big problem - how on earth do you label each faction? On the one hand, it includes whole countries, yet many have powerful factions within them that have vastly different views. On the other hand, some countries are ignored entirely (where is Lebanon? There are more factions there than just the included Hezbollah). Since they added the US, it might be helpful to stick Russia (and perhaps China) in there too.
- jqm 12y ago
  Especially Russia. They are not a minor player in the area as evidenced by the Syria conflict.
PeterisP 12y ago
Countries don't have friends or enemies, they have interests - which (at the moment) may happen to align or cross each other.
- emilsedgh 12y ago
  When the conflict of interests is too fundumental, they consider themselves enemies :) And of course there are countries which are enemies due to ideology.
  - rolux 12y ago
    Either way, congratulations to Slate for reducing politics in the Middle East to three types of smileys. Their readers must love that kind of stuff.
    - tormeh 12y ago
      Simplification is a good thing. And the middle east desperately needs some. Sure, the foreign ministries of the world shouldn't use this chart, but that's not really the audience here.
      - rolux 12y ago
        I disagree. After more than a decade of "good vs. evil" and "either with us or with the enemy" propaganda, what the audience needs is the precise opposite of this type of chart.
- PavlovsCat 12y ago
  I'd say countries don't even have interests, people in them have them. No country, and hardly any person, is a monolith.
sam88 12y ago
The chart is over simplification and lacks any depth for such relationships, for example, Jordan and Saudi, both friendly with Israel and have been funding ISIS, yet there is no mention of Jordan, Qatar too, too tiny yet playing a very big role in this mess, not there at all. The main player in all relationship in the middle east is the US and Israel, the rest is not much.
- sam88 12y ago
  I think the best thing that has been written on the Middle East is Walid Khalidi, ed., From Haven to Conquest. But as a rule of thumb,"When governments are loyal to the US (Israel, Ukraine, etc), the US calls for disarming of all militias and groups that are opposed to those governments. But in the cases of governments that are opposed to the US (Syria, Iran, Cuba, etc) the US funds and arms militias against those governments."
- jqm 12y ago
  Exactly. The lack of note of some of the original funding sources for ISIS makes me regard the chart as bogus and maybe even misleading. There are groups who don't want to see Iran (nor Russia for that matter) grow any more powerful in the region, and these are defiantly somewhat happy about the emergence of ISIS if not also surreptitiously supporting them. Putting these countries as frowny on the chart is not really very accurate even if they profess disdain in public (which they politically have to for an outlaw group like this). I hope the US is not in this group but wouldn't swear they are not. At minimum, some of the "friends" of the US are in this group. The absence of Russia on the chart is another reason not to take it very seriously. Overall.... this is like a 4'th grade view of alliances in the mid-east. Not really very useful.
piggyback 12y ago
This chart is at the very least incomplete and inaccurate if not blatantly false. To accuse Iran of cooperating with Al Qaeda while claiming that Saudi Arabia does not is audacious. Saudi Arabia spreads the most violent branch of Islam (Wahhabism/Salafism) through indoctrination as well as direct funding for terrorism. Just look at the perpetrators of 9/11, all of whom were Sunni Arabs, most of them from Saudi Arabia. The same goes for Qatar, which is missing in the chart. Hamas and Iran broke up because the former (Sunni) joined the fight against the Syria government, which is supported by Iran. Iran is neither Sunni nor Arab, groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS would love to commit genocide against Iranians. They don't have any real allies and have propped up a few Shia proxies in Iraq and the Levant. Others are missing, like the Kurds, so is the the link to Central/South Asia as well, i.e. AfPak. Without Pakistan Al Qaeda and the Taliban could have not existed. It should be noted that the Pakistani government and military are bought and paid for by the Arab states in the Persian Gulf, where Pakistani mercenaries protect the Monarchs from their civilian population, Bahrain being a notable example: the majority of Bahrainis are Shia and they are naturally friendly with Iran/Iraq. Their government, however, is run by the same kind of Sunnis that control countries like Kuwait and the UAE.
- nl 12y ago
  I think this chart reflects the position of county's government. The Saudi government doesn't support Al Qaeda and has a careful relationship with Wahhabism (as they see both as potential threats to their powerbase). Al Qaeda (the core part anyway) has never really had an anti-Shia bent (or, interestingly, anti-Israel) and Iran did tolerate some movement of Al Qaeda and Taliban through their territories. Iran did have a real ally: the Syrian government of Assad. Even that was a difficult relationship prior to the fall of Hussein in Iraq because Assad was a Ba'athist (which is a secular ideology opposed to Iran's theocracy) and Hussein was also Ba'athist (Iraq and Iran were enemies since the Iranian revolution for those who missed that bit). Ba'athism is pretty much irrelevant today, but until the 1990s it was one of the factors that shaped the Middle Wast we see now. Edit: I assume the downvotes mean I'm factually incorrect about something. I'd appreciate enlightenment.
  - sam88 12y ago
politician 12y ago
Is a matrix plot the best way of visualizing this when all of the relationships are reciprocated in kind?
- wslh 12y ago
  I added a graph using graphviz here https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByAekPg2AgZoQUFGdl8yd1h3SWs https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByAekPg2AgZoQUFGdl8yd1h3SWs
m0skit0 12y ago
From an arab: overly simplified but a good start for most people who just have no idea and talk nonsense (which are a lot).
wslh 12y ago
Uh, this is what happen when you practice data visualization abuse.
- wslh 12y ago
