Introduction

The Fertile Crescent has undergone massive transformations with far-reaching consequences that remain hard to grasp, and with tangled beginnings are just as hard to trace. Should we see them as the ramifications of the Arab Spring? Or as part of a broader process? And if so, how does it relate to the Arab Spring, a context without which these transformations are impossible to imagine?

One way to read today’s events is as the final chapter in the story of the nation-state project in the Mashreq – a chapter that began in 2003 with the fall of Iraq’s Baath regime and ended, in one way or another, in 2024 with the fall of its Syrian counterpart. This chapter marks the closure of the nation-state era in the Mashriq, whose opening act can be traced back to the Arab Revolt a century ago.

This perspective does not deny the Arab Spring and its vast repercussions, but it also goes beyond it. Using a long term historical lens connects today’s transformations and fractures to the broader trajectory of the region’s modern history, something a narrow Arab Spring framework cannot do. We also glean valuable insights by revisiting the early efforts of the nation-state’s founding generation to address similar dilemmas – efforts that feel strikingly relevant today, offering lessons that resonate more deeply than much of today’s discussions.

This paper is divided into several axes:

• An outline of the argument that we are witnessing the final chapter of the nation-state story.
• A discussion of the need to think beyond the confines of the nation-state and to explore alternatives such as federalism or even partition.
• A historical revisit of past attempts to grapple with these questions, most notably the 1920 Constitution of the Arab Kingdom of Syria. Although it was never implemented due to the French occupation and the fall of the kingdom, it remains a deeply relevant local model; one that rooted ideas of federalism, decentralisation, and checks on state authority both horizontally (separation of powers) and vertically (distribution of power between the centre and the regions).

The End of the Nation-State

In 2003, Iraq’s Baath regime fell following a U.S. invasion launched under the banner of liberating Iraq and spreading democracy. Yet the outcome was the opposite of what Washington had envisioned. Deep sectarian divisions quickly appeared and tore through Iraqi society, turning the country into a patchwork of communities – if not separate peoples – dominated by three main groups: Kurds, Sunni Arabs, and Shia Arabs. The Kurds effectively gained what seems like a state in the north, while Sunni and Shia Arabs fought over what remained of Iraq. The Shia, for the most part, welcomed the regime’s fall, their parties and movements – nearly all defined by a Shia identity – taking the lead in the post-war transition. The Sunnis, by contrast, rejected American rule, and from their ranks emerged most of the armed resistance that waged a fierce war against the occupation. There were Shia factions that also resisted the Americans, such as the Sadrist movement, but their opposition remained largely beholden to intra-Shia balances. They never reached the point of total confrontation with the U.S. occupation nor a complete break with the new, U.S.-backed Iraqi government.

Some Iraqi parties adopted a national discourse that appealed to Iraqis as citizens rather than sectarian groups; Ayad Allawi and his movement being the most prominent example. Yet within a few years, these trends waned and lost ground to sectarian parties that spoke to Iraqis primarily as Sunnis or Shias.

During this period, Iraq endured two civil wars. The first broke out in 2006 after the bombing of the al-Askari Shrine and attacks targeting Shia pilgrims, sparking a brutal conflict between Shia and Sunni factions within the broader context of the U.S. occupation. This conflict was marked by massacres and ethnic cleansing, particularly targeting Sunni Arabs. The second civil war erupted in 2014, when the Islamic State (ISIS) seized Mosul and carried out atrocities against Shia soldiers (Camp Speicher massacre). The conflict raged until ISIS was defeated. Both wars were accompanied by massacres, ethnic cleansing, and acts of extermination. Smaller communities suffered most: The Yazidis faced genocide at the hands of ISIS; Christians, Mandaeans, Shabaks, and other minorities were almost wiped out or forced to flee, many finding refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan, which remains a relatively safe haven so far. Meanwhile, the broader Sunni and Shia populations also endured mass killings, displacement, and demographic engineering that reached even Mosul – long considered a Sunni stronghold.

