Afghanistan and Iraq dominated world attention.
Another essentially Western conflict between the
Israelis and Palestinians appeared no nearer to a
solution. Other enmities and conflicts within the
Arab world or between Arabs, Persians, Kurds and
ethnic and religious minorities have received far
less attention in the West. Westerners tend to see
these societies of complex religious and ethnic
diversity as much more homogeneously Arab and
Islamic than they are. Understanding the complex
divisions is a key to understanding the conflicts of
the Middle East. It is also true that, apart from
Turks, Kurds, Armenians, Jews and the Persians of
Iran, the Middle East is predominantly Arab, and
that the majority of Arabs are followers of Islam.
This has created a sense of cultural unity: the
Koran and the Arab spoken language help Arabs
to feel that they belong to one civilisation, and
hundreds of thousands of Egyptians, Palestinians
and other Arab nationals, mainly technicians,
teachers and students, work and feel at home in
Arab countries other than their own, principally in
the oil-rich Gulf states. Although Islam is the
dominant faith of the great majority of the peoples
of the Middle East, not all Muslims are Arabs. The
Turks, the Iranians and the Kurds are ethnically
quite distinct from the Arabs, as are many converts
to Islam. The ebb and flow of conquests is
reflected in the diverse cultures and religions of
the Middle East. This becomes clearer as one
looks at the populations country by country.
Modern Turkey, shorn of its Arab empire in
1919, was the most homogeneous of the large
Middle Eastern states. It was much less so by the
twenty-first century, with a minority of 14 million
Kurds among its total population of 73 million.
Syria’s population was about 17.2 million at the
beginning of the twenty-first century, of whom
more than 1 million belong to some eleven dif-
ferent Christian sects. Most Syrians are Sunni
Muslims, but a minority, the Alawite Muslim sect,
has built up a dominant military and political role
in recent years, though the Druze is another
Muslim sect of importance in Syrian political life.
In Aleppo there is a large Christian minority.
Iran (Persia) has a mainly Persian Shia Muslim
population of 36 million out of the whole popula-
tion of 70.3 million in 2004. The division of Islam
into Sunni and Shia occurred a generation after
the death of the Prophet Mohammed in AD632,
following a dispute over the succession to the
caliphate. Ali, Mohammed’s first cousin, lost this
contest, and his followers founded the Shia
branch, whose members look to their spiritual
leaders for divine guidance on the interpretation
of the Koran. The Sunni are also known as ortho-
dox Muslims. Differences between Shia and Sunni
have important political implications, for the Shias
are in a majority in Iran and in significant minori-
ties in neighbouring Lebanon. Worldwide, the
Shia branch comprises only one in ten Muslims. It
should be remembered that there are also non-
Arab Muslims such as the Sunni and Shia Kurds of
Iran, Iraq and Turkey. There are two major
minorities in Iran, 16 million Azeri Shiite Muslims
and some 5 million Kurds bordering Iraq’s Kurds.
Iraq reflects the chequered composition of
Middle Eastern countries. The majority of the
population at the start of the twenty-first century
are Shia Muslim Arabs, 16 million out of the total
population of 26 million (2004). They live in the
south of the country. Northern Iraq is predom-
inantly Kurd. But there are also Turcoman and
Assyrians. The Kurds follow the Sunni branch of
Muslims. They are not Arabs, have preserved their
national identity, language and culture despite
being partitioned between their neighbours,
Turkey, USSR, Iran and Iraq all anxious to sup-
press them as dangerous minorities. In Iraq there
are 4.6 million Kurds. The country between the
north and south is inhabited by 8.9 million
dominant Sunni Arabs placed in key positions of
power by Saddam Hussein, who is a Sunni Arab.
There is enmity between the Sunni Arab centre
and the Kurdish north despite the religious link.
In the capital Baghdad there was a large and pros-
perous Jewish community until persecution led to
their mass exodus in 1950 to 1951. In the region
around oil-rich Mosul there is an Assyrian
Christian minority. Iraq is an artificial creation,
once a pawn in the Middle Eastern carve-up by
the strongest powers in the region who intended
Iraq to create balance and stability to the region
with its important oil resources. After the First
World War it became a British League of Nations
Mandate. In the major cities, with rapid urbani-
sation, there is a mix of religions and ethnicity.
Baghdad is mainly Sunni and Basra, Shiite.