September 22, 2021
Published by The Conversation on September 13, 2021
By: Mohamad Moustafa Alabsi, Postdoctoral fellow at the Mellon Fellowship Program, Columbia Global Centers, Amman
Alabsi addresses the future of the Middle East while touching on the impacts of colonialism, independence, and the Arab Spring. He examines various Arab nationalist movements, such as the Ba’ath Party in Iraq and Syria. Alabsi states, “In the Middle East, there are no intra-state governments but rather regime-states. Within the various monarchies of the region, the monarch does not constitutionally stand for unity among his people, but bestows his subjects with their name and nationality.” Although the region’s volatility makes the future of the Middle East extremely challenging to predict, Alabsi poses numerous questions and highlights issues that need to be addressed in order to move the region towards a more constitutional government.
This article is published as part of Transition from Violence: Lessons from the MENA, from the International Panel on Exiting Violence (IPEV).
Translated from the French by Enda Boorman for Fast ForWord.