The Collapse of Iraq and Syria: The End of the Colonial Construct in the Greater Levant
Abstract
Since 1945, the United States involvement in the political stability of thehistorical Levant and Mesopotamia Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel,Palestine, and Iraq has steadily increased. Because of the complexity, nomenclature describing the region can be confusing; as a result, this paper uses the term Greater Levant to describe Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, in their contemporary condition. The term Greater Levant is intended to drive home both a political and historical point: Syria and Iraq no longer exist as nation states or even as imposed authoritarian administrative structures like the dictatorships of Saddam Hussein and Hafiz al-Assad. The so-called nation states were administrative mirages imposed on the myriad of smaller entities, political groupings, and conflicting sectarian and ethnic splinter groups held together by force. They were not nation-states in the classical Western sense, but rather states arbitrarily created and delineated by European colonial powers and later dominated by a particular sectarian group ultimately the Saddamist and Alawite dictatorships. ... The purpose of this study is to introduce that deeper, more complex reality.This discussion deals primarily with the former states of Iraq and Syria,but will include to a limited degree Lebanon an extension of Syrian issues.Once again, the term Greater Levant as used in the paper refers to the areaextending from Beirut to Basra and Latakia to Sulaymaniyah in the arccovering most of the historical Fertile Crescent.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 01, 2015
- Accession Number
- AD1001768
Entities
People
- Roby C. Barrett
Organizations
- Joint Special Operations University