166 Sigrid Faath and hanSpeter Mat teS
3 Conf licts concerning maritime borders or the exact course of borders for
the purpose of of fshore utilisation, in particular in the Mediterranean
Sea. Disputes surrounding the maritime borders between Tunisia and
Libya and between Libya and Malta were resolved by verdicts of the
International Court in 1982 and 1985, for the most part in favour of Libya.
In 1978, Italy and Tunisia signed their own border agreement. Because of
military escalation by the US in 1973 (provocations by the 6th US f leet),
the Libyan government decided to unilaterally declare the waterbodies
of the Gulf of Sidra south of latitude 32°30’ to be national entities. This
demand has yet to be recognised internationally. The Near East has
similar unresolved disputes concerning the course of maritime borders
(e.g., between Iran and the UAE, between Turkey and Greece in the
Aegean Sea, and between Syria and Cyprus), as well as examples of the
peaceful resolution of conf licts, such as the agreement between Oman
and Pakistan of 12 June 2000 concerning the f ixation of the maritime
border between the two countries. There have been no direct military
altercations to solve such problems.
4 Conf licts arising because of shortages of natural resources such as water
or oil.^9 This type of conf lict, which has taken on a new dimension in
the past decade because of the rising population growth, primarily
concerns water rights. They have occurred, for example, between Israel
and Jordan (the Jordan River), between Turkey and Iraq (the Euphrates
and the Tigris) and between those countries directly bordering the Nile
River – concerning the amount of water each country should be allowed
to withdraw. Oil disputes arose concerning the amount of oil that can
be pumped from f ields on or near common borders between Iraq and
Kuwait, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and Morocco and Algeria.
Conf licts with an ideological background were especially prevalent in the
mid-1970s to the mid-1980s between countries with differing political and
ideological orientations, or when the parties were closely aligned with one
of the major world powers, which led to a considerable polarisation. One
example is the short border war between pro-Soviet Libya and pro-US Egypt
in July of 1977. Other examples of such ideologically polarising conf licts were
the war between Iraq and Iran (1980-1988), the quarrels between Tunisia and
Libya in 1980 as part of the Gafsa conf lict, and the confrontation between
9 From the wealth of literature published on the topic of ‘water conf lict’, see, especially,
articles and documents on ‘Water in the Middle East’ published by w w w.al-bab.com/arab/env/
water.htm.