182 Sigrid Faath and hanSpeter Mat teS
The newest example for conf lict-induced migration potential is the Arab
Spring. The civil war in Libya from March to October 2011 and the escalating
military confrontation between opposition and government forces in Syria
since the end of 2011 have produced both high internal displacements and
refugee movements to neighbouring countries. By July 2011, an estimated
number of 346,000 Libyan citizens and foreigners working in Libya had
f led to Egypt, 543,000 to Tunisia and around 30,000 into Chad and Sudan.^25
The number of Syrian refugees having left their country by January 2014
totalled 2.5 million; most of them f led to neighbouring Turkey, Jordan and
Lebanon; the number of internally displaced persons amounts to around
6.5 million (Migration Policy Centre 2013).
5.5 Future conf lict developments and migration potential
A look at the North African and Middle Eastern countries on the list of
regions that, according to Barnett (2003), belong to the so-called ‘non-
integrated gap’ reveals that this part of the world will remain, in the future,
the stage for international and domestic conf licts. Domestic conf licts, in
particular, will dominate and determine the amount of migratory activity.
5.5.1 International and transnational conf licts
Of all existing conf licts, the Middle East conf lict will remain the easiest
to predict because of the still-present problems stemming from the border
demarcation of 1948. Other conf licts, except for the case of Iran (possible US
and Israeli attack on the nuclear facilities) and Turkish military operations
in Northern Iraq, cannot be foreseen. The likelihood of a quick solution to
the Middle East conf lict is, despite all attempts at negotiating a peace treaty,
still poor. With the exception of Israel (which practices Western democracy,
at least internally, toward its Jewish citizens), all states and societies of
the region have an authoritarian structure. This implies that any hopes
of achieving long-lasting peace are illusionary as long as no fundamental
changes take place in the political systems.^26 In addition, only when effec-
25 For details and regular reports, see the website ‘Migration crisis from Libya’, launched in
2011 by the International Organization for Migration in Geneva (w w w.migration-crisis.com/
l ibya).
26 The ‘educational ef fects’ of the peace process in the Middle East are thus rather limited (see
A h ma r 20 01).