Fears of an as-yet-undefined Middle Eastern war are darkening the
horizons of a Middle East that only a year ago was celebrating the fall
of dictators, the ascent of people power and the promise of a new era of
democracy.
Iranian threats to mine the Strait of Hormuz raise the specter of conflict between the United States and Iran in the Persian Gulf. Warnings from Israel that it may strike Iran’s nuclear facilities open up the possibility of a region-wide conflict.
Most worryingly of all, as shells rain down on the Syrian city of Homs and TV screens across the region replay gory scenes of casualties captured on videos posted on YouTube, there is now little doubt that Syria is in the early stages of a civil war, one whose potentially profound ramifications provoke jitters far beyond its borders.
Although a wider war is by no means inevitable, 2012 is already proving a dark sequel to the hope and possibility of 2011, as the demands of ordinary people for greater freedoms collide with the competing agendas of big powers in the region’s most volatile heart.
“There are two different trajectories in the Middle East,” said Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. While “North Africa is moving toward more democracy,” he said, the Levant region — including Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq — is “moving toward confrontation and sectarian conflict. It is a much darker, gloomier trajectory.”
Despite chaos in Cairo and confusion in Tripoli, the three North African nations ofTunisia, Egypt and Libya are getting on with the task, however messily, of building new democracies after a year in which authoritarian leaders in each country were deposed.
But in the Arab heartlands stretched between Israel and Iran, the awakening of democratic aspirations has stirred also ancient rivalries and more recent grudges across a network of crisscrossing fault lines, any one of which could crack and trigger all the rest.
“It feels like anywhere could explode, without knowing why, at any time,” said Umm Haya, a Syrian living in Baghdad, reflecting the widespread sense of unease among many living beyond Syria’s borders. “The whole region is inflammable.”
At the center of it all is Syria, whose nearly year-long revolt began as an overwhelmingly peaceful popular uprising against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad but now is being reshaped into a far wider struggle for influence.
‘Syria will explode’
Unlike Libya, Tunisia and Egypt, whose relatively limited regional reach ensured their revolts were contained within their borders, Syria lies at the nexus of a web of strategic alliances, geopolitical interests and religious jealousies that would be upended were the regime there to fall.
“Libya imploded. Syria will explode,” said a diplomat from a non-Western country interviewed in Damascus. “And it will explode across the whole region.”
It is not only that Syria’s religious and ethnic makeup complicates an essentially grass-roots uprising against decades of tyranny. Assad’s minority Alawite clan, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, controls most key positions in the security forces spearheading the effort to suppress the unrest, lending a sectarian dimension to a revolt dominated by the country’s Sunni majority
Iranian threats to mine the Strait of Hormuz raise the specter of conflict between the United States and Iran in the Persian Gulf. Warnings from Israel that it may strike Iran’s nuclear facilities open up the possibility of a region-wide conflict.
Most worryingly of all, as shells rain down on the Syrian city of Homs and TV screens across the region replay gory scenes of casualties captured on videos posted on YouTube, there is now little doubt that Syria is in the early stages of a civil war, one whose potentially profound ramifications provoke jitters far beyond its borders.
Although a wider war is by no means inevitable, 2012 is already proving a dark sequel to the hope and possibility of 2011, as the demands of ordinary people for greater freedoms collide with the competing agendas of big powers in the region’s most volatile heart.
“There are two different trajectories in the Middle East,” said Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. While “North Africa is moving toward more democracy,” he said, the Levant region — including Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq — is “moving toward confrontation and sectarian conflict. It is a much darker, gloomier trajectory.”
Despite chaos in Cairo and confusion in Tripoli, the three North African nations ofTunisia, Egypt and Libya are getting on with the task, however messily, of building new democracies after a year in which authoritarian leaders in each country were deposed.
But in the Arab heartlands stretched between Israel and Iran, the awakening of democratic aspirations has stirred also ancient rivalries and more recent grudges across a network of crisscrossing fault lines, any one of which could crack and trigger all the rest.
“It feels like anywhere could explode, without knowing why, at any time,” said Umm Haya, a Syrian living in Baghdad, reflecting the widespread sense of unease among many living beyond Syria’s borders. “The whole region is inflammable.”
At the center of it all is Syria, whose nearly year-long revolt began as an overwhelmingly peaceful popular uprising against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad but now is being reshaped into a far wider struggle for influence.
‘Syria will explode’
Unlike Libya, Tunisia and Egypt, whose relatively limited regional reach ensured their revolts were contained within their borders, Syria lies at the nexus of a web of strategic alliances, geopolitical interests and religious jealousies that would be upended were the regime there to fall.
“Libya imploded. Syria will explode,” said a diplomat from a non-Western country interviewed in Damascus. “And it will explode across the whole region.”
It is not only that Syria’s religious and ethnic makeup complicates an essentially grass-roots uprising against decades of tyranny. Assad’s minority Alawite clan, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, controls most key positions in the security forces spearheading the effort to suppress the unrest, lending a sectarian dimension to a revolt dominated by the country’s Sunni majority
