The Middle East Friendship Chart | Hacker News Reader

The Middle East Friendship Chart

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119 pointskumarski98 comments

This chart is at the very least incomplete and inaccurate if not blatantly false. To accuse Iran of cooperating with Al Qaeda while claiming that Saudi Arabia does not is audacious. Saudi Arabia spreads the most violent branch of Islam (Wahhabism/Salafism) through indoctrination as well as direct funding for terrorism. Just look at the perpetrators of 9/11, all of whom were Sunni Arabs, most of them from Saudi Arabia. The same goes for Qatar, which is missing in the chart. Hamas and Iran broke up because the former (Sunni) joined the fight against the Syria government, which is supported by Iran. Iran is neither Sunni nor Arab, groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS would love to commit genocide against Iranians. They don't have any real allies and have propped up a few Shia proxies in Iraq and the Levant. Others are missing, like the Kurds, so is the the link to Central/South Asia as well, i.e. AfPak. Without Pakistan Al Qaeda and the Taliban could have not existed. It should be noted that the Pakistani government and military are bought and paid for by the Arab states in the Persian Gulf, where Pakistani mercenaries protect the Monarchs from their civilian population, Bahrain being a notable example: the majority of Bahrainis are Shia and they are naturally friendly with Iran/Iraq. Their government, however, is run by the same kind of Sunnis that control countries like Kuwait and the UAE.

I think this chart reflects the position of county's government. The Saudi government doesn't support Al Qaeda and has a careful relationship with Wahhabism (as they see both as potential threats to their powerbase).

Al Qaeda (the core part anyway) has never really had an anti-Shia bent (or, interestingly, anti-Israel) and Iran did tolerate some movement of Al Qaeda and Taliban through their territories.

Iran did have a real ally: the Syrian government of Assad. Even that was a difficult relationship prior to the fall of Hussein in Iraq because Assad was a Ba'athist (which is a secular ideology opposed to Iran's theocracy) and Hussein was also Ba'athist (Iraq and Iran were enemies since the Iranian revolution for those who missed that bit).

Ba'athism is pretty much irrelevant today, but until the 1990s it was one of the factors that shaped the Middle Wast we see now.

Edit: I assume the downvotes mean I'm factually incorrect about something. I'd appreciate enlightenment.

Your "The Saudi government doesn't support Al Qaeda" sounds like a joke in bad taste, I mean come on? the CIA confirmed the majority of ISIS are Saudis, 9/11 had many Saudi terrorists, Bin Laden was Saudi, ISIS is being funded by Saudi and Qatar, to mention Saddam in the current situation sounds like an intentional misleading propaganda to say the least.

You write as if it doesn't matter that ISIS have been kicked out of AlQ?

(The last I read, ISIS was fighting with all the other rebel groups in Syria? I thought that included AlQ? Also, is that really Saudi policy?! [Saudi A do send weapons to other rebels!] )

(sam88 is a three hours old account.)

ISIS seems mostly to be western "idealist" muslims, recruited by extermist imams where those can operate (ie. in the west, mostly Europe, in Saudi Arabia, and not very many other places). The locals found them, well, what everyone finds them : cruel, extremist morons.

(Imams are tightly controlled in places like Iran, Turkey or Egypt. Why ? Well let's put it this way : "mosque" does not mean house of prayer. It means fortress (house of prayer is masjid. Keep in mind that that arabic is weird. Masjid by itself means house of prayer, but combined with other words it means different things, sort of like latin). The states there, well, it's not like there's anyone in them that doesn't know this. So recruitment of locals there cannot easily happen, except by the "state" (which may be a lot more local state than a map would have you believe))

The problem is what western agencies are pointing out, but nobody's listening. Currently Syria and Iraq are the targets. Mostly because they're in the middle east, and allow "other" religions (Shi'a islam is "other" to these guys, as is Druze religion, Alwite, hell, they're not all that fond of wahhabism (too many compromises for the state and the oil, first and foremost of course, the alliance with the United States, and "with Israel") ...). That won't last. We, as in you and me, England and Sri Lanka, Japan and Alaska, are on their list. They're just having some trouble with numbers one and two (Saudi Arabia and Israel).

Again, government position vs private citizens in that country. Not sure how to make that clearer?

Even I can say you're totally wrong already in the first claims.

Al Qaida has/had quite a bit of popular support in Saudi Arabia -- AND the explicit goal to overthrow the Saudi royal family. If you check history, that is what makes you top-of-the-list to most any dictatorial junta!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Qaeda_in_Saudi_Arabia#Ideolo...

"Like al-Qaeda, it opposes the Al Saud monarchy.[8] AQAP was formed in January 2009 from a merger of al Qaeda's Yemeni and Saudi branches.[1] The Saudi group had been effectively suppressed by the Saudi government, forcing its members to seek sanctuary in Yemen."

I write this because I want to point out:

It is disgustingly dishonest to blame a country for what a dozen individuals do, like you do with the 9/11 terrorists. If we allow that "reasoning", how should the world judge all Muslims considering the millions of murders/rapes/etc in Sudan? (At least those Muslims from the large part of the Muslim world where the criticism about [Sudan's violations of] human rights is ignored or claimed to be a western conspiracy.)

I suspect there could be some more insightful ordering of the entities to make the situation slightly less clusterfuck-like.

edit: http://i.imgur.com/PgXt8Md.png is bit better, there arises two kinda clear clusters of friends.

Your chart could be summarized as Sunni versus Shi'a, and muslims versus the world, with the religious cleansing in Sunni-Shi'a warfare taking priority.

Which is kind of accurate.

Or more accurately. US foreign policy objectives and military aid versus independence.

Frankly it's not really accurate. And with most things in the Middle East, you could make this chart a ton easier by just labeling every relationship as Yellow/It's complicated

Props to them, though, for adding comments to each cell.

What's inaccurate?

The chart highlights one big problem - how on earth do you label each faction? On the one hand, it includes whole countries, yet many have powerful factions within them that have vastly different views. On the other hand, some countries are ignored entirely (where is Lebanon? There are more factions there than just the included Hezbollah).

Since they added the US, it might be helpful to stick Russia (and perhaps China) in there too.

Especially Russia. They are not a minor player in the area as evidenced by the Syria conflict.

From an arab: overly simplified but a good start for most people who just have no idea and talk nonsense (which are a lot).

The chart is over simplification and lacks any depth for such relationships, for example, Jordan and Saudi, both friendly with Israel and have been funding ISIS, yet there is no mention of Jordan, Qatar too, too tiny yet playing a very big role in this mess, not there at all. The main player in all relationship in the middle east is the US and Israel, the rest is not much.

I think the best thing that has been written on the Middle East is Walid Khalidi, ed., From Haven to Conquest. But as a rule of thumb,"When governments are loyal to the US (Israel, Ukraine, etc), the US calls for disarming of all militias and groups that are opposed to those governments. But in the cases of governments that are opposed to the US (Syria, Iran, Cuba, etc) the US funds and arms militias against those governments."

Exactly.

The lack of note of some of the original funding sources for ISIS makes me regard the chart as bogus and maybe even misleading.

There are groups who don't want to see Iran (nor Russia for that matter) grow any more powerful in the region, and these are defiantly somewhat happy about the emergence of ISIS if not also surreptitiously supporting them. Putting these countries as frowny on the chart is not really very accurate even if they profess disdain in public (which they politically have to for an outlaw group like this). I hope the US is not in this group but wouldn't swear they are not. At minimum, some of the "friends" of the US are in this group.

The absence of Russia on the chart is another reason not to take it very seriously. Overall.... this is like a 4'th grade view of alliances in the mid-east. Not really very useful.

Countries don't have friends or enemies, they have interests - which (at the moment) may happen to align or cross each other.

When the conflict of interests is too fundumental, they consider themselves enemies :)

And of course there are countries which are enemies due to ideology.

Either way, congratulations to Slate for reducing politics in the Middle East to three types of smileys. Their readers must love that kind of stuff.

Simplification is a good thing. And the middle east desperately needs some. Sure, the foreign ministries of the world shouldn't use this chart, but that's not really the audience here.

