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...

                              The middle East is a transcontinental area located primarily in western Asia. And it also connects to some of the parts of the African and European continent. The western borders connect to the Mediterranean Sea where Israel, Lebanon, and Syria rest opposite from Greece and Italy in Europe. The Red and Arabian Seas surround the southern part of the center East. Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Oman border these waters, with Iraq and Jordan connecting them to the western part of the region. In the middle of the center, East rests the Persian Gulf, cutting into the region and giving it its hook-like shape. Countries along the Persian Gulf include the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Iran. The Middle East is also called, "land of the seven seas." The world's three biggest religions originated in The Middle East, Judaism, Christianity, and...

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...