Asia
Much of Asia is in political turmoil, so I’ve had to make some difficult choices in my territories of Asia puzzle. Here, I’ll note some omissions and other relevant facts. Add your own comments below, but no flamewars please!
China: Oddly enough, even the very notion of ‘China’ is contentious, with two modern-day states vying for the title.
The last vestiges of ancient China were swept away in 1911 when the Qing dynasty was overthrown by a group of revolutionary factions. The most powerful of these was the Kuomintang, which went on to form the leadership of the autocratic Republic of China. They were overthrown by Mao Zedong’s Communist Party in 1950 and the People’s Republic of China was formed. The old Republic of China retreated to the island groups of Taiwan where they maintain authority. Until the lifting of martial law in 1987 they still insisted upon territorial rights to mainland China.
Israel/Palestine: Probably the most fought over strip of land in the history of this planet. It has been ruled by Canaanites, Israelites, Babylonians, Persians; the Greek, Roman, and Byzantine empires; by Sassanians, Omayyads, Crusaders, and Mamelukes. In ‘modern’ history, it was overseen by the Ottoman empire from 1517 to 1922. As part of war reparations after World War I, the area was given to Britain and became the British Mandate of Palestine, to be held in trust until such time as the region could govern itself. The problem was passed on to the UN and, finally, in 1948 it was decided that Palestine would be split into two territories, one Arab State and one Jewish State.
This decision was unpopular amongst the Arab population, who wanted the creation of a United State of Palestine. Soon after Israel declared its independence on 14th May 1948, around 30,000 troops from Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, Lebanon, and Egypt invaded the nascent state of Israel, beginning the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. At the end of the war, Israel had retained most of its territory, but had also gained half the land originally intended for the state of Palestine. The West Bank was annexed by Jordan, and the Gaza strip by Egypt.
Another flashpoint for the region occurred in 1956 during the Suez Crisis. The Suez Canal is a huge artificial canal west of the Sinai peninsula. It provides passage between Europe and Asia without requiring circumnavigation of Africa. In 1956 Egypt decided to nationalize the Suez Canal, effectively wresting control of the canal from European colonial powers. As a result of their decision, Britain and France invaded and captured the Sinai peninsula, supported by Israel. After a few months of Israeli occupation, the peninsula was given over to a United National Emergency Force (UNEF), charged with protecting the region from invasion.
The next major conflict occurred in 1967. Egypt expelled the UNEF from Sinai and began amassing troops on the border. Israel launched a pre-emptive strike on Egypt’s air force. Jordan weighed in by attacking western Jerusalem and Netanya. Syria shelled Galilee from the Golan Heights. By the end of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War (also called the Six-Day War), Israel had gained control of eastern Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, the Sinai peninsula, and the Golan Heights.
Beginning in 1993 the Oslo Accords were an attempt to bring peace to the region, primarily by supporting Israeli withdrawal from parts of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip. The region is now in Palestinian control, with power resting in the hands of Hamas, after the June 2007 Palestinian Civil War in which they overthrew the government of Fatah (essentially the PLO). The West Bank is now considered in international law to be a territory and not part of any state. The ultimate fate for the West Bank should follow the programme of the Oslo Accords.
I hope to write more about Asia, so please keep checking back!
[...] attention spans so please restrict the length of your paragraphs. For instance, my article on the political upheavals of Asia is a Stumbler’s worst nightmare, incorporating long sections of text with no graphics! [...]
I took your Asia quiz. It took me under five minutes to get all but two, and I waited out the clock to see what those two could possibly be. They were Gaza and West Bank. I had tried “Palestine”, which didn’t work.
If your definition of “country” is broad enough to include Macau, Hong Kong, the West Bank, and Gaza, then other territories that are disputed or specially administrated should be included, such as Nagorno-Karabakh, the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Xinjiang, Tamil Eelam, South Ossetia, Aceh, Waziristan, North Cyprus, and any number of other regions that have rebel groups claiming to be independent governments. These areas I’ve listed are no less independent nations than is the Gaza Strip.
While there is no such nation as Palestine, Palestinians do have representation at the UN and many other international groups. However, further dividing Palestine into Gaza and the West Bank, even though there has been a recent rift in governance, is not logical. Even though Gaza has come under the control of Hamas and the West Bank is controlled by Fatah, this political distinction is no more a sign of two independent countries than the rebellions in Aceh (Indonesia), Chechnya (Russia), or Waziristan (Pakistan). And several areas have more legitimate claims of statehood than does Gaza, such as Nagorno-Karabakh.
If you want to quiz people on how well they know countries of Asia, I would leave off all of the regions that are not fully independent, such as Hong Kong and Macau, as well as regions that are so disputed that they are not recognized as independent by a majority of other nations. This would allow you to include Taiwan without including the breakaway areas of Sri Lanka, Indonesia, the Caucasus states, etc., which are not shown on most maps as separate nations.
However, you could also apply other criteria, such as a seat at the UN (yes to Palestine, no to Taiwan), competing separately at the Olympics (yes to Hong Kong), etc.
starstattoo: Many thanks for your highly informative and cogently written comment. I agree that the cognoscenti would prefer a more logical criterion, such as UN membership. What I actually did was simply to use the list of territories of Asia listed in the corresponding Wikipedia article. This has the practical benefit of coming with a ready-made (and copyright-free) map.
Until my drawing skills improve, one fairly immediate solution to the dilemma would be to alter my site so that typing “Palestine” automatically adds both “West Bank” and “Gaza” to the list, though I should then have to make the same changes to include Hong Kong and Macau as part of China.
I realised when designing the page that the notion of country would be a heated issue, and was myself rather surprised that Wikipedia had chosen to split Palestine into two separate territories.
Again, from a practical standpoint, I expected that only a very small percentage of people who play the game would know all the countries, particularly the former SSRs, so intended this to be more of a learning tool than an test of prior knowledge.
I recognise the inadequacies of the quiz, but this article (and your comment!) go part-way towards making up for them.