This book is on many year-end must-read lists, perhaps because it handles the Arab Spring succinctly (i.e. in 222 pages). As much as I love brevity, I am not convinced that it is worth the kudos it has received. The author suggests that the events of the Arab Spring were not a beginning. They were simply the end of the strongman era that had dominated the middle east since the end of WW2. Within days of the self-immolation suicide of the Tunisian street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian dictator, Ben Ali, fled. Within a week, the Mubarak regime was on the rocks. On the eighteenth day of the protests, Mubarak resigned. The members of the Muslim Brotherhood were let out of jail, organized and began their plan to win an election. In Libya, Benghazi erupted and Qaddafi was on the run. His counter moves were met with an Arab League-approved NATO no-fly zone. After a nasty civil war, Qaddafi was murdered by the rebels. Unlike Tunisia and Egypt, Libya continued to drift as warlords controlled different parts of the country.
The push back against Syrian strongman Assad quickly turned into Sunni v. Shia (Assad and his ruling clique are Alawites, a Shia sect), and has been going downhill since the spring of 2011. It descended into extreme violence in a Rubik's cube chaos of Iranians, Hezbollah, Kurds, and zealots from around the world all fighting each other on behalf of distant powers and different local factions.
"Most Arab dictators have been corrupt and manipulative, but Yemen's ruler, Ali Abdullah Saleh, brought these traits to a whole new level of cynicism and mastery." Yemen was barely a step up from medieval tribalism. Al-Qaeda emerged from the disarray. Yemen too, quickly descended into a Shia-Sunni proxy war.
The most powerful, largest and coherent civilian entity in Egypt was the Muslim Brotherhood. Organized in the post WW2 era, suppressed for decades and easy victors in the elections less than a year after Mubarak's ouster. They overplayed their Islamist hand, added a touch of authoritarianism, and the following year there was a 'second revolution'. With broad based support, the military ousted Mohamed Morsi and took over. Abdel Sisi, a former intelligence chief, was in charge as much as Nasser, Sadat or Mubarak had ever been. Egypt had reverted to form.
ISIS came about when the US left Iraq and the Shiite President al-Maliki purged the Sunni from leadership positions. They made the strategic decision to go 'savage' in an effort to eliminate all opposition. ISIS proclaimed a new Caliphate and drew fighters from around the world into a never-never land between Syria and Iraq.
Only in Tunisia, the least Arabic and most European of the states in N. Africa, did the center hold. The Islamists and secularists agreed on a constitution and a sharing of power. Each side was led by a very old man and the question is whether the peace can hold.
This is an adequate book. The author spends way too much, indeed, almost all of his time, on stories of a few different families in each country. Yes, it is a way of telling of the depths of despair and terrible experiences that are part and parcel of religious civil wars, but it's hardly great exposition or analysis. Indeed, I don't think the book accomplishes its stated objective of reporting the consequences of the Spring. There are 3 pages in the second half of the book that mention Yemen, and then a few comments in the epilogue about the Saudi invasion. The long section on Syria is only about one jihadist who changed his mind and returned home to Jordan. Again in the epilogue, he tackles the current mess involving a US-led coalition bombing ISIS and the Russians on the ground supporting Assad.
The people of the Middle East sought citizenship and a future. "But they ran headlong into the seventh century..." This feels very much like a slapdash effort. Indeed, I am reminded that in the prologue, Worth points out that much of the book is previous pieces from the Times.
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