International powers then flooded conflict zones with financial and military support that flowed through to nonstate actors, armed and unarmed alike. Many of the countries in MENA that are now in conflict had little to no active civil society before the 2011 uprisings. It is particularly in theaters of conflict that powerful states have sought to commandeer nonstate actors for geopolitical ends, often blurring the lines between standard civil society organizations (CSOs) and militarily active groups. Various interest groups and countries, many of which assist each other in one place while being adversarial elsewhere, have backed nonstate actors in these conflicts. Nonstate actors have been crucial to all of these conflicts, particularly where these actors are engaged in violence. The twenty-year-long conflict in Iraq endures as internal strife threatens to break out into a new civil war, while in Sudan, all major regional and global powers meet in a competitive standoff as the country moves through its first years after the presidency of Omar al-Bashir. In Syria, President Bashar al-Assad unleashed war on his people, resulting in the largest population displacement in history, while in Yemen, the Saudi-led coalition’s war against the Houthis has driven the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis.Įlsewhere, Libya has become a theater for the proxy involvement of regional actors as well as global superpowers such as Russia European states have supported different sides in this conflict according to their national agendas. 1 Conflicts across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have endured for over a decade since the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings descended into violent confrontation. Civil society involvement in violent conflict provides a particularly stark example of the geopoliticization of civic actors.
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