ONN WINCKLER, Demographic Developments and Population Policies in Ba^⊂thist Syria (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 1999). Pp. 223. $100.00 cloth.

Abstract

The globe is estimated to have 6 billion people today. The rapid increase of the human population has for decades been a common Western bogeyman. Now, at the turn of the millennium, the threat is brought out again. Today “the human time bomb” connotes uncontrolled fecundity in the Other, the non-Western or non-European. Demographic research shows that many countries in the Middle East and North Africa have among the highest rates of population growth in the contemporary world. Unlike Europe, where the nightmare of demographers and politicians is the aging and decreasing population, the Middle East still has a rapidly increasing and young population. Quite clearly, many politicians in the European Union are worried about the “uncontrollable overflow” of populations over its borders from the southern and eastern Mediterranean shores.