Ближний Восток и Северная Африка: Географический регион и его особенности.

Geographic region

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA), also referred to as West Asia and North Africa (WANA) or South West Asia and North Africa (SWANA), is a geographic region. While still referring to most of the Middle East (or West Asia without East Thrace or the Sinai peninsula) and North Africa together, it is widely considered to be a more defined and apolitical alternative to the grouping of countries that is known as the Greater Middle East, which comprises the bulk of the Muslim world. As a regional identifier, the term "MENA" is often used in academia, military planning, disaster relief, media planning (as a broadcast region), and business writing. Moreover, it shares a number of cultural, economic, and environmental similarities across the countries that it spans; for example, some of the most extreme impacts of climate change will be felt in MENA. Some related terms have a wider definition than MENA, such as MENASA or MENAP The term MENAT explicitly includes Turkey, which is usually excluded from some MENA definitions, even though Turkey is almost always considered part of the Middle East proper. Ultimately, MENA can be considered as a grouping scheme that brings together most of the Arab League and variously includes their neighbors, like Iran, Turkey, Israel, the Caucasian countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and a few others.

Islam is by far the dominant religion in nearly all of the MENA territories; 91.2% of the population is Muslim. The Middle East–North Africa region comprises 20 countries and territories with an estimated Muslim population of 315 million or about 23% of the world's Muslim population. The term "MENA" is often defined in part in relation to majority Muslim countries located in the region, although several nations in the region are not Muslim dominated. Major non Islamic religions native here are Christianity, Judaism, Yazidism, Druzeism, African folk religions, Berberism and other Arab paganism. Migrant population, mostly within the Gulf nations, practice mostly the beliefs they follow to, such as Buddhism and Hinduism among South Asian, East Asian and Southeast Asian migrants.

The MENA region has vast reserves of petroleum and natural gas that make it a vital source of global economic stability. According to the Oil and Gas Journal (January 1, 2009), the MENA region has 60% of the world's oil reserves and 45% of the world's natural gas reserves ( ). As of 2023, 7 of the 13 OPEC nations are within the MENA region. According to Pew Research Center's 2016 "Religion and Education Around the World" study, 40% of the adult population in MENA had completed less than a year of primary school. The fraction was higher for women, of whom half had been to school for less than a year.

In its Global Peace Index 2020, the Institute for Economics & Peace stated that 'the Middle East and North Africa remains the world's least peaceful region, despite improvements for 11 countries'.

During and after the decolonisation of Africa and Asia in the 20th century, many different armed conflicts have occurred in the MENA region, including but not limited to the Rif War; the Iraqi–Kurdish conflict; the Arab–Israeli conflict; the Western Sahara conflict; the Lebanese Civil War; the Kurdish–Turkish conflict (1978–present); the Iranian Revolution; the Iran–Iraq War; Iran–Saudi Arabia proxy conflict; the Berber Spring; the Toyota War; the Invasion of Kuwait and the Gulf War; the Algerian Civil War; the Iraqi Kurdish Civil War; the rise of terrorism and anti terrorist actions; the U. S. led intervention of Iraq in 2003 and subsequent Iraq War. The Arab Spring (2010–2011) led to the Tunisian Revolution, the Egyptian revolution of 2011 and Egyptian Crisis (2011–2014), while also sparking war throughout the region such as the Syrian Civil War, the Libyan Civil War, the Yemeni Civil War and the Iraqi war against ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant). During the Sudanese Revolution, months of protests and a military coup led to the fall of Omar al Bashir's regime and the initiation of the 2019–2022 Sudanese transition to democracy and the Sudanese peace process.