Description
Ethnicity has long been a defining factor in shaping political dynamics across the Middle East, often cutting deeper than state boundaries or national identities. This paper examines how ethnic conflicts emerge and escalate in Arab states, with particular focus on cases where state collapse or severe institutional weakness has created conditions analogous to international anarchy — a situation in which ethnic communities are left to provide for their own security with no credible central authority to mediate their fears.
The study draws on neo-realist theory, specifically the concept of the security dilemma, to explain how groups that may harbour no inherently hostile intentions can nonetheless slide into violent confrontation. When the state can no longer guarantee protection, ethnic communities begin to read each other's defensive measures as potential threats, triggering a cycle of mutual fear and counter-mobilisation that is difficult to reverse. This dynamic, first applied to ethnic conflict by Barry Posen in his analysis of Yugoslavia's disintegration, is here examined in the context of Yemen, Iraq, and Lebanon following the Arab uprisings.
The paper argues that state weakness in the Arab world does not merely fail to prevent conflict — it actively generates the structural conditions for it, turning ethnic identity into a survival strategy rather than a cultural attribute. At the same time, the study acknowledges the limitations of ethno-realism as a standalone framework, noting that elite agency, historical grievances, and external interference introduce complexities that structural theory alone cannot resolve.
The study concludes that addressing ethnic insecurity in the Arab world requires moving beyond security arrangements toward genuine political inclusion and institutional reform.