For many years now there has been a constant stream of distressing news coming from the Middle East: authoritarian regimes frequently curb their political opponents’ right to express concerns and journalists and dissidents are jailed; radical militant Islamist groups are engaged in irreprehensible violent activities against anyone who opposes them, irrespective of their religion, ethnicity or gender; jihadists from all over the world have developed connections to multiple radical groups in the region; and millions of displaced people who have lost loved ones, homes, and possessions try to cling to life away from home.

What is more, news emanating from the region seems to become increasingly distressing and concerning. It’s not even possible to speculate on how all this could end and how ordinary people can begin to build their lives in a secure environment, cultivate their skills, cherish their loved ones and contribute to the lives of others – things many of us take for granted on a daily basis.

Some analysts argue that it is the post-imperial state-building process that is responsible for the extent of conflict and high levels of unrest in the Middle East, seeing violence as a natural outcome of such processes. For these scholars, all significant political change in the history of human kind has involved violence and fighting, in what is seen as an almost inevitable process.

Why do we give into such arguments so easily? Why assume that people will lose their lives, their loved ones, homes, suffer torture and distress, because it is a ‘natural’ or ‘expected’ outcome of political re-settlement, whether this resettlement is within a state or between multiple states?

Another trend in thinking that tries to explain the existence of war and conflict links to the idea of justice and argues that people may perceive good cause and reasons for engaging in conflict, such as self-defence and protection of vulnerable people. The idea that the war is undertaken for rightful reasons justifies and normalises the outcomes of war and conflict for actors engaging in fighting. However, deciding on who has the rightful cause and who doesn’t isn’t as straightforward as it seems. Moreover, throughout a sustained period of conflict, whether in the form of low-level tension or direct military confrontation, the process of conflict can become so entrenched that it becomes difficult to distinguish the right from wrong.[1]

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