Middle East Geography Remix

September 5, 2006 6:26 PM

What would the Middle East look like if there was a just realignment of its international borders? Ralph Peters, writing for the Armed Forces Journal, performed such a Gedankenexperiment. The before and the after.
posted by Falconetti (38 comments total)

Interesting that no border changes at all in this vision are contemplated for Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Kuwait.
posted by blucevalo at 6:38 PM on September 5, 2006

You know I've always said that part of the problem in the Middle East is that most of their borders were drawn up pretty arbitrarily by Britain and friends back in the early 20th, therefore I like this experimental map.
posted by Vindaloo at 6:39 PM on September 5, 2006

The Saudis will not be happy.
posted by takeyourmedicine at 6:42 PM on September 5, 2006

There's Kurdistan, but still no Palestine.
posted by jam_pony at 6:43 PM on September 5, 2006 [1 favorite]

I am relieved to see that Kuwait would retain it's Darth Vader helmet-outline. Other than this, I don't see the "I KEEL YOU! I KEEL YOU!" mindset altering much, especially after the mass migrations to the new homelands.
posted by longsleeves at 6:45 PM on September 5, 2006

Iraq extending into the oil-rich Eastern province of Saudi Arabia? the guy who drew this map has a sense of humor. That area includes pretty much every major Saudi oilfield besides Ghawar.
posted by clevershark at 6:45 PM on September 5, 2006

How is it possible to have a "just" realignment without consideration for watersheds, natural resources, access to logistical hubs, etc? What happens when Kurdistan builds a dam on the headwaters of the Tigress River?
posted by humanfont at 6:51 PM on September 5, 2006

i guess we didn't learn anything from woodrow wilson and the disaster that is eastern europe.
posted by sergeant sandwich at 6:51 PM on September 5, 2006

Is there any reason that Baghdad get to be a city-state?
posted by giantfist at 6:52 PM on September 5, 2006

posted by jam_pony: There's Kurdistan, but still no Palestine.

Exactly. What the hell's up with that?
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:53 PM on September 5, 2006

Myself, I prefer the Rumsfeldian re-draw.
posted by washburn at 6:58 PM on September 5, 2006

Peters is a truly first-rate novelist, of "literary", not merely thriller quality -- and all of his novels express a deep distrust for and cynicism about leaders. His meditation on loyalty and betrayal in Bravo Romeo, his first novel, is so searing I find it painful but always rewarding to re-read. His Red Army I've re-read and enjoyed several times, and I always appreciate his risky conclusion. Flames of Heaven -- so far as I can tell -- captures the Russian spirit and the Muslim mind, and is unflinching in its treatment of the characters, almost all of whom are sacrificed to one thing or another. AndTraitor., while a lesser work, is the paean to nor detective thrillers Peters intended. Really, a great writer

In all his books, his sympathy for, and evocation of, the depravations we ask common soldier to endure, in addition to risking their lives, is something every American should understand.

Which is why it surprises me that his political opinions are so reactionary (see his smearing on Howard Dean in 2004) and his support for the misbegotten quagmire of the Iraq War so solid.

(I had wanted to do an FPP on Peters's literary work contrasted to his non-fiction opinions, but Metafilter's restrictive format is such that I couldn't figure a way to do it that wouldn't have provoked shrill partisan complaints of "not best of the web" or GYOB, so I decided the hell with it.)
posted by orthogonality at 6:58 PM on September 5, 2006

The creater of the map addresses (sometimes unsatisfactorily) many of the questions posed in the comments in the accompanying article (linked through "Gedankenexperiment").
posted by Falconetti at 6:59 PM on September 5, 2006

orthogonality writes "nor detective thrillers "

noir
posted by orthogonality at 6:59 PM on September 5, 2006

Um, check out the acronym for his proposed Saudi state ...
posted by gubo at 7:05 PM on September 5, 2006

Yeah, I'm trying to figure out why exactly Kuwait still exists on that map. . .
posted by Jimbob at 7:06 PM on September 5, 2006

That's adorable, the way he "gives" the Pakistan-controlled portion of Kashmir to -- wait for it -- Afghanistan.
posted by CommonSense at 7:06 PM on September 5, 2006

Justice at last for the Armenian Diaspora.
posted by Kwantsar at 7:18 PM on September 5, 2006

gubo writes "Um, check out the acronym for his proposed Saudi state ..."

hehe. Well, without oil or the Muslim holy lands, what's left of Saudi Arabia? Even Ghawar won't keep producing forever.
posted by clevershark at 7:22 PM on September 5, 2006

Whistles ....

Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Now it's Turkish delight on a moonlit night

Every gal in Constantinople
Lives in Istanbul, not Constantinople
So if you've a date in Constantinople
She'll be waiting in Istanbul ....
posted by R. Mutt at 7:24 PM on September 5, 2006

Damn, I was putting together a post on efforts to redraw the world that included this map among a number of others. Ah, well, sometimes you get scooped.

posted by jam_pony: There's Kurdistan, but still no Palestine.

That is because the accompanying article talks about the difficulty of establishing which country should control the land after Israel vacates (note the extended Jordan into Saudi Arabia, for instance):

For Israel to have any hope of living in reasonable peace with its neighbors, it will have to return to its pre-1967 borders — with essential local adjustments for legitimate security concerns. But the issue of the territories surrounding Jerusalem, a city stained with thousands of years of blood, may prove intractable beyond our lifetimes. Where all parties have turned their god into a real-estate tycoon, literal turf battles have a tenacity unrivaled by mere greed for oil wealth or ethnic squabbles. So let us set aside this single overstudied issue and turn to those that are studiously ignored.

The most glaring injustice in the notoriously unjust lands between the Balkan Mountains and the Himalayas is the absence of an independent Kurdish state. There are between 27 million and 36 million Kurds living in contiguous regions in the Middle East (the figures are imprecise because no state has ever allowed an honest census). Greater than the population of present-day Iraq, even the lower figure makes the Kurds the world's largest ethnic group without a state of its own. Worse, Kurds have been oppressed by every government controlling the hills and mountains where they've lived since Xenophon's day.

posted by blahblahblah at 7:26 PM on September 5, 2006

blahblahblah, when making this post, I was thinking it would be so much better if I had links to a bunch of other attempts to redraw the world, so I hope you still make your post (I was too lazy to attempt what you were doing).
posted by Falconetti at 7:30 PM on September 5, 2006

Peters is a truly first-rate novelist . . . Which is why it surprises me that his political opinions are so reactionary (see his smearing on Howard Dean in 2004) and his support for the misbegotten quagmire of the Iraq War so solid.

I'm not familiar with the gentleman, but he certainly isn't the first novelist to hold unpleasant political opinions. (Or, for that matter, to be a profoundly unpleasant human being.)

If you doubt me, just ask the ghost of William "Television Is For Niggers" Faulkner.

Anyhow . . . why does Jordan get all that land in Saudi Arabia? What deep tie of blood and soil gives the Jordanian monarchy, ruling over a majority of displaced Palestinians, a claim to that real estate? Just curious.
posted by jason's_planet at 8:16 PM on September 5, 2006

Besides blucevalo's observations concerning the lack of changes for Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Kuwait and jam pony's on Palestine, this guy must not like Syria: he gives its coast to Greater Lebanon and still leaves Antioch with Turkey. It'd be far more logical to establish a Greater Syria by restoring those territories stolen by France during the its "mandate." He also penalises Iran by giving the ex-Iraqi Arab Shia State its access to the Shatt al-Arab, Abadan and Khorramshahr, leaving it get by with Bandar-e `Abas, which is not much of a seaport; that's backwards as, for several hundreds of years at a time over the course of 2.5 millennia, Basra the rest of Kuwait, and the west coast of the Persian Gulf were Persian -- as was Baghdad for that matter. Does he hate all Shi'ites the CIA does not control?
posted by davy at 8:41 PM on September 5, 2006

The future maps of the Middle East will be drawn with blast radii for borders and radiation symbols for cities. The trips to the Holy Land will be in radiation suits, in Hummers fortified to withstand the attacks by the giant mutant desert wolves.

I was kidding about the wolves.
posted by adipocere at 8:50 PM on September 5, 2006

humanfont, I love your spelling of "Tigris." And for the chickenhawks, will the new map include the "You 'fraidies"?
posted by rob511 at 8:55 PM on September 5, 2006

I'm a much bigger proponent of a returning the Ottoman Empire to power. Forget this Balkanization rubbish, give us ONE government - good or evil - to deal with.



posted by trinarian at 9:26 PM on September 5, 2006

Because redrawing borders based on religion and ethnicity worked so well on the Indian sub-continent, eh?

While he's right that arbitrary borders have caused problems in the Middle East, Mr. Peters doesn't seem to have more knowledge about the region than the Brits who drew the current borders while drinking tea in London.

Although, sticking it to the Wahhabist twits does have a certain appeal...
posted by QIbHom at 11:05 PM on September 5, 2006

commonsense: Missed that, thanks for pointing it out. Whodathunk Kashmir (or Pakistan) would feature in a re-drawing of Middle East boundaries?

(Told entirely non-snarkily, of course).

Interesting, again, that the author merely gave Mt Ararat to Armenia and nothing else; not that I have special insight into Armenian history, but I've heard accounts calling (the current state of) Armenia as 'East Armenia', and lands west of Diyabakir in Asia Minor as 'West Armenia'. I understand that there are dialectal differences between East and West Armenian as well. Also interesting that he 'gives' Nagorno-Karobakh to the Armenians, while granting a sort of corridor from Azerbaijan to the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic via Iran.

All in all, though, this seems like another exercise in sophomoric humour (Arab Shia State and the Saudi Homelands Independent Territories?!) rather than emotionally-genuine, if flawed, geo-political analysis.
posted by the cydonian at 11:23 PM on September 5, 2006

I'm tempted to agree that the Ottoman Empire was better than what's been there since, as well as superior to these proposed further redrawings. For its last couple hundred years it wasn't much of an empire, a "government that governs least", while the small states that replaced it have been tyrannies (especially Israel). But then my historical and/or geopolitical judgment may be a bit clouded by fatigue and bourbon at the moment. I am however absolutely sure that Israel is a further blight on a blighted area, like a chancre on a melanoma.
posted by davy at 11:46 PM on September 5, 2006

jason's planet> The Jordanian royal family is related to the rulers of Mecca and Medina prior to the Sykes-Picot treaty through complex monarchical family ties.

The Hussein (no relation to Saddam) family were installed in a number of monarchies throughout the middle East after the first world war as rewards for rising up against the Turks at the urging of T. E. Lawrence. Several of those monarchies (Syria, Iraq, Lebanon IIRC) have been overthrown or revolted from the control of their previous kings, but the Jordanian kings have remained in power. Much of the territory the cartographer gives to the Hussein family are their ancestral lands.

I'm not aware if the House of Saud and the House of Hussein are related, I must admit. I would presume they are at least distantly. I'm also not the greatest fan of monarchy or the house of Hussein, so please don't take the above as an endorsement of the cartographer's choice. I'm simply trying to answer your question.
posted by Pseudoephedrine at 12:59 AM on September 6, 2006

How about we stop drawing borders for them, and let them figure it out for themselves?
posted by moonbiter at 3:53 AM on September 6, 2006

While The Cydonian alluded to the dubious acronyms for the Arab Shia State and the Saudi Homeland Independent Territory, the text of the article goes one better, referring to them as:

"a rump Saudi Homelands Independent Territory"

and

"an Arab Shia State rimming much of the Persian Gulf"

(emphasis mine)

both of which should have President Fartjoke just clutching his sides.
posted by kcds at 4:42 AM on September 6, 2006

This will inevitably lead to an ASS-SHIT war.
posted by kirkaracha at 6:32 AM on September 6, 2006

moonbiter writes "How about we stop drawing borders for them, and let them figure it out for themselves?"

I'm not advocating redrawing borders or any other middle east restructuring but a multi year middle east wide war is going to be a humanitarian disaster and very bad for business and global stability. Especially since Turkey is part of NATO and Israel has the backing of the US.
posted by Mitheral at 6:44 AM on September 6, 2006

All in all, though, this seems like another exercise in sophomoric humour (Arab Shia State and the Saudi Homelands Independent Territories?!) rather than emotionally genuine, if flawed, geo-political analysis.

Yeah, this is just silly. But ortho, you've got me very interested in the guy's novels. Will investigate.

The Hussein (no relation to Saddam) family were installed in a number of monarchies throughout the middle East after the first world war as rewards for rising up against the Turks at the urging of T. E. Lawrence... Much of the territory the cartographer gives to the Hussein family are their ancestral lands.

1) Of course there's "no relation to Saddam," since Hussein is not Saddam's family name, it's his father's name. It wasn't the family name of the ruling family of the Hejaz, either, just the name of the Sherif at the time war broke out. Guys named Hussein aren't any more related than guys named Joe.

2) Hussein ibn Ali, the Sherif of Mecca, did not rise up against the Turks at the urging of T. E. Lawrence—that's one of Lawrence's many self-promoting myths. He rebelled because he discovered the Turkish government was planning to replace him.

3) The "ancestral lands" of the Hashimite Sherifs of Mecca (not the family of Hussein, who just happened to occupy the position at the time) were Mecca and Medina and the surrounding area (known as the Hijaz). They had no rights whatever to the vast and mostly waste lands of the rest of what is now Saudi Arabia (and thanks, Britain, for supporting Ibn Saud during WWI and thus creating the vicious and corrupt theocracy that's now making the world miserable with its oil wealth).

I'm not aware if the House of Saud and the House of Hussein are related, I must admit. I would presume they are at least distantly

Only in the sense that everyone on earth is related.
posted by languagehat at 6:44 AM on September 6, 2006

"How about we stop drawing borders for them, and let them figure it out for themselves?"

We are they and and they are we. That said, figuring out where borders are is usually referred to as "war".
posted by longsleeves at 6:03 PM on September 6, 2006

Concise antimetabole, longsleeves.
posted by Falconetti at 9:49 PM on September 6, 2006