The Failure of the Sunni Arabs

For John, BLUF:  The terrorism we face is from the failure of Arab Sunni leadership to coalesce and move their citizens forward.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

---

The Great Arab Implosion and Its Consequences

This is an essay in Mosaic Magazine, by Mr Ofir Hairy, who is vice-president of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem and head of its National Strategy Initiative.  Publication is recent, being 5 July.

The question being addressed is:

Who or what will replace a century of failed Sunni Arab dominance? What, if anything, can the West do to help shape the future?

Here is the lede plus one:

In 2007, in a seminar room in Jerusalem, a day-long session was devoted to Israeli regional strategic perspectives.  I was among the participants together with several other scholars, a former Israeli interior minister, a future Israeli defense minister, and two future Israeli ambassadors to the U.S.  At a certain point, the talk turned to various scenarios for the regional future and the opportunities or dangers each of these entailed for Israel.  When the possible breakup and partition of Arab states like Iraq or Syria was raised, the near-unanimous response was that this was simply too fantastic a scenario to contemplate.

Now we live that scenario.  The great Sunni Arab implosion that began with the 2011 “Arab Spring” was unforeseen in its suddenness, violence, and extent.  But some, both inside and outside the Arab world, had long suspected that, sooner or later, a day of reckoning would indeed arrive.  (Among Westerners, the names of Bernard Lewis and David Pryce-Jones come most readily to mind.)  Today, those in the West who acknowledge this great collapse for what it is will be better able to face the emerging realities.  But the first and most important step is to recognize that there is no going back.

Someone said "tribes with flags".  So true.

Looking at Daesh, itself, the people who form Daesh believe these are Apocalyptic Times, the End Times.  Like your more fundamentalist Protestant (and Catholic) friends,♠ they believe there will be an end battle, in Dabiq, Syria.♥  They believe there will be the Antichrist, Masih ad-Dajjal in Arabic.  Then there will be the resurrection of the dead and the separation of the good and the bad.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  You do have Protestant friends don't you, who in an unguarded moment talk about the end times?  Or are you more like Pauline Kael, sensing they are out there somewhere.
♥  And thus we have the Dabiq Magazine.