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The Great Arab Implosion and Its Consequences

(Mosaic) Ofir Haivry - Another reality is emerging in the Middle East, redrawing the regional power balances - the rise of newly armed, self-governing nations and tribes. They include a de-facto Kurdistan possessing the largest undefeated armed force between Jerusalem and Tehran; an Alawite-dominated western Syria; a consolidated Shiite southern Iraq; an increasingly autonomous Druzistan in southern Syria; a Yemen redivided into de-facto northern Shiite and southern Sunni countries; Libya's historical provinces of Cyrenaica and Tripolitania recreating their old division; with the possibility of the Sunni tribes of western Syria and eastern Iraq coalescing into a desert Sunnistan with or without IS. Similar developments are clearly brewing in Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Lebanon, and Jordan, as well as among the Berbers of Algeria and the Kurds of Turkey and Iran. With artificial regimes and borders gone, people in the region seek protection and solidarity in the old identities that have survived the Arab reverie: their nation, their religion, their tribe. These are the only building blocks upon which a new and stable system can be founded. The writer is vice-president of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem.
2016-07-07 00:00:00
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