  I translated it to the following graph. No nodes, bad relationship. You can copy the source to: http://graphviz-dev.appspot.com/ http://graphviz-dev.appspot.com/ Image at: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByAekPg2AgZoQUFGdl8yd1h3SWs/edit https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByAekPg2AgZoQUFGdl8yd1h3SWs/... digraph g{ AlQaida -> Iran [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] AlQaida -> Hamas [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] Iran -> Egypt [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] Egypt -> Iraq [arrowhead="none"] Egypt -> Israel [arrowhead="none"] PalestinianAuthority -> Egypt [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] SaudiArabia -> Egypt [arrowhead="none"] US -> Egypt [arrowhead="none"] Hamas -> Hezbollah [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] Hamas -> Iran [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] Hamas -> Iraq [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] Hamas -> PalestinianAuthority [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] Hamas -> SaudiArabia [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] Hamas -> Turkey [arrowhead="none"] Hezbollah -> Iran [arrowhead="none"] Hezbollah -> Iraq [arrowhead="none"] Hezbollah -> PalestinianAuthority [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] Hezbollah -> Turkey [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] Hezbollah -> Syria [arrowhead="none"] Iran -> Iraq [arrowhead="none"] Iran -> PalestinianAuthority [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] Iran -> Syria [arrowhead="none"] Iraq -> PalestinianAuthority [arrowhead="none"] Iraq -> Syria [arrowhead="none"] Iraq -> US [arrowhead="none"] ISIS Israel -> SaudiArabia [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] Israel -> Turkey [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] Israel -> US [arrowhead="none"] SaudiArabia -> PalestinianAuthority [arrowhead="none"] Turkey -> PalestinianAuthority [arrowhead="none"] Syria -> PalestinianAuthority [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] US -> PalestinianAuthority [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] Syria -> Turkey [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] US -> SaudiArabia [arrowhead="none"] }
EGreg 12y ago
It would be interesting to find the "basis vectors" of issues, if you will, underpinning this matrix. They seem to be: Israel-Palestinians, Syria's Civil War, Egypt's Overthrow, and the new Iraqi state. So, if the issues would be resolved in the most peaceful way, namely: Egypt's current government continuing to exist Israel and Palestinian Authority defeating Hamas and working towards a peace deal Iraq getting stable borders (with Kurds using political struggle only) Syria - probably the overthrow would maximize peace at this point, esp given the resolution above ousting Hamas The big winners would be: USA Israel Palestinian Authority Egypt Rebels in Syria Iran (even though Assad lost) And the big losers would be: Hamas ISIS Hezbollah Meanwhile: Al Qaeda and USA will keep fighting Turkey has recently had its own set of protests against Erdogan, and it's unclear where its future lies With ISIS gone, Saudi Arabia and Qatar will continue to have stable states favoring Sunni Wahhabism Iraq will probably become one of the fastest growing economies in the middle east Iran will go from being polarized to roughly moderate in its connections, esp if a peace agreement is reached with Israel, the Assad regime is ousted, and Iraq is a stable and friendly state Jordan would enjoy further peace and the Palestinian Authority's new confidence since the ouster of Hamas etc. may prove a strong factor for Jordan's relations with its Palestinian majority, which would take away focus from Israel-Palestinian conflict The new Syrian government would aspire to join the Arab League but may consider giving Palestinian refugees citizenship, which will play a factor in Israel-PA deals
- dannypgh 12y ago
  Hamas won free and fair elections. Peace must come from negotiations with Hamas; it can't be predicated on their destruction.
  - victorhooi 12y ago
    Well, yeah, except for the slight part about how they're a terrorist organisation? I mean, the Quarter (the Quartet (United States, Russia, United Nations, and European Union) basically said, we can recognise you, but you have to commit to non-violence etc. And Hamas was like, no, screw you guys, we're going to keep rocketing and bombing all the civilians we like...I mean, Israel's going to cave eventually, if we keep shooting rockets at their citizens, right?
oxama 12y ago
lol! ISIS has no friends at all
- jqm 12y ago
  Ya they do. Some very powerful ones. Or else they never would have been allowed to get to the point they are at now. If they get big enough they will get a haircut. They won't be allowed to actually rule for long probably. But as long as they keep causing trouble for the enemies of enemies they might be allowed to keep taking over caches of weapons (whoop!..but hey, we aren't arming terrorists! they just stole them!).
amiune 12y ago
Just execute Floyd–Warshall algorithm for transitive closure :)
viggity 12y ago
TL;DR everyone pretty much hates everyone else.
WorldWideWayne 12y ago
I don't know anything about this stuff, but I wonder - is it completely improbable that "Al Qaida" could actually be a group of agent provocateurs invented by some part of the military/industrial complex to scare up support for their actions?
hiharryhere 12y ago
Where's Jordan in all of this?
ahamino 12y ago
As a middleastern, I find this very incorrect and stereotypical.
ilaksh 12y ago
