How did we get to this stage in our history? Beyond doubt, the Arab world has passed through many difficult moments in its development. This applies not just to the colonial era, in which Algeria alone lost more than a million lives. It also applies to the five centuries of Ottoman rule before that. In Egypt, the population plunged to only 2.5 million due to poverty and disease. Yet, as an American expert put it, the region is in a worse state today than at the time of the Mongolian invasion in the 13th century. Six Arab states are ravaged by civil war. Virtually the whole Arab world is plagued by violence in various forms and the threat of violence is constant. From the beginning of the Arab Spring to the present, around half a million lives have been lost, 2.5 million people were wounded, and the number of refugees and displaced persons has exceeded 14 million. And that is just the human toll. The material, political and economic structures have entirely collapsed in some countries. Were we to add to this the alternative opportunity cost, the losses to our lives in the present and future are infinite. How we ever reached this point demands considerable thought because, as societies and governments, we bear no small degree of responsibility for this. International conspiracy theorising should not be taken to the point where it becomes an avenue for evading responsibility. This is a subject to which we could probably return later in some detail, as it would serve the processes of some necessary and possible reform. However, today I will focus on what made our “here and now” possible. The first cause is the so-called Arab Spring, which was neither a spring or, in all cases, Arab. Whatever terms we use to describe it — revolutions, uprisings, manifestations of political (and, by extension, economic and social) unrest — it ultimately had two consequences. The first was that it weakened Arab states' immune systems to the forces of disintegration, security breakdown and economic collapse. The second was that it flung open the doors to the seizure of power by “political Islam” in its various guises, from the Muslim Brotherhood to the so-called Islamic State (IS) group. These two consequences combined to produce violent conflicts over power, deep disputes over identity and constant fighting over natural resources, from water to oil. It has become too difficult to enumerate the many types of conflict, or to identify their component parties and divides. In some, we find government armies, or the remnants thereof, but we also find “jihadist” militias that have also bifurcated and split apart. Mixed in with these are assorted ethnic communities and different types of tribal configurations. No conflicts remained static. They may have begun in a single country but they generally became regional and, before you know it, international. It what seems obvious with regard to form, the essence has brought the arrival of economic entities that are neither states nor companies. Rather, they are hybrids in which virtual transnational states interweave with organised crime, terrorist organisations and ethnic groups. If this is the perfect image of chaos, it is of the sort that unleashes human nature's worst propensities to wreak unlimited evil. The Arab Spring was not the only operative factor that brought us where we are today. In fact, perhaps the whole story began with the US invasion of Iraq. The problem was not so much with the invasion, per se. Our region had experienced many forms of foreign invasion. Rather, the invasion was part of an evil project to dismantle the Iraq state, a project that many in the West intended for us to emulate on the grounds that it promoted human rights and would lead to democracy. Sadly, what actually happened was that Iraq was torn to shreds. More than 160,000 people were killed and over a million were wounded; the country was divided into three ethnic zones, and politically it has effectively split into two states that have become an ugly banner for sectarian division between Sunnis and Shia. If the invasion was catastrophic, the US withdrawal, in the way it took place and the disgraceful arrangements it bequeathed, created a strategic vacuum that was exploited by Iran with great determination and huge resources — not solely in order to control Iraq, but also to extend its influence across the entire region. We cannot rule out the possibility that Iran's decision, if temporary, to freeze its production of nuclear weapons, was a strategic decision to postpone its confrontation with the West so that it can focus on the confrontation in the region and expand its realm of political and strategic influence in it. It is no coincidence that immediately after the nuclear agreement Iran began to forge its coalition with Iraq, Russia, Hezbollah and Bashar Al-Assad's Syria, not just to fight IS, but also to turn the clock back in Syria. The upshot of all the foregoing is a region gripped by acute polarisation. This has manifested itself in diverse forms of conflict that, in turn, have enabled civil wars to escalate into regional ones. In Syria and Yemen in particular, local elements have combined with regional and international ones to create worrisome global flash points. These conditions have prompted some Arab, regional and international powers to search for a solution, especially in light of the mounting humanitarian pressures and refugee crises, and the ways all of this is being exploited by terrorists who threaten everyone. Nevertheless, it appears that a solution may not be found and attempts to resolve the conflicts may be abandoned, as has occurred in Somalia, for example, where civil strife has become permanent and perpetual. First, there are the US presidential elections, the process of which has become so long that the administration's state of “lame duckness” now appears to have begun with the debates in the electoral primaries. This is the stage when the US is at its most wavering in dealing with affairs in this region and in adjusting to the new realities created by the direct Russian and Iranian military presence in Syria. Second, there are the international circumstances that inform us that the life of the world does not start and stop with the Middle East and the Arab world, as important as they are. The winds blowing from Europe with regard to the Ukraine crisis are ominous. Moreover, Russia's moves in the direction of the Middle East cannot be separated from that crisis. Then there are the winds blowing from the South China Sea, where China flouted the principle of free navigation on the high seas by building islands that it turned into airports or aircraft carriers, that it now wants to legally incorporate into a national territorial sovereignty right. Third, there is the resurgence of that one crisis that had been known as the “Middle East crisis.” I refer, of course, to the Arab-Israeli conflict, which has begun to rear its head again after Israeli settlers and extremists assaulted the Haram Al-Sherif (Al-Aqsa Mosque) sanctuary, triggering a wave of violence that has claimed casualties on both sides and that threatens to escalate into a new Palestinian intifada. Whether we like it or not, the three developments above will cast their shadow over the entire Middle East and the Arab world in particular. I hope that the picture is not so grim as to cause despair. But I nevertheless believe it faithfully reflects the current conditions and what could happen if they are allowed to continue as they are without remedy. The writer is chairman of the board, CEO, and director of the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies.
