The fires are spreading so rapidly in the Middle East that it is hard to predict what the region will look like when this article goes to print. It seems there must be a link between the fires, though not necessarily a logical one, but identifying it might be like finding a black cat in an unlit room. This region is afflicted with four complexes of wars and strife. One is the civil wars bequeathed to us from the Arab Spring. In these conflicts legitimate governments, which is to say internationally recognised governments that are represented in the UN, face off against popular or militia forces that gained ascendancy or came to power through revolution, coup, or insurrection. Such conflicts are to be found in Syria, Yemen, Libya and Sudan. In all these cases, hostilities escalate and subside like seasons as external wills interact with local ones.
The second set consists of the better-known conflicts in the regional and international orders. These erupted with the Hamas offensive into the Gaza envelope on 7 October 2023, precipitating the crushing Israeli assault on Gaza, the attendant exchanges between Israeli forces and the resistance in the West Bank, and “limited,” “controlled” and “calibrated” wars (as they have been variously described) along the Israeli-Lebanese and Israeli-Syrian borders. Missiles and drones are the weapons of choice in these cross-border confrontations, while targeted assassination of enemy leaders on other countries’ territory is seen as a legitimate course of action. The only regular army in these confrontations is the Israeli one. The other side has militias: Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Syria and Lebanon. While these wars are unfolding on land, the one with the Ansarullah (Houthi) movement in Yemen is taking place on land and sea. The Houthis are waging a Civil War inside Yemen and an international war against the “Guardian of Prosperity” fleets mobilised by the US and the UK together with 40 other countries. The Houthis’ war in the Red Sea intersects with the Gaza war as the aim is to obstruct navigation and international trade and impose a blockade on Egypt’s Suez Canal. This complex of confrontations extends to another regional/international war which is being waged by the Iraqi Shiite Popular Mobilisation Forces against US bases in Iraq and Syria. The US retaliation against these militias in Iraqi territory sparked the anger of the Iraqi government which protested the violation of Iraq’s national sovereignty.
The third set of conflicts falls under the heading of the “rejectionist and resistance” front. At its centre is Iran, which arms, funds, and trains the members of an extensive camp militias opposed to the US and Israel. What they reject is all attempts to promote peace, normalisation, and regional stability in the absence of a solution to the Palestinian cause. Iran has occasionally engaged in military operations itself, as occurred when it struck what it claimed was an Israeli Mossad site in Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. This led to the first protest on the part of the Iraqi government against Iranian encroachment on Iraqi sovereignty after it was proven that the claim about a Mossad site was a lie. Iran also carried out a military operation in Pakistani territory targeting two locations of the Jaish Al-Adl militia in the province of Baluchistan. Pakistan denounced the “illegal act” and warned of “serious consequences.” Meanwhile, Turkey is conducting wars of its own against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in northern Syria and Iraq. Turkey occupies large parts of Syria and has established military bases in northern Iraq.
The fourth set of conflicts relates to Islamist groups parading under the banners of Al-Qaeda and IS. No point in recent decades has been free of the violence of these groups whose operations extend across a broad swathe of territory from Pakistan to the African Sahel and from Idlib in Syria to the Horn of Africa where the Somali Al-Shabaab movement is active.
These four complexes of violence, warfare and battle are motivated by various old and new aims. But generally speaking, their authors still see this region as an arena for the “struggle” that has continued since the colonial era. The function of the nation state from this perspective is to mobilise and strengthen the alliance between local forces in their confrontation against the superpowers, the currents of globalisation and modernity, and sometimes everything that does not conform with the faith. This framework has no room for the lexicon of development, construction, and progress, except in the context of building military capacities and, for Iran, achieving the ends of its nuclear programme.
Still, all this turmoil and upheaval did not prevent a reformist current from emerging from the Arab Spring and gaining momentum until it became a “reformist revolution” in Saudi Arabia, the most conservative country in the region. Egypt, for its part, succeeded in getting rid of the Muslim Brotherhood, the historic vanguard of the Islamist current. The other Gulf states along with Jordan and Morocco, all of which weathered the tempests of the Arab Spring, also joined the reformist tide.
The problem now is that reform, which entails a lot of construction and change, does not leave the political elites much energy to spare to contend with the siege and attrition from the above-mentioned war complexes. The only way to meet that challenge is to shift the balances of power, which rely not just on military and economic strength but also, and more importantly than ever, on soft and smart power. Achieving a new balance of power is possible and a means towards this end is to build a reformist coalition embracing all those who want to survive the conflagration.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 25 January, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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