ABSTRACT
The Arab countries attracted little interest, perhaps because they are generally not viewed as having severe national integration problems, with the obvious exceptions of Lebanon, with its multifaceted sectarian civil war, Sudan, with its racial strife, and Iraq, with its Kurdish problem. Moreover, in comparison with sub-Saharan Africa and other Third World areas, the Arab world is relatively homogeneous culturally, with Arabs and Muslims accounting for the vast majority of its inhabitants. The term national identity reserved for describing the Arabs as a whole. Arab nationalism is similar in certain respects to nineteenth century German and Italian nationalism, which sought to unite the fragmented German and Italian culture regions into nation-states. Syria illustrates many of these points and emphasizes the complex interplay between subnational, national, and supranational identities. Syria's population is overwhelmingly Arabic-speaking. Its Kurdish, Armenian, Circassian, and Turkoman language minorities are small and bilingual and do not present an impediment to national unity.
