There will be significant bits where this is going to be a very hard sell, such as Iraqi Kurdistan and large parts of Sudan.
Also, whatever transpires in Israel/Palestine is likely to turn out very messy.
United Arab nation and its demographics
- Thread starter HistoricalArthropod
- Start date
Also, whatever transpires in Israel/Palestine is likely to turn out very messy.
HistoricalArthropod
Banned
That is true, it will be hard, but not impossible. I think Sudan shouldn't be too hard as long South Sudan is let go. Anything else could get to like, Basque levels of separatism worst.
Pretty optimistic. First of all, arab states such as Egypt didn't realize how serious their military pathologies were until the '67 disaster. Second, efforts to rectify the pathologies, by emphasizing initiative, combined arms coordination etc, were only partially successful in 1973 (and subsequent to that, in the Iran-Iraq war).
Had Nasser access to the wealth of the gulf, in a united arab state, that would've greatly helped him to procure modern arms (many of those in OTL '67 were WWII vintage). But it wouldn't have solved the most serious issues.
Deleted member 67076
Of course its optimistic. But that's the nature of this thread.
Perhaps improved interventions abroad such as Egypt's historical involvement in eastern Congo or fighting South Sudanese/Kurd/neo Ikhwan rebels will help fix these.
Egypt's involvement in the Yemen conflict from 1962-67 did nothing to improve its performance. Indeed because of attrition, and failure, it probably worsened it. You should see the memoirs of Fawzi. He complained that in Yemen, medals were awarded just to improve morale not to reward performance, and likewise, artillery barrages were intended to improve morale not hit the enemy.
Depending on the time period they could be assimilated or bought off with autonomy
Angus Madison's dataset. You can find it with a Google. I think Egypt is about 2m in the early 1800s with Yemen about 4m.
HistoricalArthropod
Banned
The premise of the thread is indeed optomisitc. But that doesn't make it impossible does it?
1. Depends on economic development, but ~200 million is possible
2. As above, but assuming competent leadership it could become something like OTL Japan / Russia level of power. The population of Russia + the wealth of Japan.
3. Minorities tend to do better in wealthy, successful and powerful countries. They tend to do worse in impoverished, defeated/downtrodden ones. So in a successful Arab nation they should be fine (except in periods of political economic turmoil, same as we see in the west).
4. Industrialisation is possible. It depends on the economic incentives, which stem from the politics to some extent. A period of wealth and stability internally combined with competition with neighbours would be conducive to innovation and advancement.
5. Yes. It was already a centre of learning in the past in the Golden Age of Arabic science and could easily become so again in an ATL, given the right circumstances.
Key issue here is probably economic prosperity combined with a lack of destructive outsider invasions.
HistoricalArthropod
Banned
Hmm. I wonder what the internal subdivisions would look like. Probably many small densely populated states around the Nile, Western Levant, Mesopotamia and some parts of the Arabian coast. The interior desert regions will have large, sparsely populated states. Region which are majority non Arab may have autonomy.
Baby Kata
Banned
A complete and utter nightmare for everyone who isn't both Arab and whatever branch of Islam is official.
Shias wouldn't fare well under a Sunni mega state, and vice versa. Christians and Jews wouldn't fare well under a Caliph, either.
Ethnic minorities, like Kurds and Copts, would be up shit creek without a paddle.
Shias wouldn't fare well under a Sunni mega state, and vice versa. Christians and Jews wouldn't fare well under a Caliph, either.
Ethnic minorities, like Kurds and Copts, would be up shit creek without a paddle.
Well, the region has a long, albeit not always consistent, history of pluralism. There's no inherent need for a big Arab state to be repressive to minorieties, authoritarian or committed to a single religious group. Of course, Kurdish separatism is still likely to form and most Darfuris (for instance) and other groups might not feel they really belong to this state in national terms, but it has not to be necessarily violent, especially with all that oil revenue potential to share. Of course, it may also end up backfiring horribly.
This seems to be based on today's Middle East, which is a product of specific recent historical developments since ~1800. The OP did ask what was the latest PoD to create this ATL scenario. I imagined that the PoD is unlikely to be in the 20th century, but perhaps a 19th century one might work.
Given all that we can be reasonably confident that as @Falecius says, there's no inherent reason for today's issues to arise. More likely would be issues relating to nationalism rather than religion, and quite possibly some kind of tension between secularism and the traditional ulemma towards the end of the 19th century.
A lot of this depends on economic development as the level of wealth directly feeds into social values, education and ultimately politics. To put it crudely, the greater the wealth and the better spread across the population it is, the better the educational level and the more likely society is to be relatively enlightened.
Other factors play into it as well, such as how secure a civilisation feels and whether it feels under attack. In this ATL, it's quite probable that both factors are much more favourable than OTL. For this state to prosper, it will need to industrialise. Again this feeds back into why the 19th century is a good time, as it had been argued Egypt came very close to achieving this in the 19th century.
A lot does depend on the specifics of how this state comes about, who founds it and what their agenda is. It's interesting to speculate how such a nation might look.
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HistoricalArthropod
Banned
Awfully pessimistic. By this logic, Germany should be in constant civil war between the portestant north and catholic south.
Correct.
@Baby Kata has been banned for making racist, white supremacist and Islamophobic posts advocating genocide.
