Syria's Sectarian Civil War Is About To Spread

The Coming War In The Middle East -- Lieutenant Colonel Joel Rayburn, Defining Ideas

Imagine a sectarian conflagration, fueled by Al Qaeda, raging across the Fertile Crescent.

In the days of the Ottoman Empire, British diplomats referred to the Arabic-speaking territories of the empire as “Turkish Arabia.” It was these Arabic-speaking lands that Britain and France, in the aftermath of the First World War, divided into the modern Arab states we know today: Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon. Those arbitrary colonial boundaries have endured for the better part of a century, but the people within them have never fully acknowledged the legitimacy of the lines that British and French officials drew for them.

Tribal confederations that span the borders, adjacent river towns, minority co-religionist communities—in these places, people have continued to live as they had done for centuries, intermarrying, trading, fighting, and migrating with light regard for the political borders of the states in which, by an accident of history, they happened to be residing. It is for this reason that political and social developments in one part of the former “Turkish Arabia” can spread so quickly to another, as they have done at key points in modern Arab history such as the revolutionary year of 1958.

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My Comment: These worries and concerns were first voiced during the height of the Iraqi insurgency in 2006-2007, and only restrained by U.S. military firepower. But the U.S. is no longer in the region .... and the old sectarian hatreds are coming back. And while the Sunni - Shiite conflict has been ongoing for centuries, in this cycle of violence both sides are now in the possession of something that their predecessors never had .... advanced weaponry .... and in the case of the Syrian government .... WMDs.