Top 10 Middle East Stories of the Decade

With a few exceptions, most notably in some of the nations forming the Gulf Cooperation Council (the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and perhaps Kuwait, but not Saudi Arabia, where regression still overwhelms almost everything else) it has not been a good decade for the Middle East or for those engaging with the Middle East. It has been a violent, war-torn decade.

Afghanistan, at war since 1979, is at war still, briefly becoming the hub of George Bush's so-called "war on terror" before he let it slide back into the hands of the Taliban. Iraq was demolished and has yet to be reconstituted. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict explored every cul-de-sac imaginable while Israel engaged in three more wars--the second intifada, the 2006 war with Hezbollah, and the 2009 war on Hamas and Gaza, losing more than gaining at every turn.

Meanwhile Iran emerged as a regional power at the expense of American influence, Pakistan, a nuclear power, remains on the edge of disintegration, Osama bin laden remains at large, and al-Qaeda is not going away. Barack Obama has yet to live up to the promise of his election. Here are the ten stories that shaped the Middle East in the 2000s.