184 Sigrid Faath and hanSpeter Mat teS
vironmental problems (Brauch, Liotta, Marquina, Rogers & El-Sayed Selim
2003; Englert, Kalhöfer & Mattes 2003; UNDP 2009). The social degradation
has been constantly aggravated in recent years and is thus still relevant to
the migration problem.
We may expect migration resulting from conf licts in border areas with
transnational effects to continue in the future, especially in the Middle East,
as three recent examples illustrate. The political conf lict in Syria which
began in 2011 has led large parts of the population to f lee from the combat
areas, particularly to Turkey and Lebanon. Another example is Sudan, where
the military confrontation between Northern and Southern Sudanese forces
in the border area of South Kordofan 2012 has caused the population to f lee
the area. A recent example is the conf lict in North Mali arising from the
occupation of the three Northern provinces by Islamist groups, leading to
international intervention in January 2013. The Islamist occupation resulted
in a migration movement of 300,000 people inside Mali; about 180,000 f led
to the neighbouring countries of Mauretania, Algeria and Niger.
5.5.2 Domestic conf licts
Among possible future domestic conf licts will be the controversy in all
MENA countries at both state and social levels with Islamist/militant-
Islamist groups over the role of Islam in society and in the new constitu-
tions which have been in the process of elaboration in Tunisia, Egypt and
Libya since 2012. Inter-confessional conf licts resulting from disputes over
the specif ic role of one confession in the national state may escalate into
bloody altercations. Previous examples of such conf licts are the attacks on
Christians in Iraq, the attacks by the Sunni extremists on the Yezidi^29 in
Iraq, and conf licts between Sunnis and Shiites – particularly in Iraq and
Pakistan – due to the Shiites’ new self-conf idence (Nasr 2006).
The second most important category of domestic conf lict is, and will be,
that surrounding the ‘fair’ distribution of government resources, develop-
ment programmes and economic means among all parts of the population.
Should some regions of a country not be allowed by the leading political
caste to suff iciently participate in national means, or should whole seg-
ments of the population (such as youths or certain ethnic groups) feel shut
out of political and socio-economic developments, there may be protests,
29 The Yezidi are a religious minority not recognised by Orthodox Muslims as Muslims. A
massive bombing against the Yezidi was carried out on 14 August 2007 in Jazira and Kahtaniya
in Northern Iraqi-Kurdish territory.