Essay on Southwest Asia: Cultural Patterns, Economic Activity and Oil

Lying at the southwestern corner of the huge Asian landmass is a large stretch of territory from Turkey to Afghanistan that occupies over two and a half million sq miles in area, and contains nearly 250 mil­lion people and over a dozen and a half sovereign states, two neutral zones, and bits and pieces of territory (Gaza, West Bank, and Jerusalem).

Although geogra­phers have generally settled on the term “Southwest Asia” to identify this section of the earth the label the “Middle East” or the “Near East” have also been popularly applied to denote this region. However, these terms, on closer inspection, represent an inaccurate reflection of colonial chau­vinism.

People in London or Paris viewed China and Japan as the “Far East,” while Iran and Saudi Arabia became the “Middle East” or the “Mideast”; Greece and Tur­key became the “Near East.” But what do the terms such as “Middle East” and “Near East” really mean? Middle of what? East of where? All places are central to some­where. Thus, places can be usefully named from where they are per se, not merely in relation to somewhere else where the viewer may be.

If there is a justification of the term Middle East for the region, it lies in its centrality and its strategic location at the crossroads between Europe, Africa, and the bulk of Asia. Since earliest times the re­gion has served as a route for people, trade, armies, and ideas moving from Europe eastward to Africa and Asia, and westward from Asia to Africa and Europe.

North of Beirut are nineteen inscriptions in eight languages left by passing conquerors, be­ginning with Ramses II (c. 1220 B.C.) through Nebuchadnezzar, Marcus Aurelius, and Napolean (1769-1821). Today, the world’s major sea routes from Europe to Asia pass through the Suez and Bosphorus straits and air routes converge on Beirut, Kuwait, and Istanbul.

Cultural Patterns:

Southwest Asia is rich in history and culture. Few other parts of the world have provided a compa­rable homeland for great empires, civilizations, and religions. Several of the civilizations described by Arnold Toynbee in his survey of world history had their cradle here. Many of the earliest recorded events took place in towns like Jericho, go­ing back to 6800 B.C.

Three of the world’s great monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, originated here and diffused to other parts of the world; their conflicts and interactions shaped the course of modern times. Great empires such as the Babylonian and the Assyrian, dating back to the fourth millennium B.C., the Persian Empire that reached its maxi­mum extent in the 6th century B.C., the Arab empires, the Abbassid and the Om- maid, centered on Baghdad and Damascus, (7th to 12th centuries) and that of the Turkish Ottomans (14th to mid 20th cen­turies) were established here.

The eastern shores of the Mediterranean provided many avenues of conquest for the invad­ers: Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, the Crusaders, Arabs, Ottomans, and fi­nally the French and the British. All these have left their indelible imprints on the re­gion.

Few regions of the earth exhibit a greater cultural variety and complexity. Despite the fact that Islam is one of the few pervasive threads that tie the region to­gether, cultural unity is far from being the case. Although four major cultures-Arab, Persian, Turkish, and Jewish-characterize the region, large numbers of diverse ethnic minorities in virtually all the nations of Southwest Asia have been the source of prevailing social unrest and political insta­bility.

Many of these groups number over a million each. Nearly five million Kurds are spread over Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Transcaucasia, and Afghanistan. Over two million Azerbaijanis are located in north­ern Iran. Nearly half of the populations of Iran and Afghanistan are composed of a dozen or so minority groups.

Turkey once had Armenians and Greeks, numbering over a million each; Armenians have been liquidated or forced to flee and Greeks re­patriated to Greece in exchange for Turks living there. Russians form significant mi­norities in Transcaucasia. The Gulf nations and Oman have attracted large numbers of Indians, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans, and Filipinos primarily to work in the service industries.

Islam is the predominant religion over­all; Christianity and Judaism are numerically much smaller, the latter being nearly exclusive to Israel, but exceedingly significant from the political standpoint.

Much of the instability of the region has resulted from the interaction between the religious distributions. Perhaps nowhere else does religion play such a significant role in the daily lives of the people or influences the decisions and actions of nations to such a remarkable degree. A tangible evidence of conflicts arising out of religious discord can be found in the an­cient city of Jerusalem, the most sacred of all places to Jews and Christians, and after Makkah and Medina to Muslims.

