Around the Journals: Spotlight on Syria

My episodic roundup of what's interesting across the MENA Academy

It’s time for one of my periodic roundups of interesting new academic articles on the Middle East, where I highlight recent academic research on critical issues facing the MENA region. This week, I shine the spotlight on some recent publications about Syria’s civil war, including contributions on Syria’s economic catastrophe, pro-government militias, sectarianism and national identity, and the international relations of the war. There are few issues which should demand the sustained focus of the academic community than Syria’s catastrophe, and these recent publications demonstrate a rich and diverse set of approaches across disciplines and methodologies.

Image: Baraa al-Halabi (AFP/Getty)

Abdulla Ibrahim (editor), Omar S. Dahi, Rabie Nasser and Amr Dukmak, and Howard J. Shatz, Syrian Trade, Health and Industry in Conflict Time (2011-2021): A study on the impact of war, public policies and sanctions. Konrad Adenauer Stiftung/Geneva Center for Security Policy (March 2022).

This recent report by a team of experienced authors presents an extremely detailed, thorough and exhaustive overview of the devastation wrought by Syria’s decade of civil war. It moves away from pointing the finger for Syria’s macroeconomic catastrophe and humanitarian crisis only at the destruction caused directly by war or at sanctions. Pre-war policies and decisions by the Asad regime had long-lasting effects across the sectors surveyed, including “informalization and institutional decay, the role of intermediaries in the economy, and the overlap between business, bureaucratic, and political actors internally and externally.” The authors point to pre-2011 declines in health indicators, oil production and agricultural productivity, as well as pervasive networks of corruption. The civil war destroyed an enormous amount of infrastructure and economic factors, while both sanctions and regime decisions hinder any sort of reconstruction. Reconstruction is unlikely to work, even were sanctions ended, without dismantling the corrupt and inefficient state institutions and downgrading its coercive apparatus - none of which seems likely from the security-obsessed Asad regime. This granular report makes for grim but required reading, and gives the lie to notions that Asad “won” the war.

Baselius Zeno, “The making of sects: Boundary making and the sectarianisation of the Syrian uprising, 2011–2013,” Nations and Nationalism (March 2022)

In this contribution, exiled Syrian academic Baselius Zeno dissects the construction of sectarian narratives of the Syrian uprising. Drawing on a rich array of documentary evidence and participant observation, Zeno shows how political entrepreneurs among both the regime and the opposition exploited violence and fear by promoting sectarian identities. He shows compellingly that the rise of sectarianism was the result of escalating violence, the militarization of the uprising, and the internationalization of the conflict — and not the cause.

Christopher Phillips, “The International System and the Syrian Civil War,” International Relations (May 2022).

Phillips wrote one of the best books on the international dimensions of Syria’s war. Here, he delves into some of the more theoretical questions raised by that complex international moment. He focuses on the effects of declining US unipolarity in shaping the expectations and actions of other actors - both global and regional - in an increasingly multipolar environment. Quite interesting combination of deep knowledge of the Syrian case with explicit international relations theory aspirations.

Andrea Ghiselli and Mohammad Alsudairi, “Exploiting China's Rise: Syria's Strategic Narrative and China's Participation in Middle Eastern Politics,” Global Politics (May 2022)

Ghiselli and Alsudairi look to put China’s growing role in the Middle East into some perspective by showing how Syria’s Bashar al-Asad manipulates perceptions of Chinese support to his regime’s advantage. They argue that the image of a China deeply interested in supporting Asad as part of its patient strategy to build an infrastructure of power across the Middle East represents a strategic narrative crafted by Asad which has little basis in reality. While Asad seeks to promote an image of Syria enjoying Chinese support and eager to welcome Chinese reconstruction investment, in fact Chinese interests in Syria are quite limited and Syria plays little role in its broader regional strategy.

Haian Dukhan, “Tribal mobilisation during the Syrian civil war: the case of al-Baqqer brigade,” Small Wars & Insurgencies (April 2022)

Dukhan has been studying the role of tribes in Syria’s civil war for quite some time (see his recent article in Nations and Nationalism on tribalism in Syria, for instance). His efforts pay off here with this interesting case study of a single armed brigade. Based on his interviews and other research, he shows that this pro-Asad milita emerged not as a top-down regime initiative but rather as a bottom-up tribal mobilization rooted in local internal tribal struggles for power and resources. This study of a single tribal militia in the Aleppo area makes for an interesting contribution to theoretical debates about the implications of challenged states outsourcing security to tribal militias and the limits of such hybrid models of security.

Yaniv Voller, “Rethinking armed groups and order: Syria and the rise of militiatocracies,” International Affairs (May 2022)

This article digs deep into the “militaization” of Syria’s armed forces, tracing the lasting effects of a decade of war on the state’s effective monopoly on the means of violence. Voller theorizes and documents Asad’s growing reliance on pro-government militias, placing Syria into comparative perspective while also engaging literature on rebel governance. He shows both the costs and the benefits not only to the regime but also to the militia leaders taking on this role in support of the state.

Jerome Drevon and Peter Haenne, “Redefining Global Jihad and Its Termination: The Subjugation of al-Qaeda by Its Former Franchise in Syria,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism (April 2022)

Drevon and Haenne have been working intensively for several years on Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which evolved from al-Qaeda affiliate to the governing authority in what remains of rebel-controlled (and Turkish protected) northern Syria. Their article delves deep into its political and ideological evolution. In line with other recent work on the organization (in paticular, see Aaron Zelin’s recent report), Drevon and Haenne offers a nuanced but guarded take on its evolution which shows the adaptability of a jihadist organization operating in novel conditions between war and uneasy calm.

Adelíe Chevee, “From Suriyya al-Asad to Souriatna: Civic nationalism in the Syrian revolutionary press.” Nations and Nationalism (December 2021)

In this contribution to a themed section in the journal Nations and Nationalism, Chevee examines the emergence of a revolutionary print public sphere in the Syrian uprising, focusing on changing articulations of Syrian identity in rebel-produced newspapers as the uprising evolved. She argues that these revolutionary newspapers and associated symbolic politics articulated a civic nationalism which challenges sectararian framings of Syrian identity.

I hope you’ve found this roundup of recent publications on Syria’s war useful. Feel free to suggest topics for future roundups of academic research on critical issues facing the Middle East and North Africa!