Slate has published a fascinating grid explaining all the relationships between different groups entangled in the Middle East. Countries that hate each other have a red cranky face, countries that like each other have a green smiley face, and the yellow confused faces mean the two countries have a complicated relationship. If you go to the link, each point on the grid is clickable, and reveals a short summary of the relationship. At last, we can understand everything…until the faces change next week.
Unfortunately, the only clarity that emerges is that everyone hates ISIS, and most of the groups hate Al Qaida. I also see that hate faces outnumber happy faces 43 to 17.
But I have a solution! Every country should follow the US and Israel’s lead, and bomb, topple, annihilate, or otherwise destroy every country with a hate face. Just pick your favorite country and look down either row or column, and have them go to war with every country that’s red on the grid. The yellow ‘it’s complicated’ faces do complicate this approach, unsurprisingly, but I’m pretty sure that after you blow up their neighbors, they’ll either go green or red. It’ll evolve towards greater simplicity, naturally.
The survivors after this apocalyptic orgy of destruction will be any country that has nothing but green or yellow faces in their column, which means a wave of happiness and peace will sweep across the region. Easy. All solved. Victory!
You can even examine the grid now and predict who the victor will be.
But…
Isn’t that the Armageddon the Fundies want??
None of the factions or states involved are monolithic, and some of them may be allied on certain matters, whilst opposed on others. It’s all a lot more complicated.
Unfortunately, countries, like corporations, are not people, the merely contain them. This may complicate your survival estimates as well as the prospects for future happiness.
Wow…PZ just disclosed the neocon foreign policy playbook. Was PZ tortured by Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld in order to get him to write this?
It seems to me Jordan is the clear winner in this chart. The only way to win is not to play.
That looks disturbingly like the grid I made for my Neverwinter nights server, and all the custom factions in it.
Scary….
@ Larry Lennhoff
Oh, Jordan definitely plays. Having a smaller population (and military) than the others on the chart, they are adept at flying under the radar, but they are on the Sunni side of the broader Arab conflicts. Jordan also serves as a convenient shopping mall for arms destined for the neighboring conflicts.
Interesting. Iraq actually has the most friends right now. But I doubt that Iraq could be said to be the “winner” in the current mess.
Jordan also serves as a dumping ground for people dislocated by 70+ years of continuous war, some 2 million Palestinians and a million or so Iraqis. I suspect quite a few from Syria now.
Note that Lebanon also isn’t on the chart. Clearly such a looser in the Middle East game, I guess there was no point including them.
And where are those Russians, and the Chinese?
Some random observations:
It’s odd that the enemy faces just show a flat expression. At least, they don’t look cranky to me, though the meaning is clear from the legend.
The relationships are symmetric (no unrequited love) so half the chart is redundant.
Iraq wins the popularity contest if you just count green faces.
I think a sparse representation would be a lot more useful. E.g., solid and dotted lines for friends and “it’s complicated” with enemy status assumed by default. When I look at this kind of thing, I wonder about sayings like “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” and it would be easier to scan the information for second-order relationships if I could follow arcs instead of having to look up rows and columns.
I’m also not convinced of the validity of any of this. I would have thought Israel and Egypt had a fairly complicated relationship, despite official agreements and cooperation.
In other news:
Dr. Mordechai Kedar, a lecturer in a right-wing Israeli university and former military intelligence officer has proposed his tactic for deterring terrorists: Raping their womenfolk into submission.
PaulBC #10:
You’re correct. The chart is way over simplified. But considering that some conflicts are over a thousand years old, what did you expect?
dianne #8:
Which just goes to show how badly made this chart is. Iraq should have been at least divided into two parts (Shia and Sunni) like the Palestinians were (Hamas and PLO), if not three. Similar divisions (minority vs majority, ruler vs ruled) should have been made for each country, including those that aren’t in this chart, and even than it wouldn’t have covered the entire relationship spectrum.
@#11 – IOW, there should be a Red angry face at the Iraq-Iraq intersection instead of a gray block, because “Iraq” isn’t friends with “Iraq”.
One of the big problem with America and the Middle East is that the vast majority of Americans *still* don’t have a clue who believes what in that part of the world. I had to make myself a chart to keep it straight —
Syria (Sunni), Saudi Arabia (Sunni), ISIS (Sunni), Hamas (Sunni), Jordan (Sunni), Afghanistan (Sunni)
Iraq (Shia), Iran (Shia), Lebanon, Hezbola (Shia)
Israel (Jewish), Turkey (Kurds)
ohkay, @13,
Hmm. Turkey’s got a large Kurdish minority (as do Iraq and Iran, with some in Syria), but if you’re basing your chart on who is in charge, it’s either Turks or Sunnis. Turks would be the most appropriate, since the state is defined by nationality, but you’re using religion for every other entity, so Sunni would be parallel.
Of course, to make things more complicated, many of the conflicts in the area are defined by ethnicity (Arabs vs. Iranis, Iranis vs. Turks, Turks vs. Arabs, Kurds vs. everyone, etc.). Or, perhaps more accurately, many of the conflicts occur in the nexus of religion and ethnicity.
ohkay #13:
Actually, Syria is mostly Sunni (about 80%), but the ruling elite (which represents ~20%) are a Shia subgroup. Same in Israel – ~75% are Jewish and ~20% are Arabs (not including the occupied territories, and not all of which self-identify as Palestinians, though the majority does). Lebanon is close to half Shia, but the rest are divided between Sunni, Christians and Druze (who are sometimes seen as part of the Shia by foreigners, but are in fact considered a heresy by both Shia and Sunnah. Furthermore, all male Druze in Israel serve in the IDF, just to give you a sense of the complexity). Lastly, Iraq is the best example of dangerous misconceptions – the whole point of the war between ISIS and the Iraqi government is because *most* of Iraqis are Shia, but a large minority (again, ~20%) are Sunni and the former regime was Sunni-centered.
Like I’ve said, it’s complicated.
alexandrez — “…not including the occupied territories…” Identifying some part of Israel as not occupied territory might reflect a particular point of view.
The most hated ones are ISIS and Al Qaeda. The leader of ISIS has proclaimed himself caliph, but I doubt that his claim will be accepted by many others.
A caliph is supposed to be the religious and political leader of the Islamic community, and past caliphates were Islamic empires: the Umayyads, the Abbasids, and the Ottomans. The position has been vacant after Mustafa Kemal Atatürk deposed the last Ottoman pasha.
The Kurds should have been added to this. They’re friends with Israel, Turkey (suprisingly), and not so good friends with the Iraq government.
Serbians tried this. It worked wonder: they lost 65% of their country’s territory and their leader ended up committing suicide in a dutch prison.