One of the greatest gifts of the Middle East is its huge variety of cultures, religions and ethnicities. Its history shows a succession of powerful empires in which these different groups were able to coexist and cooperate to create a strong and functioning society. Examples of this include how the Muslims, Jews and Christians were able to live side-by-side in the Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates, as well as in the Ottoman Empire (there were many more examples of such coexistence).
However, especially in the Middle East, when certain people groups are persecuted and attacked by their government, things tend not to go well. Unfortunately, this is what has been happening for a whole century, starting with the infamous Sykes-Picot agreement, when France and the United Kingdom divided the Middle East into various spheres of influence. These divisions did not represent the different people groups, and instead split them apart, meaning that families and communites woke up, finding themselves on different sides of borders.
The new borders split these groups in such a way that they either ruled as minorities, or were persecuted by the majority. The current conflict we see between different groups in the Middle East has not existed for the majority of its history, since it was not divided by meaningless borders. So what are some examples of this conflict?
Firstly, there is the Shiite minority government in Syria, which has unfairly treated the Sunni majority. Then you have the Sunni government of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, which disenfranchised the Shiite majority.
More examples are the Yemeni Civil War, a war between the marginalised Shiite, Houthi people and the Sunni government. One can also look at the war against ISIS, which itself is a Sunni extremist group that began an uprising when the Iraqi government became Shiite after the US invasion in 2003.
The second nation could easily see significant tensions between the blue and greens, much like the Sunni and Shiites in Iraq, who are almost evenly split in population size and are usually at odds. Another thing to note is how all three groups have been split into separate nations. The Kurds are a real life example of this, their lands being spread across the borders of four nations: Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran. They are persecuted to varying degrees in all of them, being minorities in each.
How to fix the problem
The international community must also learn not to take sides in conflicts between people groups in the Middle East and to facilitate and encourage peace talks between these peoples. That way it will not add fuel to the fires of sectarianism, and instead cool the inferno.
The second part of the solution is the creation of nations that actually represent the different people groups of the Middle East, and the replacement of regimes that persecute such people groups. Practical examples of this solution would be the creation of a Kurdish state, as well as the substitution of the current Syrian administration with a tolerant and fair government that would represent and protect the different groups in Syria.
Final thoughts
By all means the solutions I have put forward could be applied all across the world, but I believe that they are particularly relevant in the Middle East where there is far more tension between people groups than in other places of the earth.
The Middle East issue is complex and will take years to 'fix', but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.
Hugh McFarlane