Throughout history, leaders have sought to reshape the Middle East. From the heights of my village on Mount Lebanon, I can contemplate the passage of successive empires: the beautiful remnants of a Roman temple, a Byzantine church or a (much less charming) French military bunker, there to remind me of the region’s magnetic pull and the fleeting nature of power.
The area stretching from the Taurus Mountains to Arabia Deserta and from Shatt al-Arab to the Mediterranean is strategically located, symbolically intense, socially diverse and, therefore, politically unstable. Imposing some kind of order on its vulnerable states and uncertain, volatile identities has been a temptation for conquerors and politicians alike. Cyrus of Persia and Alexander of Macedonia tried; so, more recently, did George W Bush.
As the 20th-century colonial empires receded and the era of independence bloomed, a largely arbitrary political map took shape, distributing among the new (non-nation) states mountains and plains, plateaus and deserts stretched around the Jordan, Orontes and Euphrates rivers. These modern creatures proved to be fragile, permanently threatened by ethnic strife and political mismanagement.