Robert F. WorthCritiques

"A Rage for Order" is just another one of those books I found terribly depressing and enlightening at the same time. A power vacuum sucked all the optimism out of the Middle East after the Arab Spring when the euphoria of overturning dictators wore off. But who to indict first: 1) The disorganized liberal and leftist factions; 2) the moderately organized Islamist groups; 3) the better organized (and corrupt) military bureaucracies; or 4) the moneyed interests in Saudi Arabia? I'll have to leave answering these questions to my Middle East friends. In the meantime, who will take responsibility for the mess in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Iraq, or what seems the biggest mess of all: Syria? Syria, like Yugoslavia and Rwanda before it, pits neighbour against neighbour. Family friendships give way to suspicion, distrust, and too frequently violence. Perhaps I knew once, but had forgotten, that Bashir al Assad, pressured by the West to step down, took the unwarranted step of emptying all his prisons of the most radical Islamists and murderers to shift public outrage away from him to the growing jihadi groups. As I recall, he took a page from Fidel Castro's playbook. In order to get even with the US acceptance of boat people from Cuba, Castro emptied his prisons and sent them all to Miami. Figure out how to put the genii back in the bottle in Syria and you will have a formula for reconciliation in the rest of the Arab states. Some day all of these states will need an accounting much like that which was done in South Africa, without packing the jails once again. Truth, reconciliation, forgiveness, and the political will to move past sectarian grievances. Like Ireland a little? We have the mechanisms to wind down the violence. When will our brothers in the Middle East find the political will to do so?

A great account of the Arab Spring and it's aftermath (at least up until approx. 2015 or early 2016). It is partially (an attempt at) objective history, and partially a work of personal importance for the author, who weaves in his own experiences and, more importantly, the heartbreaking stories of average people who were either active participants in or victims of these uprisings.

Not a good book to read if you think Assad is the good guy who has done absolutely nothing wrong, or that all Syrians who stood up to him are Islamic terrorists, or that Qaddhafi was actually a pretty decent guy after all, or that Arabs can't handle democracy and should just accept their fate in whatever dictatorship they're in.

In some ways, I wish there had been more. A lot of stuff was familiar to me because I've read quite a few books about the Middle East but that just made it easier to place events and recall what happened. Overall, a good read.

I’m chary of ‘literary journalism’ claims (once bitten, twice shy), but yeah. At times this acts like a tragic novel. A few of its human portraits are art + reality.

Interspersed is introductory material, so you don’t lose your footing even if you’re not up with current events (me) or with history.

Neither the ecstasy of the attempt, or the sadness of its failure, are smudged over or sacrificed one to the other.

I felt funny about some sentences, which inhibits me from 5*.

I read it in an afternoon and evening; it’s short and novelesque enough to want to do so.

Worth's book is concise and at times quite personal look at the Arab Spring of 2011 and its aftermath. although I followed events in Egypt closely in 2011 and succeeding years, I learned a good deal from his account. I particularly liked his sections on Yemen, perhaps because I know some Yemeni students stranded here by the ongoing proxy war in their country. I had not known, for example, that a Gandhian nonviolent movement preceded the civil war and continued to work for peace and justice until after the Iranian and Saudi government began intervening.½

This is a brief and valuable look back at the Arab Spring, the resulting failure of Islamacist governments, and the rise of ISIS (excellent timeline included). Each country - Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt, Syria, and Libya - had been saddled with autocratic dictators for many years, and there seemed to be little exposure to democratic processes or reforms. The personalities and actions of leaders and common people are both explored and explained. In most cases, the repressed religious organizations - like the Muslim Brotherhood - rose to power as theirs were the most familiar names to citizens who had lived under strict repression for so long. The big powers of Iran and Saudi Arabia play out their own struggles for power by using their militaries and weapons to squelch rights and improvement in lives. It's just as seemingly hopeless as the situation with Afghanistan, with Yemen specifically still ruled by tribal leaders. I hope that Europe and the US can continue to help refugees, but there is just no way forward.½