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    Plan détaillé Texte intégral Daring revolution despite fear Rehumanising and resocialising knowledge about the Syrian conflict Social, economic, and political transformations Bibliographie Notes de bas de page Auteurs

    Syrian Society in Revolution and War (2011–2024)

    Ce livre est recensé par

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    Table des matières

    Introduction

    Syrian Society amid Revolution and War: A Diachronic Approach across Territories

    Myriam Ababsa et Valentina Napolitano

    Traduit par Cadenza Academic Translations

    p. 9-40

    Note de l’auteur

    The writing of this text and all the contributions in this book was completed in May 2024.

    Texte intégral Daring revolution despite fear The mechanisms of an internal warThe war’s heavy human tollA devastated national economy and destroyed citiesThe revolution’s achievements: the conquering of fear, civic engagement, and democratic experiences in local committees Rehumanising and resocialising knowledge about the Syrian conflict Moving beyond essentialist readings of the conflictMultiple territoriesEthical and methodological challenges Social, economic, and political transformations Migrations, social and gender transformationsEconomic, subsistence, and governance dynamicsPolitical reconfigurations, affiliations, and mobilisations Bibliographie Notes de bas de page Auteurs

    Texte intégral

    1By 2024, thirteen years had passed since the beginning of the revolution1 against Bashar al-Assad’s regime in March 2011. The revolution’s brutal repression and subsequent war had caused untold damage and human suffering. The continued rule and even international rehabilitation of Baʿthist leaders and torturers were sources of profound turmoil and despair for many Syrians both domestically and in exile. In 2016, the end of the conflict was announced by Bashar al-Assad’s regime, which, thanks to the intervention of the Russian army and financial and oil support from Iran, managed to reconquer most of the territory that had fallen under the control of armed opposition groups. The Syrian regime had then launched its so-called “reconciliation” campaigns in several cities, promising its opponents that those who would lay down their weapons would be removed from wanted lists. These initiatives were dishonest in nature and often turned out to be traps, leading to many rebels being imprisoned or forcibly displaced (Adleh and Favier 2017; SACD 2020). Ever since the Islamic State was defeated in October 2017, a gradual rehabilitation of the Assad regime had taken shape both regionally and internationally.

    2Against the backdrop of the regime’s normalisation, the issue of refugee return was used as a threat by the authorities of host countries, particularly Turkey and Lebanon, which alone have taken in more than 4 million Syrian refugees (UNHCR 2023). This issue was taken up by humanitarian actors that were seeking to prepare for what will happen after the conflict ends and to identify solutions for people to go back (UNHCR 2022). Besides these matters, on 6 February 2023, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck northwest Syria and southeast Turkey. Over the past decade, these border regions have accommodated nearly 5 million internally displaced individuals in Syria and 2 million refugees between Antakya, Urfa, and Gaziantep (UNHCR 2023; OCHA 2023). Buildings had been hastily constructed in Turkey to accommodate them, and there were many Syrian casualties.

    3After more than a decade of appalling violence and war crimes against its people, the Assad regime attempted to impose its own narrative on the war and on society. However, the reimposition of a coercive order over part of Syrian territory had not mean that the violence and humiliation that Syrians have endured for decades has ended. In this context, this book seeks to put Syrian society back at the centre of researchers’ and the public’s attention. For although the revolutionary movement of 2011 did manage to give Syrian society a voice (Majed 2014), the sound of gunfire and the regime’s resurgence risked once again muffling and muzzling it. By situating the profound transformations that Syrians have experienced since 2011 within a broader time frame, examining these changes in social, economic, and political terms, and at the intersection of various territories, this multidisciplinary volume contributes to debates on how societies change in times of war (Richards 2004; Monsutti 2005; Debos 2016; Linhardt and Moreau de Bellaing 2013; Gayer 2018). It makes a novel contribution to existing studies on contemporary Syria by going beyond analytical paradigms that centre either on the “Arab Spring” (Burgat and Paoli 2013) or on the conflict’s geopolitical and humanitarian dimensions (Hinnebusch and Saouli 2019; Vignal 2021).

