End of an era in the Middle East and North Africa: Collapse of Pan-Arab nationalism project and the subsequent rise of political Islam

Abstract

The struggle for power between Arab, Western and other regional players has taken a major toll in the Middle East which is highlighted via the plight of the Arab region in contemporary times. Large external influence exists in the region as a consequence of the abundance of natural resources such as oil and gas and its geostrategic location. Various international interventions and Western sponsored proxy wars based on religion, ethnicity and sectarian identities have dented ethos of the Arab identity as seeds of hatred have been sowed between the people. The policies adopted by America and its allies in the MENA region have a particular course of action which more often than not create instability in the targeted region. Power vacuums are artificially created by external actors to unleash violence and bloodshed between two or more communities in a nation that legitimizes western intervention on the basis of protection of human rights which leads to imposition of Western values and extermination of the cultural history of the nation.