Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World

The Middle East extends “from the Mediterranean Sea to the mountains of Iran” (143), and from the Black Sea in the north to the Arabian Sea in the south. In between are “vast deserts, oases, snow-covered mountains, long rivers, great cities, and coastal plains” (143), beneath which lie huge reserves of oil and gas. The Arabian Desert, “the largest continuous sand desert in the world” (143), is sparsely populated and, until the arrival of colonial powers, was largely unmarked by borderlines.

As in Africa, European colonial powers established arbitrary national borders in the Middle East. Before Europe colonized the region, “there was no state of Syria, no Lebanon, nor were there Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Israel, or Palestine” (145). With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire early in the twentieth century, Europe carved up the region for its own purposes, the Sykes-Picot line separating French and British control. These unnatural borders are still fought over by competing locals. Marshall notes that “an attempt is now being made to redraw them in blood” (142), as the Islamic State spearheads a push to reshape the region.

Another cause of strife is the ancient divide between the Muslim majority Sunni and minority Shia sects over how to practice Islam and how to determine leadership of the religion. The Sunni and Shia sects are further subdivided, causing even more conflict.

Iraq, historically parsed into three sections (Assyria, Babylonia, and Sumer, today known as Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra), was forcefully united under British rule and has since struggled under a series of strongman leaders. Meanwhile, the Kurds, in mountainous northern Iraq, fought for their own independent homeland. In 1988, Saddam Hussein purged the rebels; “Up to one hundred thousand Kurds were murdered and 90 percent of their villages wiped off the map” (148). With the overthrow of Hussein in 2003, a “de facto Kurdistan began to take shape [...] Baghdad will not again rule the Kurds” (148).

After World War I, Britain granted control of newly founded Transjordan to the Hashemite tribe, while the Saudis were given rein over the Arabian Peninsula to the south. In 1948, Transjordan became independent Jordan, mostly populated by Palestinians who felt no allegiance to the Hashemite rulers. Meanwhile, one million Syrian and Iraqi refugees, escaping recent conflicts, crowded into eastern Jordan, “putting a huge strain on its extremely limited resources” (150).

Lebanon was originally a Christian stronghold created by France on the Mediterranean coast; by the 1950s, it was majority-Muslim. A civil war rocked Lebanon between 1975 and 1990. Next door, “Syria is another multi-faith, multi-confessional, multi-tribal state that fell apart at the first time of asking” (152). The French originally gave control of the militia and police to the minority Alawites, who today rule over the Sunni majority; bloody conflict has ensued. As Marshall notes, “when the nationwide uprising began in 2011 there were scores to be settled” (153).

Arab populations long frustrated by failures of governance have been attracted to the fundamentalist promises offered by al-Qaeda and Islamic State (ISIS) militants. Military success and territorial conquests in Syria and Iraq made ISIS “the ‘go to’ jihadist group, drawing thousands of foreign Muslims to the cause” (155). 

ISIS’s bloody ways soon alienated many Middle Easterners, especially Shia and other minorities, whom ISIS tended to kill when possible. In 2014, US, British, French, and Russian forces, with support from the Iraqi military, attacked ISIS, and ISIS began to lose its territory. Many ISIS fighters fled to Libya, where they hoped to establish a new front.

In Iraq, Sunnis, the erstwhile rulers, are now caught between Kurds in the north and Shia in the south, both of whom control the oil fields. Sunnis elsewhere must deal with simmering jihadist movements within their own countries. Jordan, for example, could easily descend into the same chaos as in Syria, while Saudi Arabia, having made inroads against internal al-Qaeda cells, now faces insurgents in neighboring Yemen.

Israel, often in conflict with its neighbors since its founding in 1948, lately contends with Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank as well as in the nearby Gaza strip. Israelis do not want an enemy army perched on the heights of the West Bank, where it can fire into Israel, which is so narrow that “any half-decent military could cut Israel in two” (165). To the south, the Sinai desert protects Israel from Egypt, with whom it has a peace treaty; to the east, across a large desert, Israel and Jordan also are at peace. To the north, Lebanese Hezbollah militants harass Israel with occasional rocket fire, while in the northeast, Israel commands the Golan Heights, which look down into Syria, who otherwise might be tempted to invade Israel, in part for its coastal access.

Iran’s 78 million people live mostly in the mountainous regions; “the great deserts and salt plains of the interior of Iran are no place for human habitation” (166). Despite having the world’s third-largest oil reserves, Iran suffers from mismanagement, international sanctions, and mountain ranges that restrict transport. The mountains protect the country—except in the south and west, which are guarded by marshland and the Persian Gulf—but they also divide Iranians into many hard-to-control groups and minorities.

The threat of a nuclear-armed Iran frightens the Arab world; a US-brokered deal whereby Iran promises to limit its bomb-making program has been derided in the region as appeasement. Both Iran and Saudi Arabia have ambitions to dominate the Middle East, and war between them is an ugly possibility.

When the defeated Ottoman Empire was carved up by Europe at the end of World War I, Turkey, led by Kemal Ataturk, rebelled and formed its own independent nation. Ataturk westernized the country, hoping to make it fit in with Europe. A member of NATO, Turkey has applied for, but never received, membership in the European Union, in part because only a small portion of the country is in Europe while the rest lies in the Middle East. Turkey’s “record on human rights, especially when it comes to the Kurds” (171) is another issue, along with its weak economy and the fact that Turkey is 98 percent Muslim, which troubles majority-Christian Europe.