Today, Iraqis identify as Sunnis, Shias, Kurds, and other communities. Anyone following Iraqi political discourse – especially in the wake of popular uprisings or street protests – can easily sense how deeply this ‘ethnic’ consciousness shapes politics and society alike. It is not uncommon to hear clerics warning Shias against protesting, arguing that doing so might endanger ‘Shia rule.’  In effect, Iraqis have ceased to see themselves as one nation united by a shared identity as imagined from the founding of the Iraqi Kingdom under King Faisal until the end of the Baath era. The term ‘Iraqi people’ has been reduced to a legal abstraction. In reality, Iraq now consists of several ‘peoples,’ where power belongs to one people at a time who rule over the others. The rest either resist that rule, try to escape it, or seek at least to share in its spoils.

In Syria, the Assad regime fell through a sudden military operation whose details remain unclear. With its fall, the first part of a fourteen-year civil war came to an end, having seen the near-total destruction of the country and its communities, largely at the hands of Assad’s forces. Sunni Arab communities were the direct victims, targeted by the regime and the Shia militias allied with it. The war also witnessed the rise of ISIS, which seized vast territories and carried out massacres and ethnic cleansing, particularly against the Kurds, who later bore the greatest burden in fighting and defeating ISIS. Sunni opposition factions were also responsible for violations and war crimes, with an overtly sectarian rhetoric taking shape within two or three years of the war’s outbreak. The war thus evolved largely along sectarian and ethnic lines, even though the Assad regime, ironically, was the only actor that continued to speak in national terms and maintained a cross-sectarian support base, despite its security and military core being sectarian and its allies almost exclusively Shia.

With Assad’s fall, the only player feigning a national language was gone. Power then passed to Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, once al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch and, in its earliest phase, a splinter of ISIS – and its allied factions.

In March, a military campaign in the coast – initially presented as a counterinsurgency operation against remnants of the old regime – turned into a massacre marked by anti-Alawite violence and incitement. The rhetoric surrounding these events resembled anti-Semitic propaganda once used against Jews in Germany. A few months later, another massacre struck the Druze in Suwayda, accompanied by full-blown sectarian incitement that dehumanised them and branded them as traitors and conspirators. This was preceded by sporadic anti-Druze attacks in Jaramana and Sahnaya, as well as recurring clashes and hostile rhetoric directed at Kurdish groups. Violations against Alawites remain a daily occurrence, including killings, abductions of women, and routine humiliation at checkpoints.

Through these confrontations, communal identities hardened and began to evolve into distinct ‘peoples,’ each asserting its separate culture, values, and way of life – and increasingly voicing a desire for secession or self-determination. Meanwhile, the de facto authorities grew more authoritarian and power-hungry, renaming streets and schools and revising national holidays to project a Sunni-centric vision of the country.

Today, Syrians themselves have fractured into peoples who are drifting away from their national identity. What divides them now rivals what unites them. Mutual distrust runs deep; psychological distance and social barriers have risen too high.

Lebanon is not much different. The country has been in near-total collapse since the outbreak of internal strife following the 2005 assassination of Rafik Hariri, the withdrawal of Syrian Army, Hezbollah’s takeover of Beirut on 7 May 2008, and two wars with Israel in 2006 and again in 2025. The latter war ended in a crushing defeat for Hezbollah and the assassination of its political and military leadership.

Looking at the trajectory of the past two decades, we see not only the breakdown of the nation-state as an institution but also the disintegration of the very idea of a national community. What analysts often call ‘sub-national identities’ have surfaced and hardened, turning into competing ethnic or sectarian ‘nations’ and demanding recognition on their own terms – often in direct conflict, since they vie for the same land and political sphere.

The rise and dominance of Islamism – whether through politics or warfare – have reinforced this trend. As an identitarian and sectarian movement, it deepens social fault lines and stands in direct opposition to any vision of a cross-sectarian national imagination. This dynamic has been sharpened by the increased extremism, sectarianism and Salafism that define today’s Islamist movements, especially on the Sunni side, compared to earlier generations that once saw themselves as part of the broader umma (the transnational Islamic community), however contested this idea was for non-Muslims.

What we are witnessing now is the collapse of the nation-state. In the Mashreq, where the state was the main pillar of national identity – an identity with no deep historical roots apart from the state itself – its collapse has brought down the very idea of a national community. Syrians, Iraqis, and Lebanese have ceased to exist as unified peoples, replaced by Shias, Sunnis, Christians, Alawites, Druze, Kurds, and others.

