Syria’ history, civil war, foreign policy…
Syria’ history, civil war, foreign policy…
With the ‘return of the state’ in Syria, Assad’s ‘resilience’ is a puzzle increasingly broached in both media and academic discourses. This article seeks to turn such an approach on its head, examining the resilience not of the state, but of bottom-up Syrian popular mobilization and organization. Persistent if changing Syrian civic modes and practices are thus mediated by conflict, but also part and parcel of ongoing resistance against the authoritarian state. A survey of Syrians’ ‘revolutionary’ media landscape reveals a set of shifting emphases. Appeals soliciting global support for an uprising seeking freedom and dignity give way to lamentations over disappointed yet tenacious Syrian aspirations. The article then explores Syrian ‘democratic learning’ through a mini-case study of opposition-controlled local councils. Drawing on original interview data, it argues that these councils exhibit ‘civic resilience’ as they navigate and adopt international norms discourses to protest and resist not just Assad but also international actors, and gradually take up democratic processes including elections. Despite uncertainty with respect to its institutional dividends in Syria, ‘democratic learning’ is a promising, understudied area for further exploration in the bloody politics of the country’s uprising.
Over the years, al-Qaida has become an increasingly decentralized movement in which its geographically dispersed affiliates have assumed increasing levels of autonomy over their tactical and strategic decision-making. At the outset of the Arab Spring, al-Qaida was also undergoing a process of strategic rethinking, in which more locally-sensitive and nationally grounded methods of operating were being encouraged as more effective paths towards durable jihadi projects. The Arab Spring itself also presented al-Qaida and its affiliates with opportunities to tie themselves more deeply into a collective sense of change across the Middle East. It was in Syria that this evolved level of thinking found itself most efficiently realized, as Jabhat al-Nusra sought to implement a modus operandi that was based on integrating and embedding itself into the Syrian revolutionary milieu through a combination of cooperation and [short-term] pragmatism. Jabhat al-Nusra’s embrace of this new model of jihad brought it substantial benefits, but as time passed, it also posed new challenges. By embracing localism so wholeheartedly over al-Qaida’s traditional internationalist agenda, Jabhat al-Nusra struggled to sustain the trust of its members who expected a truly fundamentalist face to eventually emerge. Moreover, despite its strong localist focus, too many Syrians still distrusted the group because of its continued links to a globalist jihadist movement. Jabhat al-Nusra therefore sought to differentiate itself from ISIS and was also forced to distance itself from al-Qaida, which set in motion a series of events that challenged the group’s successors’ – Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (JFS) and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – internal unity and external credibility. It therefore appears that although HTS in 2017 maintains a potentially protectable base in northwestern Syria, the challenges that its unique strategy presented forced it to act in ways that undermined much of the sustainability progress it had made in previous years. Whether the group’s long game strategy of controlled pragmatism could be said to have been a success is therefore an open question.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, since 2011, the Syrian conflict has generated roughly 5.4 million refugees, while approximately 6.5 million people are internally displaced within the country, making it the largest internally displaced population in the world. Rebuilding Syria’s infrastructure, homes, and businesses will be an immense task, with cost estimates ranging between $250–$350 billion USD. The Syrian government and the international community have already started to contemplate postwar reconstruction and even wartime reconstruction, despite the ongoing fighting. This Note operates under the assumption that the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad will, at a minimum, remain in charge of at least what has been termed “Useful Syria.” Furthermore, it recognizes that reconstruction is a process that begins during war and that the notion that Syria will be able to implement a grand, centralized reconstruction project after the war’s cessation is an unrealistic paradigm. It is imperative, then, that policymakers, negotiators, and lawmakers representing Syria’s warring parties debate and negotiate existing Syrian domestic law, which appears likely to persist in some form, in order to anticipate and accommodate the rights of displaced Syrians and Syrian refugees.
A proper investigation of the obstacles to Syrian refugees’ achievement of appropriate post-conflict relief and housing restitution necessitates an understanding of the flaws in Housing, Land, and Property rights in prewar Syria. Rapid urbanization and the proliferation of informal housing spurred by neo-liberal government policies led to massive discontent in the country.
This Note analyzes the Principles on Housing and Property Restitution for Refugees and Displaced Persons (“Pinheiro Principles”) and argues that while they provide valuable contributions to an increased understanding of the needs of post-conflict societies, room may be allotted to tailor a more context-specific approach to remedying the rights of displaced Syrian persons and refugees. This Note proceeds to analyze and prescribe amendments and additions to existing Syrian domestic law so that it better conforms to the end goals of the Pinheiro Principles. Syria’s Local Administrative Law, Legislative Decree Law 107, if amended to democratize the institution of the Syrian governorship, could be an effective starting point that presents decentralization as a pivotal tool to empower sustainable reconstruction efforts for refugees and displaced persons. Its incorporation, alongside an amended version of Syria’s Public-Private Partnership Law, Legislative Decree Law 5, could safeguard against abuses directed against refugees’ and displaced persons’ rights under the Pinheiro Principles, strengthen ordinary Syrians’ voices in the deliberations concerning their country’s bottom-up reconstruction, and enhance and strengthen demoralized and underdeveloped local Syrian institutions.
In this study, such questions as how the Muslim Brotherhood did emerge; how did it develop; what kind of effects had it on the Syrian politics, will be answered. As a strong opposition movement which had a wide base and a solid organizational structure, how did it try to spread the invitation at homes, mosques and teahouses; and by this way finding an echo at the base of society especially among rural people, how did it influence the Syrian people and the political line of Syrian State, will be evaluated. The formative phase of the movement, its administrative structure, the classes which formed its base, its interaction with other intellectual movements, the attitudes of the Baath Party to the secularism and its role on Syrian politics, and the transformation with Bashar al-Assad period, will be discussed. In addition, events in Hama, the repercussions of the Arab Spring and the effects of Muslim Brotherhood to the Arab Spring process, will be examined.