Turkey has begun to see itself as a regional power, taking sides in conflicts in Egypt and Syria, and perhaps harboring larger ambitions. Geographically the link between Europe and the Middle East, Turkey also controls the Bosporus Straits, which connect the Black Sea, and its Russian fleet, to the Mediterranean. Turkey buys gas from Russia and would like some from Israel, but it is on strained terms with both countries. Moreover, President Erdogan’s “remarks on Jews, race, and gender equality, taken with the creeping Islamization of Turkey, have set alarm bells ringing” (175) among Western nations.

Marshall contends that in the contemporary Middle East, “religious beliefs, social mores, tribal links, and guns are currently far more powerful forces than ‘Western’ ideals of equality, freedom of expression, and universal suffrage,”; he argues, “if you are hungry and frightened, and you are offered either bread and security or the concept of democracy, the choice is not difficult” (178).

India and Pakistan are neighbors and bitter enemies with nuclear weapons. India’s geographical size and population of 1.3 billion both greatly exceed those Pakistan, and India’s economy vastly outperforms its neighbor’s. Pakistan wouldn’t be a threat to India except for its nuclear arsenal. Mountains to the north, seas to the south, deserts to the west, and jungles to the east protect the two nations from external threats but not from each other.

Bangladesh, Nepal, and Bhutan share the northeast section of the region, but none of them pose a threat to Pakistan or India. Nepal and Bhutan are landlocked and poor, while Bangladesh, surrounded by India except for its southern border on the Bay of Bengal, suffers regular flooding.

Over the centuries, widely diverse peoples have crowded into the region, and it has been invaded many times, “but none have ever truly conquered it” (184). Muslim invaders made inroads in the region, but “east of the Indus River Valley a majority of the Hindu population resisted conversion” (185). Moreover, governing the area is difficult because of “the ancient disparities of the languages of the Punjab and Gujarat, the mountains and the deserts, and Islam and Hinduism” (185).

In 1947, Britain divided its south Asian holdings into India and Pakistan and then left: “millions of Muslims fled the new borders of India, heading west to Pakistan, with millions of Hindus and Sikhs coming the other way” (185). Chaos and riots erupted, and “at least a million people died” (186). Pakistan, in turn, is divided into two sections separated by over a thousand miles of India’s territory; in 1971, “after much bloodshed, East Pakistan seceded, becoming Bangladesh” (186).

India, despite its diverse peoples, is politically more unified and democratic than Pakistan, “an Islamic state with a history of dictatorship” (187). With “five distinct regions, each with their own language” (187), Pakistan struggles for unity. Most of the population lives in the north, but most of the resources—minerals and gas, as well as the port of Gwadar, being built up to move energy overland to China and Chinese products back through Gwadar to the world—are in the south and west.

India and Pakistan fought eight wars between 1947 and 1999, mainly over Kashmir, which both sides claim. Full control of Kashmir would give India a doorway into central Asia and deny Pakistan completion of its economic corridor to China. Also, the headwaters of the Indus River, which provide Pakistan with most of its water, pass through Indian Kashmir and its growing population.

The “Line of Control” border between each country’s portion of Kashmir suffers from periodic violent flare-ups. India has a much larger military, but Pakistan can hit India’s main highway and cut off its supplies. Plans for attack and counter-attack across the Punjab plains to the south keep military thinkers up at night. The danger of nuclear war is ever-present.

When not engaged in full-out war, each country has sought to sow discontent within the other’s borders. For example, Pakistan has supported “terrorist attacks inside India such as the Mumbai massacre of 2008” (191).

Each country has tried to bring nearby Afghanistan to its side, but Pakistan has the advantage of tribal affiliation with the Afghans, and it has backed the Taliban there. The colonial Durand Line, which still sets the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, is largely ignored.

For its support of the Taliban, who attacked the US on 9/11, Pakistan was threatened by the US, and it agreed to support the War on Terror, forcing Pakistan “to turn on the very Taliban leaders they had trained and formed friendships with in the 1990s” (196). Battles have erupted between Taliban and Pakistani forces, and “up to fifty thousand Pakistani civilians have been killed” (196), but elements within the Pakistani government continue quietly to support the Taliban.

American forces, distrusting Pakistan’s loyalties, slipped into Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden, while Taliban forces crossed into northern Pakistan, where they have caused trouble for their former mentors. The Taliban are not easy to dislodge, as they simply fade back into the mountainous Pashtun border region.

India and China pester each other in small ways along their mountainous border. India supports Tibetan independence; as a pushback, China supports Maoists in Nepal. China also claims a portion of northeastern India, while nearby liberation movements each want a piece of the Indian state of Assam.

Playing economic catch-up to China, India “has nine thousand miles of internal navigable waterways, reliable water supplies, and huge areas of arable land" (203). Although it produces a lot of coal and some oil and gas, India must import much of its energy, and increasing trade may pressure the two countries—who once could safely ignore each other across forbidding borderlands—to engage at sea. India has aligned itself with several Southeast Asian countries “to check China’s increasing domination of the South China Sea”; India is especially concerned about “the friendly port China has built at Gwadar in Pakistan” (205).

Despite these other external pressures, as Marshall contends, “with India, it always comes back to Pakistan, and with Pakistan, to India” (205).