Three major religions of the world trace their origins to the region. Conflict in the area rises and falls, like the tides of its seas and the sands of its deserts. According to some religious beliefs, Armageddon will take place there. But before that fateful day, New Mexico State University professors and students are making in-roads into this volatile part of the world – the Middle East.

From health studies in Egypt on the bird flu to research and analysis on the best ways to restore Afghanistan’s war-torn water systems, NMSU researchers and students are busy trying to find answers, build contacts and develop lasting images and connections to the lands of the Bible and the Qur’an.

“Afghanistan is a country that has been ravaged by war for at least 30 years. As a result, much of the country’s infrastructure has been destroyed, including water facilities and processing plants for their products. In a nutshell, their economy has been in a shamble,” says Terry L. Crawford, who is one of the leaders of a $20 million grant to help Afghanistan restore its water systems. Crawford is a professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Agricultural Business in NMSU’s College of Agriculture and Home Economics.

Partnering with researchers from Colorado State University, the University of Illinois and Southern Illinois University, Crawford, NMSU Senior Project Manager Rich Phillips and others will take this expertise with arid, southern New Mexico and West Texas regions to Afghanistan to try to revive Afghanistan’s water systems so the Afghan people can once again have a viable agricultural economy.

Along similar lines as the Afghan project, Christopher Brown, an associate professor in the NMSU College of Arts and Sciences Department of Geography, is completing a comparative analysis of two regions that share water resource issues and border security. One is the Israeli-Palestinian region, sharing the water resources of the Alexander River Valley and other rivers in the region. The other is the U.S.-Mexico border region, where residents share the Rio Grande and other rivers and their politically charged border-security issues. The research will examine how bi-national wastewater treatment plants on the U.S.-Mexico border and the Palestinian-Israeli regions are funded, built and maintained, Brown says.

“In both situations you have a wealthy, more powerful political entity interacting with a less powerful entity. In the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, the U.S. is the more powerful and wealthier entity, and the manner by which it interacts with Mexico raises equity issues,” Brown says. “In the Middle East, Israel is the more powerful and wealthier player, and the manner by which it deals with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza raises similar issues.”

In the land of the Pharaohs, Susan Wilson, associate professor of health science in the College of Health and Social Services, will be researching why so many Egyptian women are contracting bird flu.

“Egypt has a high rate of bird flu. We want to identify some of the high risk behaviors of people getting the bird flu. Out of 22 deaths in Egypt from bird flu, 20 have been women. This is very high when you look at bird flu worldwide,” Wilson says. “I want to develop a health education program with the women so that they train each other on some of the things they can do to reduce the risk of getting bird flu. The long-term goal is to do a comparison from small domestic poultry production in the U.S. and the small rural, farm aspect in Egypt to compare the behaviors.”

But research and analysis is not the only work being accomplished in the Middle East. Another factor, and equally as important, is establishing solid contacts with Middle East universities, their faculty and students.

NMSU graduate student Rajaa Shindi fulfills one such role. Originally from Iraq, Shindi has many contacts in the region and – more importantly – she speaks Arabic.

After 9/11, students and faculty numbers from the Middle East dwindled in participating and studying at U.S. universities. The Saudi king raised a concern and offered 10,000 scholarships to study in the U.S. The U.S. also wanted the students to return to attend American universities.

“I went on a recruitment trip to the Middle East that included a visit to six countries with a goal to recruit graduate and undergraduate students to NMSU and to look for more opportunities in the Middle East through meeting faculty and students and visiting universities and high schools,” said Shindi, who is also a part-time instructor at Doña Ana Community College. Shindi’s tour began and ended in Jordan but her recruiting efforts took her to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

Jeanne Gleason, professor and director of media productions, has been working in the Middle East to leave a lasting image – literally – teaching Iraqis, Jordanians and Afghans how to use video and DVD technology to produce agricultural training videos.

“The value of training videos can’t be overstated,” says Gleason. “When it comes to learning an agricultural process, actually showing someone how it is done is much more powerful than reading about it in a brochure.” Training videos also have bridged a gender communications gap by allowing women to gain training in agriculture without violating strict Muslim canons, Gleason says.

But as NMSU faculty and staff work at developing the relationships needed to conduct meaningful and productive research, there is still a factor that dwells in the backs of their minds – the volatile nature of the area and its dangers.

Brown tells of how the morning after he arrived in Israel, his host Itay Fischhendler, research colleague from Hebrew University of Jerusalem, picked him up early in the morning and then they transferred into a car owned by Nitsan Levy, regional environmental minister. He said they drove for a while without Brown knowing where they were going and within 15 minutes, were standing in the West Bank looking at a bi-national treatment plant immediately downhill from a Jewish settlement.

“Ten minutes later, three Israeli soldiers pull off the road, park near us, and start checking us out. I asked: ‘what’s going on?’” Brown says.

“Oh, they’re just watching us, and they want to make sure no one hurts us,” his host answered.

It was explained to Brown that they were in the Palestinian occupied territories and the people in the jeeps, with the guns, are the ones occupying the territories. After getting back to Jerusalem, Brown asked Fischhendler a question: “Itay, today, what we did today, was it safe?”

“Oh no, it wasn’t safe. It wasn’t dangerous, but it wasn’t safe. If I was driving, we wouldn’t have gone,” Itay responded.

“Then why did we go?” Brown asked.

“I wasn’t driving, was I?” Itay said.