This is a region facing profound problems: the fragmentation of existing state structures; fundamental divisions between Shia Iran and the Sunni Arab states; not to mention Turkey's long-standing and complicated relationship with the Kurds.
Steven Zyck, a research fellow at the Overseas Development Institute, said the intensification of the fighting and fragmentation of the state would only exacerbate the suffering of Yemenis and make it harder for aid workers to reach those most in need.
However, the fragmentation of the State of Law bloc and the formation of the National Alliance has meant that Maliki's claim to represent the biggest group at the start of the first parliamentary session is no longer true.
It all starts with the humiliation that Russians feel, even anti-communist Russians, over the loss of Russia's former global influence and over the fragmentation of a state that most Russians would have preferred to see remain intact, even after the end of the Soviet Union.
_Meanwhile, the Norwegian oil-and-gas corporation Statoil, in its most recent report on future energy trends, has added a new scenario: "a series of political crises, growing protectionism, and a general fragmentation of the state system, resulting in a multipolar world developing in different directions".
Since the Rwandan and Bosnian genocides, and with the fragmentation of numerous states along religious or ethnic lines, the essential story of modern conflict has become "we, the normal folk, against an inhuman, alien and irrational foe".
Rajagopal (2003b, p. 05) concludes his digressions highlighting the necessary elements to build a theory of resistance: the exercise of power re-articulation within the International sphere; the nature of human liberalization aimed; the relationship between reformist and radical resistance; and the plurality and fragmentation of diverse States.
Any fragmentation of the country into small states would be "catastrophic and something that we would be reeling from for decades to come", he added.
The fragmentation of the Syrian state has reportedly been seized upon by Benjamin Netanyahu as a reason for the US to officially recognise Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights in 1981.