    4This publication is the outcome of an international conference held in September 2019 in Amman at the French Institute of the Near East (Institut français du Proche-Orient; Ifpo).2 The gathering brought together researchers from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds (anthropology, economics, geography, history, sociology, and political science). It took place eight years after the initial anti-regime protests of February and March 2011, meaning the conflict’s extremely fast pace of events could be examined with ample hindsight. For many researchers who had studied Syria before 2011, the conference provided not only an opportunity to take a fresh look at their former field sites but also to reflect on the trajectories of their past interlocutors. Most of the time, they were powerless to do anything other than watch as these individuals became engulfed in the conflict. This gathering also provided a chance to relay observations from new fields and research projects from the Syrian exile—in Turkey, Jordan, and Germany—and that have shone a light on the process of destructuring, but also of reconfiguration and transformation of Syrian society, at the intersection of new territorial, social, and political realities. This publication is the outcome of these intellectual exchanges, and the contributions gathered here provide a glimpse, modest and inexhaustive, of a Syrian society that, in the midst of transformation, has drawn on its revolutionary experience.

    Daring revolution despite fear

    5In February 2011, amid regional turmoil, Syrian society shattered its wall of fear, loudly proclaiming its quest for dignity and liberation from an authoritarian regime that had held power since the 1970s. It began with children playfully scrawling anti-regime graffiti on the walls of a school in the southern city of Darʿa. These children were subsequently imprisoned and tortured by the security forces, and their families were humiliated when they asked for their release. There then followed a protest in the al-Ḥariqa market district in Damascus, after a police officer violently assaulted the son of one of the market traders. The era of submission and impunity for the criminals in power seemed to be over. Protesters chanted the slogan “The Syrian people will not be humiliated!” (al-shaʿb al-sūrī mā byindhall). Anti-regime demonstrations broke out on 15 March 2011 in the al-Ḥamidiyya market in Damascus, followed the next day by a demonstration outside the Ministry of Interior at Marjeh Square. Protests took place simultaneously across the country in Darʿa, Ḥoms, Bānyās et Dayr al-Zūr on 18 March, a day that came to be known as the “Friday of Dignity” (Jumʿat al-Karāma). The movements’ spontaneity and simultaneity took the regime by surprise. Very quickly, calls for political change and the fall of the regime were being emphatically made in public spaces, and these have continued to be rallying cries among the population.3 When the spokesperson for the Syrian government, Boutheina Shaaban, announced wage increases and social reforms, the protesters countered, “The Syrian people are not hungry!” (al-shaʿb al-sūrī mū jwʿān).

    The mechanisms of an internal war

    6From the first weeks of spring 2011, the regime’s strategy for decimating the peaceful movement included the use of disproportionate violence enacted via firearms and tanks, mass imprisonment, and sieges of areas entirely populated by civilians, which went as far as the dropping of barrel bombs. Thousands of activists were imprisoned, tortured, and killed. In reaction to the torture of their loved ones, activists were compelled to militarise encouraged by the defection of hundreds of soldiers. This choice was accompanied by internal debates about which leaders to choose and which strategy to adopt. According to their age and experiences with the regime, activists reacted in different ways to the torture and violence. The younger generations were more tempted to take up arms, with the Gulf countries’ networks of influence playing an active part in arming them (Fourn 2018b; Picard 2018; Trombetta 2018; Ruiz de Elvira 2019). An internal war ensued, and this became internationalised following the intervention of a host of foreign actors, particularly Iran, Russia, and Turkey (Burgat and Paoli 2013; Majed 2014; al-Shami and Yassin-Kassab 2016; Pierret 2017). The terms “internal war” or simply “war” seem more appropriate than that of “civil war”, which is used in the media and has been adopted in some academic research (Baczko, Dorronsoro, and Quesnay 2016). As Franck Mermier highlights, the term “civil war” “tends to involve two opposing sides on an equal footing, concealing the regime’s responsibility for the escalation of the conflict” (Mermier 2018: 8).

