Download DOCUMENT B (continued) - McCullers` World Explorers

ECONOMICS DOCUMENTS
DOCUMENT A - http://api.theweek.com/sites/default/files/legacygeneric/world-commodities-map-middle-east-central-asia_LARGE.jpg “This Map Shows Which Export Makes Your Country the Most Money”
Simran Khosla
1. In which Middle Eastern countries does oil make them the most money (include petroleum)?
2. Which Middle Eastern countries do not have oil as their leading money-making export?
3. Would you expect countries with oil to have a higher or lower GDP than countries without oil?
Why?
4. Use the GDP chart to find the GDP of the following Middle Eastern countries:
Saudi Arabia:
Iran:
Israel:
Turkey:
Iraq:
Kuwait:
5. Were your predictions in #3 correct? Why or why not?
6. How do you think countries without oil feel about countries with oil? Why?
DOCUMENT B (2 maps)
http://www.businessinsider.com/map-middle-east-energy-production-chokepoints-2014-12
1. List the top three producers of oil in the world and their percentages.
2. What is the relation between petroleum production, consumption, and the “chokepoints” on the
map (Suez Canal, Strait of Hormuz, and Bab el-Mandeb)? (HINT – How does the oil get from the
producers to the consumers?)
3. Would an oil-producing country prefer to be close to these three places or far away? Why?
4. What could occur if a country could not have access to these three places due to another country
interfering?
DOCUMENT B (continued)
Oil Reserves in the Middle East - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/globalconnections/mideast/maps/topotext.html
5. Most of the oil reserves in the Middle East surround which body of water?
6. What countries border this body of water?
7. Name one conflict that we have learned about that started because of the information this map
displays. Describe the causes and effects of that conflict.
DOCUMENT C
BACKGROUND OF THE PERSIAN GULF WAR – 2015 HISTORY.COM
Though the long-running war between Iran and Iraq had ended in a United Nations-brokered
ceasefire in August 1988, by mid-1990 the two states had yet to begin negotiating a permanent peace
treaty. When their foreign ministers met in Geneva that July, prospects for peace suddenly seemed
bright, as it appeared that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was prepared to dissolve that conflict and
return territory that his forces had long occupied. Two weeks later, however, Hussein delivered a
speech in which he accused neighboring nation Kuwait of siphoning crude oil from the Ar-Rumaylah
oil fields located along their common border. He insisted that Kuwait and Saudi Arabia cancel out $30
billion of Iraq’s foreign debt, and accused them of conspiring to keep oil prices low in an effort to
pander to Western oil-buying nations.
Did You Know?
In justifying his invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, Saddam Hussein claimed it was an
artificial state carved out of the Iraqi coast by Western colonialists; in fact, Kuwait had
been internationally recognized as a separate entity before Iraq itself was created by
Britain under a League of Nations mandate after World War I.
In addition to Hussein’s incendiary speech, Iraq had begun amassing troops on Kuwait’s border.
Alarmed by these actions, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt initiated negotiations between Iraq and
Kuwait in an effort to avoid intervention by the United States or other powers from outside the Gulf
region. Hussein broke off the negotiations after only two hours, and on August 2, 1990 ordered the
invasion of Kuwait. Hussein’s assumption that his fellow Arab states would stand by in the face of his
invasion of Kuwait, and not call in outside help to stop it, proved to be a miscalculation. Two-thirds of
the 21 members of the Arab League condemned Iraq’s act of aggression, and Saudi Arabia’s King
Fahd, along with Kuwait’s government-in-exile, turned to the United States and other members of the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) for support.
1. What reasons did Saddam Hussein give for invading Kuwait?
2. Did the other nations of the Arab League support Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait?
3. What did Saddam Hussein want from Kuwait?
DOCUMENT D
25 AUG 2014: ANALYSIS- YALE ENVIRONMENT 360
Mideast Water Wars: In Iraq, A Battle for Control of Water BY FRED PEARCE
Conflicts over water have long haunted the Middle East. Yet in the current fighting in Iraq, the
major dams on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers are seen not just as strategic targets but as powerful
weapons of war.
There is a water war going on in the Middle East this summer. Behind the headline stories of brutal
slaughter as Sunni militants carve out a religious state covering Iraq and Syria, there lies a battle for the
water supplies that sustain these desert nations.
Blood is being spilled to capture the giant dams that control the region’s two great rivers, the Tigris
and Euphrates. These structures hold back vast volumes of water. With their engineers fleeing as the
Islamic State (ISIS) advances, the danger is that the result could be catastrophe — either deliberate or
accidental.
Fights over water have pervaded the Middle East for a long time now. Water matters at least as
much as land. It is at the heart of the siege of Gaza – the River Jordan is the big prize for Israel and the
Palestinians. And over the years, water has brought Iraq, Syria and Turkey close to war over their shared
rivers, the Euphrates and Tigris.
The two rivers water a region long known as the “Fertile Crescent,” which sustained ancient
Mesopotamian civilizations. They were the first rivers to be used for large-scale irrigation, beginning about
7500 years ago. The first water war was also recorded here, when the king of Umma cut the banks of
irrigation canals alongside the Euphrates dug by his neighbor, the king of Girsu.
Not much has changed. The dependence persists, and so do the disputes. The main difference
today is that the diversion dams are bigger, and supply hydroelectric power as well as water. And that is
why in recent months, many of the key battles in Iraq’s civil war have been over large dams.
The Islamic State’s quest for hydrological control began in northern Syria, where in early 2013, it
captured the old Russian-built Tabqa Dam, which barricades the Euphrates as it flows out of Turkey. The
dam, which is the world’s largest earthen dam, is a major source of water and electricity for five million
people, including Syria’s largest city Aleppo. It also irrigates a thousand square kilometers of farmland.
This dam-building flies in the face of growing evidence that the entire region is becoming drier.
Below average rainfall has persisted for almost a decade now. Less rainfall combined with water diversions
have reduced the flow of both the Tigris and Euphrates by more than 40 percent in recent years, says AlAnsari. Some analysts say that the intense drought of 2007-2009, and the resulting failed crops, helped
trigger Syria’s civil war by creating social breakdown as farmers became refugees and food prices soared in
cities.
Japanese and Israeli climatologists predicted in 2009 that the drought is likely to be permanent
and the Fertile Crescent, which has sustained the region for thousands of years, “will disappear this
century.”
As the rivers empty, the temptation to fight over what remains can only grow. It is a true tragedy of
the commons.
1. What are the names of the two greatest rivers in the Middle East?
2. Why is having access to water so essential in the Middle East? Name a few purposes
of water in the region.
3. What has “reduced the flow” of the two greatest rivers in the region “by more than
40 percent in recent years?”
4. As water has become less available, what has happened between the countries in the
region? Explain some of the resulting conflicts that are described in the article.