This chart is deceptive because it focuses on details of micro relationships while ignoring alignment of factions with global powers vying for control over resources and political influence, which has been stirring this pot on and off for thousands of years. The western media portrays these battles as isolated internal disputes, and while there are very serious regional disputes, they are influenced by external powers like the US and Russia. Similar to the way in previous epochs groups like Muslim or Roman empires affected outcomes or took advantage of regional conflicts. It is a crucible. I believe that the biggest driver is still fossil fuels. Yes, solar and other systems are rapidly replacing a portion of the energy demand, but still, the critical need for oil cannot be understated. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_consumption http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_consum.... You can see that this is quite an unequal distribution. The need to maintain that is what puts pressure on that region and causes regional animosities to be taken advantage of in order to move power over to groups siding with dominant forces. Even though solar and other energy sources are gaining ground, the industrial reliance on fossil fuels is a much tougher nut to crack, and I actually believe that creating viable industrial production processes based on bio-fuels or significantly different chemistry is the key to 'peace in the Middle East'. Obviously, bad blood between groups going back thousands of years does not go away just because someone invented a non-fossil-fuel-based industrial precursor, but the motivation for stirring up those conflicts in order to further political power of one group gets reduced. There are other aspects to this aside from fossil fuels. The fire for the crucible is fueled generally by the global power struggle which has other aspects like currency domination. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_hegemony http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_hegemony or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Great_Game http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Great_Game. For some people, for example, those who read western media which is full of talk of local "evil dictators" and "terrorists", framing things this way will be very controversial. My next paragraph will probably be even more controversial for everyone. I believe that hegemony and centralized control (at least on a physical regional level) could someday be supplanted by global cyber-states. In other words, the borders are not dictated so much by the map or actual physical areas, but by alignments with global systems of political power and organization, connected by internets. There will likely be multiple internets controlled by different global factions, since controlling these internets is key to controlling the global organizations. Technologies like advanced 3d printing (eventually moving into the area of programmable matter), and free information flow may democratize force so that power over life and death, and therefore ultimate political control, moves from central authorities into the hands of individuals and more regional groups. At the same time, this type of technology could enable the global super-cyberstates as it would enable any group with sufficient control of a net to nearly instantly muster military assets at any point around the world. I can go so far as to frame all of this as a need for good tools and systems for knowledge management and securing human needs, with the two interacting. One of the core problems for knowledge management systems is how to promote an efficient, integrated, holistic view of the system, while still providing a strong capability for the evolution and maintenance of divergent branches or systems which evolve in new and beneficial directions. Or just, divergent branches which allow localized freedom in the knowledge graph, which may later lead in beneficial directions. An example of this is different standards or platforms competing for dominance in technology. Based on a certain platform of solutions and set of common assumptions, a set of new problems arises, and many different groups and individuals solve those problems in relative isolation. In order to move on to solving the next set of problems, or for the overall group to gain the advantages of the new solutions in a way that integrates with previous efforts, a certain solution set is selected. The particular process by which solutions are selected and integrated into the system, or multiple interacting systems, affects everyone working towards the advancement or maintenance of the systems greatly. Github is a concrete example of this. There seems to be a tendency towards a very small number of systems which exhibit high coupling and low cohesion. But maybe that view is too mechanistic and low-level, and a higher level view which better incorporates abstraction has a different problem. Creating an abstraction prunes redundant solutions but also often discards less generally relevant information that may however be important in certain circumstances. Abstractions are powerful because their hierarchical structure allows individual nodes to leverage aggregate powers of branches. This hierarchical structure is also a disadvantage though in terms of the reliance that leaves have on the integrity of each branch. Compositional rather than hierarchical structures can provide the same power of abstraction without the brittleness and central-point-of-failure that hierarchies have. It seems though that more compositional networked structures tend to converge towards what are effectively hierarchies. Anyway, I think that there must be some tools or processes or perspectives that would provide for somehow more optimal evolutions of structures. Probably some that are not discovered or in common use. In case anyone read all of this and knows of some relevant links, please let me know.
scaramanga 12y ago
It's pretty simple. Any country which is receiving massive US aid is friends with other countries receiving massive US aid. In some cases the frienship is a sort of "secret" (eg. Saudi Arabia and Israel) or "complicated" because officially, for appearances sake, they should align on religion or something. Iran used to be part of the USA club when it had the brutal murderous dictator. But now it's enemy to the USA club as soon as they overthrew the dictator.
kumarski 12y ago
wow. Didn't expect this much of a response.
the_watcher 12y ago
Basic takeaway - the relationships between players in the Middle East is much more complicated than state-state relations, and stated positions of the players are not necessarily comprehensive in summing up the relations. Also - this chart seems like it could change incredibly frequently (Iran's friendship with Iraq is relatively recent, 6 months ago ISIS would have far more friends, etc.)

