Middle East Strategy at Harvard

From MESH Admin

Some of the many interactive geography quizzes on the web ask visitors to identify the countries and capitals of the Middle East. We assume MESH readers have no problem there, so we’ve collected links to more challenging quizzes. There’s no end to learning.

• Iraq. The United States has been at war in Iraq for five years, but only one in three young Americans can even find it on the map. You can find it, but can you identify all of Iraq’s governates and their capital cities? There are two good versions of the governates quiz, here and here. And once you’ve aced that, move on to the capitals quiz.

• Iran. This weblog has devoted much attention to Iran, the rising power. An Iranian who purports to know something about the United States can probably identify the great State of Texas on a map. So can you identify the great province of Fars? Try your hand at this quiz.

And there is also much talk about how Iran’s ethnic groups might be turned against the Islamic regime. Take this quiz and see whether you can find them.

• Afghanistan and Yemen. U.S. forces have been in Afghanistan even longer than they have been in Iraq, and the President-elect wants to send more. Take the same rigorous test for provinces of Afghanistan, in two versions, here and here. And for the truly expert (or for Yemenis), see if you can navigate another hot spot in the GWOT, by identifying the governates of Yemen, here.

• More fun/frustration. Forget about those simple interactive quizzes that ask you to identify leaders or flags, and try these instead. Here are ten Middle Eastern countries; order them by population size. And here are another ten; order them by total military expenditure. (The answers are supposedly based on the CIA World Factbook.)