This Just Became The Most Important Map In Geopolitics
Earlier today, in “Mid-East Melee: Sectarian Showdown Looms As Bahrain Cuts Ties With Iran, UAE Recalls Ambassador,” we brought you the latest from the war-torn Mid-East where a worsening spat between Saudi Arabia and Iran threatens to plunge the region into chaos.
Make no mistake, things were already out of control. The conflict in Syria has mushroomed into a global proxy war, Iraq is struggling to drive Islamic State from key cities, and Yemen remains mired in war nine months after the Saudis entered the fray to drive back the Houthis and restore the Hadi government.
Against that backdrop, the region could have done without the events that unfolded over the weekend. By executing prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr, Riyadh has infuriated the Shiite community which took to the streets in protest, even going so far as to firebomb the Saudi embassy in Tehran.
In order to understand the upcoming sectarian strife and in order to fully grasp who belongs to Iran’s sphere of influence and who is loyal to the Saudis, one needs to have a working knowledge of what the Sunni-Shiite split looks like across the region. Because this is set to become the key geopolitical issue in the weeks and months ahead, we thought it an opportune time to present the following map from Goldman which does a nice job of delineating the sectarian split. Note the asterisks which indicate the affiliation of a country’s leadership.
From Goldman
Where are the main sectarian and ethnic divides in the Middle East today? Saudi Arabia and Iran, with their large respective Sunni and Shiite majorities, are generally viewed as two major opposing forces in the Middle East. They lie on opposite sides of an abstract and somewhat contentious demarcation known as the Shiite crescent, an area of Shiite influence stretching from Iran through southern Iraq and into parts of Syria and Lebanon.
The region’s geopolitical, religious, and sectarian relationships are in reality more dynamic and complex. The conflict in Syria continues to pit anti-government insurgents, including Sunni Islamists, against the Alawite (Shiite) government’s forces and Shiite militias supported by Iran. In Iraq, some Sunnis have felt increasingly disenfranchised under the Shiite-majority government in Baghdad (a relatively new development given Iraq’s long history of Sunni rule). The Islamic State (IS) militant group has exploited this sentiment, particularly in the Sunni-majority areas of northern Iraq.
How are the different branches of Islam represented in politics? In some countries, such as Saudi Arabia, the rulers adhere to the same branch of Islam as the majority of their citizens. However, this is not always the case. Despite being predominantly Shiite, Iraqis lived under Sunni rulers for much of history, including under the Ottoman Empire and the Ba’thist regime of Saddam Hussein. (Ba’thists are members of the Arab Socialist Ba’th Party, a political party founded in Syria in the 1940s on platforms of Arab nationalism and anti- colonialism. In Iraq, the Ba’thists governed from 1958 until the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.) The Iraqi Ba’thist regime was secular in name but reserved political influence for the Sunni elite. In a break from its long history of Sunni political dominance, Iraq is currently ruled by a Shiite-majority government centered in Baghdad. Conversely, in Sunni-majority Syria, members of the Shiite Alawite sect have controlled the government since 1970.
What is the composition of Sunnis and Shiites in the Muslim world today? Sunnis make up the majority of Muslims worldwide – an estimated 85-90%. Sunnis comprise 85% or more of the Muslim populations in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates, and 70-85% in Kuwait, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Shiites comprise the majority in Bahrain, Iraq, and Azerbaijan (all 60-65% Shiite), as well as in Iran (90-95%), home of the largest Shiite population. Although the Middle East and North Africa region is overwhelmingly Muslim (93%), it is home to only around 20% of Muslims worldwide. The majority – over 60% – lives in the Asia-Pacific region.
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Criminal putin regime has done many international crimes and as things gets worse and judgment day approaches faster by each day (MH17 crash: Dutch investigators to assess new study implicating Russian soldiers) so does people – both involved and who managed invasion in Ukraine and occupation, annexation of Crimea and downing MH17 killing 298 people – dies more and more by each day.
Because: dead men don’t talk.
2750 degrees
Ronald S. Lauder was on the board of directors of the NY board of privatization. He is the key individual who lobbied for the privatization of the WTC, but he also got Stewart Airport, formerly Stewart AFB, to become privatized. Oddly, the flightpaths of flight 175 and flight 11 converged directly over this airport.
Lauder is active in the following organizations:
-Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations
-Jewish National Fund
-World Jewish Congress
-American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
-Anti-Defamation League
-Jewish Theological Seminary
Lauder has funded a school for the Mossad in Herzliya, Israel.
Latvian potato farmers have been accused of causing widespread potato crop failure across the Baltics due to their meanness in spraying their own blight-infested potatos with appropriate chemicals to control it.
"Latvian potato farmers en route to potato-blight meeting"
Wars of Religion. My father's Huguenot predecessors fled to England, from France, as a result of the strife between catholics and protestants there. POTUS says, "calm down!" Quite clearly, he hasn't been to Boston, raising money for the IRA! Religion is an explosive force within all of us. Nothing is more awful, intractable and less amenable to rational response than a War of Religion. Wars of Religion kick sand in every hegemon's face.
Seems to me the idea of an Indo-MENA might be wise with Turkey and Syria left to assimilate into the European Union in time. Who knows perhaps Israel will see the sense in time taking the Lebanon in too. They do participate in the Eurovision afterall and that tends to mean a-lot, lets face it. You have one vast East-West contiguous region from Afghanistan to Nigeria. Perhaps people are looking at the map the wrong way round. Reconfiguring the old Ottoman Empire may not make sense no more.
As an RC Christian, Islam and the Koran counfounds me though I concede that the concept of the Holy Trinity is challenging and perhaps inaccurate the Holy Spirt being an entitty and Jesus having said he was the corporeal representation and manifestation of the Father. So the Islamic saying 'There is only one God', is to an extent a matter of interpretation assuming one accepts the divinity of Jesus. Muhammed could be represented as a marshal saint should anyone care to re-invest in the notion of the Abrahamic Faith Triad, which exisits at an entirely bogus level as far as all three Faith systems are concerned. It seems incredible that these kinds of disputes could be going on in the world today at this critical time.
As the Africans say 'When elephants fight the grass suffers'. But it seems to me religion is beyond theological resolutions and that it will simply be an issue if which credos manage to keep pace with progressive changes like the influence of feminism and impact of new technologies not to mention climate change, food-shortages and resource issues. Islam is going to go through a melt-down one way or another. Managing that process is the real issue. The Mullahs will alienate the Faithful who may be as indifferent to the supposed divisions as Westerners are.
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