When extended so far the acronym MENA (Middle East and North Africa) is increasingly common, although alternative terms such as WANA (West Asia and North Africa) are occasionally preferred as a means of circumventing the problematic tendency of defining a region by virtue of its relation to a supposed global “centre” in Europe. The “Middle East” is a relatively recently devised and inconsistently defined term used to refer to a region centring on the Arabian Peninsula and, depending on the context, including countries as far west as Morocco and as far east as Pakistan.
