No direction home: What broke the Levant, and can it be fixed?

Returns

After 11 years in the United States, I was flying back to the land I called home. Beirut airport was its usual busy and chaotic self, but my fellow passengers and I all got through passport control and baggage claim with surprising efficiency. The hot and humid air, scented by the nearby Mediterranean, hit me as I walked out of the terminal. Expecting a grim mood, I was instead greeted by the festive drum and reed flute fanfare for a young man just returning from Hajj or preparing for a wedding — I could not tell which.

I braced myself for the car ride down the airport road: aside from the crazy traffic and scooters darting every which way, the large posters of Hezbollah martyrs and leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran reminded me of the shattered country I was returning to. I was quickly drawn down into dark musings about how Lebanon, once a uniquely prosperous, peaceful, and pluralist haven, had sunk so low: an all-but-collapsed state, a cratered economy and shuttered banking system, a powerful armed group — backed by Iran — dominating the political chessboard, a corrupt political class sitting atop the ruin, and a country on the brink of another major war with its southern neighbor, Israel. But my thoughts went beyond Lebanon to the wider Levant, to Syria and Iraq, and of course to Palestine. The Levant, which just seven or eight decades ago seemed to hold all the promise of a successful rise through the late 20th century and beyond, now lay largely in ruins and disarray. What broke the Levant, I wondered; and could it be fixed? In the long run, surely that is possible, but in the immediate term, the path forward seems dangerously blocked.

The long legacies of the Levant

Looking for answers, my thoughts went first to the long foundational period of Ottoman rule. Unlike in Egypt or Morocco, there was little semblance of autonomy or suzerainty in Ottoman rule of the provinces that now comprise much of the Levant. Ottoman Turkish governors ruled most of these provinces directly and forcefully, leaning primarily on the use of force or the threat of it, and managing politics from a position of strength with local notables, religious leaders, and landowners. This pattern of force-first politics would reemerge reinvigorated in the ferocious late Ba’ath regimes of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Hafez and Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Lebanon — or Mount Lebanon, as it was known in Ottoman times — diverged from this direct-rule pattern, having carved out a measure of autonomy in the mountains; it evolved its own politics of power-sharing and horse-trading among the sectarian and quasi-feudal families of the province, while also drawing in all manner of foreign states to try to gain an advantage locally — a pattern that persists tragically to this day.

The Ottoman Empire tolerated diversity. Although a Sunni-dominant order, it accorded legitimacy to the Christian and Jewish communities within it. This diversity was one of its upsides, but it also meant that sectarian identities remained strong throughout; and while many of the Levantine countries — Lebanon excluded — tried and to some degree temporarily succeeded in overcoming sectarian divisions in favor of a wider nationalism and an ambitious state-building program, these sectarian identities would come raging back at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st to help tear these societies apart.

So while the Ottoman period had maintained several centuries of relative calm, a somewhat pluralist and diverse social order, and wide economic networks, it was also a period when these Arab provinces did not develop the practice or institutions of autonomy or self-rule; they instead had the experience of largely praetorian rule. The much-lauded toleration of diversity, meanwhile, maintained patterns of sectarian identity that would come back to exact their pound of flesh.

The troubled birth of the Levantine states

The decline and collapse of the Ottoman Empire unleashed high hopes and ambitions among the activist population of the eastern Arab provinces. But the post-World War I settlements and the establishment of British and French mandate rule put paid to those hopes. The promises of a unified Arab state, at least in these eastern Arab provinces, made by the British during the war, were dropped in favor of dividing the region into rather arbitrary statelets under either British or French rule. In 1917, the United Kingdom also promised the Zionist movement a Jewish homeland in Palestine, thus setting the stage for a century — so far — of conflict, the last of which has racked the region since October of last year.

