Chapter 30: Africa and the Middle East

Independence in Africa

The Transition to Independence

  • European rule had been imposed on nearly all of Africa by 1900.
    • However, after World War II, Europeans realized that colonial rule in Africa would have to end.
  • In 1957, the Gold Coast, renamed Ghana and under the guidance of Kwame Nkrumah, was the first former British colony to gain independence.
    • In North Africa, the French granted full independence to Morocco and Tunisia in 1956.
    • In South Africa, where the political system was dominated by whites, the process was more complicated.
  • At the same time, by the 1950s, South African whites (descendants of the Dutch, known as Afrikaners) had strengthened the laws separating whites and blacks.
  • The result was a system of racial segregation known as apartheid (“apartness”).
  • Blacks demonstrated against the apartheid laws, but the white government brutally repressed the demonstrators.
  • After the arrest of ANC leader Nelson Mandela in 1962, members of the ANC called for armed resistance to the white government.

The New Nations

  • Most of the leaders of the newly independent African states came from the urban middle class and had studied in either Europe or the United States.
    • The views of these African leaders on economics were somewhat more diverse.
  • The African form of socialism was not like that practiced in the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe.
  • Some African leaders believed in the dream of Pan-Africanism— the unity of all black Africans, regardless of national boundaries.
    • Nkrumah in particular hoped that a Pan-African union would join all of the new countries of the continent in a broader community.
  • Independence did not bring economic prosperity to the new African nations.
  • Most still relied on the export of a single crop or natural resource.
  • The new states also sometimes created their own problems.
    • Population growth also crippled efforts to create modern economies.
  • Drought conditions led to widespread hunger and starvation, first in West African countries such as Niger and Mali and then in Ethiopia, Somalia, and the Sudan.
  • In recent years, the spread of acquired immuno-deficiency syndrome (AIDS) in Africa has reached epidemic proportions.
    • As a result of all these problems, poverty is widespread in Africa, especially among the three-quarters of the population still living off the land.
  • Millions live without water and electricity in their homes.
  • Within many African nations, the concept of nationhood was undermined by warring ethnic groups.
  • During the late 1960s, civil war tore Nigeria apart.
    • When northerners began to kill the Ibo people, thousands of Ibo fled to their home region in the eastern part of Nigeria.
    • Conflicts also broke out among ethnic groups in Zimbabwe.

New Hopes

  • One of the most remarkable events of recent African history was the election of Nelson Mandela to the presidency of the Republic of South Africa.
  • In 1993, the government of President F. W. de Klerk agreed to hold democratic national elections — the first in South Africa’s history.

Society and Culture in Modern Africa

  • In general, the impact of the West has been greater in the cities than in the countryside.
    • After all, the colonial presence was first and most firmly established in the cities.
  • Outside the major cities, where about three- quarters of the inhabitants of Africa live, modern influence has had less of an impact.
  • Independence from colonial powers had a significant impact on women’s roles in African society.
  • The tension between traditional and modern and between native and foreign also affects African culture.
  • In some countries, governments make the artists’ decisions for them
  • African writers have often addressed the tensions and dilemmas that modern Africans face.
    • These themes certainly characterize the work of Chinua Achebe, a Nigerian novelist who has won international acclaim.

Conflict in the Middle East

The Question of Palestine

  • In the Middle East, as in other areas of Asia, World War II led to the emergence of new independent states.
  • In the years between the two world wars, many Jews had immigrated to Palestine, believing this area to be their promised land.
  • The Zionists who wanted Palestine as a home for Jews were not to be denied, however.
  • Many people had been shocked at the end of World War II when they learned about the Holocaust, the deliberate killing of six million European Jews in Nazi death camps.
  • Its Arab neighbors saw the new state as a betrayal of the Palestinian people, most of whom were Muslim.
    • As a result of the division of Palestine, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled to neighboring Arab countries, where they lived in refugee camps.

Nasser and Pan-Arabism

  • In Egypt, a new leader arose who would play an important role in the Arab world. Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser took control of the Egyptian government in the early 1950s.
    • Concerned over this threat to their route to the Indian Ocean, Great Britain and France decided to strike back.
  • Nasser emerged from the conflict as a powerful leader.
  • He now began to promote Pan-Arabism, or Arab unity.
  • In 1961, military leaders took over Syria and withdrew the country from its union with Egypt.

The Arab-Israeli Dispute

  • During the late 1950s and 1960s, the dispute between Israel and other states in the Middle East became more heated.
  • Fearing attack, on June 5, 1967, Israel launched air strikes against Egypt and several of its Arab neighbors.
    • Israeli warplanes wiped out most of the Egyptian air force.
  • Over the next few years, Arab states continued to demand the return of the occupied territories.
    • Meanwhile, however, the war was having indirect results in Western nations.
  • In 1977, U.S. president Jimmy Carter began to press for a compromise peace between Arabs and Israelis.

The PLO and the Intifada

  • In 1964, the Egyptians took the lead in forming the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to represent the interests of the Palestinians.
  • During the early 1980s, Palestinian Arabs, frustrated by their failure to achieve self-rule, became even more militant.
  • This militancy led to a movement called the intifada (“uprising”) among PLO supporters living inside Israel.
  • As the 1990s began, U.S.-sponsored peace talks to address the Palestinian issue opened between Israel and a number of its Arab neighbors.

Revolution in Iran

  • The leadership of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and revenue from oil helped Iran to become a rich country.
    • However, there was much opposition to the shah in Iran.
  • Leading the opposition to the shah was the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini , a member of the Muslim clergy.
  • The new government, led by the Ayatollah Khomeini, moved to restore Islamic law.
  • After the death of Khomeini in 1989, a new government, under President Hashemi Rafsanjani, began to loosen control over personal expression and social activities.

Iraq’s Aggression

  • To the west of Iran was a militant and hostile Iraq, under the leadership of Saddam Hussein since 1979.
  • Iraq and Iran have long had an uneasy relationship, fueled by religious differences.
  • In 1980, President Saddam Hussein launched an attack on Iran.
  • In 1990, Iraqi troops moved across the border and occupied the small neighboring country of Kuwait, at the head of the Persian Gulf.

Afghanistan and the Taliban

  • After World War II, the king of Afghanistan, in search of economic assistance for his country, developed close ties with the Soviet Union.
  • The Soviets occupied Afghanistan for 10 years but were forced to withdraw by anti-Communist forces supported by the United States and Pakistan.
  • Condemned for its human rights abuses and imposition of harsh social policies, the Taliban was also suspected of sheltering Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organization.

Society and Culture

  • In recent years, conservative religious forces have tried to replace foreign culture and values with Islamic forms of belief and behavior.
  • Actions of militants have often been fueled by hostility to the culture of the West.
    • In the eyes of some Islamic leaders, Western values and culture are based on materialism, greed, and immorality.
  • The movement to return to the pure ideals of Islam began in Iran under the Ayatollah Khomeini.
  • At the beginning of the twentieth century, women’s place in Middle Eastern society had changed little for hundreds of years.
    • In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Muslim scholars debated issues surrounding women’s roles in society.
  • Until the 1970s, the general trend in urban areas was toward a greater role for women.
  • The literature of the Middle East since 1945 has reflected a rise in national awareness, which encouraged interest in historical traditions.
    • The most famous contemporary Egyptian writer is Naguib Mahfouz.
    • The artists of the Middle East at first tended to imitate Western models.