The region of the Near East, or as we could understand as the Near East we are going to describe, it is located between two big continents, Europe and Asia. This meeting point among two huge differenciate continents make this region a special one. The beginning of the civilization as we known, if we consider "civilization" as a way of organizing the life in a political way of sedentary citizens. The first civilizations were located, about the 3000 BCE, in state cities like Uruk or Lagas in the riverbeds of the Euphrates and Tigris. This societies quickly progressed and starting developing crops and mining habilites, so this region became the most advanced one.
This region developed also several civilizations in the come in years.
Due to the arise of the Greek colonies in the Mediterranean and the cities-state the greeks were organizing, the polis, the Greeks developed also an important economical point in the world. All the cultural exchanges, besides economic ones took place in the Greek polis and after it concentrated also in the Roman Empire. Another region of the world that was also prosperous at that time was the continent we know nowadays at Asia, concentring the economic mainly in the Asia coast. So this region, the Near East, became a meeting poing between two civilizations, where also a civilization lived. This point was very dynamic, speaking from an economic, social, political and cultural. For example: the western philosophy started in the greek colonies in the Mediterranean Sea about the VI century BCE. Nowadays this region is important because another reason: is wealthy in oil, so that means that this is an strategic region to control. We will focus in the Near East as entire territories that share a culture, etnography, languagues and religion that in some point of time were dominated by the Ottoman Empire. So we exclude the balcans, although the Near East has strong relations and both regions are interdependent, they share more features with another regions of Europe or Russia (former CCCP republics). We can say the same about territories that were under the control of the Ottoman Empire, like a part of Greece, Cyprus, Armenia...
GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT (nominal)
This region is a non-institucionalized region, so all the indicators showed here have only an academic purpose, we are only adding up the GDP of each country. We mean that we cannot understand the data given as the GDP of the entire region, it is only a sum. The origin of the data is the International Monetary Fund in the approximate estimation of 2016. It depends on the place you search the data and the procedure you do the number of the GDP.
GDP of the region: 3,530,416 millions US dollars.
World GDP (Includes NE): 75,212,696 millions US dollars.
Near East GDP: 3,530,416 millions US dollars.
LANGUAGES SPOKEN IN THE REGION
In such a cultural diverse region we can found a lot of languages spokens, dialects and local languages, here are some of the languages, the most important ones, that are spoken in the region:
- Arab
- Turkish
- Altaic languages
- Farsi
- Arabic languages
- Kurdish
- Hebrew
- Azerbaijani
- Syriac
- Aramaic
- Urdu
- Baluchi
- Berber
- Turkic languages
- French
- English
- Judeao-Spanish
SURFACE
If we compute all the surface of the countries and we add together, it will result that the Near East total area is:
6,561,509 square km
We must appoint:
- Total area: the sum of land and water areas within international boundaries and coastlines.
- Land area: the aggregate of all land within international boundaries and coastlines, excluding water area.
- Water area: the sum of the surface areas of all inland water bodies (lakes, reservoirs, and rivers) within international boundaries and coastlines.
POPULATION
The census of each country of people who has one of the nationalities is: 427,434,000 inhabitants.
But we must take care about this number, currently in the region several conflicts are causing population movements and demographical changes, for this reason we can sum up saying that about 427 milion people lives currently in this region, according to the governments, but maybe is not showing the reality scenario. Approximately 10 milion people are in movement or they are not in their countries of origin due to several causes, like wars in the region as the Syrian Conflict, the Israel-Palestina disputies or the increase of terrorism.
In red (Negative migratory balance) the number of population missing (dead, migrations) for each countries. In green, new population. (Positive migratory balance).
DENSITY
The location of this region, in a desert environment makes that the population concentrates in cities. But it exists also a huge number of the population who live disperse among the territory within small villages and towns. Another important fact is that the population concentrates also in places near see, like in the riverbed or in the coasts. The average density of the poblation of the Near East is: 66,73 inhabitants per square kilometer.
But we can compute also the density of the total region, computing the region as unique one territory, by this definition the density is: 65,14 inhabitants per square kilometer. Moreless the total density of the region, mixing both calcs is about the 66 inhabitants per square kilometer.
GDP PER CAPITA
This coefficient is easy to understand the economic power of a certain region, in the meaning that relationates the economic capability (GDP) distributed among the population. Although is a biased indicator, because it does not shows the inequality and the income differences among the population, it gives us a basic image of the region. This coefficient will tell us "how many GDP corresponds to what part of the population", but this region is complex and the countries too, it exist extreme poor countries (Yemen) and extreme high countries (Kuwait), doing that the GDP per capita is distorted. The GDP per capita of the region is
33,191.94118 Geary-Khamis dollars per person and per year.
AVERAGE HDI
The HDI s a composite statistic of life expectancy, education, and per capita income indicators, which are used to rank countries into four tiers of human development. A country scores higher HDI when the lifespan is higher, the education level is higher, the GDP per capita is higher, the fertility rate is lower, and the inflation rate is lower. The inequality of this region makes that some countries have a high life level while others have disastrous indicators. While in some parts of the regions the economic makes the HDI grows, in the same region the existance of no educations makes this index go down. Overall, the average HDI of the region is 0,667.
