Discovering MENA and other thoughts

This week's Economist publishes an enlightening article drawing, amongst other things, parallels between the Lebanese and the Syrian civil wars. I would stress a sentence that I believe sums it all up perfectly: "Lebanon could not be conquered by one side, nor divided among all. Its people are too mixed".

In addressing the debate on the pros and cons of foreign intervention in Syria, there are many parallels that might be found between the Syrian situation and the dilemma faced several Western powers before the Spanish Civil War. George Orwell said that " the outcome of the war in Spain was decided outside of the country and one year afterwards, any realistic observer knew that the democratic government would not be able to win unless there was a radical change in the European situation. " The picture was complicated: firstly most states clung to the need to appease Hitler's Germany, and at the same time, many had mixed feelings regarding the communist forces. Paradoxically, the ultimate goal was to avoid a general war in Europe with, like the Spanish war and the Syrian conflict, deeply ideological roots. The position of the international community in the conflict was finally based on the non-intervention principle, but this postulate was openly mocked by Nazi Germany...

I was about to write an article on April 20 Iraq´s local elections, the country´s first vote since US troops left for good in December 2011, when I read that small bombs had exploded and mortar shells had been fired at several polling stations. During the weeks, and even months, prior to what some considered a test before the Parliamentary Elections of 2014, the campaign was marked by an escalation of violence and fourteen candidates, most of them Sunnis, were killed. I already spoke about the resumption of tensions between the Shiite communities of Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, the Sunni minority and the Kurdish population. Apparently, this was just the start, as the country seems set for a new civil war. The last sectarian war took place in 2006 and 2007, and left tens of thousands of people dead.