119 points by kumarski 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

marvin 12y ago
Atheists often bring up religion as a source of conflict, and there is some truth to this. But it isn't the whole picture. Religion is often just another expression of cultural differences, which along with conflicts for resources is the biggest driver for conflict. Religion is just part of the package. A non-religious example which often shows up among atheists is feminism, which is really just an expression for different value systems and opinions about what constitutes a better world. Similar conflicts of morality and interest show up between people of differing religion as well, and don't necessarily have anything to do with beliefs in different gods. Remember, religion is deeply intertwined with culture and not a separate entity. In pre-scientific times, religion has also had an important role in bringing vital knowledge to the next generation (e.g. don't eat pork in hot climates; don't eat animals that have been dead for a long time). We wouldn't have world peace if everyone just became atheists tomorrow. There are too many interactions between religion and culture in general. If two cultures are compatible, it's often because they interact a lot. If cultures interact a lot, they often end up with the same religion anyway. Etc. Remember, cultural boundaries are not static. Blaming religion above everything else betrays a limited understanding of the problem. It is really about communication, values and culture.
- waps 12y ago
  > If cultures interact a lot, they often end up with the same religion anyway. This is what people always seem to forget. "Diversity" within a culture does not bring diversity, ironically, but merely causes one side to be assimilated into the other, losing it's distinct identity.
  - shortsightedsid 12y ago
    Not necessarily. India for example was ruled primarily by Muslim rulers for over a thousand years but still ended up with a huge Hindu population and a significant Muslim population. If you consider the whole of South Asia, that "Diversity" in religion is even more stark. Since this region has almost 2 Billion people living, it can't be considered as different. At the same time, you do have a good point. When you consider colonialism, what it represented was non-assimilation. One criticism of British Colonialism in India has been that unlike other Invasions (Greeks, Persians, Central Asian etc..), the British never did assimilate into India. The Mughals for example were conquerers from Central Asia (descendants from Mongols), but dropped their ties and forged new ones in India. That never happened in Colonialism not just by the British but every Colonial power. So, in that sense you are right about assimilation but its a bit more complex than that.
    - waps 12y ago
      The India you're talking about starts in what we today call Iraq and ends about 1/3rd into what we currently call India, encompassing Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and never reached the south of India or Madagascar. That was the area ruled by the Mughals, which was called India because, well it was. Their rule can be described as having a death toll of between 30 and 50 world war IIs. The area of the Mughal empire is most definitely both religiously and ethnically cleansed. So it the other side. Before islam northern africa was black. In all likelihood, Hannibal was black. There is no assimilation. Now in this case is was because of constant massacres, perpetraded predominantly by the muslim side (but where one side starts massacring, revenge will come). But it doesn't really matter. The European conquest of the Americas has only a few massacres, certainly not comparable to what happened in Northern Africa or India. For the most part Native American culture dissappeared because, well, frankly, because Native Americans preferred European culture above their tribes (and in a lot of cases, they didn't have much of a choice, having lost a duel for leadership, or a woman, according to several monks who wrote on the subject). You see the same in places where "natural" human communities still exist, like sub-saharan Africa. Just talk to the people there. You will note that they know life in the "villages" as they call it. They're not talking about some faraway town with a church but no supermarket (for one thing, they're not all that far from the cities, only 10km or so). They're talking about huts, hunting, and so on. They also know why the men leave (the women, well, mostly can't. Think about the impact on the group for 5 minutes and you'll understand why men can leave and women can't. And no, they're not prudes, the women can fuck whoever they want, kids are the village's kids, not really having any real mother or father, just a group of people who care for them (mostly the older children)). They are voluntarily abandoning the culture they have en-masse to attempt (and mostly fail) to join the third world. Having been there, I can certainly see why. Plus sometimes they get into trouble (e.g. lose a territorial battle, get half the tribe infected, run out of food, ...) and they have no choice.
- jonahx 12y ago
  i agree, at least to a point, with you, but (non-rhetorical question): what are some examples of groups with purely cultural, that is non-religious, differences who fight with same violence we see in the Middle East and other places of ethnic/religious conflict?
  - shortsightedsid 12y ago
    Well, all you have to do is look back a few years in Europe. Until the US enforced peace in Europe, almost every country has been at war at some point or the other. WW2, WW1, 7 years war, 100 years war etc... Now you could argue that some of it was religious (Catholic vs Protestant), but in general it would be political. What you see in the Middle East isn't a phenomena that's tied to that region but it just so happens to be volatile. Since most of the Western world is peaceful currently, we then to think of everywhere else are violent.
    - marvin 12y ago
      Not to mention the American civil war, which had only superfluous regligious motivation (the interpretation of slavery in the Bible). I am European and haven't read in detail about this conflict, but my impression is that it was to a large degree caused by cultural disagreement and to a lesser extent about territory. >600,000 dead.
      - jonahx 12y ago
        Great example. Thanks.

lobotryas 12y ago

Huh, where's Afghanistan? Or do they kind of not matter any more in this scheme of things?

SuperChihuahua 12y ago
According to Wikipedia, Afghanistan is not a part of the Middle East
- ulfw 12y ago
  According to Wikipedia, the United States is not a part of the Middle East either. Odd...
berkay 12y ago
Afganistan is not in the middle east. That's a whole another cluster..ck.
cturner 12y ago
There were gaps closer to home - the non-ISIS Syrian opposition (on the ground, not the overseas committee), the Kurds.

hackerboos 12y ago

Iraq: The most friendly country in the middle east.

keerthiko 12y ago
Obviously the more friendly countries in the Middle East aren't mentioned here: Oman, UAE, Qatar, because they aren't involved in any conflicts or political standoffs.
- waps 12y ago
  Oman, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are only friendly because they have done religious cleansing 30-50 years ago (all three used to have significant Shi'a populations, Saudi Arabia still has some), and back then nobody was watching. So not that much is really known about those events. Currently, yes, they are mostly peaceful. Bahrain and UAE are peaceful, but certainly have political standoffs that could explode.
  - antocv 12y ago
    Bahrain smashed their Shia rebellions during arab spring with tanks, but that was blessed by USA as opposed to the attempted smashing by Syria and Lybia of their own rebellions.
    - waps 12y ago
      With Saudi Arabian provided mercenary tanks (because Bahrain's own army is at least partly Shi'a), and this was definitely not "blessed" by the USA. Tolerated, maybe, in the sense that the US was not going to create a shooting war with Saudi Arabia to stop this, yes. Don't oversimplify it. The USA is constantly pressuring Bahrain into allowing the Shi'a a voice in government, and every 6 months or so, Bahrain expels yet another American diplomat for mentioning the Shi'a.
joosters 12y ago
A big problem here is that Iraq is so factionalised that you can't easily categorise it. The chart doesn't break out Iraq and Kurdistan, yet the Kurdish controlled areas are effectively a separate country. So which group's political affiliations do you use when drawing up the chart?

