Since 2011, civil wars and state failure have beset the Arab world, underlying the misalignment between national borders and identity in the region. This book offers a unique and detailed account of the separatist movements that aim to remake those borders-the southern movement in Yemen, the federalists in eastern Libya, the Kurdish nationalists in Syria and Iraq, and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Instead of focusing on incumbent states, the bookshows how separatists claim the mantle of self-determination and seek to replace a broken regional order with more legitimate and stabile polities.

• Introduction


• 1. The Rise and Decline of Arab Statehood, 1919 to 2011


• 2. 2011: Revolutions in Arab Sovereignty


• 3. Cyrenaica


• 4. Southern Yemen


• 5. Kurdistan


• 6. The Islamic State


• Conclusion: The Ends of Separatism in the Arab World

Ariel I. Ahram is Associate Professor in the Virginia Tech School of Public and International Affairs in Alexandria, Virginia, and non-resident fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. He earned a Ph.D. in government and M.A. in Arab Studies from Georgetown and B.A., summa cum laude, from Brandeis. He writes widely on security issues in the Middle East and North Africa. He was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C. and has spoken and lectured at the World Bank, Marine Corps University, and the German Institute for Global Affairs. In 2015, he testified before the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee on the Islamic State's abuses of women and children.