The Arab Spring, a revolutionary wave of mass demonstrations against long-entrenched governments in the Middle East and North Africa, began in late 2010. In the next two years, rulers were forced from power in Tunisia, Eyypt, Libya, and Yemen. There were civil uprisings in Bahrain and Syria, and major protests in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, and Sudan. The protests later faded in the face of violent state repression by 2012, leading to what some have called the Arab Winter. But all-out fighting continues to this day in Syria, alone among all those Arab nations. The Syrian Civil War gave birth to two major developments that, each in its own way, threaten international peace and stability. One is the rise of the Islamic State with its jihadist extremism. The other is the mass migration of Syrians and other refugees to Europe. The Islamic State, one of the rebel forces fighting [...]
