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Why Arab States Have Failed

(National Interest) Mohammed Ayoob - Denigrating ISIS' capabilities in Syria and Iraq will not solve the problem of anarchy and violence in these countries. It is the failure of states to provide adequate security to their populations that has provided the space for groups such as al-Qaeda and ISIS to flourish in these countries. When states fail to perform their primary task to provide security to their populations, individuals and groups look for alternative security providers. After the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, a deliberate program aimed at destroying both military and civilian organs of the state, called de-Baathification, created a huge political vacuum into which extremist forces moved. Thus was created al-Qaeda in Iraq, which mutated into ISIS. Since the post-invasion Iraqi governments were mostly led by Shia sectarian entrepreneurs, most Sunnis completely lost faith in the state's capacity to provide them protection. Similar patterns became visible in Libya with the fall of the Qaddafi regime, and in Syria with the Assad regime's loss of control over much of the country. In both cases, as in Iraq, foreign intervention was responsible to a significant degree for state collapse. The writer is Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Policy and Professor Emeritus of International Relations at Michigan State University.
2016-09-21 00:00:00
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