I disagree. After more than a decade of "good vs. evil" and "either with us or with the enemy" propaganda, what the audience needs is the precise opposite of this type of chart.

I'd say countries don't even have interests, people in them have them. No country, and hardly any person, is a monolith.

It would be interesting to find the "basis vectors" of issues, if you will, underpinning this matrix.

They seem to be: Israel-Palestinians, Syria's Civil War, Egypt's Overthrow, and the new Iraqi state.

So, if the issues would be resolved in the most peaceful way, namely:

Egypt's current government continuing to exist

Israel and Palestinian Authority defeating Hamas and working towards a peace deal

Iraq getting stable borders (with Kurds using political struggle only)

Syria - probably the overthrow would maximize peace at this point, esp given the resolution above ousting Hamas

  The big winners would be:
  USA
  Israel
  Palestinian Authority
  Egypt
  Rebels in Syria
  Iran (even though Assad lost)

  And the big losers would be:
  Hamas
  ISIS
  Hezbollah

Meanwhile:

Al Qaeda and USA will keep fighting

Turkey has recently had its own set of protests against Erdogan, and it's unclear where its future lies

With ISIS gone, Saudi Arabia and Qatar will continue to have stable states favoring Sunni Wahhabism

Iraq will probably become one of the fastest growing economies in the middle east

Iran will go from being polarized to roughly moderate in its connections, esp if a peace agreement is reached with Israel, the Assad regime is ousted, and Iraq is a stable and friendly state

Jordan would enjoy further peace and the Palestinian Authority's new confidence since the ouster of Hamas etc. may prove a strong factor for Jordan's relations with its Palestinian majority, which would take away focus from Israel-Palestinian conflict

The new Syrian government would aspire to join the Arab League but may consider giving Palestinian refugees citizenship, which will play a factor in Israel-PA deals

Hamas won free and fair elections. Peace must come from negotiations with Hamas; it can't be predicated on their destruction.

Well, yeah, except for the slight part about how they're a terrorist organisation?

I mean, the Quarter (the Quartet (United States, Russia, United Nations, and European Union) basically said, we can recognise you, but you have to commit to non-violence etc.

And Hamas was like, no, screw you guys, we're going to keep rocketing and bombing all the civilians we like...I mean, Israel's going to cave eventually, if we keep shooting rockets at their citizens, right?

"[The other side is] going to cave eventually, if we keep shooting rockets at their citizens" is exactly the logic Bibi is using with the current campaign in Gaza.

It's absurd and insanely biased to pressure only one side of an armed conflict to adopt non-violence. Take a look at the death toll of the conflict: the fact that more pressure is on Hamas than Israel to "commit to non-violence etc." from various actors like the Quartet is a sign of how biased those actors truly are.

I've been downvoted, presumably because people seem to believe "we need to bomb the other side / wipe them out in order to begin to discuss peace" mentality but that's been the predominant strategy for decades and it hasn't gotten far. Hamas rose to popularity in the OPT because they were seen as an institution that was providing social services (hospitals, schools, etc.) and wasn't as corrupt at the local level as the PA. If you take a 30-year view, Hamas went from enjoying support from the Israeli military as a counterweight to the PLO to being the reason Israel claims they can't have any productive dialogue with the PA. It's morally bankrupt.

Predicating negotiations on capitulation of the other side (in terms of things like the Hamas charter, recognition, non-violence, what have you) isn't diplomacy, it's the complete absence thereof.

All I know is that if Hamas didn't fire rockets into Israel, Israel's army would never come in or bomb anything in there. In fact the IDF would protect them if they were attacked.

As for the blockade -- we need international inspectors to come in and make sure all the tunnels are closed and qassam rockets are gone. Then Egypt and israel should lft the blockade.

The best test of an organization isn't when they win an election, it is if they step down when they lose one.

If they "can't" lose elections (because of military control, media control, just not holding any more elections and/or election cheating), they aren't better than... well, Putin or Hamas.

In this case, we also have all that about celebrating the murdering of civilians and organised official antisemitism copied from both religious sources and the Nazis(!).

Edit: I might add that Austria got sanctioned in the EU over Jörg Haider's political party and its democratic result. Hamas must be at least a factor of hundred worse.