The rather arbitrary boundaries that created the countries of the post-World War I period were a crippling birth defect, as the modern nation-state was supposed to be a symbiosis between a fairly clear national identity and a congruent state sitting atop it. The question of national identity fueled both political and armed conflict throughout the decades — between Arab nationalists calling for a wider union and local nationalists; between Islamists railing against the artificial secular state boundaries and calling for a wider Islamic state, including the latest wars with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS); and by sub-national groups, e.g., Kurds in Iraq and Syria or Christians during periods of the Lebanese civil war, calling for secession and smaller, more ethnically homogenous states. The mandate powers were also fundamentally force-first forms of government, with order imposed and preserved primarily coercively. They also leaned on empowering minority groups to help contain and counterbalance the large and largely hostile Sunni majority in the region. Civil war, the principal legacy of this tactic, has endured — in Syria, where an Alawite-dominated regime has devastated the country to remain in power, in Lebanon, where Maronite dominance has left the country largely ungovernable, and in Palestine, where Jewish dominance ignited a century-long conflict that is still being fought. 

On the other hand, the Mandate powers also brought with them the institutions of liberal democracy, representative government, separation of powers, rule of law, etc. Indeed, their League of Nations mandate was to prepare these new states for independence and self-rule. In Syria and Lebanon, governance was a republican form of nascent democracy, while in Iraq and Jordan it was structured toward constitutional monarchy. Interestingly, this modern multiparty form of competitive liberal politics shaped the main political life in these countries, even in Egypt during the interwar period, and for a short period after independence.  

Independence and the Cold War

World War II brought an end to the colonial order and gave independence to these new states. This development engendered optimism as national elites took the trappings of democratic governance and tried to make them work — for a short while in Syria and Iraq, for a longer while in Lebanon. But World War II also revealed the Holocaust in Europe and renewed the sense of urgency to establish a Jewish homeland and safe haven in Palestine. This quickly led to armed conflict in Palestine, which drew in neighboring Arab states and ended with victory for the Zionist armed groups and the establishment of the state of Israel. The exodus of Palestinian refugees to neighboring countries and the passions of this conflict quickly became a driving force in regional politics and, despite ebbs and flows, still reverberate widely across the region as we see today, 76 years later. In succession, Egypt, Syria, and Iraq succumbed to nationalist coups, abrogated their pseudo-democratic experiments, eliminated free civil and political life, nationalized much of their economies, and built military or single-party dictatorships with an increasingly harsh record of repression. Lebanon clung to its pluralist democratic model until it succumbed to civil war in 1975, and Jordan has preserved its monarchical system while fending off coup attempts. The Palestinians, unsurprisingly, eventually developed various means of armed resistance. 

The Cold War only cemented these divisions. The West backed Israel and supported the fence-sitting Jordan and Lebanon, while the Soviet Union backed post-coup Syria, Iraq, and Egypt. The Cold War also reinforced the old pattern of reliance on external powers for support and gave local ruling elites foreign backing to resist political change at home. But US and Soviet interest in the region also brought with it external support for local development, both in terms of state-building and in terms of socio-economic development; and gains were made in levels of education, housing, health care, and GDP growth. And the strong bipolar order also gave a measure of stability and manageability to the otherwise unstructured Middle East order.

The shocks of 1979

A major shock to this order came in 1979 with the toppling of the Shah in Iran and the establishment of the Islamic Republic, which did not fit into the East-West order, nor did it align with a secular socialist Soviet bloc or liberal secular democratic West. It signaled a third Islamist way. This was reinforced by the strong and eventually successful Islamist resistance to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the Islamist turn in Saudi Arabia after the attack on the Holy Mosque in Mecca, also in 1979. Secular Arab nationalism had already been dealt a crippling blow in 1967 with the devastating defeat of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt and its allied states in the face of Israeli forces. These dynamics gave encouragement to various Islamist movements, Sunni and Shi’a, throughout the Levant, that had been largely eclipsed by secular nationalist and leftist movements during the many previous decades.

