THE ROLE OF IDENTITY IN THE CONFLICTS IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Regional security and identity in the Middle East have been tested for hundreds of years, as the region has constantly been caught in a clash of its own populations and values, compounded by external influences. Moreover, internal conflicts and external implications seem to continuously worsen and feed into each other. Thus, disputes over political, sectarian, religious, tribal, territorial, ideological, ethnic survival, and national interest matters combine and overlap. Many of the Middle Eastern states that maintained authority and turned it into dictatorship later lost legitimacy and became battlegrounds for regional and extra-regional powers eager to accumulate resources. Such states in the Middle East today function under imposed authorities that violate the principles of the identities that formed them.