Ummm how about the part where after these fair and free elections they eliminated the rest of the government through killing them or running them out of town?

Would you mind addressing what part of legitimate democracy that is?

I didn't say that there was a legitimate democracy in the OPT- I said they won elections.

By the 4th Geneva Conventions the security of Palestinian civilians rests with the occupying power. Gaza is similar to Area A - the PA has policing powers but the Israeli military retains ultimate control, as evidenced by control of borders, airspace, and shipping routes. By international law Gaza is still occupied, so the occupying power has at least as much responsibility for protection of civilians as any other entity.

The PA has little if any practical influence over areas B and none over area C. So in very real terms the OPT is occupied, and I wouldn't call any occupied state a free democracy, because occupying militaries aren't elected by their subjects.

I mention the elections because they do represent a poll if not a census of popular opinion in the OPT. If you want to maintain legitimacy and support for any accord, it makes sense to include them. Otherwise you're just gearing up for an agreement between the occupying power and their puppets, which is pretty meaningless.

Hamas was elected in 2006 because they had better social programs than Fatah. This was a more major factor than their position regarding the elimination of a Jewish state.

Almost immediately upon coming into power they destroyed the rest of the government, killed people, ran Fatah out of town and proceeded to impose growing Talibanization efforts in Gaza, restricting freedom of women, gays, etc. They also trained kids to become fighters, etc. It is against the Geneva conventions to fire rockets from civilian areas, and against many international laws to use civilians as human shields. So no, Hamas is not a legitimate government, and they commit international war crimes. I am not sure how you support the idea that "Peace can't be predicated on their destruction".

That said, if the international community cares as much about Gaza as it now seems from the rhetoric, I say they should form a coalition to go into Gaza and help them build a real, independent sovereign state there. When the UN inspectors can confirm that the smuggling tunnels have been closed and there are no more Qassam rockets, scud missiles, or whatever else they've got lying around, then Israel and Egypt can lift the blockade and Gaza can have freer trade. Note that all this can be done without Israel's involvement.

But the international community would have to find willing partners in Gaza, and I doubt the semi-theocratic, ideological Hamas regime would make for good partners. But after Israel takes out Hamas, maybe the international community can form a plan to step in there. Here's hoping. But then again, let's face the sad truth: no states really care enough to help the Gaza people. The Arab League states deny Palestinian refugees citizenship -- even the ones fleeing Syria. And the same NATO countries that went into Iraq to nation-build are not likely to do it in Gaza, even though it's much more readily possible to build something there. There's no oil or other stuff to support "American interests".

Other people that international coalition didn't really try to help get their own state or avoid genocide: Kurds, Tutsis, Black Sudanese in Darfur. So how do we get them to actually stop talking and start helping provide security and nation build?

I didn't say they were a government. They are a resistance movement in an occupied territory. I suppose you could consider then a stateless government, but they most certainly aren't running a state. They're running something closer to a semi-autonomous reservation. Yes, they've violated international law, repeatedly, and so has Israel.

Negotiations take place between two or more parties and they result in changes to what they're all both doing. If you predicate negotiations on capitulation, you aren't negotiating - you're demanding. Israel refusing to talk to Hamas until Hamas has managed to stop all the rocket fire (I'll point out one of the early targets in this round of Gaza shelling was the Gaza police chief, so the idea that the political wing of Hamas even could stop the rockets requires quite a bit of faith in their wartime occupation political integrity!) would be just as boneheaded as Hamas refusing to talk to Israel until Israel agrees that refugees can return and not live as second class citizens in the land of their ancestors.

Hamas has put forward proposals for medium to long-term cease fires and/or peace agreements before, and has agreed in principle to focusing on the creation of a Palestinian state within 1967 borders. Meanwhile, Israel proclaimed East Jerusalem as annexed and routinely states that Jerusalem will remain an undivided and eternal capital of their state, all while expanding settlement construction in the West Bank.

"We have no-one to talk to because the other side is doing bad things" is a position both sides could take on reasonable moral grounds, but practically, it's stupid to think that any sort of peace could come from a refusal to talk.