If this picture is accurate, the pressing question becomes: how can we navigate this reality in the absence and gradual disappearance of national thought? For decades, Arab intellectuals have repeatedly raised the question of reform, but Arab governments largely ignored it. Since 2003, however, reform took on unprecedented urgency under international pressure – particularly American and Western – on Arab states to address their internal crises. This pressure came in response to a wave of terrorist attacks that struck the U.S. and other countries, whose roots lay in the Arab world’s political stagnation. Yet the reform question, which reached its peak during the Arab Spring, ended in tragedy as Arab societies imploded under the weight of revolutions and their aftermath. Counterrevolutions triumphed in Egypt and Tunisia, while collapse and civil war followed the downfall of regimes in Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Sudan, and even in Iraq and Lebanon where the regimes themselves survived.

This makes reform deeply problematic. Should we really aim to ‘reform’ the state? Isn’t the state itself the source of all evil? And conversely, hasn’t the collapse or the weakening of the states unleashed a Pandora’s box of crises, making its continued existence, however tyrannically, preferable to the alternative of civil war? If we narrow the focus to the Fertile Crescent, several general observations can be made.

• The centralised state has been a key driver of the Arab world’s tragic trajectory. Such states, built on a modernising model that served as their main claim to legitimacy, paved the way for authoritarian and repressive regimes that destroyed political life and crippled any ability to produce leaders, normative values, and organisational capacity. The result was hollowed-out societies stripped of agency, ruled by regimes that sustained themselves not through cross-communal legitimacy but through the deliberate cultivation and manipulation of divisions.
• At the same time, Arab societies have failed, even imaginatively, to develop alternative visions that challenged the state’s extreme centralisation. The constitutional principle of separation of powers (executive, legislative, judicial) only briefly functioned during the short-lived liberal era; and only partially back then. Other political frameworks, such as federalism, were entirely absent and often dismissed as plots to further divide states which were created by colonialism.
• Attempts to de-centralise the state by recognising and integrating communal groups into its structure through a form of consociational democracy – such as in Lebanon and Iraq – have also led to deeply negative outcomes. This did not end communal conflict; instead, it deepened and entrenched it, producing a cycle that alternates between ‘cold’ civil wars (chronic political crises) and open civil wars. They preserved the form of the state as a sovereign institution – with all the military, economic, and legal privileges that entails – but restricted access to it to those with recognised sectarian affiliations. One could reach office only as a Sunni, Shia, or Maronite. Consociational democracy did not challenge the nation-state model; it simply divided it along communal lines. Its core flaw is that it fixes political representation at one moment in time, based on the balance of power during the state’s formation, while societies themselves continue to evolve. When demographic or social shifts later demand a redistribution of power, any such adjustment risks triggering a new civil war.

Federalism and Other Possibilities

These observations point to the need to rethink models that go beyond the normative form of the sovereign nation-state as we know it. They compel us to explore alternative systems of governance, such as limiting or diluting sovereignty or creating frameworks through which new collective identities can express themselves in the absence of a unifying national identity.

Partition may be an option that should not be dismissed outright, despite the many obstacles that stand in its way today and the enormous cost it would entail if imposed by force. The failed independence referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan offers a clear example of how limited this path currently appears. Yet it remains a possibility that cannot be ignored, especially since many of the regional and international constraints against it are fluid and largely unpredictable. Moreover, the persistent failure of governance systems across the region makes this scenario increasingly plausible and capable of even shifting international and regional attitudes toward it. Iraq, for instance, has suffered two civil wars in the past two decades, while Syria’s new era has already witnessed two massacres with genocidal overtones, the loss of several territories beyond Damascus’s control, and a deeply sectarian ruling authority monopolising power – which may facilitate defections and increased opposition. If internal failure persists – as seems likely given the nature of the current ruling elites – it could become a decisive factor prompting international actors to reconsider their opposition to partition, or at least explore less drastic alternatives, such as granting certain regions within existing states semi-autonomous self-rule.

But if we set aside the most extreme and unpredictable of all scenarios, i.e. partition, there remain other possibilities that could open the way for reform, coexistence, and a return of politics to the people. Chief among these are federalism, expanded decentralisation, and even forms of local self-rule. From this perspective, federalism appears as a practical and timely option that allows, within certain limits, for moving beyond the deadlock of the centralised sovereign state. It offers a broader framework for addressing the region’s ethnic and sectarian diversity and for healing the wounds left by years of internal conflict.