The Islamic Republic of Iran declared, of course, its enmity toward the US and Israel, which by itself would raise tensions in the Levant, but also declared its ambitions to export its revolution abroad, including to the Gulf and the Levant. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, backed by the Gulf countries, launched a war on Iran that would drag on for almost a decade. Consequently, Iraq turned away from the path of development it had originally embarked upon and suffered from further reckless decisions by Saddam, including the later invasion of Kuwait, and eventual war with the US. For Iran, the conflict immediately hardened the new regime, increased its sense of insecurity, and encouraged it to double down on finding and building up armed allies in the Arab countries. This cemented its alliance with Syria, its commitment to Hezbollah in Lebanon, and, ultimately, led to the formation of Hezbollah-like proxies in Iraq, Yemen, and Syria.

The opportunities and risks of the post-Cold War order

The end of the Cold War order and the collapse of the Soviet Union would bring opportunities but also instabilities of their own, the most significant of which was that it left the US undeterred. This led to the first major direct American military intervention in the Middle East with the US-led war to push Iraq out of Kuwait. The war was supported by most countries in the region and internationally, but it is fair to say that the US would not have contemplated such a direct deployment during the Cold War. The success of the first Gulf War created a precedent and expectation of success that would be followed a decade later by two other US-led military initiatives that would end disastrously: the war to topple the Taliban in Afghanistan and the invasion and occupation of Iraq. The first Gulf war could be argued to have been a stabilizing operation to restore regional order after the Iraqi invasion, and it was backed even by Syria; the second war in the Levant — the invasion of Iraq — had multiple destabilizing effects: it created a power vacuum in Iraq, empowered Iran, and gave new fuel to al-Qaeda and similar extremist groups, which later morphed into ISIS.

Al-Qaeda and other radical groups had already been empowered by the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and they turned that momentum into war with the US. ISIS used that momentum to try to take over the Levant and replace the existing fragile states with an Islamic state of its own.

The Arab uprisings 

In the second decade of the present century, the Arab uprisings were driven largely by domestic factors that had been brewing for many years, but it is fair to say that the protesters took some encouragement from the successful uprisings two decades earlier in Central and Eastern Europe and the collapse of longstanding totalitarian regimes there. In the Levant, the Arab uprisings hit Syria hardest. The dictatorship in Baghdad had already been toppled almost a decade before, and Iraq was struggling with a plethora of internal divisions, conflict, corruption, and security issues, albeit in the context of elections, power-sharing governments, and a shaky constitutional order. Lebanon, too, had no dictatorship to dislodge but was plagued with an entrenched Hezbollah militia and a corrupt sectarian oligarchy that was hard to unseat, even with regular elections. Jordan came under strain, but like other monarchies in Morocco and Kuwait, the Jordanian kingdom could manage a balance between accommodation and repression that secular autocratic republics like Syria could not pull off. Monarchs can accommodate elections and sharing power with elected officials, as their position as ruler is not based on elections and cannot be challenged on that basis; secular presidents do not have that option. The Syrian president had also learned from presidents in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen that accommodation with protesters demanding a share of power was a slippery slope that would lead to the president’s ouster or worse. The lesson he learned was that it was an all or nothing fight, and that is how he confronted the uprising among his own people. This confrontation has destroyed Syria — arguably the central country of the Levant — and left it with no visible pathway for reconstitution and recovery in the foreseeable future.

Three main obstacles along the path forward

As I landed back in the Levant, this is the scene I surveyed. A Lebanon dominated by an Iran-backed militia, with a corrupt sectarian oligarchy, an almost fully collapsed state, a bankrupt banking system, and a deeply ailing economy. A Syria torn to pieces and on its knees, with no visible pathway forward. An Iraq trying to move forward but laden with a large Iran-backed militia problem of its own, high levels of corruption, and lingering internal divisions. A Palestine locked in conflict with a powerful Israel, and with no real prospect of a solution in sight. And Jordan, alone in the Levant, struggling to maintain functioning statehood and sovereignty, albeit heavily dependent on external support.

