When it comes to the Arab Levant, it is difficult to take a sentence in a single direction or have it convey a single emotion. The immense relief at Lebanese Hezbollah being weakened is born coupled with fury at the Israeli war machine’s crimes against the people of Lebanon, particularly the Shiites, as well as anxiety over what the war could mean for the southern border, and more than anything else, fear for the future of civic peace and the prospect of Lebanon’s foundations, as a society and a state, breaking down.
We could say something similar about what happened in Aleppo and western Syria, in light of the regime’s exhaustion, which had been exposed, even before the regime's complete silence since October 7, by a long series of Israeli airstrikes. We thus end up with a situation that engenders two sentiments side by side:
On one hand, we rejoice at the status quo established by Russia's (aerial) and Iran’s (ground) intervention years ago being deeply shaken, as well as the return of hundreds of thousands of refugees and displaced persons who had been forced out by the violence of the regime and its allies, and the release of prisoners of conscience (not all prisoners).
On the other hand, we panic about the prospect of Islamist forces "filling the vacuum"- forces known for their primitivism, fanaticism, and medieval positions on minorities, women, and education...
If there is indeed a "Turkish scenario" behind the events, with influential regional and international powers colluding with Ankara, then our horror broadens to encompass the fate of the Kurdish minority there and in their other areas to the east. Attacks against them began with ferocity early on, and the same might also happen to other minorities in what could be a kind of rambling tragedy.
Assuming that the Iranian influence is being rooted out of the region, if the aim, in Iraq, is to have the Popular Mobilization Forces become a substitute for Hezbollah in the assault on the Syrian people, we would find the same pairing of sentiments: cries of glee at the fates that could befall the militias of de facto control that would be accompanied by sorrow at the sectarian militias opposing them, who share their backwardness and fanaticism, taking their place.
Dozens of examples that evoke these dual stances and feelings could be given, as there are no forces whose actions could safeguard states and national communities and maintain an acceptable degree of stability, respect for the rule of law, and openness to the world.
After over half a century of an oppressive, factional, and genocidal military regime’s rule, along with the cultural and moral ossification of all aspects of life, faith, and education that comes with it, the Levant now constitutes a sick and diseased space from which politics has withdrawn, with kinship, sectarian, tribal, and ethnic loyalties that share an authoritarian bent competing over power.
It seems, however, that the eventual failure of three major events/developments, albeit of divergent significance and impact, has done more than anything else to deplete vigorous and promising forces, leaving us almost fated to misery
In 2003, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein did not give rise to a unified Iraq in which political life could absorb the drive for vengeance and curb sectarian and ethnic loyalties or tame them. The political elite, who rushed to broaden foreign influence at the expense of national sovereignty, played a decisive role in reinforcing and perpetuating this state of affairs.
In 2005, Lebanon’s "second independence" was prevented from becoming a prelude to the development of a modern political society capable of transcending sectarianism. To that end, a culture rife with kinship loyalties colluded with a series of assassinations, and the instigation of the 2006 war which thwarted any effort to ensure reform and change.
The biggest disaster came with the defeat of the Syrian revolution, a little over a year after it broke out in 2011, as it devolved into a civil war. Modern forces that pursued peaceful civic change could not withstand the onslaught of a brutal regime from one side and insular Islamic militias from the other. Due to Syria's geographical centrality, the revolution's defeat opened the floodgates to the spread of decay throughout the Levant, not just in Syria, and that was even before the progressive agenda was hit with the disaster of “Al-Aqsa Flood” and the same old bland questions imposing themselves.
Having missed these three major opportunities, the Levant, amid the cascading collapses in Libya, Yemen, and Sudan, has become little more than a home for the "Game of Nations,” where foreign forces and local militias loyal to them hold power. While all maps seem like they could be gone with the wind, every scene revolves nowadays around a community shelling another community and masses of people wandering aimlessly in hunger, fear, and horror.
Thus, we are left with nothing more than a political drought and a barren landscape. This demands some humility and that we return to the fundamental questions: What is a country? What is citizenship? What is the state? What is politics? Where does one begin? With such questions, we can reconnect with a history frozen by a combination of tyrannical repression and intellectual and cultural stagnation. As for the constellation of armed forces, whether they are allied or in conflict, none of us win with the victors nor lose with the vanquished.
