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It is a worrying fact that two Arab countries that have experienced foreign occupation (Iraq) and the Arab Spring (Syria), are now both host to fragmented communities mainly separated by faith, but also ethnicity. It is as though in both cases, the importance of religion won over democratic hopes and the emergence of civil societies. The regionalization of community conflicts within each country appears to be erasing their borders. Could we be witnessing history’s revenge, with the collapse of states that were both colonial creations of dubious legitimacy and artificial borders? A century later, the betrayal by the Allies of all sorts of promises made to the Arabs, Kurds, Armenians, and Chaldo-Assyrians appears to be resurfacing in the violence. All were promised states or independent homelands if they rose up against the Ottoman Empire that ruled them. We know what followed. . . . Regionalization based on sectarian conflict in Iraq, followed by Syria, is a clear indicator that the legitimacy of these states is being called into question. As both their borders and their conception are colonial creations (in the form of incomplete Arab nation states), their civil societies could not escape the traps of sectarianism. The vertical relationship between the state and civil societies can also create fertile ground for democratization.