ulfw 12y ago

Frankly it's not really accurate. And with most things in the Middle East, you could make this chart a ton easier by just labeling every relationship as Yellow/It's complicated

robzyb 12y ago
Props to them, though, for adding comments to each cell.
Kiro 12y ago
What's inaccurate?

tdsamardzhiev 12y ago

So, no love for ISIS in the Middle East?

stickydink 12y ago
You might consider it a ... Danger Zone? In fairness, I wasn't aware what the real ISIS was myself until a couple of weeks ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_L...

parham 12y ago

Since when did Iran and Turkey become enemies?

waps 12y ago
Different religions. Turkey is "sunni"/secular. Iran is Shi'a/secular. (but the other way round, Turkey's population is "moderately" sunni muslim, the state is aggresively secular. Iran, the population, I think is fair to say, is secular, the state is aggresively Shi'a muslim). The sunnis are the ones that are organising things like ISIS, and the religious cleansings ISIS is doing. Problem is that one of the values of islam is to militarily dominate, so aside from Lebanon (and formerly Iraq), there is no example of a state with powre sharing. Even in Lebanon there is only power sharing between Christians and muslims, not between different sects of muslims. (the difference being that Christians don't see the need to exterminate muslims (just convert them, eventually), nor do muslims want to exterminate Christians, just dominate them (talking about the values of the religions here). Sunni's do want to exterminate Shi'as and vice-versa. To put it bluntly: sharia is pretty clear on the need to kill any muslim who is not the same sect as you are. But Christians/Jews can get the choice dhimma or death. So Lebanon will not blow up as easily as Iraq will)
- nl 12y ago
  Turkey is probably about as strong an opponent of ISIS as there is in the middle east. Edit: the parent comment was edited while I was writing that. There is a lot I disagree with now, bit the biggest factual problem is the idea that Lebanon "won't blow up like Iraq" seems to ignore 2 decades of civil war in Lebanon.
  - waps 12y ago
    Not really. Let's say that Erdogan and ISIS agree on goals, absolutely not on means, and Erdogan stands to lose a LOT if ISIS doesn't back down. They are not enemies, even if you have a point that they're absolutely not friends either. You're right of course that Lebanon hasn't been very stable.

zokier 12y ago

I suspect there could be some more insightful ordering of the entities to make the situation slightly less clusterfuck-like. edit: http://i.imgur.com/PgXt8Md.png http://i.imgur.com/PgXt8Md.png is bit better, there arises two kinda clear clusters of friends.

waps 12y ago
Your chart could be summarized as Sunni versus Shi'a, and muslims versus the world, with the religious cleansing in Sunni-Shi'a warfare taking priority. Which is kind of accurate.
- scaramanga 12y ago
  Or more accurately. US foreign policy objectives and military aid versus independence.

higherpurpose 12y ago

Relevant (and funny): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vZLWbqpDyQ&feature=youtu.be&t=2m25s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vZLWbqpDyQ&feature=youtu.be...

antocv 12y ago

According to chart, Iran is "its complicated" with Al-Qaueda, haha. Yeah sure. Iran is enemies with terrorist groups, except for hezbollah which are somewhat less terrorists than hamas, but not in the same league as al-qaueda, or various terrorists sponsored by USA in Syria. And according to chart ISIS has no friends only enemies, which is not true, as Saudi Arabia is at least complicated with them unless their friends. Where is Qatar, Bahrain etc, and the various groups that were smashed with tanks during arab spring?

waps 12y ago
No ISIS is Sunni, Hezbollah is (mostly) Shi'a (and works mainly in a country that has a long history of religious toleration). Hamas is sunni. Egypt is also Sunni, but hamas and the muslim brotherhood are somewhere between allied and the same thing, and the muslim brotherhood is the mortal enemy of the current Egyptian state (they got control of the state, and used it to start to kill some groups and loot, at which point the army saw the risk of food supplies to the country getting interrupted, and started shooting the muslim brotherhood - not that they were friends before) So ISIS want to kill every last Iranian. Iran, by contrast, shares it's religion (and half of it's government), with the dominant faction in the Iraqi government. So Iran is naturally allied with the Iraqi government, and, for the moment, with America (they have toned down the rhetoric at least. And keep in mind they are allied with America for short-term strategic reasons - keep Iraq from falling over. They very -very- much disagree with America's proposal to share government power between factions in Iraq, they'd rather just subjugate the sunni's like they've done in Iran, you know, force their kids to go to Shi'a schools and the like (which isn't nice, but keep in mind those sunnis would like to murder them)). Keep in mind ISIS represents the majority sunni in Syria and the minority sunni in Iraq, and wants to exterminate all other factions in both places. That's what they're fighting for.

dodyg 12y ago

1. Egypt is not "enemy" with Syria. Morsi last year did call for a Jihad against Bashar al-Assad but this is one of the few reason he got overthrown. Egypt's policy toward Syria is non interference. 2. Egypt is not "enemy" with Turkey. The relationship is definitely strained but marking the relationship as "enemy" is wrong.

emilsedgh 12y ago
I think the word 'Hostile' would've made much more sense in many cases.

