Understanding the Middle East :D

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Given your current level of understanding in World Geography, explain the present situation in the Middle East and how it came about. Be sure to include only the facts as we know them today.

It's a really long story, goes far back.
I'd say that the current middle east came to be what it is a long time ago.

But to give examples from not too far away times, I'd say that British and French colonialism brought about the real catastrophe.
Before that, the arabs, the most numerous people in the middle east, were either desert dwelling bedoin nomads, or city-dwelling people bent on living out a peaceful life, or simple farmers in villages.
After the Ottoman empire got itself involved in a world war, the british were bent on taking over the arabian peninsula using divide&conquer tactics. For that purpose, they incited revolts which stemmed mostly from the ignorant bedoin tribes that roamed the area, with a certain brtish agent known as Lawrence of Arabia as their head. They had success, and the arabs were now expecting the independence they were promised. On the contrary, they received word that they were tricked, and were instead divided even further, into seperate nations, even though they were all arabs in the end.

The Brits and French began to modernize the urban populations of the countries that they held in their hands now, dealing with small-scale rebellions from time to time, probably from peasants and bedoins.
At the end of WWII, the red menace was on the rise, and it was also finding itself a following in the middle east.
The palestinians were the first to found and maintain camps in their country that were officially recognized by leftist groups in other countries, and many other leftist militants from other countries received their training in palestine, and continued to operate elsewhere.
To curb communism in arab countries, the NATO, led by the US, initiated a campaign that would fire up religious fervor instead of communism. Obviously, that was a very futile attempt, as those people obviously were slow to realize that fundamentalism is in many ways, similar to communism.
IF you look at the pictures of Alexandria from the times of the British occupation and today, you'd see many differences.
It's not that it was brought upon by the british occupation, there were many arab visionaries, that advocated nationalism and modernization of thought and deed, who were silenced afterwards.

And well, the foundation of Israel was obviously the last straw for them. They had revolted against the caliphate for their british friends, and were fucked over the head by the same people, the westerners, who were now supporting Israel instead.

The other folks, such as the tajik-folk in the middle east, such as persians, pashto, tajiks, tats, kurds, balochis and etc. were not doing very well.
From these, the persian(fars), tajik and pashto, were dominant people in the areas they lived in. The fars were screwed over by the west due to oil interests in the area, and after that, the shah was deposed of by a revolution, which led to the foundation of the Islamic republic of Iran.
The west sought to use the same tactics of divide and conquer, supporting Iraq in this war.

The kinsmen of the fars, the pashto and tajiks were doing not so well in Afghanistan. The Soviets were pressing in, seeking warm waters, and the US and NATO were determined to stop them. So they armed the local mujahidin, who in turn fought the soviets, and thankfully repulsed them. But they armed them not only with weapons of steel, but also trained them in mental warfare, which included a rigorous religious education, hence the name "taliban", which means student in arabic(Talib, meaning student, Talibun, plural).

Yeah, I believe that explains only a small part.
There are also many other variables that should be taken into consideration, but they'd take us a while, while back, I'd say.