Evolution of the Shatt al-’Arab Boundary Dispute
Richard N. Schofield
Menas Press Ltd.
Only around fifty per cent of international boundaries in the Middle East and North Africa are demarcated or partially demarcated and three still remain to be allocated and delimited. This is as much connected with the environmental unsuitability of the region for the application of the linear concept of boundaries as the youthful nature of the system itself.
Drysdale and Blake (1985) calculated an average age of 70 years for the boundaries in the region, 40 of which have been delimited this century. The majority of Middle Eastern and North African states experienced independence and first exercised effective sovereignty over their territories at approximately the same stage of time, that being the post Second World War phase of decolonisation. Boundary alignments …
Richard Schofield took his first degree at the School of Oriental & African Studies, London, and recently completed a Master's course at the University of Durham, where he specialised on the Middle East. He has a continuing interest in the Middle East region and the problems of the Gulf area in particular. | 
