Extremists thriving after collapse of order: failure of governments to provide security is empowering warlords across the region
Il Medio Oriente sta scivolando verso un'era dominata dai "signori della guerra", con gli stati-nazione che lottano in continuazione per controllare tutto il loro territorio, e milioni di inermi cittadini che vivono sotto il dominio dei nuovi capi locali e dei movimenti estremisti...
Armed irregular forces hold effective power over growing areas of Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya where central government authority barely reaches. Motivated by religious ideology or regional separatism, they have grabbed oil facilities and weapons, imposed taxes or changed school curriculums, and fought each other as well as traditional armies.
Il Medio Oriente sta scivolando verso un'era dominata dai "signori della guerra", con gli stati-nazione che lottano in continuazione per controllare tutto il loro territorio, e milioni di inermi cittadini che vivono sotto il dominio dei nuovi capi locali e dei movimenti estremisti...
Armed irregular forces hold effective power over growing areas of Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya where central government authority barely reaches. Motivated by religious ideology or regional separatism, they have grabbed oil facilities and weapons, imposed taxes or changed school curriculums, and fought each other as well as traditional armies.
“It is almost like the whole
regional order that was built in the 20th century is collapsing,” Nadim
Shehadi, associate fellow at the Middle East and North Africa Programme
at Chatham House in London, said in an interview. “Non-state actors are
filling the vacuum.”
The failure of governments to
provide security and basic services, in a region that holds more than
half the world’s oil, is allowing extremist groups to thrive and drawing
in external powers bent on stopping them. Behind the turmoil lie
economic failures that will be even harder to address without
functioning administrations.
It’s not clear whether
interventions such as the US-led bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria can
put the pieces back together, said James Coyle, director of global
education at Chapman University in California. Military operations will
only achieve short-term gains, unless governments are “given legitimacy
by the people through the provision of security and basic social
services,” he said by e-mail.
Daesh, which declared a
caliphate on the territory it controls in Iraq and Syria, is the most
visible challenge to the Middle Eastern system of nation states that
emerged as the Ottoman Empire collapsed after the First World War.
Other
non-state forces have also emerged, especially since the Arab revolts of
2011, which plunged Syria into civil war. The latest fighting in
northern Syria pits Daesh against Kurdish forces that have also won
de-facto autonomy from Damascus. In Iraq, where the collapse of central
authority dates to the US invasion of 2003, much of the fighting against
Daesh has also been done by non-state forces — Kurdish Peshmerga
fighters, or Iran-backed Shiite militias.
In some countries, “the state
has been too fragile to withstand the combination of internal
challenges and foreign intervention,” Jane Kinninmont, a senior research
fellow at Chatham House, said in response to emailed questions.
Libya, holder of Africa’s
biggest oil reserves, hasn’t suffered as much bloodshed as Syria yet the
eclipse of government power is even more complete, as the country slid
into chaos after the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi by Nato-backed rebels.
Two rival parliaments and premiers emerged, and separatist groups
seized oil terminals and at one point sought to sell the crude
themselves. The past few weeks of fighting between rival militias has
displaced more than 140,000 people, the United Nations estimates.
Yemen was convulsed by almost
a year of protests that toppled its longtime leader in late 2011, and
his successor, President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, hasn’t been able to
restore stability. Last month, Al Houthi rebels advanced from the north,
seized key buildings in the capital, Sana’a, and forced authorities to
change the cabinet and revoke tax increases.
Other national governments
have experienced lower-level challenges to their authority over parts of
their territory. Militants have repeatedly targeted the Egyptian army
and police with in the Sinai Peninsula, drawing air strikes in
retaliation. In the mountainous interiors of Tunisia and Algeria,
insurgents elude government efforts to hunt them down. An Algerian
militant group kidnapped and beheaded a French mountain guide last
month.
The region’s biggest oil
producers, many of which have close military or economic ties to the US,
have largely escaped the centrifugal forces, and maintained strong
central governments.
“Oil countries did have an
advantage in the Arab Spring,” said Gregory Gause, head of the
International Affairs Department at Texas A&M University. “Only
Libya saw major upheaval, and that’s largely because Gaddafi didn’t
spread the money around. The Saudis actually did a much better job than
he did at that.”
Saudi Arabia, which pumps
almost $1 billion-worth of crude every day, has expanded spending on
jobs and welfare. Elsewhere, where governments are less flush with cash,
efforts to rein in the militias and extremist groups will be difficult
as long as there are few economic opportunities for Arab youths, said
Eckart Woertz, a Gulf specialist at the Barcelona Centre for
International Affairs.
The region has the world’s highest rate of youth unemployment, according to the International Labour Organisation.
“There is no shortage of
angry young men,” Woertz said. “Sectarianism, religious intolerance and
conspiracy theories are unfortunately widespread. Daesh can thrive in
such an environment.”
The United States has vowed
to crush the militant group, and there are signs that the threat from
non-state actors is making some of its regional allies more assertive
too. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are among five Arab
nations to join in the US airstrikes in Syria. Egypt and the UAE have
been involved in attacks on Islamist militias in Libya, according to the
US, though neither country has confirmed it.
The region-wide clash between
SSaudi Arabia and Iran, which both support proxies in other countries,
has deepened the instability. Beneath the sectarian and ethnic
divisions, though, are similarities in political culture that helped
enable the rise of non-state actors.
Most Middle Eastern countries
are classified as autocracies by the Economist Intelligence Unit’s
Democracy Index, and their leaders have typically cultivated an image as
strongmen at the head of powerful regimes.
For all that, “the problem in
the Middle East is not a surplus of government, but a deficit,” said
Coyle, who was also director of Middle East studies at the US Army War
College.
Source: gulfnews.com
Source: gulfnews.com
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento