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The Middle East Friendship Chart

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Re: The Middle East Friendship Chart

#21

Post by waps »

keerthiko wrote: post #11
hackerboos wrote: post #7

Iraq: The most friendly country in the middle east.

Obviously the more friendly countries in the Middle East aren't mentioned here: Oman, UAE, Qatar, because they aren't involved in any conflicts or political standoffs.

Oman, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are only friendly because they have done religious cleansing 30-50 years ago (all three used to have significant Shi'a populations, Saudi Arabia still has some), and back then nobody was watching. So not that much is really known about those events. Currently, yes, they are mostly peaceful.

Bahrain and UAE are peaceful, but certainly have political standoffs that could explode.

Re: The Middle East Friendship Chart

#22

Post by antocv »

According to chart, Iran is "its complicated" with Al-Qaueda, haha.

Yeah sure. Iran is enemies with terrorist groups, except for hezbollah which are somewhat less terrorists than hamas, but not in the same league as al-qaueda, or various terrorists sponsored by USA in Syria.

And according to chart ISIS has no friends only enemies, which is not true, as Saudi Arabia is at least complicated with them unless their friends.

Where is Qatar, Bahrain etc, and the various groups that were smashed with tanks during arab spring?

Re: The Middle East Friendship Chart

#23

Post by waps »

marvin wrote: post #4
[deleted] wrote: post #2

[deleted]

Atheists often bring up religion as a source of conflict, and there is some truth to this. But it isn't the whole picture. Religion is often just another expression of cultural differences, which along with conflicts for resources is the biggest driver for conflict. Religion is just part of the package. A non-religious example which often shows up among atheists is feminism, which is really just an expression for dif…

> If cultures interact a lot, they often end up with the same religion anyway.

This is what people always seem to forget. "Diversity" within a culture does not bring diversity, ironically, but merely causes one side to be assimilated into the other, losing it's distinct identity.

Re: The Middle East Friendship Chart

#24

Post by antocv »

waps wrote: post #21
keerthiko wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously the more friendly countries in the Middle East aren't mentioned here: Oman, UAE, Qatar, because they aren't involved in any conflicts or political standoffs.

Oman, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are only friendly because they have done religious cleansing 30-50 years ago (all three used to have significant Shi'a populations, Saudi Arabia still has some), and back then nobody was watching. So not that much is really known about those events. Currently, yes, they are mostly peaceful. Bahrain and UAE are peaceful, but certainly have political standoffs that could explode.

Bahrain smashed their Shia rebellions during arab spring with tanks, but that was blessed by USA as opposed to the attempted smashing by Syria and Lybia of their own rebellions.

Re: The Middle East Friendship Chart

#25

Post by dodyg »

1. Egypt is not "enemy" with Syria. Morsi last year did call for a Jihad against Bashar al-Assad but this is one of the few reason he got overthrown. Egypt's policy toward Syria is non interference. 2. Egypt is not "enemy" with Turkey. The relationship is definitely strained but marking the relationship as "enemy" is wrong.

Re: The Middle East Friendship Chart

#26

Post by waps »

antocv wrote: post #22

According to chart, Iran is "its complicated" with Al-Qaueda, haha. Yeah sure. Iran is enemies with terrorist groups, except for hezbollah which are somewhat less terrorists than hamas, but not in the same league as al-qaueda, or various terrorists sponsored by USA in Syria. And according to chart ISIS has no friends only enemies, which is not true, as Saudi Arabia is at least complicated with them unless their frien…

No ISIS is Sunni, Hezbollah is (mostly) Shi'a (and works mainly in a country that has a long history of religious toleration). Hamas is sunni. Egypt is also Sunni, but hamas and the muslim brotherhood are somewhere between allied and the same thing, and the muslim brotherhood is the mortal enemy of the current Egyptian state (they got control of the state, and used it to start to kill some groups and loot, at which point the army saw the risk of food supplies to the country getting interrupted, and started shooting the muslim brotherhood - not that they were friends before)

So ISIS want to kill every last Iranian. Iran, by contrast, shares it's religion (and half of it's government), with the dominant faction in the Iraqi government. So Iran is naturally allied with the Iraqi government, and, for the moment, with America (they have toned down the rhetoric at least. And keep in mind they are allied with America for short-term strategic reasons - keep Iraq from falling over. They very -very- much disagree with America's proposal to share government power between factions in Iraq, they'd rather just subjugate the sunni's like they've done in Iran, you know, force their kids to go to Shi'a schools and the like (which isn't nice, but keep in mind those sunnis would like to murder them)).

Keep in mind ISIS represents the majority sunni in Syria and the minority sunni in Iraq, and wants to exterminate all other factions in both places. That's what they're fighting for.

Re: The Middle East Friendship Chart

#27

Post by waps »

antocv wrote: post #24
waps wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oman, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are only friendly because they have done religious cleansing 30-50 years ago (all three used to have significant Shi'a populations, Saudi Arabia still has some), and back then nobody was watching. So not that much is really known about those events. Currently, yes, they are mostly peaceful. Bahrain and UAE are peaceful, but certainly have political standoffs that could explode.

Bahrain smashed their Shia rebellions during arab spring with tanks, but that was blessed by USA as opposed to the attempted smashing by Syria and Lybia of their own rebellions.

With Saudi Arabian provided mercenary tanks (because Bahrain's own army is at least partly Shi'a), and this was definitely not "blessed" by the USA. Tolerated, maybe, in the sense that the US was not going to create a shooting war with Saudi Arabia to stop this, yes.

Don't oversimplify it. The USA is constantly pressuring Bahrain into allowing the Shi'a a voice in government, and every 6 months or so, Bahrain expels yet another American diplomat for mentioning the Shi'a.

Re: The Middle East Friendship Chart

#28

Post by waps »

nl wrote: post #20
waps wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different religions. Turkey is "sunni"/secular. Iran is Shi'a/secular. (but the other way round, Turkey's population is "moderately" sunni muslim, the state is aggresively secular. Iran, the population, I think is fair to say, is secular, the state is aggresively Shi'a muslim). The sunnis are the ones that are organising things like ISIS, and the religious cleansings ISIS is doing. Problem is that one of the values o…

Turkey is probably about as strong an opponent of ISIS as there is in the middle east. Edit: the parent comment was edited while I was writing that. There is a lot I disagree with now, bit the biggest factual problem is the idea that Lebanon "won't blow up like Iraq" seems to ignore 2 decades of civil war in Lebanon.

Not really. Let's say that Erdogan and ISIS agree on goals, absolutely not on means, and Erdogan stands to lose a LOT if ISIS doesn't back down. They are not enemies, even if you have a point that they're absolutely not friends either.

You're right of course that Lebanon hasn't been very stable.

Re: The Middle East Friendship Chart

#29

Post by joosters »

hackerboos wrote: post #7

Iraq: The most friendly country in the middle east.

A big problem here is that Iraq is so factionalised that you can't easily categorise it. The chart doesn't break out Iraq and Kurdistan, yet the Kurdish controlled areas are effectively a separate country. So which group's political affiliations do you use when drawing up the chart?

Re: The Middle East Friendship Chart

#30

Post by emilsedgh »

dodyg wrote: post #25

1. Egypt is not "enemy" with Syria. Morsi last year did call for a Jihad against Bashar al-Assad but this is one of the few reason he got overthrown. Egypt's policy toward Syria is non interference. 2. Egypt is not "enemy" with Turkey. The relationship is definitely strained but marking the relationship as "enemy" is wrong.

I think the word 'Hostile' would've made much more sense in many cases.
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