Talking isn't the last step, it's the first, and Israel certainly has no less blame for the absence of talks than Hamas.

Also, re: use of human shields, despicable behavior, and not unique to a side. http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/middle-east/israeli-sol...

While I agree with the sentiment, I think for whatever your proposals are worth Hamas has in fact been the party that refused to participate in an egyptian brokered ceasefire and talk to Israel:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/16/egypt-no-negoti...

It seems like they'd rather have their last stand "to the last human shield", because they are "hard liners".

During this time Israel had enforced a ceasefire and invited Hamas to do the same while they talk, but nothing changed on the other side.

Are you seriously advocating that Israel live under hundreds of rockets being fired into their cities because they now have enough bomb shelters and anti missile defenses (where each anti missile is like $50k) that its population can endlessly run to shelters and pray no one gets hurt? And just wait until Hamas happens to feel like talking?

For any real peace agreement to occur, both sides should be able to enforce it. For a couple years Hamas was able to restrain the other groups from firing rockets. I personally think this is not good enough. When you have terror groups right on your country's border able to fire in at any time, who try to dig tunnels for the sole reason to attack you, and when your country is 25 miles wide around that area, wouldnt you have an obligation to protect your people?

By the way the critics of Israel did far worse intheir day. USA committed genocide against native americans who are lucky to live reservations after their brethren have been exterminated. That great new critic Erdogan denies the Kurds an independent state TODAY, besides having to live down the massacres of Armenians, Greeks and others by the Turks. These are real genocides and massacres. What we have at this point is as you said a "reservation" which COULD become an independent state if they only renounced violent methods, recognized its neighbor as a state, and focused on using their money to help build up their own people with international help. They knew exactly what would happen when they fired into Israel.

I agree with Bill Clinton's statements on this: http://www.jpost.com/Operation-Protective-Edge/Bill-Clinton-...

For what it's worh I also agree with Clinton's remarks to Israel regarding letting the west bank be its own state: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/18/so-what-did-bill-...

But when it comes to Gaza literally ALL THEIR LEADERS HAVE TO DO IS CARE ABOUT THE PEOPLE OF GAZA more than their ideology. You mentioned refusing to talk - yes, they have been doing that for years.

Hamas didnt agree to this ceasefire because it was brokered with the Palestinian Authority but also refuses to participate in talks during the ceasefire!

Four years ago during the settlement freeE in the west bank Hamas and Hezbollah actively undermined the peace process by threatening to unleash violence if any agreement was reached!

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_negotiations_between_I...

During the direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, Hamas and Hezbollah reaffirmed to threat peace talks if both sides were matriculated towards any possible agreement. A Hamas-led coalition of 13 Palestinian militant groups initiated a violent campaign to disrupt peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. A series of attacks killed and wounded eight Israelis, including two pregnant women, between August and September 2010. Israeli and Palestinian Authority security forces responded with raids that resulted in the deaths and arrests of militants involved in the attacks. Rocket and mortar attacks from the Hamas-run Gaza Strip also increased in September.

Reas what you wrote and tell me how it applies to Hamas.

Hamas doesnt recognize Israel and wouldnt talk to it. They engage in http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle_diplomacy but their previous partners hate them also (Egypt). Egypt participates in the blockade of Gaza!

Hamas are hardliners who still think along the lines of http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khartoum_Resolution

2008: They refused to recognize Israel as a state and honor any previous agreements and said they could generously offer a 10-year truce if Israel goes back to pre 1967 borders. Although they refuse to stop calling for the elimination of the Jewish state: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/24235665/ns/world_news-mideast_n_a...

2012: Hamas says it will recognize and talk with Israel if Israel withdraws completely to pre 1967 borders with no swaps and gives a full right of return to ALL Palestinians. Asked whether this will lead Hamas to have peace with Israel, they refused to state. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2008/04/20086150983...

In short: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3471/hamas-moderation

I am not even sure how anyone can seriously argue in favor of a Hamas regime without also being in favor of the elimination of a Jewish state because that's pretty much what they are after. Just because it sounds crazy doesnt mean they arent.

Relevant (and funny): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vZLWbqpDyQ&feature=youtu.be...

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.

