"It is important to note two critical things about this ranking. The first is that it focuses on change in coverage of conflict, not the raw volume of that coverage itself. It is obviously not news that Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria are all still undergoing intense conflict -- the policymaking question is whether they are getting any better (at least in the eyes of the news media). Thus, Syria, which ranks No. 2 out of all countries in terms of total raw volume of conflict, actually had the greatest decrease in coverage of that conflict in 2013 (despite a major chemical weapons attack in August 2013) and thus is green in the map above. The second thing to keep in mind is that this ranking combines all forms of conflict, both domestic and foreign. France's significant increase in conflict comes from a combination of domestic strife from increasing immigrant unrest, anti-Semitism, class wars, and societal fractionalization -- but also its foreign military interventions in Africa, from Mali to Central African Republic."

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In this piece, Peter Harling and Sarah Birke reflect on the state of the Arab world after a confounding 2013 that saw, for many, the dissipation of the enthusiasm of the 2011 uprisings. Harling is Senior MENA advisor at the International Crisis Group; Birke is a Middle East Correspondent for The Economist.

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