First, federalism provides a way to counterbalance the power of the central state. The traditional idea of separating the three branches of government (executive, legislative, and judicial) has proven insufficient to restrain centralised authority. In the end, the state has managed to dominate all three. Federalism introduces an additional layer of balance by dividing sovereignty not only horizontally among the three branches, but also vertically, transferring part of that sovereignty to the regions, their governments, legislatures, and courts, rather than concentrating it solely in the centre.

Federalism also helps curb the power of the executive. It allows regions to share in key areas of sovereignty and resource management, including taxation, ownership of natural wealth, law enforcement, policing, legislation, and trials. Each region would have its own government, judiciary, and police force to uphold the law, as well as legislative councils that oversee its governments and pass local laws. Regional capitals would collect taxes, remit a portion to the central government, and manage their own resources and public projects, while the central state would take charge of projects of national scope.

The damage caused by the centralised state has not been limited to its overpowering and repressive nature; it has also had damaging effects on patterns of social and economic development. Capitals have swollen into overcrowded megacities, a trend worsened by their limited natural resources, as is often the case with us. Meanwhile, peripheral areas, and even major secondary cities such as Aleppo in Syria, have been neglected. Here, too, federalism can help. It allows greater attention to the developmental needs of regions and localities based on the choices, priorities, and decisions of their own residents. Peripheral and smaller cities would no longer see their resources drained by the capital, receiving only crumbs in return. Nor would they be forced to follow national development plans imposed from above, detached from local needs and aspirations. In Syria, for example, this would directly benefit resource-rich but long-neglected areas such as Jazira, and to a lesser extent, Hauran.

Finally, federalism can offer a more flexible framework for addressing questions of identity, community, and cultural particularity. It is not synonymous with partition along ethnic or religious lines – many federal states do not even experience such divisions, and their regions often cut across them. Rather, federalism provides a more adaptable structure for managing diversity. Regions can define their own cultural and educational policies according to their population’s makeup and local traditions. For instance, Syria’s Jazira region, with its large Kurdish population, could design cultural and educational programmes reflecting that reality, while regions like Hama or the coast – where Kurds are absent – would not require similar programmes. Likewise, religious and social differences could be expressed through regional legislation, as in the contrast between Idlib, Jabal al-Druze, and the Syrian coast – or between Basra, Mosul, and Baghdad.

In short, the main advantages of federalism, and for that matter any expanded form of decentralisation, lie in limiting the power of the central state, distributing sovereignty across multiple levels to reduce the risk of renewed authoritarianism, creating fairer systems of development and governance, and providing more inclusive ways to accommodate ethnic and sectarian diversity.

Yet these advantages do not mean that federalism would magically resolve all our problems. In reality, the road to federalism faces serious obstacles, including its poor reputation in the Arab political imagination, where it is often equated with partition and viewed with deep suspicion as a colonial scheme meant to weaken the Arab world. But there are other deep challenges beyond this perception. Federalism presupposes a basic level of trust, a genuine willingness among different groups to live together, and the capacity for dialogue and compromise – conditions that are far from present today. This is especially true in Syria with its current authority, where mutual hostility runs deep, and massacres and sectarian violence continue to move from one region to another.

Federalism does not solve ethnic or sectarian conflict; it merely offers a framework to move beyond it, particularly as it acknowledges the internal ethnic and religious diversity of regions, as seen in Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. But when national trust collapses and communities retreat into hardened sectarian or ethnic identities, federalism may lose its usefulness. In such conditions, the same rival groups exist within every potential region, and their conflicts could simply shift to the regional level. Efforts at ethnic cleansing within these regions could then lead back to partition, raising the question: Why remain in a federal state at all if each region becomes homogeneous?

Federalism is about coexistence and preserving the current state structure. It rests on a real desire to co-exist, providing a governance system to make that coexistence work. Without that desire, however, federalism has nothing to offer. The fundamental question facing the Mashriq, therefore, is not technical or constitutional; it is moral and collective: who are we, and do we truly wish to live together in a way that guarantees dignity, freedom, and justice for all?

