The Middle East is a strategic whole: when one part suffers, the rest breaks out in fever or loses sleep. The same has been said of the Arab region and the Islamic world. Strategic thinkers have also applied it to Europe, Southeast Asia and the Indo-Pacific. The history of these regions followed a trajectory set by earlier historical periods in which a disruption in the area quickly spread, wrecking widespread havoc on everyone in the region. After the French Revolution erupted, all of Europe quaked. Napoleon’s armies marched inexorably through that continent up to the gates of Moscow, from which they returned, defeated by the bitter cold. This led to the establishment of a new international order known as the Concert of Europe, formed by Britain, Russia, Prussia, and Austria, and subsequently joined by France after Napoleon’s final defeat. The new system made it possible for peace to prevail in Europe for a hundred years. However, Germany remained a fault line in the heart of Europe, precipitating two world wars. 

The Middle East was a theatre for both these wars. When World War II ended, this region, like other territories colonised by the West, fought for their national independence through resistance and armed struggle. The period introduced an additional state – Israel – a colonial project claiming to have existed two thousand years ago whereas in fact it was born of European anti-Semitism. In the eight decades since the end of World War II, national independence proved insufficient to achieve a qualitative leap towards progress or to solve the question of Israel, the epicentre of conflict, directly with its neighbours on multiple occasions and against the Palestinians without interruption. 

The situation in the region today began on 7 October 2023, with the aim of translating old pains into a new reality. In the year since, it has evolved into a regional war extending from the Arabian Gulf to the Red Sea and from the latter to the Mediterranean. The war theatres include Gaza, Southern Lebanon and northern Israel. Missiles alternating with drones, destruction and displacement, promises of victory and scenes of defeat are common to them all. The talons and tentacles of foreign and regional powers have sunk deep into the war at every level. The consequences are now fully exposed in the eviscerated body of Syria, as epitomised by the state of the Baathist regime of Al-Assad dynasty which ruled the country for 53 years.  

Syria’s current situation is not entirely new. It carries strong echoes of World War I and its aftermath, from the Great Arab Revolt to the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Balfour Declaration, then the violent imposition of French colonial rule. When it gained independence after the World War II, Syria careened from one coup to the next. Then a group of officers decided to escape forward through a unity with Egypt, in the hope that this would solve the problem of rivalries between tribes, sects, and military ranks. Evidently, nature prevailed over nurture, for before long Syria turned against Egypt, seceded from the union, and reverted to its customary coups.

Syria has now become the centre of the ongoing regional conflict, after it was abandoned by its supporters: Hizbullah in Lebanon, the Revolutionary Guard in Iran, and President Putin in Russia. The opportunity is at hand to end three syndromes. The first is the Syrian Spring, an offshoot of the broader Arab Spring, which toppled the rulers of several Arab countries. Bashar Al-Assad survived that but resorted to brutalist measures to do so. The second is the regime’s survival strategy of escaping forward into Baathist grand visions of Arab national unity, as though this was the key to ending sectarianism and ethnic discrimination at home. The third syndrome is the escape backwards to dilute Syria into the even broader sea of political Islam with its full spectrum of violence. This has been articulated by the Muslim Brotherhood and IS, with its so-called Islamic Caliphate straddling the Syrian-Iraqi border. And from these sprang assorted jihadist groups with names like Zainabiyoun, Nour Al-Din Al-Zenki, Hurras Al-Din, and finally, the Nusra Front which rebranded itself as Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS).

Names such as HTS, which translates as the organisation for the liberation of the Levant, are inspired by an environment rich with dreams of a Greater Syria, fusing far-flung pieces of geography, history, and ideas about religion, freedom, and democracy, yet in the end producing nothing. Just as every beginning has an end, in Syria the ends return to the beginning: the nation state. What happened to Syria is ultimately the product of the historical failure to build a citizen’s state with a central authority that monopolises the legitimate recourse to arms, lawmaking and the power to enforce the laws. In this respect, Syria is not so different from other countries in the region, in which the ruling elites failed to forge a national identity and apply it as framework for governance, legislation, and political, economic and social development. 

* A version of this article appears in print in the 19 December, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly