By Joost Hiltermann Program Director, Middle East and North Africa
In a speech at the Institut Europeu de la Mediterrània, Crisis Group’s Middle East and North Africa Program Director Joost Hiltermann highlights four key issues that hinder peace efforts in the region, and five clusters of century-old conflicts that are still causing turmoil today.
Introduction
Following the recent withdrawal by the United States (US) from the Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and the re-imposition of sanctions, the Iran situation is becoming tense. There has been some discussion in Europe and the US about what will happen next: now that the US has withdrawn, will Europe do so? Will Iran withdraw? And if it does, what happens next? Will there be war or an attempt at regime change in Iran? Nobody knows but everybody is talking about all the possibilities. What is surprising is that in Iran nobody seems to be worried about it -- neither hardliners nor moderates, not even in academia. Iranians consider that they have established a "balance of terror": they are aware that the US can attack them, either directly or via proxies somewhere in the Middle East, but the US has a lot of assets spread out over the Middle East and beyond, which Iranians believe they could also hit. With this mutual deterrence situation, both sides know -- or think -- that they could inflict tremendous harm on each other. Right now, everyone is waiting to see what Europe will do, and both the Americans and Iranians are trying to force Europeans to make a decision. The Iranians want to force the Europeans to break from the US, which is not going to happen, but they are still unrealistically expecting it. And the Americans are preventing it by trying to divide the Europeans.
The notion of there being a "balance of terror", in the region and beyond, is important. Iran actually has the capability to strike at the US, either its assets directly or its proxies in Iraq, Yemen, Bahrain, Lebanon and other places. This is significant because, while in the Middle East there used to be only the Israel-Palestine conflict -- which is still the source of many ills --, the region is currently ridden with conflict. There are wars in Yemen and Syria, instability in Lebanon and Iraq, and a failed state in Libya, and a key problem is that although these conflicts started out separately they have come to intersect. These are no longer conflicts between local actors, as the regional powers have become involved and, in some cases, the global powers as well -- such as Russia and the US.
Moreover, in the very recent period we see not only that conflicts in the region have started to bleed into one another but that new lines are being drawn, essentially between two emerging camps: what is roughly an anti-Iran alliance -- formed by the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and maybe Egypt -- and Iran and its local proxies or allies -- militias in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Hezbollah. But these two camps are choosing the entire region of the Middle East and parts of North Africa as their battleground. This rivalry is actually aggravating pre-existing disputes in these places, worsening them and -- this is the key point -- making them harder to resolve. Why is that a problem? First of all, people are dying, so there is an issue of morality and humanity. In Yemen, for example, we have already seen a huge humanitarian catastrophe, with its population being clearly affected by famine as well as widespread cholera and other diseases. In Syria, we have seen huge suffering and death as a result of bombings, refugee flights and massive displacement. Secondly, there is a self-interest issue -- and usually states act better on self-interest than on morality. In this regard, these conflicts are a security threat for Europe. Chronic instability in the Middle East neighbourhood means ongoing flows of refugees to Europe, as well as the arrival of Jihadists or the departure from its cities of "would-be Jihadists" to battlegrounds where they get trained and later come back and set off bombs. Thus, it is an inherent interest of Europe, in particular, but also of the US, despite being further away, to intervene in the region -- hopefully in a preventive way, to try to stabilise the situation. However, there is usually not only a preventive but also reactive attitude. When European states and the US react to what they perceive as threats to their societies, they tend to come with responses that are heavily securitised -- such as joining an armed coalition and bombing Islamic State (Daesh) -- instead of addressing the underlying problems that give rise to radical movements. There is no mystery about where these movements come from: they thrive on chaos and poor governance, a chronic problem in the region.
To all that, we have to add the current youth bulge. There is such a great demographic growth in the region that societies cannot keep up in providing the jobs, services and prospects to young people that they would like to see. In the Middle East, North Africa and beyond, it is increasingly difficult to have these opportunities, and there are all kinds of reactions to that: some people join popular movements, others are very lucky to find a job -- even if it is a dead-end job, at least they make some money to secure the welfare of their families --, some join violent movements, and some just get into a little boat and try to make it to safer shores where they expect to find new opportunities. This is a serious issue, and the way that the Western world is addressing it is predominantly by securitised measures, such as trying to intercept the boats or sending airplanes over Iraq, Syria, or Libya to fight Islamic State. But this only makes things worse. It may provide short-term solutions but they are only bandages. In the end, these problems do not go away.