World on Fire - Brownstein, Michael [111]
Putting aside Israel for the moment, the Middle East can be roughly divided into three subregions: North Africa, the Gulf States, and the “Levant” or “Mashriq” countries. The North African countries include Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia. The Gulf States include Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Yemen. The Levant, a colonial term (al-Mashriq is the Arabic equivalent), usually refers to the countries of the eastern Mediterranean including Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq. In addition, Iran and Turkey, while not always considered part of the Middle East because their populations are not predominately Arab, are often included in the description of the Middle East region as they share the same religious traditions and an interwoven political history.
There are no market-dominant minorities today in North Africa. The major ethnic divisions in North Africa are between Arab and Berber. Self-identified Berbers make up roughly one-quarter of the population in Algeria, where political and economic friction has frequently resulted in mass demonstrations and deadly riots. Estimates of the Berber population in Morocco typically range from 30 percent to 45 percent. Berbers represent much smaller minorities in Libya and Tunisia. It is worth noting that most Berbers are also Muslim and that there has been considerable intermarriage since the rise of Islam and concurrent Arab influx some thirteen hundred years ago. In any event, Berbers are certainly not market-dominant, and if anything, disproportionately poor.
In Egypt, historically, the Christian Copt minority was disproportionately economically successful. Their market dominance, however, was largely broken up by President Gamal Abdel Nasser, whose sweeping (and economically disastrous) land reforms and nationalizations in the 1950s disproportionately targeted wealthy Copts. Today, while there remain some very successful Coptic business families, Egypt’s economic elite, including many military insiders, is heavily Muslim and not perceived as ethnically distinct from the rest of the population.
2
Similarly, there are few, if any, market-dominant minorities in the Gulf States. The main religious divide in the Gulf is between Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims. The vast majority of the population in the Gulf States are Sunni Muslims, although each country has its own distinctive dynamic. In Bahrain, for example, the population is 70 percent Shia Muslim and only 30 percent Sunni. Because the ruling family and those with significant economic power in Bahrain are Sunni, the Shia majority often complains of their second-class status, and the kingdom has been rocked by a number of disturbances and riots over the years. Most Middle East experts agree that the Shia majority would vote out their Sunni overlords were there to be any real democratic opening.
More generally, most of the ruling families in the Gulf States are repressive and appear to be increasingly unpopular in their own countries, where they are widely viewed as morally bankrupt, toadying to the United States and living off the fat of a corrupt capitalism. Although the citizens of the Gulf countries enjoy a significantly higher standard of living than their brethren in the Mashriq, the consensus is that democratization in these countries would probably lead to the ouster of the current regimes. Nevertheless, with a few possible exceptions (such as Bahrain), the fact remains that the ruling families in the Gulf are not ethnically distinct from the majority of their populations.
3
In the Levant there are significant group divisions, mostly along religious lines. Christians make up a substantial portion of the population in Lebanon (30–35 percent), Syria (10 percent), and Jordan (6 percent). Other religious divisions exist between various Muslim sects—most notably Druze in Lebanon and Alowite in Syria. In Syria, the Alowite have controlled the presidency through the military dictatorship of Hafez al-Asad and now his son, Bashir