Will Bashar al Assad be in power one year from now?

[politicus]

Removing dictators in the Middle East has yet to prove productive since power vacuums lead to Islamic radicals.

What about Tunisia?

Tunisia is in the Middle East now?

The Middle East is ill defined, this is from Britannica.com:

[politicus]

That's from the confusion between 'the Arab World' and the Middle East. The latter is basically just the Levant, Mesopotamia, Anatolia and the Armenian Highlands (both of which have a slightly confused status but lets ignore that), the Arabian Peninsula, Egypt and Persia. You would describe Tunisia as being part of the Mahgreb or North Africa.

That is the way we use it in Scandinavia and Germany, but it seems it is generally used in a much broader way in English.

Confusion with "the Arab world" does not explain the inclusion of Afghanistan.

[politicus]

That's from the confusion between 'the Arab World' and the Middle East. The latter is basically just the Levant, Mesopotamia, Anatolia and the Armenian Highlands (both of which have a slightly confused status but lets ignore that), the Arabian Peninsula, Egypt and Persia. You would describe Tunisia as being part of the Mahgreb or North Africa.

That is the way we use it in Scandinavia and Germany, but it seems it is generally used in a much broader way in English.

Confusion with "the Arab world" does not explain the inclusion of Afghanistan.

I doubt most Americans realize that the Afghans are not Arabic.

The map is from Britannica..

[politicus]

Well, not all Anglophones agree that Afghanistan isn't part of the Middle East. Let me recite the words of the great Oklahoman poet Toby Keith:

"I'm just a middle-aged, Middle Eastern camel-herdin' man. I got a two-bedroom cave here in northern Afghanistan…"