CHAPTER 8 A Geographic Profile of the Middle East and North Africa Joe Hobbs Egypt’s St. Katherine Monastery, built in the sixth century, lies at the foot of Jebel Musa—a mountain believed by many to be the Biblical Mount Sinai. 198 Section 8.1 Area and Population 199 chapter outline 8.1 Area and Population 8.4 Economic Geography 8.2 Physical Geography and Human Adaptations 8.5 Geopolitical Issues 8.3 Cultural and Historical Geographies chapter objectives This chapter should enable you to: Appreciate the problems of control over fresh water in this arid region Understand and explain the mostly beneficial relationships be- tween villagers, pastoral nomads, and city dwellers in an envi- Know what al-Qa’ida and other Islamist terrorist groups are ronmentally challenging region and what they want Know the basic beliefs and sacred places of Jews, Christians, and Muslims Recognize the importance of petroleum to this region and the Look for this logo in the text and go to GeographyNow at world economy http://earthscience.brookscole.com/wrg5e to explore interactive Identify the geographic chokepoints and oil pipelines that are maps, view animations, sharpen your factual knowledge and among the world’s most strategically important places and geographic literacy, and test your critical thinking and analytical routes skills with unique interactive resources. he Middle East is a fitting designation for the places Africa more intelligible by illuminating the geographic con- and the cultures of this vital world region because they text within which they occur. T are literally in the middle. This is a physical cross- roads, where the continents of Africa, Asia, and Europe meet and the waters of the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean mingle. Its peoples—Arab, Jew, Persian, Turk, Kurd, 8.1 Area and Population Berber, and others—express in their cultures and ethnicities What is the Middle East and where is it? The term itself is the coming together of these diverse influences. Occupying as Eurocentric, created by the British who placed themselves in they do this strategic location, the nations of the Middle East the figurative center of the world. They began to use the term and North Africa have through five millennia been unwilling prior to the outbreak of World War I, when the Near East re- hosts to occupiers and empires originating far beyond their ferred to the territories of the Ottoman Empire in the Eastern borders. They have also bestowed upon humankind a rich Mediterranean region, the East to India, and the Far East to legacy that includes the ancient civilizations of Egypt and China, Japan, and the western Pacific Rim. With Middle East, Mesopotamia and the world’s three great monotheistic faiths they designated as a separate region the countries around the of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Persian Gulf (known to Arabs as the Arabian Gulf, and in People outside the region tend to forget about such con- this text as the Persian /Arabian Gulf and simply The Gulf). tributions because they associate the Middle East and North Gradually, the perceived boundaries of the region grew. Africa with war and terrorism. These negative connotations Sources today vary widely in their interpretation of are often accompanied by muddled understanding. This is which countries are in the Middle East. For some, the perhaps the most inaccurately perceived region in the world. Middle East includes only the countries clustered around the Does sand cover most of the area? Are there camels every- Arabian Peninsula. For others, it spans a vast 6,000 miles where? Does everyone speak Arabic? Are Turks and Persians (9,700 km) west to east from Morocco in northwest Africa Arabs? Are all Arabs Muslims? The answer to each of these to Afghanistan in central Asia, and a north–south distance questions is no, yet popular Western media suggest other- of about 3,000 miles (4,800 km) from Turkey, on Europe’s wise. This and the following chapter attempt to make the southeastern corner, to Sudan, which adjoins East Africa misunderstood, complex, sometimes bloody, but often hope- (Figure 8.1). This is the region covered in these chapters, ful events and circumstances in the Middle East and North where it is referred to as “The Middle East and North 200 Chapter 8 A Geographic Profile of the Middle East and North Africa Political Geography 15˚W . I C T ROMANIA RUSSIA a UZBEKISTAN TAJIKISTAN R T s p O SPAIN A i P Black Sea a ATLANTIC L BULG. GEORGIA n Y TURKMENISTAN 30˚N ALB. ARM. AZER. S M E e OCEAN D G Kabul Algiers I Ankara