Afghanistan: Too close for comfort. Iraq. Iraq (/ɪˈræk/, i/ɪˈrɑːk/, or /aɪˈræk/; Arabic: العراق al-‘Irāq), officially the Republic of Iraq (Arabic: جمهورية العراق Jumhūriyyat al-‘Irāq; Kurdish: كۆماری عێراق), is a country in Western Asia encompassing the Mesopotamian alluvial plain, the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, and the eastern part of the Syrian Desert.[6] Iraq borders Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, Kuwait to the southeast, Saudi Arabia to the south, Jordan to the southwest, and Syria to the west.
Iraq has a narrow section of coastline measuring 58 km (36 mi) on the northern Persian Gulf. The capital city, Baghdad is in the center-east of the country. Mauritania’s Islamists. Islamists have become an important political force in Mauritania since formal Islamist associations first emerged in the 1970s.
Islamist activism has contributed to the ongoing Islamization of Mauritanian society, as is evident from the proliferation of mosques and Islamic associations in the capital, Nouakchott, and elsewhere. In the 1990s, political liberalization allowed Islamists to participate in elections as independents, and since its legalization in 2007, Tewassoul, the strongest Islamist party in Mauritania today, has become a significant minority voice in the country’s politics and has built ties with Islamists elsewhere in the Arab world. These moderate Islamists who participate in elections hold different beliefs and goals from Mauritania’s jihadist fringe. Middle East Security Lies in the Collective. Here’s a thought: the Middle East is one of the most resource- and culturally rich, geo-strategic and, alas, unstable pieces of ‘real estate’ on earth.
Evidently, it is also a region whose leaders remain largely oblivious to the great potential of the Middle East as an integrated unit, or to the prospects of stable and lasting peace through collective defense and cooperative security. Instead, the region’s seemingly unshakable divisions have ensured a modern history marred with fierce zero-sum inter-state competition, war and turmoil, and incessant regional tensions—some, along archaic tribal or sectarian fault-lines. All of this is undergirded by the fact that the Middle East suffers from a region-wide security dilemma.