Shadow wars: the secret struggle for the Middle East

Abstract

The brief euphoria that followed the Arab Spring' of 2011 quickly gave way to religious politics, sectarian war, bloody counter-revolutions and the most brutal incarnations of Islamic extremism ever seen. In the aftermath, people around the world once more lamented the Middle East's apparently permanent inability to build functioning modern states. However, the reality is that this turn of events fits firmly into a centuries-old pattern of uprisings and reactions involving not only the region's elites and their opponents but also the interests of foreign powers and their clients. Middle East expert Christopher M. Davidson makes the devastating argument that the primary blame for the failure of the Arab Spring and the rise of Islamic extremists, including al-Qaeda and Islamic State, must rest with successive US and UK governments.