Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
is, which is the only ideational basis for a stable democracy in Syria. McNeill, Hodgson,
and Adonis really do overlap in terms of Syria's promise.
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The implications of this for the rest of geographical Greater Syria—Lebanon, Jordan,
and Israel—are immense. Whether or not there is a jihadist revolt in Syria to follow the
democratic one—in the event that a democracy worthy of Adonis does not take root—Syria
appears destined to become a less centralized, and, therefore, a weaker state. And it will
be one with a significant youth bulge: 36 percent of the population is fourteen years old
or younger. A weakened Syria could mean the emergence of Beirut as the cultural and
economic capital of Greater Syria, with Damascus paying the price for its decades-long,
Soviet-like removal from the modern world. Yet with the poor, Hezbollah-trending Shiites
of south Beirut continuing to gain demographic sway over the rest of that city, and Sunni
Islamists having more political influence in Damascus, Greater Syria could become a far
more unstable geography than it is now.
Jordan might yet survive such an evolution, because the Hashemite dynasty (unlike the
Alawite one) has spent decades building a state consciousness through the development of
a unified elite. Jordan's capital of Amman is filled with former government ministers loyal
to the Jordanian monarchy—men who were not imprisoned or killed as a result of cabinet
reshuffles, but who were merely allowed to become rich. But, once more, the curse is in the
demographics: 70 percent of Jordan's population of 6.3 million is urban, and almost a third
are Palestinian refugees, who have a higher birth rate than the indigenous East Bankers.
(As for the East Bankers themselves, the traditional relationship between the tribes and the
monarchy has frayed as tribal culture has itself evolved, with pickup trucks and cellphones
having long replaced camels.) Then there are the 750,000 Iraqi refugees in Jordan, making
Jordan per capita the host of the largest refugee population on earth.
Again, we are back to the truth of a closed and claustrophobic geography, according to
Paul Bracken, in which the poor and crowded urban masses have had their emotions fur-
ther whipped up by electronic media, according to Elias Canetti. Because of the violence in
Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade, we became indifferent to just how unstable are
the so-called stable parts of the Middle East. We did so at our peril—as the Arab uprisings
have shown. The uprisings began as expressions of yearning for civil society and individu-
al dignity, which calcified national security regimes had robbed people of. But in the future
urbanization and electronic communications could lead to less benign expressions of pub-
lic rage. The crowd baying at real and perceived injustices is the new postmodern tiger that
the next generation of Arab leaders will struggle to keep under control.
I crossed the border from Jordan to Israel several times. The Jordan River valley is part of
a deep rift in the earth's surface that stretches from Syria for 3,700 miles south to Mozam-
bique. Thus, the switchback, westering descent to the Jordan River from the biscuit-brown