Can the broken Levant be fixed? In the long run, surely it can; but in the short run, it is hard to see any quick path forward. Three major obstacles block the way. One is the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the absence of a pathway for a two-state solution that would provide a sustainable and acceptable conclusion to that century-old conflict. The non-resolution of that conflict not only affects the lives of Palestinians and Israelis but also radiates radicalization and instability throughout the region. Second is the posture that the Islamic Republic of Iran has invested in, which is one of permanent military presence in three Levantine countries (Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq) through the allied/client militias that it funds, arms, and oversees, and its refusal to consider any fundamental rethinking of that strategy. The fact that it declares itself in perpetual conflict with Israel and the US — and uses Arab countries to wage those conflicts — makes matters worse. The third obstacle is the fundamental blockage in Syria and the refusal of the Assad regime to consider any negotiation or reform to put its broken country back together again. 

A change on the Israel-Palestine track seems more remote than ever after the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7 and the vast Israeli war on Gaza that ensued. But a two-state solution also remains the only viable option in the long term. If new leadership emerges in Israel and Palestine, along with more effective leadership from the US and a bolder position from Saudi Arabia, a two-state solution somewhere down the road is not inconceivable. It would take a transformation as deep as the one France and Germany wrought after they decided to put two world wars behind them and build a more stable Europe.  

When it comes to Iran, no one questions that Tehran will always be a major player in the Middle East, but can it reach a point of abandoning its policy of building its security on the insecurity and breach-of-sovereignty of its Arab Levantine neighbors? That is conceivable. Although accurate readings of public opinion in Iran are hard to come by, a majority of young Iranians have expressed time and again their prioritization of domestic economic, social, cultural, and political needs and rights. Change could come to Iran, either through the advent of new leadership and policy within the Islamic Republic or through more fundamental change.

And in the meantime, a form of de-escalation and conflict abatement is possible, as represented by the Saudi-Iranian agreement of March 2023 brokered by China. But there is no doubt that a differently oriented Iran, one that is eager and willing to become a partner in rebuilding sovereignty in broken states, disbanding militias, and seeking to find solutions for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other disputes in the region, would have a major positive effect on the Levant. 

In Syria, it is unrealistic to expect any change from the Assad regime. It survived the first onslaught on its existence — with critical life support from Iran and Russia — and came out greatly weakened but alive; it is not clear that it could survive another. In that sense, it seems like a dead state walking. Even if the Assad regime wrested back physical control of more of its territory after an American and/or Turkish withdrawal, it still has no working political contract or lasting legitimacy with the bulk of its own people, nor does it have a pathway toward political, social, or economic recovery and renewal. Real change in Syria would require either new leadership in Damascus, or major regional change, such as a policy turnaround from Iran.

In Lebanon and Iraq, despite lingering systemic problems — mainly an absence of sovereignty — there is some limited progress that can be made in strengthening state institutions and governance structures, even if they do not secure full sovereignty, and improving economic and social conditions. Major improvements will require larger changes in one of the three obstacles I pointed out above. But it is better to be making progress and ready for major opportunities when they arise, rather than the opposite.

Denouement

In the long term, given the talent and dynamism of its people, I have faith that the Levant is destined to rise again, but the years ahead are still strewn with major obstacles and many dead ends. As I made my way from the airport and up the winding roads of the ancient Lebanese mountains, I thought of all the people in all the towns and villages for hundreds of miles around, struggling to endure difficult conditions, hoping for a better life, imagining a different future. And I wrestled with conflicting emotions — satisfaction with being home, despair at the conditions of Lebanon and its neighboring countries, hope that progress is possible, and commitment to do what one can to help bring it about.

Paul Salem is MEI’s Vice President for International Engagement. He focuses on issues of political change, transition, and conflict as well as the regional and international relations of the Middle East.

Photo by AFP via Getty Images