Currently there are over 20 million forcibly displaced persons (refugees and internally displaced persons/IDPs) throughout the Middle East and North Africa, particularly Iraq, Kurdistan, Libya, Palestine, Syria, and Yemen. This is just a part of over 65 million forcibly displaced persons worldwide representing the greatest global refugee crisis since World War II. The immediate causes of the current MENA crisis are well known and include the United States’ Global War on Terror and invasions/occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq; the on-going Palestinian-Israeli Conflict; Turkey’s war against its Kurdish populations; Arab Uprisings and subsequent civil wars in Libya, Syria, and Yemen; the entrenchment of Al-Qaeda; the rise of ISIS; and the continued interference of regional and global powers in the various ongoing conflicts in the MENA. This paper, however, focuses on the root and long-term causes of the current MENA refugee and IDP crisis. It argues that the current crisis is the net result of an ongoing combination of Western Interventionism/Imperialism, Geo-Political and Regional Rivalries, Nationalism, Nation-state Construction, the Integration and Peripheralization of MENA into the Global Capitalist Economy, and the Wedding of Ethno-Religious Identity with Political Representation and Access to Power. This toxic cocktail was entrenched in the Middle East and North Africa as a result of World War One, its immediate aftermath, and the creation of the current state system in the MENA region that resulted in the most devastating demographic transformation the region since the plague and Mongol invasions ravaged the region in the 13th and 14th centuries. The entrenchment of this toxic cocktail as a result of WWI has led to a perpetual process of displacement and dispossession in the MENA that has culminated with the current crisis. This paper will provide an overview of this process citing specific examples to illustrate its development and consequences over the course of the 20th century and in so doing provide a template of how to integrate the current crisis into the broader historical narrative regarding the development of the modern Middle East and North Africa over the last century.