RELIGION
The Near East region is situated in the classical influential zone of the Muslim beliefs, it is for that reason that most of the population of the region is Muslim believer (89%), another division we must do is between the Shia Islam (12% of total muslims) and Sunni Islam (87 of total muslims) and other believes like Ibadism (in Oman is majortiy) included inside the residual 1%. This division between Sunni and Shia are clearly in some territories of the region like Iran (clear Shia majority) or in Saudi Arabia (clear Sunni majority), but it exists countries where the gap is not so much, causing that in the same territory of the region lives different muslims beliefs, creating a conflict situation like in countries as Iraq or Syria. Jews are only present in Israel. It exists also minority religions like yazidies or a few christians minority in the coast of Syria or in inner cities of Syria like Hasakah. The dominant religion is the Islam. The rest 11% is divided between christianity, judaism and other beliefs, including the very low rate of atheist or agnosticism.
Green: Sunni Red: Shia Blue: Ibadism
ETHNICS
We must define ethnics as a social group that shares a common and distinctive culture, religion, language, ethnic traits, background... It is an inherited condition, that goes through generation thanks to the DNA and the traditions. We must not confuse this term with races, which are divided by biological conditions, where ethnics are defined as a group of people who share several aspects, including physiological ones but not exclusively biological characteristics.
In Near East the most common ethincs are: arabs, jews, turks, kurds, assyries and persians.
CURRENCIES
In the regions, as it is not defined by any administrative organization, it does not have an official currency. All the countries have their own currencies and use them mostly in their inner economy. We want to make this section because we want to remark the importance of a currency held by no state, the petrocurrency (Currency obtained through the sell of oil). As we will explain after, this region charactarized by having a lot of oil, and not only havinf (resources and reseves) they also trade with it and its their most important income of the budget, for one part is positive because oil actually is necessary for all the process of production nowadays, but it has a bad side, that the economies of this region are very sensitive to the oscillations of the price.
We must remember that each country have a currency, but we could name the "non-official" currency of this region the petrocurrency, specially the petrodollar.
MAP OF CURRENT SITUATION (With non-state actors)
The current situation in the Near East is a bit complicated in sense of that non-state actors are controlling huge zones of the region, changing the rules of the international law and changing constanly the boundaries of the countries that integrates the region of the Near East. For that reason we want to clude a map with the zones under control of non-state actors to show how this region is suffering a change. We wills decribe the region as the international community (neocolonialist point of view) recognized according to historical definition and international law.
TIME ZONE
The Near East region is divided by political administrations (states), each of these stats adopts different times zones, according to own criteria. Some of them use the summer time adding one hour, and other countries don't use. This map shows how the region is divided by the time zone. The range of the difference of hours goes to GMT+4 (Oman) to GMT+2 (Turkey).
MOST COMMON INTERNATIONAL GOVERNMENTAL ORG.
The countries that integrates the Near East have a diversal cultural approximation, they have different ways of seeing the world, different degree of the religion law application and several ethnics groups. For all that reasons there's not a unique international governmental (or non-governmental) that rules the entire region. We must remember that the term Near East was coined by westeners to define the region to the East of Asia, coined after the Crimean War. After this term was used to mention the countries that were under the dominion of the Ottoman Empire. This region is used now for academic purproses, for that reasons there not exists a feeling of the countries of belonging to a Near East community, they think that they belong to other communities like to the EU by Turkey, the Arab countries by Saudi Arabia and other kind of alliances. The countries do not share so many important international organizations, the most important could be the Arab League, the United Nations, the World Trade Organization and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
Countries of the Arab League.
COUNTRIES AND NON-STATE ACTORS
We will go deep on this section in the other part of the web, now only we will write the names.
STATE ACTORS
- Saudi Arabia
- Bahrein
- Qatar
- United Arab Emirates
- Iraq
- Iran
- Israel
- Jordan
- Kuwait
- Lebanon
- Oman
- Palestinian National Authority
- Syria
- Turkey
- Yemen
- Egypt
NON-STATE ACTORS
- Hezbollah
- DAESH
- Free Syria Army
- Kurdish
- Northern Cyprus
- Islamic front
- Al-Qaeda
- Houthis
MOST IMPORTANT CITIES
One way of knowing which are the most important cities are by looking a satellite image by night. All the strong points shows important cities, showing the economic development of the zone. Some weak lights of the deserts are the flamethrowers of the oil stations. The mos important cities are: Jerusalem, El-Cairo, Istanbul and Makkah.
AVERAGE GINI COEFFICIENT
The Gini coefficient is a measure of statistical dispersion intended to represent the income distribution of a nation's residents, and is the most commonly used measure of inequality. This inequality in the Near East is too high. While some countries have huge and large income levels, some other probably could not hva enough money to survive a single day. The average gini coefficient is a indicator that is a mean, but is distorted, or that reason we want to express the differences inside the region by uploading this image where gini coefficient shows the inequality in the region. Moreover, we have not enough data to draw a representative average gini coefficient.
AVERAGE MILITAR EXPENDITURE
The high tension within the region makes that a lot of countries spent a huge share of the budget to defense purpose. The military power is not always measured in the number of soliders, in current times military power is measured in the share of GDP destined to the army, the share of R+D destined to military technology and the tecnhology of the armies. Countries in the Near East like Israel, Iran or Saudi Arabia have a huge share of the GDP destined to defense issues. The Near East is the zone where most countries spent a huge share of its GDP to defense as the maps shows:
EXPORTS
All the entire regions exports oil or oil derivates. Exports like minerals, raw materials, agricultural products, crops, clothing and precious metals are exported. This show and explaines why this regions it is so controversial, the main product of exportations, the oil, is the most important input in the current capitalist system and in the current technological era which all works with oil.
IMPORTS
Depeding on the country. There not exist a clear tendency to import the same product, all depends on the configuration of the country, what it produces and what lack of materials it has that they have the necessity to export them. The most common imports are food, finished products like cars and raw materials to make concrete.