In the old section of the city, venerated sites of all three religions are closely interlocked, a situation that has occasionally caused seri­ous friction among the various sects. Additionally, a number of Christian and Muslim sects, and remnants of an ancient religion, Zoroastrianism, that inhabit the region further compound the already sec­tarian politics of the region.

Judaism is the oldest of the major mod­ern religions native to the region. The Jewish people had established a small state in the highlands of Judea, the present-day “West Bank,” during the second millen­nium. Since their conquest by the Assyrian kings in the 8th century B.C. and later dis­persal by the Roman overlords in the 1st century, Jews became established in many parts of Europe and Asia, where they ab­sorbed much of the culture (and even some of the racial traits) of the peoples of lands of their settlement.

Yemenite, Persian, Georgian, and even Abyssinian Jews are distinguishable at the present day, and are in sharp contrast to the Jews of Europe who settled in Spain or Poland. The creation of the state of Israel in 1948 has again provided the Jews a home­land. The variety of people who have emigrated, to the new state is impressive, and each group has brought with it ideas and customs characteristic of those parts of the worlds in which their ancestors had settled during the centuries of the “Dias­pora.”

Although most immigrants feel themselves a part of rebuilding an ancient homeland, there is diversity and disagree­ment, unrest and even terrorism in their methods of making their adopted land and nation secure. European Jews, and the Middle Eastern “Sephardic” Jews, and the Reformed and Orthodox versions of the faiths are often engaged in bitter doctrinal opposition. Moreover, perhaps nowhere else except in Iran is religious fundamental­ism as strong as it is here.

The second major older religion in South-west Asia is Christianity, which be­gan as a sect of Judaism. In 313, Christianity was adopted as an official re­ligion of the Roman Empire. By 330 Constantinople (now Istanbul) had sup­planted Rome as the capital of the Roman Empire. Despite Constantinople’s position in the Christian world the predominantly Christian nation had failed to establish it­self in the succeeding centuries despite the massive efforts of medieval Europe.

This is perhaps a reflection of the vivisection in the Christian church which experienced a growing divergence in doctrine and rituals in areas so far from the Roman authority. From Constantinople arose the Greek Or­thodox Church; from Alexandria the Coptic Church; and from Antioch the Syr­ian Church, all of which became in due course completely independent of Rome.

Today, Christian religious communities largely Catholic-remain active. Syrian, Armenian, Chaldean or Assyrian, and Maronite are a few of the communities that are distributed in varying degrees of strength. In Lebanon, where the Chris­tians form more than a quarter of the population, they remain a vital political force in the nation’s parliament.

Of all the religions that have taken root in the region, however, the most spec­tacular has clearly been Islam. In terms both of speed and depth of impact on the culture, language, and politics, the Prophet’s faith had substantial implica­tions for most of the known world of his times, and lasting effects on the region. Muhammad died in Medina in 632 and suc­ceeded in bringing the vision of a monotheistic religion to the nomadic tribes.

Following his death, his fiercely zealous followers invaded the long-established kingdoms of the times in all directions and succeeded in establishing the faith of the Prophet and an extensive empire. By 750 their control extended from Spain in the west to what is now Pakistan in the east.

With their conquests, the Arabs brought to a large part of the world Islam, the Arabic language, and a vast range of art, literature, science, and technology. Arabic, which represented the embodi­ment of power and authority, became influential wherever the conquest spread, finally to be established as the most impor­tant medium of communication in areas between the eastern shores of the Mediter­ranean and the Persian Gulf. It now ranks as one of the world’s most widely spoken tongues.

The unity of the Islamic church was, however, short-lived. Muhammad died without naming a successor as the leader of the faithful. A majority of the followers felt that the leader should not be heredi­tary, but elective among the senior leaders qualified to rule. Thus, the first “Caliphs” (“successors”) held elective positions, and continued to govern from Medina; in their time most of the impressive expansion of the faith occurred, and their line of author­ity became the dominant “Sunni” form of Islam.

A few of Muhammad’s followers, who believed that leadership should be based on kinship, chose Ali, Muhammad’s nephew, as the rightful Caliph, but he was murdered. His followers were known as Shiites (“Partisans”), and became the trou­bled conscience of Islam.

