The Arab world is one broad cultural area, but remains politically divided among some twenty-two Arab states, including Palestine. There are also Arab minorities in neighboring countries. This "cultural unity" has been pragmatically reconciled with the "political divisions" by the creation in 1945 of a regional organization known as the League of Arab States (LAS). The Arabs, their world, cultural unity, and political division have been evolving throughout history. Even the cultural boundaries, let alone the political borders, have continued to change. Thus in the 1970s, three new countries in sub-Saharan Africa opted to identify themselves as "Arab" and joined the LAS: Mauritania, Somalia, and Djibouti, followed in the 1990s by the Comoros Islands in the Indian Ocean. Of these, only Mauritania has a historic Arabic-speaking majority. At present the different political regimes are divided between republics, some military in origin, and various kinds of monarchies. The diversity of the population of many of these states reflects the ebb and flow of empires, and the spread of cultures and religions in the past thus the concentration of Berber-speakers in the Maghrib ( Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia) , the inclusion of Nuer, Dinka, Azande, Fur, and others in Sudan, and the combination of Christians and Druze in Lebanon.