What is behind the conflicts in the Arab world?
NOVANEWS
By James M. Dorsey
The short answer to the question in the title is: where does one start? If things in the Middle East and North Africa were not complicated enough, answering the question has been made even more difficult by the rise of Donald Trump, and the fact that no one, maybe not even he, has an idea about what his policy towards the various crises in the Middle East and North Africa will be, or what his attitude might be towards individual countries in the region.
So, rather than speculate or get bogged down in the excruciating detail of individual conflicts like those in Syria, Iraq, Libya or Yemen, what I would like to do is look at fundamental issues that weave themselves like a red thread through whatever conflict or crisis one looks at. These include the ones in Sy...