Is a matrix plot the best way of visualizing this when all of the relationships are reciprocated in kind?

I added a graph using graphviz here https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByAekPg2AgZoQUFGdl8yd1h3SWs

It's pretty simple. Any country which is receiving massive US aid is friends with other countries receiving massive US aid. In some cases the frienship is a sort of "secret" (eg. Saudi Arabia and Israel) or "complicated" because officially, for appearances sake, they should align on religion or something.

Iran used to be part of the USA club when it had the brutal murderous dictator. But now it's enemy to the USA club as soon as they overthrew the dictator.

Basic takeaway - the relationships between players in the Middle East is much more complicated than state-state relations, and stated positions of the players are not necessarily comprehensive in summing up the relations. Also - this chart seems like it could change incredibly frequently (Iran's friendship with Iraq is relatively recent, 6 months ago ISIS would have far more friends, etc.)

Since when did Iran and Turkey become enemies?

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 of islam is to militarily dominate, so aside from Lebanon (and formerly Iraq), there is no example of a state with powre sharing. Even in Lebanon there is only power sharing between Christians and muslims, not between different sects of muslims. (the difference being that Christians don't see the need to exterminate muslims (just convert them, eventually), nor do muslims want to exterminate Christians, just dominate them (talking about the values of the religions here). Sunni's do want to exterminate Shi'as and vice-versa. To put it bluntly: sharia is pretty clear on the need to kill any muslim who is not the same sect as you are. But Christians/Jews can get the choice dhimma or death. So Lebanon will not blow up as easily as Iraq will)

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.

You think Erdogan wants an Wahhabist caliphate centered in Bagdad that claims parts of Turkey? Not likely!

I'm trying to imagine what goals they share?

I guess Turkey probably doesn't want an Iranian-dominated Iraq (and nor does ISIS of course!), but Turkey can probably accept that to some degree provided Iraqi Kurdistan remains autonomous and provides a buffer zone. Beyond that I can't see anything they really have in common.

Of course not. I think he wants the ottoman empire back. He wants a non-wahhabist (but still quite strict) caliphate centered in constantinople. Most of all he wants the basic property of the caliphate : a theocracy.

He has, after, said exactly that. Cost him votes, but not enough.

As I said, he's quite sympathetic with what they're doing, he's doing the same. He's just behaving like any Ottoman vasal did a mere 100 years ago. He agrees with the need for a caliphate, probably even with the method. He just disagrees on the caliph and the capital. Like any ottoman vasal, tough, he sees them as competition as well as potential allies.

Iran is Shi'a/secular

Islamic Republic of Iran is a theocracy.

Bush was republican, doesn't mean all Americans were right-wing.

Exactly the distinction I wanted to make. Iran is a theocracy, with a population that has at least a significant secular fraction.

Is your purpose in drawing this distinction to claim that the secular tendencies of the population of Iran is an effective counterweight to the ambitions of its theocracy?

US ambitions keep the theocracy powerful. Since they overthrew the US backed dictator which had overthrown the secular, progressive democratically elected government of Mossadegh.

Every time the US threatens Iran or imposes sanctions, or funds and arms a terrible dictator in Iraq so he can bomb Iranian cities and drop poison gas on them killing hundreds of thousands of people. The theocracy steps up to the plate the only force powerful enough to stand up to the US.

Any more liberal voices get drowned out by the need for security from the US and its interests.

Turkey is a NATO member. Additionally, Iran supports Assad in Syria while Turkey generally supports (some of) the rebels.

Turkey is generally seen as the leader of the secular Islamic world, while Iran is seen as the leader Shia Islam.

While they aren't shooting enemies they aren't exactly allies either.

More interestingly, the chart shows Turkey and Iraq as enemies, while in fact Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan have recently become quite close allies (!!) based on a oil and trade[1][2].

[1] http://online.wsj.com/articles/conflict-shows-new-closer-tur...

[2] http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/turk...

Iran and Turkey became enemies when Iran overthrew the brutal dictatorship of the Shah. Same time the US switched from being pro- the Iranian nuclear program to being anti-.

Highly surprising! Nah, not really.