Having a united Arab state that spans all of Arabic-speaking Asia plus Egypt and Sudan, would be very difficult though not impossible to accomplish. The POD would have to begin somewhere in the mid-to-late 19th century.
First of all, you would need to somehow prevent Britain, France, Italy, etc from annexing all those various Arab territories they took from the Ottoman Empire. Then, you would need to have some brilliant Arab monarchs/warlords with a pan-nationalist vision to unite all of Arabia (ala Germany or Italy) engage in a successful campaign of anti-Ottoman rebellions and conquests of other Arab states.
I admit that I am not sure about all the exact details of how this scenario would work out. But if done correctly, an Arab super-state would probably be very economically prosperous because of the abundant oil reserves and control of important trade routes. If the government of united Arabia isn't too corrupt or incompetent, then the Middle East would be (relatively) much more stable than what we have now in the real timeline.
The potential problems for this giant Arabia would all depend on the type of government it gets; theocratic or secular, monarchy or dictatorship or democracy, etc; but most importantly, if the government is competent enough and has a strong military to mantain order. If ethnic/religious minorities like Shiites, Christians, Kurds, etc are treated decently and fairly enough, then there's less risk of a violent separatist rebellion.
First of all, you would need to somehow prevent Britain, France, Italy, etc from annexing all those various Arab territories they took from the Ottoman Empire. Then, you would need to have some brilliant Arab monarchs/warlords with a pan-nationalist vision to unite all of Arabia (ala Germany or Italy) engage in a successful campaign of anti-Ottoman rebellions and conquests of other Arab states.
I admit that I am not sure about all the exact details of how this scenario would work out. But if done correctly, an Arab super-state would probably be very economically prosperous because of the abundant oil reserves and control of important trade routes. If the government of united Arabia isn't too corrupt or incompetent, then the Middle East would be (relatively) much more stable than what we have now in the real timeline.
The potential problems for this giant Arabia would all depend on the type of government it gets; theocratic or secular, monarchy or dictatorship or democracy, etc; but most importantly, if the government is competent enough and has a strong military to mantain order. If ethnic/religious minorities like Shiites, Christians, Kurds, etc are treated decently and fairly enough, then there's less risk of a violent separatist rebellion.
Issue with that is that, by the early 19th century, Europe has already entrenched itself in the affairs of the Middle East to the point of declaring war on Muhammad Ali Pasha for threatening to disrupt the balance of power in the region. Britain in particular has a history of propping the Ottoman Empire up and coming up with a partition arrangement both satisfactory for the British, Austrians, and Russians (along with the French, Germans, and Italians) while also accommodating for the Arabs is a bit difficult seeing as the Arabs weren't actually consulted regarding Middle Eastern borders at any point in the era and would proceed to not do so into the 20th century.
There's also the twin issues of administration and center of power that haunted OTL's Pan-Arabism. The question of who should hold the seat of power is going to be vital to the both the identity and stability of the union state, as is the distribution of political authority. OTL's United Arab Republic between Syria and Egypt collapsed due to Egypt's overwhelming dominance in the union state and Nasser's unwillingness to share power with regional authorities, both of which led to Syrian discontent and, ultimately, independence from the union state. Including more of the Middle East could tone down Egyptian demographic dominance but runs the risk of alienating the Egyptians, who would see themselves as the natural center of power due to how much of the union's population it has under centralised control, while giving more power to the Egyptians to satisfy them would be somewhat similar to the issues Yugoslavia faced in some senses. Plus the issue of the nomads of Arabia (how are they accommodated) and how the oil money is spent (Norway or Venezuela?) and distributed (will regional authorities benefit more or will the nation as a whole reap the gains? The former weakens central authority, the latter alienates regional authorities).
Plus, just the ME Arab Union+Sudan would be pretty massive (something like 7 million km sq, the US being around 10 million km sq), which necessitates major infrastructure projects to connect all the major population centers and also exacerbates the regionalism issue that has torn so many large nations asunder.
Even putting the ethnic and religious issues aside, there's still regionalism to deal with and the distribution of power, which has the potential to spiral into some rather nasty conflicts in any case (again, the Yugoslavia example illustrates that point pretty effectively).
Koprulu Mustafa Pasha
Gone Fishin'
A united Arab State... let me say it like this...
It will have a population between 300 and 500 million. A Sunni (80-90%) dominated Federal Republic or a dynasty lead by the successors of Mehmed Ali of Egypt. Probably the former.
Militarily it depends on. If the Arab State has its origins in Egypt, the Army will be strong enough to challenge European States threatening this state.
Turkmens, Assyrians etc will be assimiliated to the dominant Arab population. Kurds living on the edge will more or less survive. Berbers will challenge Arab Rule the Maghreb. If Ethiopia is also under Arab rule, it is not gonna be a nice place to live.
The borders will be as West as Mauritania, as East as Khuzestan/Oman, as North as Syria and Iraq, as South as Zanzibar/Somalia.
It would be an industrial power when oil becomes important. Any other small industry will remain insignificant before oil. Railroads are going to be a mess but really important. It might become as industrialised as... Russia?
It will be a state looking more like the USSR/Russia but without communism (dependent). Literacy is going to be no less than 90%. But the contribution of thjs united Arab State is not going to be challenging Germany alone. My two cents are on this. The oil industry is going to be dominating though. A GDP of 5-10 trillion should be possible.