Time for Iraq and Lebanon to ditch state-sponsored sectarianism

AS MANY ARAB leaders have fallen in the past year as did during the Arab spring. And still the wave of protests over corruption, unemployment and threadbare public services continues to sweep across the Middle East and north Africa. Turnover at the top has not mollified the masses, because rather than producing real change it has reshuffled entrenched elites. Particularly in Iraq and Lebanon, many of the protesters now want to tear down entire political systems. It is a dangerous moment. Yet the protesters are right to call for change.Both Iraq and Lebanon divvy up power among their religions and sects as a way of keeping the peace between them. Lebanon constructed a sectarian political system long before the civil war of 1975-90, and buttressed it afterwards. Iraq’s system was set up in 2003, after America’s invasion. It did not prevent Sunnis from fighting Shias. But the civil war is over in Iraq, as in Lebanon. It would seem risky to upset these fragile arrangements.