In Syria of the Arab Spring, it is very much a story of sectarian politics. Syria under Hafiz Al-Assad was a country in which domestic stability was secured from the early 1980s. For the next 30 years, however, under his successor, Bashar Al-Asad, beginning in June, 2000, Syria was never as effectively governed as it had been by his father. And with the arrival of the Arab Spring protests in March 2011, Syria progressively spun out of control with disastrous humanitarian consequences. What began as a minor protest by disgruntled peasants and workers in Syria's rural backwater soon mushroomed into a full-scale sectarian civil war the end of which is presently nowhere in sight. The opposition in Syria is, needless to say, composed mainly of representatives of the Sunni majority. But not all Sunni's are firmly allied with the opposition and the regime still enjoys support among urban Sunnis who have largely remained neutral and uncommitted. A myriad of Sunni organizations make up the bulk of a very desperate opposition. In the meantime, Syria is no longer the unitary state it once was. It might recover if Assad wins in the end, and it could disintegrate if he does not, with a variety of partial and decentralized options in between. Presently, the country is divided into a number of zones of control. The regime has lost control of the border area with Turkey, which is divided into two different zones, one in the northwest controlled by the rebels, in which Aleppo is still contested territory. And the other in the northeast controlled by Syria's long marginalized and newly assertive Kurds. The rebels also control much of the Jazira area in the east. Including the towns Al-Raqqah and Deir ez-Zor. The regime still controls the capital, Damascus, although not entirely, important sections of the border area with Lebanon, and the northwestern coastal area, which is predominantly territory populated by the ruling Alawi minority. In sum, the territorial identities that were cultivated by the regimes in Iraq and Syria have proved to have been very thin veneers. Behind the territorialist's facade, the regimes in question were sectarian to the core. Just like the Tikriti group that ruled in Iraq, the Syrian Ba'athi regime was dominated, though obviously not exclusively, by the Assads and their allies from the Alawi community. The intimate cohesion of these minorities in power was a source of great stability and reliability as long as they lasted. But once they lost their unbridled control, the sectarian genie was let out of the bottle. The oppressed and the oppressors changed places as in Iraq, or fought it out inconclusively so far as it is in Syria. Thus, as we have seen, the weakening of the formal authoritarian regimes in countries like Syria and Iraq did not usher in pluralist democracy, but rather, sectarian civil war and state disintegration. It is in this chaotic reality that a plethora of militias and armed groups have risen to fill the vacuum. Of these, ISIS or ISIL is unquestionably the strongest, the largest and the most impressive, albeit in ways and means that many would regard as morally reprehensible, if not to say barbaric. A word is in order about the confusion in the name of ISIS or ISIL. In Arabic the name of the group is "Al-Dawla Al-Islamiya fil-Iraq wa-Sham" that is, "the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham". Sham is Great Assyria, the lands of what are today Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine and Jordan, alternatively translated into English as Syria, therefore: ISIS, or the Levant, therefore: ISIL. In June 2014 ISIS declared the establishment of a Caliphate under the self-proclaimed Caliph Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi in the territories under their control in North Western Iraq and much of Eastern Syria. The Caliphate was henceforth referred to simply as the Islamic State, with its capital in the Eastern Syrian city of Raqqa. The origins of ISIS are to be found in post-Saddam Iraq. The empowerment of the Shiites in Iraq led to the formation of various Sunni opposition groups, one of which was Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which subsequently transformed into the Islamic State in Iraq. Exploiting the convulsions of the Syrian civil war, the Islamic State in Iraq expanded into Syria and formed the Islamic State in Iraq and a-Sham in April 2013. ISIS is thereby filling some of Sunni void, fighting the Shiite-dominated government in Iraq, as well as its allies in the Alawi regime in Syria, while it goes about erasing the borders between Syria and Iraq, undoing the state structure that was established a century ago. Yet, the expansion of ISIS has resulted more from the weakness of its opponents than from its own intrinsic power. ISIS is not invincible, and they have also suffered serious setbacks and severe losses. Their future depends very much on the unpredictable determination and resilience of their