Since 2021, international relations in the Middle East have shown a commendable state of détente, with the exception of the relationship between Israel and Iran, the relations between major powers in the Middle East have shown varying degrees of détente. While the easing of relations between major regional powers is conducive to peace and stability in the Middle East, this does not mean a reduction in low-intensity violent conflicts, and the fundamental reason is that there are too many violent conflicts in the Middle East that are different from formal international conflicts.
Recently, a series of low-intensity violent conflicts have emerged in the Middle East, which are highlighted by conflicts caused by the illegal use of violence by the state, and conflicts caused by the wanton use of violence by non-state actors, such as Israel's uncontrolled bombing of Syria, Turkey, Iran's cross-border strikes against Syrian and Iraqi Kurdish forces in the name of "combating terrorism", and the latter, such as the recent terrorist attack in Istanbul, Turkey. Violent clashes and terrorist attacks in Israel and Palestinian areas. While the more intense and larger Russia-Ukraine conflict has become the focus of international attention, the low-intensity conflict spread in the Middle East naturally pales in comparison. However, as far as the Middle East region is concerned, this low-intensity conflict is the root cause of the prevalence of violent political culture, the poor regional political ecology and the difficulty of regional peace construction in the Middle East, and its difficulty in governance even exceeds that of normal international conflicts.
On November 25, 2022, local time, in the Aleppo province in northern Syria, Turkish-backed Syrian fighters faced positions in the Kurdish-controlled Tal Rifat region. Since November 20, Turkey has launched airstrikes on semiautonomous Kurdish areas in northern and northeastern Syria, as well as along the Iraqi border. People's Visual Infographic
The illegal use of violence by States against other countries is the norm in Middle East politics
The Middle East region is undoubtedly the region with the highest concentration of illegal violence by countries against other countries, highlighting the fact that regional powers such as Israel, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt have launched military operations against other countries without legitimacy or insufficient legitimacy.
Israel is undoubtedly the country that uses the most illegal violence. After the end of the four large-scale Middle East wars in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973, most of Israel's military operations in the region were atypical wars or military operations, such as the invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the Israeli-Lebanese conflict in 2006; the innumerable low-intensity wars or military operations waged by Israel in Palestine, Gaza, Palestine and the West Bank since the beginning of the new century; Since the 2011 Syrian crisis, Israel's regular air strikes against Syria under the pretext of attacking Iran's military are illegal use of violence.
Turkey is also a country that often uses violence illegally. Since the 2003 Iraq War, with the intensification of the conflict between Turkey and the PKK, Turkey has opened the prelude to crossing the border into Iraq to carry out military strikes against the PKK. Since the Syrian crisis in 2011, especially in the context of the growing Kurds in Syria and Iraq in the process of fighting the extremist organization "Islamic State" and the impact on the Turkish Kurdish issue, Turkey has not only returned to the policy of strong repression on the Kurdish issue in China, but also adopted a series of "undeclared war" military operations against Syria and Iraq since 2018, and tried to establish a "buffer zone" in Syria separating the Syrian Kurds from the Turkish Kurds ”。
Since 2022, especially since the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Turkey has intensified its military operations against Kurds across the border in Iraq. At the same time, Turkey has also adopted a pan-Ottoman, pan-Islamist and pan-Turkist domestic and foreign policy in its domestic and foreign affairs, which has also aroused the dissatisfaction of minority groups such as Kurds. The November 13 terrorist attack in Istanbul coincided with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's high-profile participation in the 9th Summit of Turkic-speaking Countries in Uzbekistan, and the PKK, which is suspected of carrying out the attack, undoubtedly has an intention to provoke Erdogan. Similarly, in recent months, Iran has often carried out indiscriminate shelling of Iraqi Kurdish regions in the name of "counter-terrorism". It can be seen that the Kurdish regions of Iraq and Syria, which have increased their autonomy, are becoming the targets of military operations launched by Turkey and Iran in the name of "anti-terrorism".
Saudi Arabia also often launches military operations against neighboring countries such as Bahrain and Yemen. During the Cold War, Saudi Arabia and Egypt supported the royalists and republicans in North Yemen, respectively, and engaged in protracted proxy wars. After 9/11 in 2001, in the face of the expansion of al-Qaida's Arabian Peninsula branch in Yemen, Saudi Arabia countered al-Qaida's infiltration into Yemen by cooperating with the Saleh regime in Yemen. Since the 2011 Arab Spring, Saudi Arabia first suppressed popular protests in Bahrain in the name of the Gulf Cooperation Council, and then organized a coalition of Arab countries in 2015 to launch military operations against the Houthis, the Shiite force of Islam in Yemen. Although Saudi Arabia's military operations in Bahrain and Yemen have some legitimacy (invited by the governments concerned), their actions, especially in Yemen, do not have sufficient legitimacy.
