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Sunday, February 20, 2011

BBC Map Guide to Middle East Unrest

If you are looking for Libyan War maps see our on-going series of creating and collecting the best maps on the internet.

The BBC has an interactive map guide to unrest in the Middle East and the sociodemographic factors that have contributed to the unrest.

Strangely missing is anything on Lebanon which actually was the first real case of unrest in the Middle East this year.  Hezbollah managed a political coup in January by managing to replace the Sunni position of Prime Minister.  The Sunni Future Movement and pro-Western Christians tried to stop this action both in parliament and in the streets but the fact that Hezbollah still defies United Nations regulations by being an armed group crushed any hopes of stopping the Hezbollah action.

Another thing to note is that Iraq's protests are limited to Shiite internally displaced persons demanding more services for their camps around Baghdad.  There is no mass anti-government protests in democratic Iraq.  Violence levels are even down to 1980s-1990s levels as the al Qaeda insurgency is dead and all that remains are criminal groups who try to stroke sectarian violence like the Ku Klux Klan did after the Civil War.

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