For centuries, the Arabs have been sensitive about their peripheries.

In Yemen, at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, the Arab world has, for centuries, sought to ensure that the Red Sea remains largely an Arab lake, and that the reaches of that sea to the Indian Ocean, are secure. This was hardly ever the case, for repeated waves of voyagers from the long shores of east Africa and even from the Indian Sub-Continent had sought to establish presences at that strategic strait separating the sea from the open ocean. Arab thinking was always cognisant that that narrow sea gives direct access to al-Hijaz, where Islam’s holiest sites are, and to key demographic centres in Arabia, Sudan, and Egypt.

Northwards, at Iraq’s narrow intersection with Iran, the Arabs have, also for centuries, been wary of Iran’s persistent desire to expand westwards towards the Levant and from there towards the Mediterranean. In Arab psyche, that narrow border with Iran has witnessed numerous battles, in which, at times, the Arabs were seeking to expand their realms, but at many other times, the Arabs were defending their lands against Iran’s innate desire to expand its political influence and its cultural milieu westwards. Often in the Arabs’ historical narrative, this struggle seemed between Arabness and Persianness, a fraught relationship whose tribulations have exerted major influence over Arab and Islamic history.

At the other side of the north of the Levant, at Syria’s border with Turkey, the Arabs have, again for centuries, been aware that it is at that geographic point that Arabness gives way to Turkishness. And with that distinction, over many centuries, even from before the Ottomans widened their territories south into the Levant and Egypt, the Arabs’ innate sense of their cultural identity had clashed with a Turkish feeling of responsibility for the destiny of the Islamic world. Arguably, this clash was at the core of some of the most important political transitions in Arab and Islamic history.

Hundreds of miles to the west, north and south of Gibraltar, the Arabs have been keenly aware that kingdoms they had built at that point of intersection between their world and Europe, collapsed, and with that collapse, slipped away from Arab collective consciousness the greatness of some of the brightest episodes of Arab history.

And in Sudan, south of Khartoum, hundreds of years ago, Arab tribes had established a major presence that gradually evolved into a home that blended Arabness with the cultural richness they came in touch with and later incorporated into a unique expression of Arab socio-politics. But inherent in that cultural mix, and in the varied political entities that had emerged from that unique socio-political form of Arabness, was a blurred vision, a confused perspective, where the Arabs there often sought to extent their reach deeper into sub-Saharan Africa, and often ignored their surroundings, and fixated their gaze at the north, towards Egypt and the Levant.

Arguably, Arab success and failure could well have been discernible, throughout the past 14 centuries, since Arab tribes had expanded from the Arabian Peninsula to dominate their immediate neighbours in the Middle East, through their ability - or inability - to assert their identity and interests at these peripherals.

Today Arab interests in all of these peripheries are exposed. Arguably the situations at all of these peripheries are sores in Arab psyche.

In Yemen, not only has war torn the country for over a decade, but also the political divisions of different constituents which have exacerbated that war, have, over the past decade, stirred deeper religious divisions Yemen had known for centuries, and that it seemed to douse only few decades ago. This has happened at a time non-Arab political powers in East Africa have been slowly but surely building up their power to resuscitate national ambitions that, for centuries, have clashed with Arab interests along the Red Sea.

For two decades, Iran has managed to perfectly use the demise of the last Arab nationalist project in Iraq - which had committed crimes against fellow Arabs and strategic sins against the interests of its own people - to not only expand westwards, but also to entrench Iranian interests in Iraq’s socio-politics and political economy. And as the Iranian project in the eastern Mediterranean has been acutely weakened in the past year and half, Iran’s presence in Iraq gains considerable value in Iranian strategic calculus

At the other end of the Levant, at the periphery where Arabness meets Tukishness, there has emerged now a situation the Arabs have not known at that periphery for over a century, since the fall of the Ottoman Empire. There, a new political and military elite composed of Arabs and non-Arabs, and backed largely by Turkey, is beginning to create a new political entity that is rapidly asserting its control over the whole of Syria. And given Syria’s strategic location and demographic depth, controlling Syria endows major influence over the entire Levant. Here there is an argument that the emerging political entity replaces the Assad regime that, has long ago, lost its way and dried its Arab nationalist roots, let alone committed horrendous acts in its country and beyond. And so, in this argument, the emerging power structure there entails a promise of regeneration and peace and stability for the Syrians. But there is another view, in which that important part of the Arab world is returning, after a century of Arab control, to a situation reminiscent of Ottoman times, when the powers effectively controlling it comprises Arabs and non-Arabs, and whose guiding ideology transcends Arabness.

At Gibraltar and all the way to the eastern Mediterranean, the connections between the Arab world and Europe have undergone a subtle and sad transformation in the past two decades. That is, the political and cultural intersection between the southern and northern shores of the Mediterranean have now become the scene of repeated deaths of hundreds of desperate Arab youths, willing to take the risk of drowning in order to escape the Arab world and reach the shores of Europe, where they are largely unwelcomed. This is a piercing testament to a collective Arab failure, not only concerning politics in the past two decades, but concerning Arab development in at least the past half century. Inherent in this sad situation, is a change in the nature of Arab-European interaction, from that of friends or foes over centuries of rich civilisational interaction along the shores of the Mediterranean, to that of an unwanted seeker and a disinterested sought after. Large segments of Europeans at this stage are all but happy to be totally disconnected from the Arab world. Only the fear of Arab migration to Europe keeps those large segments concerned about developments at the southern shores of the Mediterranean.

At the final periphery, where Arabness has founded for itself a place in east Africa, and which for centuries has been an Arab political and cultural reach to sub-Saharan Africa, war now rules supreme. Sudan’s war has acutely eroded the pillars of the state, driven millions out of the country including the ones with the best education and exposure to the world, and opened up the country to non-Sudanese and non-Arab political and military forces seeking to build interests and to exploit riches, through prolonging the war. With that, the Arabs have lost, for the foreseeable future, their solid political presence and cultural reach at that periphery. Now, the Arab world seems detached from east Africa, again at a time forces in that region are rising with wide ranging ambitions and assertive attitudes.

This dilution at all the peripheries of the Arab world is unprecedented in at least a century.