a Rabat T N E R E TURKEY O R A C Tunis AFGHANISTAN T R E Tehran C T O U A C N E R N S I CYPRUS SYRIA O S E I M I A IRAN A Tripoli N LEBANONBeirut Baghdad Tro A Damascus K pic AR S E A Ca of H IRAQ nce SA ISRAEL Jerusalem A r N ALGERIA R Amman P TE S JORDAN KUWAIT Kuwait E Cairo P W er 20˚N sia BAHRAIN n G LIBYA SAUDI ulf Abu Doha Dhabi Muscat MAURITANIA EGYPT Riyadh QATAR R U.A.E. 20˚N e N d ARABIA A SENEGAL MALI M S Arabian e O a NIGER N Sea G U E I N San’a M E BURKINA FASO A CHAD Khartoum ERITREA E S.L. Y 10˚N L N I IVORY T I SUDAN B DJIBOUTI E O R N G I COAST E NIGERIA A GHANA O A B I N O ETHIOPIA L INDIAN E O CENTRAL qua tor R AFRICAN REP. A 0˚ E OCEAN 0 500 1000 mi. M M A tor C O Equa 0 500 1000 km. S 60˚E Figure 8.1 The Middle East and North Africa Africa.” The North African peoples of Morocco, Algeria, Egypt has the Nile River, and parts of Iran and Turkey have and Tunisia generally do not perceive themselves as Middle bountiful rain and snow. Conversely, where rain seldom Easterners; they are, rather, from what they call the Maghreb, falls, as in the Sahara of North Africa and in the Arabian meaning “the western land.” Many geographers would place Peninsula, people are few. Sudan in Africa South of the Sahara and Afghanistan in ei- The Middle East and North Africa as a whole have a high ther Central Asia or South Asia. Both are clearly border or rate of population growth. The rapid growth is a general in- transitional countries in regional terms, and in this text, they are placed in the Middle East and North Africa with consid- eration given to their characteristics of the other regions. Thus defined, the Middle East and North Africa include 21 countries, the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the disputed Western Sahara (Table 8.1), occupying 5.91 million square miles (15.32 million sq km) 30˚N and inhabited by about 479 million people as of mid-2004. This area is about 1.8 times the size of the lower 48 United ic of States and is generally situated at latitudes equivalent to Trop ncer those between Boston, Massachusetts, and Bogotá, Colom- Ca bia (Figure 8.2). These nearly half-billion people are not distributed evenly across the region but are concentrated in major clusters (Fig- ures 8.3a and b). Three countries contain the lion’s share of the region’s population: Turkey, Iran, and Egypt, each with E quato more than 65 million people. One look at a map of precipi- r tation or vegetation explains why people are clustered this way (see Figure 2.1, page 18, and Figures 8.5a and b). Where Figure 8.2 The Middle East and North Africa compared in water is abundant in this generally arid region, so are people. latitude and area with the conterminous United States Section 8.1 Area and Population 201 Table 8.1 The Middle East and North Africa: Basic Data Estimated Area Annual Rate Population Human Urban Per Estimated of Natural Density Develop- Popula- Arable Capita (thousand/ (thousand/ Population Increase ment tion Land GDP PPP Political Unit sq mi) sq km) (millions) (%) (sq mi) (sq km) Index (%) (%) ($U.S.) Middle East Afghanistan 251.8 652.2 28.5 2.7 113 44 N/A 22 12 700 Bahrain 0.3 0.8 0.7 1.7 2333 901 0.843 87 3 16,900 Iran 630.6 1633.3 67.4 1.2 107 41 0.732 67 8 7000 Iraq 169.2 438.2 25.9 2.7 153 59 N/A 68 13 1500 Israel 8.1 21.0 6.8 1.6 840 324 0.908 92 16 19,800 Jordan 34.4 89.1 5.6 2.4 163 63 0.750 79 2 4300 Kuwait 6.9 17.9 2.5 1.7 362 140 0.838 100 1 19,000 Lebanon 4 10.4 4.5 1.7 1125 434 0.758 87 16 4800 Oman 82 212.4 2.7 2.2 33 13 0.770 76 0 13,100 Palestinian Territories 2.4 6.2 3.8 3.5 1583 611 0.726 57 17 800 Qatar 4.2 10.9 0.7 1.6 167 64 0.833 92 1 21,500 Saudi Arabia 830 2149.7 25.1 3.0 30 12 0.768 86 1 11,800 Syria 71.5 185.2 18 2.4 252 97 0.710 50 25 3300 Turkey 299.2 774.9 71.3 1.4 238 92 0.751 59 31 6700 United Arab Emirates 32.3 83.7 4.2 1.4 130 50 0.824 78 0 23,200 Yemen 203.8 527.8 20 3.3 98 38 0.482 26 2 800 Total 2630.7 6813.5 287.7 2.0 207 80 0.728 60 8 6153 North Africa Algeria 919.6 2381.8 32.3 1.5 35 14 0.704 49 3 6000 Egypt 386.7 1001.6 73.4 2.0 190 73 0.653 43 3 4000 Libya 679.4 1759.6 5.6 2.4 8 3 0.794 86 1 6400 Morocco 172.4 446.5 30.6 1.5 177 69 0.620 57 19 4000 Sudan 967.5 2505.8 39.1 2.8 40 16 0.505 31 7 1900 Tunisia 63.2 163.7 10 1.1 158 61 0.745 63 18 6900 Western Sahara 97.2 251.7 0.3 2.1 3 1 N/A 0 0 N/A Total 3286 8510.7 191.3 1.9 123 47 0.634 46 5 4130 Summary Total 5916.7 15,324.2 479 1.9 160 62 0.690 54 6 5345 Source:World Population Data Sheet,Population Reference Bureau, 2004;U.N.Human Development Report,United Nations,2004;World Factbook,CIA,2004.