    7In response to the non-sectarian unity movements of the demonstrators, who chanted “One, one, one! The Syrian people are one!” (wāḥed, wāḥed, wāḥed! al-shaʿb al-sūrī wāḥed), the regime quickly realised that it needed to play on community divisions in order to fragment society and stifle a nascent democratic process (Burgat 2013). Continuing a long-standing strategy of using sectarianism as an instrument of clientelist power management (Trombetta 2019), Bashar al‑Assad has played on minorities’ fears (see al-Haj Saleh in this volume), positioning himself as the protector of Christians against an enemy that is not only jihadist but, on a more basic level, Sunni. The Alawites were mobilised against this threat, which was made real by shabiha4 who provocatively spread anti-Christian and anti-Alawite rumours (Burgat and Paoli 2013). The regime allowed the Druze the privilege of remaining neutral and not engaging in the revolution, up until the mass abductions carried out by Islamic State, when it saw fit to remind them of their need for the regime’s protection (see Poujeau in this volume). In March 2013, the regime conceded the beginnings of autonomy to the Kurds in governing northeast Syria, the idea being to pull them out of the revolutionary movement, and at the same time it refocused the forces of repression on the central cities (Quesnay and Roussel 2013). The Democratic Union Party (PYD), the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), took care of dissolving the Arab-Kurdish local committees whose creation had begun back in 2011 (Favier 2016). This organisation, which entered into a relationship of opportunistic cooperation interspersed with sporadic conflict with the Syrian regime, found itself on the front line in 2014, fighting jihadists from Iraq and abroad. Moreover, the regime soon began employing Shiite militias, hated by the population owing to the barbarity of their acts, from Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. These militias were present south of Damascus, in Aleppo, and along the southern bank of the Euphrates, where they changed the demographic composition of entire neighbourhoods.

    8The Assad regime has deliberately sought to crush resistance by starving the population via the destruction of wheat silos and bakeries. Cereal fields were set ablaze east of Aleppo and in Jazīra (Eng and Martinez 2014). By using heavy subsidies, the regime made the price of bread a tool for winning over impoverished populations whose homes had been destroyed (Ababsa 2018). Many sieges have occurred across the country—for instance, in the city of Darʿa and in the Bāb ʿAmro district of Ḥoms at the very beginning of the uprising in 2011, in Dārayā in the southern suburbs of Damascus between 2012 and 2016, at the Palestinian camp of Yarmouk between 2013 and 2014, in Eastern Ghūṭa in 2014, in Zabadānī and Madāya north of Damascus between 2015 and 2017, in Raqqa and Dayr al-Zūr (which were under Islamic State control) in 2017, and in Idlib from 2017. As of 2024, Idlib was still being besieged by regime forces. War profiteers and a black market for food items have also emerged, further elevating prices and straining cities’ supply chains.

    9Beyond mass violence in public spaces, it is in the depths of prisons that the regime has sought to break individuals and families. By employing torture and prison rape, the regime’s torturers have aimed to destroy the very foundations of families and social cohesion. The Livre noir des Assad (1970-2021) (Coquio et al. 2022) describes in horrifying detail how murderers and common criminals have targeted opponents and civilians—men, women, and children alike—in prisons and carceral spaces, and how some prisoners have been forced by their torturers to inflict violence on their fellow inmates to survive. In the work of restoring individuals’ and families’ dignity, memories of these abhorrent crimes will be difficult to erase.

    The war’s heavy human toll

    10In demanding freedom and dignity, Syrians have paid a heavy price for daring to challenge the Assad regime. Thousands have been killed, injured, or humiliated. The revolution and war have profoundly disrupted their lives, not only on a collective scale, but also at the family and individual levels. People have endured grief, psychological and physical anguish, torture in prisons, starvation, helplessness in the face of injustice, and self-imposed silence to preserve their honour.

