172 Sigrid Faath and hanSpeter Mat teS
and ethnic (Arab vs Persian) rivalries between the Gulf states, especially
Saudi Arabia and Iran (Fürtig 2006), become manifest in continual allegations
that one side was always trying to undermine the other side’s own political
interests. The Saudi-Iranian antagonism and the fear of a ‘Shiite crescent’
strain the political development of the entire Gulf region (Faath 2010).
5.3.2 Domestic conf licts
The domestic conf licts, each of which has its own specif ic cause and
background,^18 may be put into one of three groups:
1 conf licts stemming from the postcolonial process of nation-building –
the establishment of a central government in the entire territory, and
attempts by the dominant political force to establish their doctrines to
the detriment of other ethnic or religious minorities (Binder 1999);
2 conf licts occurring as a consequence of ideological or religious differ-
ences about the best social-development model to solve existing (or
worsening) social problems; and
3 conf licts, especially in 2011/2012 (the Arab Spring), resulting from au-
thoritarian rule since independence and the growing incapacity of the
governments to respond to the social, economic and political aspirations
of their people.
Well-known examples of the f irst group are:
- the Berber uprising in Morocco in 1956 and in Algeria in the 1960s and
1980s; - the civil war in Lebanon (1975-1991), caused by the artif icial political
supremacy of the Christian Maronites, who had become a minority in
their own country; - the imbalance in Iraq, where the majority group is Shiite, whose
powerbase was underrepresented until the demise of Saddam Hussein
(conf licts from 1974 onward, uprising 1991); - the civil war in Yemen (from 1962 onward, at varying levels of intensity),
which ref lected the diff icult process of nation-building in that area. The
civil war proceeded against the background of very explicit ideological
differences between the Royalist North Yemen (supported by Saudi
Arabia, Jordan and Great Britain) and the Republican South Yemen (sup-
18 In the study he edited entitled The international dimensions of internal conflict, Michael
E. Brown (1996) denotes in the Introduction and in Chapter 17 four types of factor – structural,
political, socio-economic and cultural – that can cause conf licts, be they individual or cumulative.