very desperate collection of rivals, such as the Assad regime and the Kurds in Syria, or the Shiite majority and the Kurds in Iraq, who are backed up, directly or indirectly, strangely enough by both the United States and the coalition of Sunni Arab states on the one hand, and Shiite Iran on the other. They all have their different reasons for opposing Sunni extremists like ISIS. The Arab Spring had initially emboldened the Jordanian opposition but the outcomes of the revolutions in countries like Egypt and especially the bloodbath in Syria, were horrifying to most Jordanians. Even opponents of the monarchy in Jordan tend to see the Hashemite regime as the thing that holds the country all together. The situation therefore in Jordan, remains manageable, as long as the unswerving loyalty of the security establishment lasts. The capacity of the regime to continue muddling through will depend more on its ability to deal effectively with the economy than on any other single factor, including the pace of political reform. Yemen and Libya, where tribalism is so deep rooted, and stateness so extremely long, they are at the other end of this spectrum. After the removal of Ali Abdallah Saleh in Yemen and the removal of Muammar Qadhafi in Libya, both countries have degenerated into empty shells of formerly sovereign entities as competing tribal militias jockey for position, often violently. In Yemen, the tribal fault lines were reinforced by sectarian divisions between Sunnis and Shiis, who were concentrated in the mountains in north-west of the country, and are about 40% of the overall population. Yemeni lawlessness and anarchy, already pervasive after years of ongoing tribal and sectarian conflict, a persistent presence of Al-Qaeda strongholds in the countryside, and other Islamist political opposition to the regime, hit rock bottom when Shiite rebels, known as the Houthis, overran the capital of Sanaa in September 2014. The Houthis, who have been in a state of active rebellion against the central government for over a decade, were named after their commander, Hussein Badr Al-Din Al-Houthi, who was killed by Yemeni government forces in 2004. The Houthis are Shiites of the Zaidi branch of Shiism, that is an offshoot of the mainstream Shiism, that is practiced in Iran, Iraq and Lebanon. But because of their Shiite faith, the Houthis were widely suspected by their Sunni opponents as potential or actual allies of Iran. Their spectacular takeover of Sanaa turned the Yemeni government into even more of a powerless empty shell. Shortly thereafter, the Houthis also took control of the port of Hudayda, just north of the strategically important straits of Bab Al-Mandab on the Yemeni coast, at the entrance to the Red Sea en route to the Suez Canal and Europe. The Houthis were not expected to interfere with shipping in the straits, which will probably provoke a fierce international response. But just the fact that a force widely perceived to be close to Iran was located in such a strategically sensitive location, provided Iran with possible control, or at least leverage, over both the straits of Hormuz at the exit from the Persian Gulf and Bab Al-Mandab, a potentially significant boost for Iranian hegemonic desire. Yemen and Libya are extreme cases of countries that might break up. Yemen might eventually lead to the reconstitution of the division of the country into north and south Yemen as, as had been the situation before the unification of the two in 1990. Libya is very low in components of statehood. It has most ineffective state institutions and is torn asunder by tribal identities. Split also between Tripolitania, Cyrenaica, and Fezzan. Those three territories that were thrust together in the creation of Libya by the western allies in 1951. Its oil wealth is unequally distributed between the three provinces, very much in favor of Cyrenaica, another factor which may precipitate the dissolution of the state, as warring tribes compete for control of the country's resources. According to some Jordanian ambassadors quoted in the Jordanian media, Libya remains the tribal society it was in 1951, when it became independent. As a political concept, they say, Libya for many of its citizens remains limited to tribes, family, or province. The notion of a unified system of political checks and balances remains Terra incognita. So these Jordanian ambassadors claim. As we look at the Arab Spring in perspective, Arabism and the Arab state have been challenged in recent years. More than they have been for the entire century that has passed. During the 20th century, Arab nationalism and the formation of the Arab state were the two most important processes that governed Arab politics for much of the 20th century. Arabism has failed for the most part, and the Arab state, presently, is being challenged in terms of its cohesion and integrity, perhaps more than at any time since the Arab state system was formed a century ago.