Could someone explain the first couple of principal components of this conflict to a historically illiterate like me?

It all comes down to 'Whose land is it anyway?'

Some of the issues go back thousands of years. In a sense, it also shows the genius of Prophet Mohammad. From a historical point of view, one of his greatest achievements was to unite the Arabs. That's something that was never done before or since. So, simplifying it as just a land dispute isn't right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-evIyrrjTTY

Israel, Oil, Shia vs Sunni conflict, US ambitions, old school dictators vs democratic movements vs religious fundamentalists.

I think that covers most things, except Turkey. Turkey has a whole secular vs religious plus embrace Europe and the West vs embrace the Middle East thing going on.

Basically a short summary is difficult because the history is enormous and intertwined.

Proxy wars among larger powers.

Syria demonstrates this principal most clearly. It's the US (or the West if you prefer) vs Russia for controlling influence in the region.

Huh, where's Afghanistan? Or do they kind of not matter any more in this scheme of things?

According to Wikipedia, Afghanistan is not a part of the Middle East

According to Wikipedia, the United States is not a part of the Middle East either. Odd...

Afganistan is not in the middle east. That's a whole another cluster..ck.

There were gaps closer to home - the non-ISIS Syrian opposition (on the ground, not the overseas committee), the Kurds.

This chart is deceptive because it focuses on details of micro relationships while ignoring alignment of factions with global powers vying for control over resources and political influence, which has been stirring this pot on and off for thousands of years.

The western media portrays these battles as isolated internal disputes, and while there are very serious regional disputes, they are influenced by external powers like the US and Russia. Similar to the way in previous epochs groups like Muslim or Roman empires affected outcomes or took advantage of regional conflicts.

It is a crucible. I believe that the biggest driver is still fossil fuels. Yes, solar and other systems are rapidly replacing a portion of the energy demand, but still, the critical need for oil cannot be understated. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_consum.... You can see that this is quite an unequal distribution. The need to maintain that is what puts pressure on that region and causes regional animosities to be taken advantage of in order to move power over to groups siding with dominant forces.

Even though solar and other energy sources are gaining ground, the industrial reliance on fossil fuels is a much tougher nut to crack, and I actually believe that creating viable industrial production processes based on bio-fuels or significantly different chemistry is the key to 'peace in the Middle East'. Obviously, bad blood between groups going back thousands of years does not go away just because someone invented a non-fossil-fuel-based industrial precursor, but the motivation for stirring up those conflicts in order to further political power of one group gets reduced.

There are other aspects to this aside from fossil fuels. The fire for the crucible is fueled generally by the global power struggle which has other aspects like currency domination. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_hegemony or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Great_Game.

For some people, for example, those who read western media which is full of talk of local "evil dictators" and "terrorists", framing things this way will be very controversial. My next paragraph will probably be even more controversial for everyone.

I believe that hegemony and centralized control (at least on a physical regional level) could someday be supplanted by global cyber-states. In other words, the borders are not dictated so much by the map or actual physical areas, but by alignments with global systems of political power and organization, connected by internets. There will likely be multiple internets controlled by different global factions, since controlling these internets is key to controlling the global organizations.

Technologies like advanced 3d printing (eventually moving into the area of programmable matter), and free information flow may democratize force so that power over life and death, and therefore ultimate political control, moves from central authorities into the hands of individuals and more regional groups. At the same time, this type of technology could enable the global super-cyberstates as it would enable any group with sufficient control of a net to nearly instantly muster military assets at any point around the world.

I can go so far as to frame all of this as a need for good tools and systems for knowledge management and securing human needs, with the two interacting.

One of the core problems for knowledge management systems is how to promote an efficient, integrated, holistic view of the system, while still providing a strong capability for the evolution and maintenance of divergent branches or systems which evolve in new and beneficial directions. Or just, divergent branches which allow localized freedom in the knowledge graph, which may later lead in beneficial directions.

An example of this is different standards or platforms competing for dominance in technology. Based on a certain platform of solutions and set of common assumptions, a set of new problems arises, and many different groups and individuals solve those problems in relative isolation. In order to move on to solving the next set of problems, or for the overall group to gain the advantages of the new solutions in a way that integrates with previous efforts, a certain solution set is selected.

