political conFlictS and Migration in the Mena StateS 165
a larger state of Morocco – i.e., the reintegration of Tarfaya (1958) and
Ifni (1969), the annulment of the international status of Tanger (1960),
the occupation of the West Sahara since November 1975, and repeated
claims over the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on Moroccan
territory. Every demonstrative show of Spanish sovereignty, such as the
visit by King Juan Carlos to Ceuta and Melilla in November 2007, is met
with massive protests on the part of the Moroccans. That visit also drew
the attention of the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaida, which threatened
attacks against Spanish, French and American targets in the Maghreb
(Anon. 2007; Chambraud 2007). These conf licts may be seen as part of
the process of decolonisation which, in the case of Morocco, is still not
complete. This is also the background to the demands of Iraq against
Kuwait, which led to the Gulf War of 1991. Currently, the Iranian claim
to the Tumb Islands in the Persian Gulf, which were occupied by the
Iranian army in 1971, seems to be regulated, inasmuch as there is no
tendency to give in to the claims of the UAE. The most recent example
of new territorial claims took place in August 2007, when the Iranian
newspaper Kayhan wrote that ‘Bahrain is an inseparable part of Iran
and should be returned to it’ (Mansharof & Rapoport 2007).
2 Conf licts arising because of imprecise or disputed border demarcation
stemming from colonial times. This is true, for example, for the southern
border between Morocco and Algeria (war of 1963; border agreement of
1972; border demarcation still in progress), the border between Tunisia
and Algeria (demarcation completed in December 1993), the border
between Libya and Algeria (Libyan territorial claims since 1976), the
border between Libya and Chad (occupation of the Aouzou Strip by
Libyan troops in 1973; pullback and restitution to Chad on 30 May 1994
following the arbitral verdict of the International Court of 3 February
1994) and the border between Sudan and Egypt, the latter of which, to
this day, disputes possession of the so-called Hala ́ib Triangle. In all of
these cases, economic factors – in particular the presumption of valuable
resources in the disputed areas – have played a major role. In the Middle
East a number of border disputes are still being or were recently resolved:
those between Bahrain and Qatar, solved through the intervention of the
International Court in the Hague on 16 March 2000 (Naim 2000), between
Qatar and Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Oman, and Saudi Arabia and Yemen.^8
8 The nearly 60-year-old border conf lict between the two states was peacefully resolved on
12 June 2000 by a border agreement (Detalle 2000).