To this day, the faith is divided be­tween a Sunni majority and a sizable Shiite minority. Today ninety percent of Iran’s and seventy percent of the adjacent nation of Azerbaijan’s population belongs to the Shia faith. Nearly two-thirds of Iraq’s, a quarter of Afghanistan’s, and a fifth of the United Arab Emirates’ populations profess the Shia faith, while Yemen’s population is almost equally divided between the follow­ers of the Sunni and Shia faiths.

The Shiites have historically resented the “second class” status that they occupy in the Mus­lim world, and a large part of the social and political tension and conflict in the Is­lamic world is derived from the Sunni-Shia split. Apart from the Sunni-Shia division, there are in fact several other sects in Is­lam, some incorporating Christian and other elements, derived primarily from the Shia line of belief.

The best known and most influential among these are the Ismailis, whose head, the Agha Khan, traces ancestry to the Prophet himself; and the Druzes, who have found refuge in the hill country of Lebanon, and play an active role in the affairs of the country.

Economic Activity:

Climatically, the most conspicuous feature of Southwest Asia that has profoundly affected its land­scape and the daily lives of the people is the extreme aridity. Excepting a few favored coastal sections of Turkey and the moun­tainous Trans-caucasia, a major part of the region receives less than 10 inches (25 cen­timeters) of precipitation a year, large sections less than a half of it, and a few un­der two inches.

Quite possibly the interior parts of Saudi Arabia and Iran are as rain­less as any in the world. The dry climate has historically posed obvious problems for economic activity. Man has been able only to use the natural environment with relentless effort, for example by the intro­duction of camels and the resultant caravan trading.

Agricultural activity has been severely restricted to relatively few locations of reliable sources of permanent water at oases. Thus, a pattern of dense population and economic activity is con­centrated in a few places separated by vast, empty spaces.

By and large, the region is agricultur­ally deficient, particularly in basic food grains. Except in Turkey and Yemen, less than a third of the labor force in these na­tions is engaged in agriculture, and almost all the nations are importers in food grains. Only Turkey could reasonably be consid­ered to possess a balanced agricultural base.

This despite the fact that historically the Tigris-Euphrates area has been the agricul­tural “heartland” for some 9,000 years and from Mesopotamia (mainly modern Iraq) agriculture is supposed to have moved to other parts of the world. The climate was probably Steppe rather than Desert during the past glacial times when the region was a little cooler and substantially wetter than it is today. With the climatic change, the region and the resulting rise in pastoral economies, the region experienced a long period of agricultural decline.

The Importance of Oil:

Few regions of the world have experienced so dramatic a surge in economic importance in modern times derived from the exploitation of a single commodity as Southwest Asia. But for the presence of an abundant supply of oil, one of the modern world’s most sought-after commodities, this entire re­gion would have remained an insignificant international backwater from the eco­nomic standpoint. Oil has changed the economic relationship of the region with the rest of the world.

Southwest Asia is now more important for its intrinsic wealth than for its historic roadways; de­pendability of oil supplies from the region is of greater concern than the region’s his­toric transit functions for goods and passengers between Europe and the Ori­ent. Oil has not only transformed much of the character of the region; it has made the area a focus of aggressive interests of major external powers, and has enormously exac­erbated tensions within the region.

Although oil and gas seeps have been known in many locations in Southwest Asia for millennia, enormous amounts of petroleum have been discovered and ex­ploited only since the beginning of the 20th century. The world’s biggest reserves are located around the Persian Gulf and in the Tigris-Euphrates lowland.

Production in commercial quantities was started as early as 1912 in Iran, by British companies that led to a long history of European in­vestment as the demand arose in oil-deficient Europe. The Iraqi production dates from 1927 in Kirkuk field, but later production was concentrated in the region of Shatt-al-Arab, the waterway of the joint Tigris-Euphrates waters that drains into the Gulf, the area which became the focus of the 1990 “Gulf War.”

Discoveries in Bahrain, the tiny island Sheikhdom in 1938, and near Damman, which proved the existence of the richest field so far, put in course of a rapidly growing number of oil fields, finds, and exploitations, in the Gulf by the American companies (earlier concessions were held by the Arabian- American oil company, the Aramco).