This final condition seems nearly impossible to meet at present, especially with Salafi-jihadist movements now in power in Syria, riding a wave of Sunni triumphalism coupled with a deep sense of ‘Sunni grievance.’ This has fostered an imagined unity among Sunni Arabs and a belief that the current government is ‘theirs.’ Their notion of justice has taken on a sectarian and self-privileging tone, one that breeds fear and fuels separatist sentiment among other communities, especially after the massacres of Alawites and Druze in recent months. The regime needs to sustain an imagined Sunni unity and identify itself with it, prompting it to invoke the threat of losing Sunni privilege or to resurrect the spectre of an ‘alliance of minorities.’ With no access to participate in power, including through genuine power-sharing (as evidenced by the Syrian authorities’ constitutional declaration, their national dialogue, or their parliamentary elections), or access to participation in economic reconstruction, or development projects, Syrian authorities rely on fear and mobilisation through hostility. This dynamic has even produced new internal enemies, evident in expressions like ‘cute Sunni.’ A similar but less dramatic situation exists in Iraq. The notion that ‘the government belongs to the Shia’ is often invoked to suppress dissent, particularly from Shia voices protesting poor services, corruption, and institutional decay. Iraq also continues to face simmering communal tensions and an unresolved Kurdish question. Lebanon, in turn, offers another case in point. The debate over Hezbollah’s weapons has resurfaced once again. Although the official slogan remains resistance against Israel, the group’s weapons now serve primarily internal purposes amid the aftermath of total defeat. Yet, if Hezbollah were to be disarmed, what would the Shia community be left with? Many in Lebanon seem poised to retaliate against Hezbollah and its supporters, making disarmament as destabilising as keeping the weapons – a mirror of the dilemmas of Syria and Iraq. In the absence of national institutions or mutual trust, weapons remain both a cause of conflict and a perceived guarantee of communal survival.

From this perspective, federalism and other forms of decentralisation present a challenge. On the one hand, they seem to be the only means of preserving what remains of national unity and of countering authoritarian projects that threaten to bring further ruin – those that justify strong states in the name of keeping the nation whole or demand a ‘national dictator’ to preserve it. On the other hand, such forms require a genuine will to coexist, a readiness to renounce vengeance and domination, and even the capacity to forgive and accept a measure of unfairness for the sake of co-existence. These, however, are precisely the conditions most absent in the region today.

Historical Foundations of Federalism

The negative perception of federalism in the Mashriq is rather puzzling when we recall Syria’s first constitutional experiment – the 1920 Constitution – which never came into effect after French forces occupied Damascus and brought an end to the short-lived Syrian monarchy.

That constitution was approved by a representative assembly that included delegates from across Syria’s regions, social groups, and political currents – from secular liberals to traditional conservatives. It explicitly called for a federal system, granting the provinces wide administrative autonomy, as stated in the second and third articles. A full chapter – Chapter 11 – was devoted to the provinces, containing twenty-three articles that defined their legislative councils and their authority to pass local laws, establish provincial courts, and hold governors accountable before their own assemblies. Governors were appointed by the king; whose powers were themselves restricted by the constitution. Federalism was thus embedded at the core of the constitutional monarchy envisioned by the founders of modern Syria. It was designed to limit royal authority, ensuring that his accountability to a national parliament and to the provincial councils and their elected representatives. In this way, federalism appeared in the very first political document drafted and approved by Syrians themselves, as both a safeguard for independence and a bulwark against colonial threats.

Syrian politicians at the time turned to federalism out of a keen awareness of the country’s diversity, its varied peoples, regions, and levels of development. They were similarly aware of the fragility of a newly emerging national identity still overshadowed by older religious, regional, and tribal loyalties. They saw in federalism a form of governance capable of accommodating this diversity while countering foreign claims to ‘protect minorities,’ which were often used as pretexts for Western intervention.

The 1920 experience thus provides a historical foundation for revisiting federalism as the earliest and most forward-looking framework conceived by Syria’s founders, designed both to manage diversity and ensure shared governance, and to restrain executive place limits on executive authority and central rule. A century later, we still face the same challenges that our predecessors faced. The untested federal vision of 1920 remains perhaps the most relevant and promising model for rethinking federalism and decentralisation in the Mashriq today.