Will the Mideast’s Civil Wars Partition it into small Warring States?

[unhappycamper]

http://www.juancole.com/2016/03/will-the-mideasts-civil-wars-partition-it-into-small-warring-states.html

Will the Mideast’s Civil Wars Partition it into small Warring States?
By contributors | Mar. 16, 2016
By Thalif Deen | (Inter Press Service)

UNITED NATIONS (IPS) – As civil wars and cross-border military conflicts continue to escalate in the Middle East, Syria, Iraq and Libya are in danger of breaking up —even as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) continues to make territorial gains in the volatile region.

US Secretary of State John Kerry has already warned that “it may be too late to keep Syria as a whole if we wait much longer.”

Currently there is a fragile “cessation of hostilities” by the warring factions in Syria in a civil war which began on 15 March 2011. But it is anybody’s guess as to how long the cease-fire is going to last.

Antonio Guterres, the former UN High Commissioner for Refugees and a candidate for the post of UN Secretary-General, has warned that if the protracted conflict in Syria does not end quickly, “it might be the end of Syria as the world knew it.”

[bemildred]

1. Mr. Cole should say: "Have the Mideast’s Civil Wars Partitioned it into small Warring States?"

And the answer would be: "Yes, the process is well on its way now, and to be expected once the old mutant colonial regimes which arose after the Yurpeans gave up were destroyed in the mistaken belief that that would lead to a free market utopia, an example to the worlds of how greed and power are the best organizing principles for ALL human societies.

Since those Yurpeans set those mutant post-colonial regimes up in the first place to protect themselves from the results of their efforts, this represents a Darwin-inducing kind of stupidity.

Which we all pay for.

[DetlefK]

2. IMO: No. But it should.

1. The states of the Middle-East were created by colonial powers with no respect for the ethnicities living there. For example, that why the Kurds have no nation but are split up among Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran: Nobody bothered to make a kurdish nation back then.
It's up to the people on the ground to decide what kind of nations they need.

2. Nationalism is different in the Middle-East. People have made the experience that nation-states get hijacked by tyrants and disappoint them. That's why, instead of using a national identity as a great ideal, they switched to religion to create a cultural identity for themselves.
If there is no patriotism for a nation that has become a symbol of injustice and disappointment by way of what its governments did, why should that nation be considered untouchable?
Again: It's up to the people on the ground to decide what kind of nations they need.