Nearly 60 percent of the world’s oil is now estimated to be concentrated in the Gulf region, fully 30 percent in Saudi Arabia alone. Presently the Gulf region (that in­cludes Iran, Iraq, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar) produces close to one-third of the world’s total production.

As the peoples of Southwest Asia were technologically unable to produce the oil themselves and had no industrial or com­mercial need for it, the exploration was given to the Westerners. Currently the U.S. is responsible for much of the explo­ration; the British, Dutch, German, and Japanese are also getting increasingly in­volved.

With the legal rights for the production and sale of petroleum came the political influence of the external powers. Political sympathies of the Gulf States were increasingly sought after by the western powers as the need for oil escalated since World War II in order to gain concessions in areas likely to yield oil, as well as to en­sure flow of oil on favorable terms.

Most of the production is moved by tankers, although considerable amounts flow through and out of Southwest Asia by pipelines. However, political turmoil in the region has made oil flow by pipelines risky. Pipelines cross the territories of Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia and were built to carry oil to the Mediterranean shore. These were de­stroyed during the 1964 war between Israel and the neighboring Arab states, and re­mained closed until the late 1970s.

Large tankers are now the major means of oil transportation; the sea lanes of the Gulf are among the busiest in the world, while the narrow Strait of Hormuz at the eastern end of the Persian Gulf has acquired sub­stantial strategic significance. Oil is among the most precious types of merchandise that now moves on the oceans, and much of it originates in the Gulf.

It is easy to understand the enormous importance of oil to Southwest Asia, where small countries with otherwise lim­ited resources have come to rely almost entirely upon oil revenues as a means of economic support. However, this fact has also made this area particularly sensitive to fluctuations in the world economy, such as the collapse of oil prices in the face of in­creasing production in 1982-83.

Estimates suggest that each dollar reduction per bar­rel costs Saudi Arabia nearly half a billion in lost revenues, and Iran nearly half a bil­lion, and Libya over $350 million. In fact, oil prices fell by about $10 per barrel at that time, and the total losses to these oil- exporting nations are truly staggering.

To counteract the price fluctuations that could have such devastating effect, most Gulf nations had helped form the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), an international cartel that monitors and controls the price and production levels of oil of the member na­tions (Nigeria, Gabon, Indonesia, Algeria, Libya, Ecuador, and Venezuela are some other members in addition to the Gulf states).

During recent years, the price of oil has tended to be more than double the pre- 1982 levels in the free markets, reflecting both the growing world shortages of oil as demand rises in the rapidly industrializing nations, and the determination of the oil exporting nations to use their new bargain­ing strength to ensure that they obtain adequate benefits from their product.

It may be noted that OPEC has invested in these nations new political and economic powers in relation to the industrial coun­tries. As the buyers of the critical commodity, international corporations and importers of oil are obliged to deal with the OPEC organization. Besides be­ing a purely administrative body, it has acquired an important political and eco­nomic role.

As a final note, the pattern of oil distri­bution in the Gulf region has its bitter and ironic aspect. The tiny state of the United Arab Emirates, smaller than New Jersey and with a population of 2.3 million and oil production at a little over one million barrels a day, is literally floating on oil. It has a per capita GNP of over $18,000— over five times the world’s average.

Close by, at the other end of the Arabian pen­insula, Yemen with a population little over 17 million and a very small amount of oil production has a per capita GNP of only $270, nearly one-seventh of the world’s average!

Prospects:

Despite the heightened awareness of the prospect of a long-term decline or shortage of oil, a vital resource on which much of the future development of the world depends, demand for it has been rising since the 1950s. Increased de­mand, especially from the rapidly industrializing Asian nations, makes the Persian Gulf region a globally strategic area and a source of Gulf conflict. The world is also facing a radical military tech­nology and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in the future which pre­sent some ominous scenarios.

On the other hand, the Middle East has the capac­ity to move toward a more constructive and peaceful future, if the nations in the area work toward it. Intra-regional propos­als for joint infrastructural projects, shared oil and gas pipelines, and improved trans­portation lines linking the region to Europe already exist. If enacted, these could usher in a new era of prosperity and cooperation.