The particular process by which solutions are selected and integrated into the system, or multiple interacting systems, affects everyone working towards the advancement or maintenance of the systems greatly.

Github is a concrete example of this.

There seems to be a tendency towards a very small number of systems which exhibit high coupling and low cohesion. But maybe that view is too mechanistic and low-level, and a higher level view which better incorporates abstraction has a different problem.

Creating an abstraction prunes redundant solutions but also often discards less generally relevant information that may however be important in certain circumstances. Abstractions are powerful because their hierarchical structure allows individual nodes to leverage aggregate powers of branches. This hierarchical structure is also a disadvantage though in terms of the reliance that leaves have on the integrity of each branch.

Compositional rather than hierarchical structures can provide the same power of abstraction without the brittleness and central-point-of-failure that hierarchies have.

It seems though that more compositional networked structures tend to converge towards what are effectively hierarchies.

Anyway, I think that there must be some tools or processes or perspectives that would provide for somehow more optimal evolutions of structures. Probably some that are not discovered or in common use. In case anyone read all of this and knows of some relevant links, please let me know.

As a middleastern, I find this very incorrect and stereotypical.

Just execute Floyd–Warshall algorithm for transitive closure :)

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.

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.

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?

TL;DR everyone pretty much hates everyone else.

So, no love for ISIS in the Middle East?

You might consider it a ... Danger Zone?

In fairness, I wasn't aware what the real ISIS was myself until a couple of weeks ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_L...

Where's Jordan in all of this?

wow. Didn't expect this much of a response.

lol! ISIS has no friends at all

Ya they do. Some very powerful ones. Or else they never would have been allowed to get to the point they are at now.

If they get big enough they will get a haircut. They won't be allowed to actually rule for long probably. But as long as they keep causing trouble for the enemies of enemies they might be allowed to keep taking over caches of weapons (whoop!..but hey, we aren't arming terrorists! they just stole them!).

I don't know anything about this stuff, but I wonder - is it completely improbable that "Al Qaida" could actually be a group of agent provocateurs invented by some part of the military/industrial complex to scare up support for their actions?

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?

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.

Uh, this is what happen when you practice data visualization abuse.

I translated it to the following graph. No nodes, bad relationship. You can copy the source to: http://graphviz-dev.appspot.com/

Image at: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByAekPg2AgZoQUFGdl8yd1h3SWs/...

digraph g{

AlQaida -> Iran [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"]

AlQaida -> Hamas [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"]

Iran -> Egypt [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"]

Egypt -> Iraq [arrowhead="none"]

Egypt -> Israel [arrowhead="none"]

PalestinianAuthority -> Egypt [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"]

SaudiArabia -> Egypt [arrowhead="none"]

US -> Egypt [arrowhead="none"]

Hamas -> Hezbollah [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"]

Hamas -> Iran [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"]

Hamas -> Iraq [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"]

Hamas -> PalestinianAuthority [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"]

Hamas -> SaudiArabia [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"]

Hamas -> Turkey [arrowhead="none"]

Hezbollah -> Iran [arrowhead="none"]

Hezbollah -> Iraq [arrowhead="none"]

Hezbollah -> PalestinianAuthority [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"]

Hezbollah -> Turkey [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"]

Hezbollah -> Syria [arrowhead="none"]

Iran -> Iraq [arrowhead="none"]

Iran -> PalestinianAuthority [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"]

Iran -> Syria [arrowhead="none"]

Iraq -> PalestinianAuthority [arrowhead="none"]

Iraq -> Syria [arrowhead="none"]

Iraq -> US [arrowhead="none"]

ISIS

Israel -> SaudiArabia [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"]

Israel -> Turkey [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"]

Israel -> US [arrowhead="none"]

SaudiArabia -> PalestinianAuthority [arrowhead="none"]

Turkey -> PalestinianAuthority [arrowhead="none"]

Syria -> PalestinianAuthority [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"]

US -> PalestinianAuthority [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"]

Syria -> Turkey [style="dashed" arrowhead="none"]

US -> SaudiArabia [arrowhead="none"]

}

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