3rd3 12y ago

Could someone explain the first couple of principal components of this conflict to a historically illiterate like me?

joosters 12y ago
It all comes down to 'Whose land is it anyway?'
- shortsightedsid 12y ago
  Some of the issues go back thousands of years. In a sense, it also shows the genius of Prophet Mohammad. From a historical point of view, one of his greatest achievements was to unite the Arabs. That's something that was never done before or since. So, simplifying it as just a land dispute isn't right.
- slashdotaccount 12y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-evIyrrjTTY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-evIyrrjTTY
nl 12y ago
Israel, Oil, Shia vs Sunni conflict, US ambitions, old school dictators vs democratic movements vs religious fundamentalists. I think that covers most things, except Turkey. Turkey has a whole secular vs religious plus embrace Europe and the West vs embrace the Middle East thing going on. Basically a short summary is difficult because the history is enormous and intertwined.
- jqm 12y ago
  Proxy wars among larger powers. Syria demonstrates this principal most clearly. It's the US (or the West if you prefer) vs Russia for controlling influence in the region.

joosters 12y ago

The chart highlights one big problem - how on earth do you label each faction? On the one hand, it includes whole countries, yet many have powerful factions within them that have vastly different views. On the other hand, some countries are ignored entirely (where is Lebanon? There are more factions there than just the included Hezbollah). Since they added the US, it might be helpful to stick Russia (and perhaps China) in there too.

jqm 12y ago
Especially Russia. They are not a minor player in the area as evidenced by the Syria conflict.

PeterisP 12y ago

Countries don't have friends or enemies, they have interests - which (at the moment) may happen to align or cross each other.

emilsedgh 12y ago
When the conflict of interests is too fundumental, they consider themselves enemies :) And of course there are countries which are enemies due to ideology.
- rolux 12y ago
  Either way, congratulations to Slate for reducing politics in the Middle East to three types of smileys. Their readers must love that kind of stuff.
  - tormeh 12y ago
    Simplification is a good thing. And the middle east desperately needs some. Sure, the foreign ministries of the world shouldn't use this chart, but that's not really the audience here.
    - rolux 12y ago
      I disagree. After more than a decade of "good vs. evil" and "either with us or with the enemy" propaganda, what the audience needs is the precise opposite of this type of chart.
PavlovsCat 12y ago
I'd say countries don't even have interests, people in them have them. No country, and hardly any person, is a monolith.

sam88 12y ago

The chart is over simplification and lacks any depth for such relationships, for example, Jordan and Saudi, both friendly with Israel and have been funding ISIS, yet there is no mention of Jordan, Qatar too, too tiny yet playing a very big role in this mess, not there at all. The main player in all relationship in the middle east is the US and Israel, the rest is not much.

sam88 12y ago
I think the best thing that has been written on the Middle East is Walid Khalidi, ed., From Haven to Conquest. But as a rule of thumb,"When governments are loyal to the US (Israel, Ukraine, etc), the US calls for disarming of all militias and groups that are opposed to those governments. But in the cases of governments that are opposed to the US (Syria, Iran, Cuba, etc) the US funds and arms militias against those governments."
jqm 12y ago
Exactly. The lack of note of some of the original funding sources for ISIS makes me regard the chart as bogus and maybe even misleading. There are groups who don't want to see Iran (nor Russia for that matter) grow any more powerful in the region, and these are defiantly somewhat happy about the emergence of ISIS if not also surreptitiously supporting them. Putting these countries as frowny on the chart is not really very accurate even if they profess disdain in public (which they politically have to for an outlaw group like this). I hope the US is not in this group but wouldn't swear they are not. At minimum, some of the "friends" of the US are in this group. The absence of Russia on the chart is another reason not to take it very seriously. Overall.... this is like a 4'th grade view of alliances in the mid-east. Not really very useful.

piggyback 12y ago

This chart is at the very least incomplete and inaccurate if not blatantly false. To accuse Iran of cooperating with Al Qaeda while claiming that Saudi Arabia does not is audacious. Saudi Arabia spreads the most violent branch of Islam (Wahhabism/Salafism) through indoctrination as well as direct funding for terrorism. Just look at the perpetrators of 9/11, all of whom were Sunni Arabs, most of them from Saudi Arabia. The same goes for Qatar, which is missing in the chart. Hamas and Iran broke up because the former (Sunni) joined the fight against the Syria government, which is supported by Iran. Iran is neither Sunni nor Arab, groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS would love to commit genocide against Iranians. They don't have any real allies and have propped up a few Shia proxies in Iraq and the Levant. Others are missing, like the Kurds, so is the the link to Central/South Asia as well, i.e. AfPak. Without Pakistan Al Qaeda and the Taliban could have not existed. It should be noted that the Pakistani government and military are bought and paid for by the Arab states in the Persian Gulf, where Pakistani mercenaries protect the Monarchs from their civilian population, Bahrain being a notable example: the majority of Bahrainis are Shia and they are naturally friendly with Iran/Iraq. Their government, however, is run by the same kind of Sunnis that control countries like Kuwait and the UAE.

