Crumbling

The troubling situation in the Middle East is the main factor pushing up fuel prices and pushing down markets globally.

There are four theaters of armed conflict currently active: the border between Israel and Gaza, the lingering brutal civil war in Syria, the rampage of ISIS militants in Iraq, and full-scale battles between rival militias in Libya. Combined with the civil war in Ukraine and the broad economic sanctions imposed by Europe on Russia, the world’s fuel supply is under strain.

A major disruption in fuel supply could cause prices to spiral and force major economies into recession. This is a hellish scenario. Things could spiral beyond any economy’s control.

Set aside the Gaza situation for the moment. It is a repeating story about the radical Hamas movement constantly firing homemade rockets into Israel and the Israelis fighting the threat through armed incursions that inevitably produce bloody urban warfare.

The spectacle in Libya, Syria and Iraq is that of crumbling nation-states.

In the face of state failure, the component communities revive ancient identities and resurrect ancient grievances. Overlying this breakup into sub-state communities is the rise of a violent strand of militant Islam obsessed with fighting modernity through sheer brutality.

Libya, Syria and Iraq share many characteristics. They are complex tapestries of different tribes, ethnic groups and sectarian identities. They were artificially brought together by the accident of colonial borders.

European colonialism, as it withdrew from the region, yielded to the forces of classical nationalism. The colonial spheres of influence were delineated as nation-states, ignoring communal divisions within them.

This is the reason why the national boundaries in the Middle East and Africa follow straight lines. The “nations” were defined by mapmakers as colonialism withdrew. In countries like Rwanda and Nigeria, we saw horrendous civil wars between tribal communities.

The patchwork of communal identities that was Libya, Syria and Iraq were held together for decades only by strongman rule. The sheer brutality of the tyrannies that once ruled these countries suppressed the pre-existing communal divisions — but did not erase them. Nevertheless, there was a certain historical functionality to those dictatorships, including the ones that had ruled Egypt and Tunisia.

When the strongman regimes weakened under popular democratic pressure, such as the so-called “Arab Spring,” the promise of modern democracies emerging seemed a distinct probability for a while. However, the resurgence of ancient identities progressed much faster than the internalization of western-style democracy. It was a resurgence driven, in part, by the context of militant Islam.

In the first free elections ever held in Egypt, for instance, the Muslim Brotherhood prevailed. The duly elected Islamist president was deposed after only a year in office by the more secular-minded army after friction between the fundamentalists and the more modern urban populations intensified.

 In Libya, the newly installed democratic government soon succumbed to tribal rivalries. In the aftermath of a civil war, the tribal militias were armed. That is the reason there is a spiral of violence in that country, forcing us to evacuate at great expense the thousands of Filipinos working there.

In Syria, what began as a democratically-inclined popular resistance to the Assad dictatorship was pushed aside by a more aggressive stream of Sunni jihadists. These jihadists, extremely brutal in their methods and irascible in their dogmatism, emerged as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

When the Shia-based Assad regime, supported by Iran and the Hezbollah in Lebanon, proved unyielding, the Sunni militias of the ISIS swung south into Iraq. There they found a sympathetic base of minority Sunni communities marginalized by the Shia regime in Baghdad.

No one expected the force and ferocity of the ISIS militias. They moved quickly, capturing Iraqi army bases and key cities along the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates. They enforced they brand of jihad with extreme cruelty unmatched by anything the civilized world has seen.

Shia civilians were herded and massacred. Children were beheaded and displayed on fences. Had the US not intervened in the nick of time with precise air strikes against ISIS formations, the militants would have undertaken a gory genocide of minority communities in northern Iraq.

Nearly the entire population of minority Yazidis have evacuated to a mountain range. A humanitarian calamity prevails there now. Exposed to extreme weather, they are dying by the hundred while surrounded by the ISIS. Food drops have to be undertaken by the air forces of the US and the UK.

The Kurds are likewise under threat. Their main city, Irbil, is under ISIS assault.

The Kurds are a distinct people colonialism somehow forgot to provide a homeland for. They contiguous populate areas now in the borders of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria.

There is no easy solution to the communal violence now going on in Libya, Syria and Iraq. The nation-state whose mission it is to subordinate communal identities to that of nationality now commands only feeble fealty. The chaos only provides fertile ground for Islamic radicalism to grow.

As far as Libya, Iraq and Syria are concerned, the nation-state is broken. Nationalism cannot be a force to meld the communities together. In the ruins of the post-colonial state, only chaos will prevail for many years to come. The western powers, concerned principally with the rise of terrorist movements, do not possess the legitimacy or the will or the means to rebuild the nation-state.

We should contemplate the crumbling of the nation-state in the Middle East to enlighten the forthcoming debate on establishing a “Bangsa Moro” in our own backyard.