Why Middle East nation-states are unravelling at such a virulent pace

Iraqi residents inspect damages on May 7, 2014 following shelling by government forces in an area of Fallujah held by anti-government fighters. Iraqi troops, Kurdish fighters and Shiite militiamen backed by American strikes pressed a fightback against jihadist-led militants on Monday, buoyed by breaking the 11-week siege of a Shiite town. FILEPHOTO | AFP

What you need to know:

The US-led invasion of Iraq put an end, not only to Saddam Hussein’s rule, but also to Sunni-minority control, established by the British generations ago.

Since Muammar Gaddafi’s death in 2011, Libyans have failed to establish a coherent state structure of any sort, cycling through six prime ministers.

The horror stories emerging from northern Iraq, as well as the continuing slaughter in Syria’s civil war, point to a tectonic shift in the Middle East.

Almost 100 years after World War I, the regional state system established after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire is unravelling.

The contemporary map of the Middle East was drawn by the victorious Western imperial powers, Great Britain and France, during and after WWI.

While the war was still raging, they signed an agreement drafted by the diplomats Sir Mark Sykes and François George-Picot, which delineated their respective spheres of influence across the Levant — a pact that entirely disregarded the region’s history, ethnic and religious traditions and affiliations, and the local people’s will.

The states of Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon thus arose as separate entities. Their borders were arbitrary and artificial; none had ever existed in such form. (The case of Palestine was even more complicated, owing to Britain’s conflicting promises to Arabs and Jews.)

Eventually, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon became independent countries, modelled on the Westphalian idea of the modern nation-state. Their leaders maintained this system — and its borders — as the best available.

None of these rulers, especially the authoritarian ones who emerged after independence, had an interest in rocking the boat.

That Western-imposed system is now unravelling. Nation-states cannot be sustained when they do not reflect the wishes of their populations.

US INVASION

The US-led invasion of Iraq put an end, not only to Saddam Hussein’s rule, but also to Sunni-minority control, established by the British generations ago.

The Shia majority, once unleashed, viewed US-backed elections as a vehicle for imposing hegemonic control over the country.

Iraq today is not the unitary Arab nation-state that it was, and it is doubtful whether it can be restored.

The Kurdish Regional Government in the north is a de facto state, with its own army, border authorities, and control (up to a point) of the natural resources located on its territory.

In Syria, what started as peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations deteriorated quickly into an armed insurrection of the Sunni majority against the hegemony of the Alawite sect, led by the Assad family. As with Iraq, it is difficult to see how Syria can be reconstituted as a unitary Arab nation-state.

The dismemberment of both countries’ central state authorities gave rise to a totally new player — the Islamic State (IS) — which has announced the establishment of a Caliphate straddling Iraq and Syria, totally disregarding the old Sykes-Picot arrangement.

The Islamic State, an offshoot of Al Qaeda, will probably not succeed in creating a viable, cross-border entity, but its brutal effort and Islamist ideology certainly suggest that the old borders and territories are on their way out.

CIVIL WAR

The unravelling of the Western-imposed state system is taking place elsewhere in the greater Middle East. Sudan — a vast, multi-ethnic, and multi-confessional country, established as a political entity by the British in the 1890s — is continuing to fray. The emergence, after a prolonged and bloody civil war, of an independent South Sudan in 2011, freed the local Christian and animist population from the Arab yoke. But Darfur is still bleeding, and South Sudan is far from being stable.

Libya, too, is disintegrating. The two provinces of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, which Italy wrested from the Ottomans just before WWI, were forced together into an entity called “Libya,” despite their profound historical and cultural differences.

Since Muammar Gaddafi’s death in 2011, Libyans have failed to establish a coherent state structure of any sort, cycling through six prime ministers.

Pious Western sermons about the need to form a unified, democratically elected government, sound utterly irrelevant.

There is one exception to this regional development: Egypt. For all of its internal tribulations, there is no doubt that Egypt is a coherent entity, deeply anchored in history and in the consciousness of its population. But Egypt, too, has followed a defining regional pattern.

Prof Avineri teaches Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. (c): Project Syndicate, 2014. (www.project-syndicate.org)