178 Sigrid Faath and hanSpeter Mat teS
the social protesters and the new political leadership interested primarily
in consolidating their power and distributing resources to their followers.
Political and economic instability, as well as security problems caused by
criminal groups, are central features of those MENA states which have been
going through a transformation phase since 2011, fuelling domestic conf licts.
5.4 Assessment of the conf licts
If we look at the timeline of the two largest parties engaged in conf lict, we
note that the major conf licts in this area, which took place mostly in the
1950s and 1960s, today play only a minor role (with exceptions). Following
completion of the decolonisation process and the subsequent territorial
delimitation, new conf licts arose^23 caused more by the respective internal
structural, political or socio-economic backgrounds. The ethnic and religious
minorities, in particular (e.g., the Copts/Christians, the Sunnis in Iraq, the
Alawites in Syria and the Kurds in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran; see also the
bibliographic section ‘Minderheiten’ (minorities) in Koszinowski & Mattes
1988 onwards), now represent constant political (and thus structural) factors
leading to a major latent conf lict potential in the many Arabic countries,
especially those in the Middle East (Bengio & Dor 1999; Planhol 1997). On
the other hand, because of the often incomplete process of nation-building
and the existence of authoritarian structures that suppress any open debate
about minority problems, one could conclude that Aliboni and Miggiano
clearly expressed the situation when they said that:
Minorities are a well-known underlying factor of conf lict in the NENA
(Near East/North Africa), but what makes this structural factor more
intractable than it should be with respect to its size and nature are
proximate and systemic factors. This is a conclusion to be noted,
particularly in a conf lict prevention perspective. In fact, it emphasizes
preventive diplomacy and systemic conf lict prevention over structural
conf lict prevention policies. (Aliboni & Miggiano 1999: 4)The increase in domestic conf licts since the 1990s is rooted in part in the end
of the East-West conf lict; the disintegration of the Soviet Union weakened
23 Aliboni and Miggiano (1999: 3) called the year 1992 the ‘starting point of a new wave of
conf licts’. This holds true for the disputes with the Islamists, which escalated after this point in
time, particularly in Egypt, Algeria and Libya, and for the conf licts between Turkey and the Kurds.