SYRIAN CRISIS AND EMERGING REGIONAL ORDER IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Abstract

Syria’s strategic importance in the Middle East is principally because of its important geopolitical location. Situated in the “heart’ of the Middle East—Levant, Syria’s role has traditionally been instrumental in terms of amassing Arab nationalism, bringing unity, and forging resistance against the state of Israel which make the great part of Arab discourse. When the Arab Spring in the late 2010 brought political changes in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, Syria seemed to be no exception. The geographical context, models of governance, state society relations, the shared conception of threats (security, insecurity) and state identities played a crucial role in escalating the deteriorating trend. Mass demonstrations in the eastern part of Syria, driven by the desire for change, turned to violent protests, which ultimately left destruction, disorder, and instability which paved the way for new arrangement of relations among different actors in the Middle East. Syrian crisis invited not only regional states but also external powers to juxtapose and expose the region to new political configurations and realities. This crisis has diverse dimensions, which range from the involvement of different regional and trans-regional states to various armed, religio-political and jihadists groups. Consequently, it has assumed a serious regional conflagration with intensive competition for regional influence. The Assad regime has struggled for survival against the rebels, representing an amalgamation of non-state actors. The Syrian crisis has engendered deep political divisions not only in the world community but also in the regional politics. In particular, it has produced far reaching social, political, strategic, and economic implications and hard policy choices for the states like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel in the Middle East. The new alliances, emerging power centers and arrangement of actors in the region have caused significant changes to the old order which heralded to the new ones in the Middle East. Therefore, this study highlights the fact that given security interdependence amongst states in the Middle East how Syrian crisis has paved the way for new regional order in the region.