nl 12y ago
I think this chart reflects the position of county's government. The Saudi government doesn't support Al Qaeda and has a careful relationship with Wahhabism (as they see both as potential threats to their powerbase). Al Qaeda (the core part anyway) has never really had an anti-Shia bent (or, interestingly, anti-Israel) and Iran did tolerate some movement of Al Qaeda and Taliban through their territories. Iran did have a real ally: the Syrian government of Assad. Even that was a difficult relationship prior to the fall of Hussein in Iraq because Assad was a Ba'athist (which is a secular ideology opposed to Iran's theocracy) and Hussein was also Ba'athist (Iraq and Iran were enemies since the Iranian revolution for those who missed that bit). Ba'athism is pretty much irrelevant today, but until the 1990s it was one of the factors that shaped the Middle Wast we see now. Edit: I assume the downvotes mean I'm factually incorrect about something. I'd appreciate enlightenment.
- sam88 12y ago

politician 12y ago

Is a matrix plot the best way of visualizing this when all of the relationships are reciprocated in kind?

wslh 12y ago
I added a graph using graphviz here https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByAekPg2AgZoQUFGdl8yd1h3SWs https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByAekPg2AgZoQUFGdl8yd1h3SWs

m0skit0 12y ago

From an arab: overly simplified but a good start for most people who just have no idea and talk nonsense (which are a lot).

wslh 12y ago

Uh, this is what happen when you practice data visualization abuse.

wslh 12y ago
I translated it to the following graph. No nodes, bad relationship. You can copy the source to: http://graphviz-dev.appspot.com/ http://graphviz-dev.appspot.com/ Image at: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByAekPg2AgZoQUFGdl8yd1h3SWs/edit https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByAekPg2AgZoQUFGdl8yd1h3SWs/... digraph g{ AlQaida -> Iran [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] AlQaida -> Hamas [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] Iran -> Egypt [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] Egypt -> Iraq [arrowhead="none"] Egypt -> Israel [arrowhead="none"] PalestinianAuthority -> Egypt [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] SaudiArabia -> Egypt [arrowhead="none"] US -> Egypt [arrowhead="none"] Hamas -> Hezbollah [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] Hamas -> Iran [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] Hamas -> Iraq [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] Hamas -> PalestinianAuthority [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] Hamas -> SaudiArabia [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] Hamas -> Turkey [arrowhead="none"] Hezbollah -> Iran [arrowhead="none"] Hezbollah -> Iraq [arrowhead="none"] Hezbollah -> PalestinianAuthority [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] Hezbollah -> Turkey [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] Hezbollah -> Syria [arrowhead="none"] Iran -> Iraq [arrowhead="none"] Iran -> PalestinianAuthority [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] Iran -> Syria [arrowhead="none"] Iraq -> PalestinianAuthority [arrowhead="none"] Iraq -> Syria [arrowhead="none"] Iraq -> US [arrowhead="none"] ISIS Israel -> SaudiArabia [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] Israel -> Turkey [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] Israel -> US [arrowhead="none"] SaudiArabia -> PalestinianAuthority [arrowhead="none"] Turkey -> PalestinianAuthority [arrowhead="none"] Syria -> PalestinianAuthority [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] US -> PalestinianAuthority [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] Syria -> Turkey [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"] US -> SaudiArabia [arrowhead="none"] }

EGreg 12y ago

It would be interesting to find the "basis vectors" of issues, if you will, underpinning this matrix. They seem to be: Israel-Palestinians, Syria's Civil War, Egypt's Overthrow, and the new Iraqi state. So, if the issues would be resolved in the most peaceful way, namely: Egypt's current government continuing to exist Israel and Palestinian Authority defeating Hamas and working towards a peace deal Iraq getting stable borders (with Kurds using political struggle only) Syria - probably the overthrow would maximize peace at this point, esp given the resolution above ousting Hamas The big winners would be: USA Israel Palestinian Authority Egypt Rebels in Syria Iran (even though Assad lost) And the big losers would be: Hamas ISIS Hezbollah Meanwhile: Al Qaeda and USA will keep fighting Turkey has recently had its own set of protests against Erdogan, and it's unclear where its future lies With ISIS gone, Saudi Arabia and Qatar will continue to have stable states favoring Sunni Wahhabism Iraq will probably become one of the fastest growing economies in the middle east Iran will go from being polarized to roughly moderate in its connections, esp if a peace agreement is reached with Israel, the Assad regime is ousted, and Iraq is a stable and friendly state Jordan would enjoy further peace and the Palestinian Authority's new confidence since the ouster of Hamas etc. may prove a strong factor for Jordan's relations with its Palestinian majority, which would take away focus from Israel-Palestinian conflict The new Syrian government would aspire to join the Arab League but may consider giving Palestinian refugees citizenship, which will play a factor in Israel-PA deals

dannypgh 12y ago
Hamas won free and fair elections. Peace must come from negotiations with Hamas; it can't be predicated on their destruction.
- victorhooi 12y ago
  Well, yeah, except for the slight part about how they're a terrorist organisation? I mean, the Quarter (the Quartet (United States, Russia, United Nations, and European Union) basically said, we can recognise you, but you have to commit to non-violence etc. And Hamas was like, no, screw you guys, we're going to keep rocketing and bombing all the civilians we like...I mean, Israel's going to cave eventually, if we keep shooting rockets at their citizens, right?

oxama 12y ago

lol! ISIS has no friends at all

jqm 12y ago
Ya they do. Some very powerful ones. Or else they never would have been allowed to get to the point they are at now. If they get big enough they will get a haircut. They won't be allowed to actually rule for long probably. But as long as they keep causing trouble for the enemies of enemies they might be allowed to keep taking over caches of weapons (whoop!..but hey, we aren't arming terrorists! they just stole them!).

amiune 12y ago

Just execute Floyd–Warshall algorithm for transitive closure :)

viggity 12y ago

TL;DR everyone pretty much hates everyone else.

