Arab SpringBad social policy, not ideology, is to blame for the Arab world’s downward spiral
Nothing symbolizes the sorry state of Arab politics more than the rise of ISIS. The Arab world at large appears to be fast descending into a political quagmire, only a few years after the euphoria of the so-called Arab Spring. The unravelling of old dictatorships in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt and Syria has opened up a Pandora’s box of sectarian, ethnic and tribal divisions, old fault lines that have persisted under the heavy hand of police states for the last century.
Dr. Rana Jawad // Source: chinajob.com
The rapid rise of ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) to global notoriety has taken observers of Middle East politics by surprise. All of a sudden, a new Islamist political movement has stunningly upstaged former global public enemy number one al-Qaeda and establishes an Islamic state, a caliphate encompassing lands in both Iraq and Syria.
ISIS sees itself and its newly declared caliphate as revoking the historic deals that were struck between European imperial powers after World War I, which gave us most of the Middle Eastern borders we know today.
Nothing symbolizes the sorry state of Arab politics more than the march of ISIS. The Arab world at large appears to be fast descending into a political quagmire, only a few years after the euphoria of the so-called Arab Spring. The unravelling of old dictatorships in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt and Syria has opened up a Pandora’s box of sectarian, ethnic and tribal divisions, old fault lines that have persisted under the heavy hand of police states for the last century.
And the more chaotic the region becomes, the more desperate and frustrated the search for a meaningful explanation.
Bad governance
From the perspective of many Western governments and much of the Western media, many Arab countries have never been able to govern themselves effectively. They lack structures for effective democratic governance and rule of law; they are bedeviled by corruption and are too influenced by Arab or Islamic traditions which favor paternalistic or patronage systems of rule.
The rise of ISIS, meanwhile, is yet another example of how many Arab states, which never really saw their independence-era nation-building projects to completion, are still being buffeted about by the whims of modern-day feudal warlords.
