This is a great piece of journalistic reflection on the Arab world in the 21st Century.
The Great Unwinding
"Unlike the1967 war, when three Arab states lost territories to another state, and their existence was not in danger, today’s conflicts are within states, with regional and international powers involved directly or by proxy in various ways and on multiplicity of levels. In these protracted wars, the very existence of some of the states born out of the great violence of the Great War a century ago is in jeopardy. We are currently watching the great unwinding of Syria and Iraq the way we have known them for almost a century. The train of Kurdish independence has already left the station in Baghdad carrying between 5 and 6 million people toward the final station of statehood in Erbil. The current Kurdish leadership in Iraq is the last leadership that speaks Arabic. The majority of Kurds who are under the age of 30 speak rudimentary Arabic or none. The ugly, and at times systematic, religious and ethnic cleansing that Iraq witnessed in recent years in which governments in Baghdad (beginning with Saddam’s regime) and later with the Shiite governments installed with U.S. help, as well as Sunni and Shiite militias, including the Islamic State ISIS, have finally destroyed any semblance of communal coexistence. Baghdad, which a century ago boasted large communities of indigenous Christians and Jews as well as Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds is now about 80 percent Shiite city, and constantly losing its urban soul with rural populations and values smothering its once vibrant cultural life."
Article in its entirety: http://english.alarabiya.net/e...
(Hat-tip Boaz Simovici on Faecesbook)