Aqeel Ahmad

  UNDERSTANDING THE PRESENT: THE IMPACT OF WORLD WAR I IN THE MIDDLE EAST           Watching the ongoing refugee crisis in the Middle East and Europe, I cannot but recall the suffering of Middle Eastern people at another time of great upheaval: during the First World War and following its settlement.      The history of the Great War helps us to understand how the violent past is responsible for the current turmoil in the Middle East. Historians have covered the destruction caused by the First World War in Europe extensively, but many in the West do not realize the level of destruction and upheaval it caused in the Middle East. The losses in the Middle East were staggering: the war not only ravaged the land and decimated armies, but it also destroyed whole societies and economies. In this way, the experience of World War I in the Middle East is perhaps more akin to the experience of World War II in Europe. The social, economic, and p...

  West Asia and the Arab world since 1919 Outline: 1          Middle East: Strategic importance, geography and history Turkey: 2          Downfall of Ottoman Empire during WWI 3          Turkish war of independence 4          Mustafa Kemal reforms 5          Cyprus problem 6          Turkey and Pakistan Egypt: 7          Egyptian Nationalism after WWI 8          Free officer’s movement, Coup d’état 9          Suez War 10        1967 Arab Israeli war 11        1973 Arab Israeli war 12...

NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION      In May 1998, India and Pakistan engaged in a series of nuclear tests, raising  the possibility of escalation in the pace of nuclear proliferation around the  world. Nuclear proliferation refers to the spread of nuclear weapons to states that did not possess them prior to 1968, when the Nuclear Non-Proliferation  Treaty (NPT) was signed. Until the Indian and Pakistani nuclear detonations, international efforts to arrest the spread of nuclear arms in the 1990s  seemed to be enjoying some success. The rate of nuclear proliferation appeared to be slowing down, the geographic scope of proliferation was  shrinking, and de-nuclearisation was achieved in 1996 in parts of the former Soviet Union. Three post- Soviet states with nuclear weapons left on their  territory – Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine – cooperated in the removal of those weapons to Russia and joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as non-nuclear-w...