5 Political conf licts and migration in the
MENA states
Sigrid Faath and Hanspeter Mattes
5.1 Introduction
The Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) states, stretching from
Mauretania in the West to Pakistan in the East, are some of the most volatile
countries in the world – and, according to the index of the Freedom House
2010, harbour the largest aggregation of dictators any where.^1 Changes have
occurred since 2011 when, during the so-called Arab Spring, protesters
forced four authoritarian rulers to step down: President Ben Ali in Tunisia in
January 2011, President Mubarak in Egypt in February 2011 and the Yemenite
President Saleh in February 2012. The Libyan leader, Gaddaf i, was killed by
revolutionary brigades in October 2011 (see the chapter ‘Arab uprisings and
their global repercussions’ in Freedom House 2012).
Thus, it is natural to refer to the conf lict potential in these states since
this serves as justif ication in many world political organisational models
for so-called ‘security interventions’ in this ‘non-integrated gap’ of territory.^2
The interventions in Afghanistan since October 2001 and in Iraq since 2003
serve as practical examples of such security concepts, although the political
and social ramif ications thereof (the continuing cementation of existing
conf licts and instability, and the trigger for massive migratory movements)
were severely misjudged by their perpetrators. No other conf licts in recent
times in the MENA states were more indicative of the close connection
1 Political science sees here a causality with respect to the dictum of ‘democratic peace’: The
missing mechanisms of consensus in authoritarian regimes tend to promote violent solutions
to political problems.
2 Thomas Barnett divides the world up into two regions: The ‘functioning core’ and the ‘non-
integrated gap’. According to Barnett (2003), the functioning core comprises the so-called f irst
world and up-and-coming countries such as Russia, China, India, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina
and Mexico. Characteristic of the functioning core is its intensive role in global networks and
its expressed interdependence. In other words, the functioning core is the modern, globalised
world, as expressed by prosperity, security and stability; the non-integrated gap, on the other
hand, comprises those countries marked by poverty, insecurity and instability which, because
of their lesser global intertwinement, represent an overall security risk. The solution to this,
Barnett says, is the military control of the countries of the non-integrated gap by those of the
functioning core – e.g., in the form of military intervention.