WorldWideWayne 12y ago

I don't know anything about this stuff, but I wonder - is it completely improbable that "Al Qaida" could actually be a group of agent provocateurs invented by some part of the military/industrial complex to scare up support for their actions?

hiharryhere 12y ago

Where's Jordan in all of this?

ahamino 12y ago

As a middleastern, I find this very incorrect and stereotypical.

ilaksh 12y ago

This chart is deceptive because it focuses on details of micro relationships while ignoring alignment of factions with global powers vying for control over resources and political influence, which has been stirring this pot on and off for thousands of years. The western media portrays these battles as isolated internal disputes, and while there are very serious regional disputes, they are influenced by external powers like the US and Russia. Similar to the way in previous epochs groups like Muslim or Roman empires affected outcomes or took advantage of regional conflicts. It is a crucible. I believe that the biggest driver is still fossil fuels. Yes, solar and other systems are rapidly replacing a portion of the energy demand, but still, the critical need for oil cannot be understated. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_consumption http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_consum.... You can see that this is quite an unequal distribution. The need to maintain that is what puts pressure on that region and causes regional animosities to be taken advantage of in order to move power over to groups siding with dominant forces. Even though solar and other energy sources are gaining ground, the industrial reliance on fossil fuels is a much tougher nut to crack, and I actually believe that creating viable industrial production processes based on bio-fuels or significantly different chemistry is the key to 'peace in the Middle East'. Obviously, bad blood between groups going back thousands of years does not go away just because someone invented a non-fossil-fuel-based industrial precursor, but the motivation for stirring up those conflicts in order to further political power of one group gets reduced. There are other aspects to this aside from fossil fuels. The fire for the crucible is fueled generally by the global power struggle which has other aspects like currency domination. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_hegemony http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_hegemony or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Great_Game http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Great_Game. For some people, for example, those who read western media which is full of talk of local "evil dictators" and "terrorists", framing things this way will be very controversial. My next paragraph will probably be even more controversial for everyone. I believe that hegemony and centralized control (at least on a physical regional level) could someday be supplanted by global cyber-states. In other words, the borders are not dictated so much by the map or actual physical areas, but by alignments with global systems of political power and organization, connected by internets. There will likely be multiple internets controlled by different global factions, since controlling these internets is key to controlling the global organizations. Technologies like advanced 3d printing (eventually moving into the area of programmable matter), and free information flow may democratize force so that power over life and death, and therefore ultimate political control, moves from central authorities into the hands of individuals and more regional groups. At the same time, this type of technology could enable the global super-cyberstates as it would enable any group with sufficient control of a net to nearly instantly muster military assets at any point around the world. I can go so far as to frame all of this as a need for good tools and systems for knowledge management and securing human needs, with the two interacting. One of the core problems for knowledge management systems is how to promote an efficient, integrated, holistic view of the system, while still providing a strong capability for the evolution and maintenance of divergent branches or systems which evolve in new and beneficial directions. Or just, divergent branches which allow localized freedom in the knowledge graph, which may later lead in beneficial directions. An example of this is different standards or platforms competing for dominance in technology. Based on a certain platform of solutions and set of common assumptions, a set of new problems arises, and many different groups and individuals solve those problems in relative isolation. In order to move on to solving the next set of problems, or for the overall group to gain the advantages of the new solutions in a way that integrates with previous efforts, a certain solution set is selected. The particular process by which solutions are selected and integrated into the system, or multiple interacting systems, affects everyone working towards the advancement or maintenance of the systems greatly. Github is a concrete example of this. There seems to be a tendency towards a very small number of systems which exhibit high coupling and low cohesion. But maybe that view is too mechanistic and low-level, and a higher level view which better incorporates abstraction has a different problem. Creating an abstraction prunes redundant solutions but also often discards less generally relevant information that may however be important in certain circumstances. Abstractions are powerful because their hierarchical structure allows individual nodes to leverage aggregate powers of branches. This hierarchical structure is also a disadvantage though in terms of the reliance that leaves have on the integrity of each branch. Compositional rather than hierarchical structures can provide the same power of abstraction without the brittleness and central-point-of-failure that hierarchies have. It seems though that more compositional networked structures tend to converge towards what are effectively hierarchies. Anyway, I think that there must be some tools or processes or perspectives that would provide for somehow more optimal evolutions of structures. Probably some that are not discovered or in common use. In case anyone read all of this and knows of some relevant links, please let me know.

scaramanga 12y ago

It's pretty simple. Any country which is receiving massive US aid is friends with other countries receiving massive US aid. In some cases the frienship is a sort of "secret" (eg. Saudi Arabia and Israel) or "complicated" because officially, for appearances sake, they should align on religion or something. Iran used to be part of the USA club when it had the brutal murderous dictator. But now it's enemy to the USA club as soon as they overthrew the dictator.

kumarski 12y ago

wow. Didn't expect this much of a response.

the_watcher 12y ago

Basic takeaway - the relationships between players in the Middle East is much more complicated than state-state relations, and stated positions of the players are not necessarily comprehensive in summing up the relations. Also - this chart seems like it could change incredibly frequently (Iran's friendship with Iraq is relatively recent, 6 months ago ISIS would have far more friends, etc.)