The above-mentioned military actions taken by regional powers such as Israel, Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia either have no legitimacy at all or are not sufficiently legal, and their demands are mainly their own security needs, but they ignore international law; The reasons for this are even more complex, not only the historical heritage of colonialism, border disputes, ethnic and religious contradictions and other factors, but also closely related to the targets of their attacks on radical ethnic and religious organizations, and even more closely related to the frequent illegal military actions taken by major countries and regional countries outside the region such as the United States and Israel without punishment, thus making the Hobbesian culture of violence the mainstream of the strategic culture in the Middle East.
Radical non-state actors: the origins of atypical violence
Extremist forces such as ethnic separatism, religious extremism and international terrorism not only indiscriminate violence themselves, but their violent confrontation with the state intensifies the violent interaction between the state and non-state actors.
In the long-term conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas and the Lebanese Allah Party, although Israel has a serious problem of illegal use of violence, Hamas and the Allah Party, as Islamic radical organizations, undoubtedly have radical and even extreme elements in their ideology and propositions, and their behavior, especially the behavior of some extremists, is undoubtedly violent and terrorist, which in turn makes the West and Israel use this as a pretext to strike at them militarily, which not only leads to long-term vicious interaction between Israel and Islamic radical organizations in fact. It also creates many legal and ethical dilemmas.
In Turkey's long-term interaction with the PKK, although the Turkish government has made serious mistakes in state construction and ethnic policies, such as denying Kurdish national identity and banning Kurdish and other ethnic policies of forced assimilation, the violent terrorist acts of the PKK are also difficult to deny. In the process of interaction between the Turkish government and the PKK, the former also tried to solve the Kurdish issue through a reconciliation policy, but changes in the internal and external environment, especially the 2016 domestic coup, the strengthening of authoritarian rule, the outbreak of the Iraq war, the Syrian crisis and other major events affecting the Kurdish issue, have finally failed to reconcile the two sides, and may even return the relationship between the two sides to the vicious interaction between the government's strong suppression and the violent resistance of the PKK. This may be an important red flag from the terrorist attacks in Istanbul.
More seriously, extremist groups such as al-Qaida and the Islamic State are using unprincipled and indiscriminate violence on the basis of distorting Islam. As we all know, the Islamic word "jihad" (originally meaning "struggle") cannot be simply understood as "jihad", it includes the connotation of struggle at the two levels of thought and action, namely "big jihad" and "little jihad". Even in terms of "little jihad" at the behavioral level, Islam still has strict legal and ethical restrictions on the use of violence, such as "jihad" must be declared by a respected religious leader or national leader, no jihadi in mosques, no "jihad" against women, children and other non-combatants, and so on. But with al-Qaida and ISIS, jihad has become a violent terrorist act with no limits in terms of subjects, places, and targets. The violent terrorist activities launched by extremist organizations and terrorist organizations in the name of religion not only make violent terrorist activities more cruel and bloody, but also provide a pretext for the West to demonize Islam, and provide an excuse for countries inside and outside the region to launch military operations in the name of "counter-terrorism".
The causes of extremist forces such as national separatism, religious extremism and international terrorism in the Middle East are extremely complex, but the kinship of the countries of the Middle East, especially the Arab States, in terms of ethnicity, religion and sect enables these forces to easily penetrate across borders and to develop various intricate relationships with other States and non-State actors, which in turn becomes the cause of violent actions by State actors, which in turn has formed a complex network of violent interaction between State and non-State actors in the Middle East. This may be the complexity and particularity of the Middle East system and the security in the Middle East.
Therefore, only by adhering to a comprehensive, common and sustainable new security concept and striving to shape a regional strategic culture of peace, mutual trust and inclusiveness and a platform for security dialogue can the Middle East emerge from the nightmare of atypical violence and truly achieve peace, development and security.
"Middle East Review" is a column by Professor Liu Zhongmin of the Institute of Middle East Studies of Shanghai Overseas Chinese University, which adheres to the combination of reality, theory and foundation, and responds to practical problems with historical and theoretical depth.