good thoughts on the leaders!! BTW, there is an arab league: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_league
It has 22 member countries, so it's pretty significant.
good idea also about making khazakstan a peaceful barb
You could do that, or you could also unite all of the "Stans" into their own Civ, except for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
One thing about the leaderheads: I notice that the trait Imperialistic has been used. In a pre-set scenario, this trait declines in usefulness because settlers aren't as important. However, you might make it more useful by also adding something like "Free Raider promotion to armored units." This would also be a good idea, because in this mod, an imperialistic leader would likely expand by conquering cities, rather than founding them.