Review Ewan Anderson and Khalil Rashidian, Iraq and the continuing Middle East crisis, Pinter Publishers, 1991

Anderson, Ewan and Rashidian, Khalil, Iraq and the continuing Middle East crisis, Pinter Publishers, 1991

 

Iraq and the continuing Middle East crisis by Ewan Anderson and Khalil Rashidian was written as a short yet in depth background book to the Gulf War. The first two-thirds are about all the major issues in the Middle East from ideology to Palestine to oil. The last third is about Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the subsequent Gulf War. For its time it was very impressive since few in the West who was the intended audience knew much about the entire region. Today there’s not much to be gained from it as there are others that focus solely upon the war and give much more detail.

 

Most of the book is background information on the Middle East and its major conflicts. It begins with the formation of the region in modern times by the British and French who carved up the Ottoman Empire after World War I. It then goes into the formation of Israel and the plight of the Palestinians, major ideologies of Arab nationalism, socialism and Islamic fundamentalism as well as a chapter on the history of Islam. It finishes with the impact of the Iranian Revolution and the role of oil. The authors do a very good job explaining each issue quickly yet with enough detail to give some real insights into what was driving the Middle East up to the 1990s. Many are still ongoing so a reader could still learn something from it.

 

The final section of the book deals with the actual Iraq-Kuwait conflict. There’s a short history of Kuwait on how it went from a small trading town to an independent state which caused an immediate conflict with Iraq which claimed it as part of its territory. The problems between the two that led up to the war are also discussed such as over producing oil which drove down prices when Iraq was desperate for money after the Iran-Iraq War. There are important little details such as how the U.S. and UK ignored Saddam’s threats and movement of forces to the Kuwait border before its invasion and then how President Bush sending forces to Saudi Arabia almost guaranteed a war as it could not keep such a large number of troops there indefinitely. In their conclusion the authors also note that they overestimated Iraq’s military capabilities and underestimated the Coalition arrayed against it and made an important point that the Gulf War solved none of the problems in the region.

 

Iraq and the continuing Middle East crisis took a novel approach to the Gulf War deciding that its readers needed to know the breadth of the region to understand Iraq and Kuwait. It proves to be quiet effective in its goal. The problem is that many modern readers will not be interested in all that background when there are other books that are only focused upon the Gulf War and give far more details about what happened.

 

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