Middle Eastern History Quotes

“MOST OF THE NATIONS OF the Middle East can be divided into those with long histories and no oil, and those that have lots of oil and very little history. With a few notable exceptions, both groups share a common feature: they were cobbled together by outsiders. The borders of the modern Middle East were drawn by Europeans after the First World War with no regard for the interests or backgrounds of the people who inhabited it.”
― Richard Engel, And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East

“Many countries in the Middle East are artificial creations. European colonialists drew their national borders in the nineteenth or twentieth century, often with little regard for local history and tradition, and their leaders have had to concoct outlandish myths in order to give citizens a sense of nationhood. Just the opposite is true of Iran. This is one of the world’s oldest nations, heir to a tradition that reaches back thousands of years, to periods when great conquerors extended their rule across continents, poets and artists created works of exquisite beauty, and one of the world’s most extraordinary religious traditions took root and flowered.”
― Stephen Kinzer

“BCCI's ascendancy was also due to business practices that were highly unusual in the staid world of banking. Other banks gave toaster ovens to new depositors; BCCI provided prostitutes... The report says that the woman was reputed to have first won the attention of the royal family "by arranging to get virgin women from the villages from the ages of 16 to 20... According to one U.S. investigator with substantial knowledge of BCCI's activities, some BCCI officials have acknowledged that some of the females provided some members of the Al-Nahyan family were young girls who had not yet reached puberty, and in certain cases, were physically injured by the experience. The official said that former BCCI officials had told him that BBCI also provided males to homosexual VIPs.”
― Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties