Jihadist Salafism’s geopolitical worldview and the geopolitical future of Western Asia, with an emphasis on Iraq and Syria developments

The main objective of the study is to investigate the movements affecting the geopolitical downfall in the western part of Asia and geopolitical-political developments in this region, and the effect of the worldview of Jihadist Salafi movements on the formation of the new era of geopolitical downfall in the region. In this paper, an attempt was made to study two important and fundamental eras in the geopolitical downfall of the West Asia’s region—the decline of the model of Caliphate order to the nationalist Arabian-Turkish model, and in the end the decline of this model to small-scale, identity-based model. In addition to the study of the challenges and damages caused in these two eras, the worldview of Jihadist Salafi movements will be investigated in the aftermath of Iraq occupation (2003-2018). The quality of how the second geopolitical downfall era has been fueled in the area were analyzed. The method of the research was descriptive-analytical, and the data were gathered with library method. The results showed that the geographical worldview of Jihadist Salafi movements plays an important role in the formation of an identity anarchy, stimulation of existing identities at small scale, and in the end lays the grounds for the deterioration of the geopolitical order derived from Sykes-Picot agreement in the western part of Asia. By aggressively and militarily denying the fabricated frontiers in the West Asia, the foregoing movements affect three different areas; small-scale identity of Sunni groups within the realm of state-nations in the region, other small-scale identities within the realm of any state-nation, and finally other small-scale identities outside the national boundaries of the countries in the region (including Sunni and non-Sunni); and give rise to some kind of anarchy and geopolitical downfall, which can result in a disintegration in the area.