For Middle East watchers, 2013 was a schizophrenic year politically. As the months went by, all the supposed truths about the region after the ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings were contradicted, leaving us deeply confused. Back in January, there was a democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, Israel was pushing for an attack on Iran and commentators were still betting on the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Eleven months later and the military have returned to power in Egypt, Salafists and fundamentalists are growing across the region, Assad looks undefeatable and Iran’s new president is exchanging hugs with Western leaders. In the midst of all this, Lebanon has ground to a depressingly familiar halt. What can we make of it all? Chaos, clearly, but if there is a lesson to be drawn from the year it is that those, like myself, who believe in liberalism and focusing on economic development