    11The human toll of these years is terrifying. There have been over half a million fatalities and casualties,5 and upwards of 150,000 people have been imprisoned or forcibly disappeared.6 Half of the population—about 13 million people—have been forced into exile or been internally displaced.7 Among them, 5 million have been driven from their neighbourhoods or villages, with no choice but to leave their country and adapt, as refugees, to unfamiliar social and territorial environments. Sometimes they have stayed with relatives, but often they have been alone, relying solely on local charity for support. To escape the bombings, protect their families, or shield teenagers from being conscripted, they have sought refuge in Turkey (mostly in the case of those coming from Aleppo, Idlib, Raqqa, al-Ḥasaka, and Dayr al-Zūr), Lebanon (those coming mainly from Aleppo and Damascus), Jordan (from across the country), and to a lesser extent Iraq (mostly Kurds from the eastern province of Jazīra) and Egypt. They have often been welcomed “like brothers.” This term, along with that of “guests,” was favoured by the host authorities and Gulf’s donors in 2011–2012 to emphasise that their presence was only temporary (Ababsa 2015). But since 2013–2014, when they had become a permanent presence in these countries, refugees have encountered xenophobia and increasing restrictions on their freedom to work and travel. The constant uncertainty around whether they might be forced to return has hampered any prospect of planning for the future. Young Syrians in exile could not return because they were afraid of being conscripted by the regime but also, in the northeast of the territory, by the Kurdish authorities (see Ababsa in this volume). In August 2017, at the reopening of the Damascus International Fair, President Bashar al-Assad delivered a chilling speech to foreign diplomats, asserting that while Syria had lost the best of its youth and infrastructure, it had gained in return “a healthier and more homogeneous society […] the basis of national unity.”8 These remarks have been widely criticised for their cynicism and the desire they display for religious and political rebalancing, since the refugees are predominantly Sunni (al-Haj Saleh 2016; Heydemann 2018).

    A devastated national economy and destroyed cities

    12The national economy has been left devastated by these years of conflict (Yazigi 2017; Vignal 2018), while in 2024 the national territory is fragmented and under the sway of various local and international actors. The Syrian Democratic Forces and the PYD have been in control of the governorates of Syrian Jazīra since October 2017, but not of the border area with Turkey, which occupies a 120 km-long, 30 km-deep strip of Syrian territory. The Idlib region, where thousands of jihadists have retreated under an international agreement, is self-governed, a strategic choice on the regime’s part. The humanitarian situation there is dire, with the United Nations regularly negotiating aid corridors (OCHA 2022). The remainder of the territory continues to be controlled by the regime with the support of the Russian military and Iranian militias.

    13All sectors of the economy have been ravaged by the war: industry has been partially destroyed or relocated; agriculture has shrunk because of fires and the destruction of silos and irrigation canals; and services have been crippled by the exodus of the middle classes and rampant inflation. The regime has, however, been careful to safeguard its strategic industrial assets, including refineries, power plants, and hydroelectric dams. More than half of the population has fallen into poverty. High unemployment and underemployment rates have pushed young graduates into emigrating. The current living conditions in Syria are inhumane for most of the population, who face electricity, water, and bread shortages on a daily basis and the return of cholera. Three-quarters of the population require humanitarian aid, and half of Syrian children have been subjected to direct violence (OCHA 2022). Encumbered by international embargoes, the Syrian economy is in dire straits; Russian wheat and Iranian oil are not sufficient to sustain it. The Syrian pound has been devalued, forcing the population into an exhausting daily struggle for survival, while living under a regime that has intensified its mechanisms of police control.

    14The major Syrian industrialists that had branches in Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, and Iraqi Kurdistan moved their main machinery there when the conflict began. Since 2016, small and medium-sized independent entrepreneurs have been subjected to the regime’s heavy tax policy, the devaluation of the Syrian pound, the crisis in the Lebanese banking system, and the obligation to go through state banks for foreign exchange transactions (Hatahet 2021). Taxes are applied retroactively to the businesses that do manage to operate, following visits from financial inspectors who confiscate computers and invoices. Industrialists who do not comply face seeing their family members kidnapped and having to pay ransoms. Industrialists who support the regime are spared these retaliatory measures, but they face high raw materials prices and state monopolies. Many Syrian entrepreneurs have relocated to Egypt or even Turkey, as labour is cheaper there (Hatahet 2021).

    15Apart from the city of Damascus, only the suburbs of which have been affected, and the coastal cities of Latakia and Tartus—in the predominantly Alawite region, from which the Assad family originates—all Syrian cities have been at least partially destroyed, including Aleppo’s eastern districts, Ḥoms, Ḥamā, and Idlib, while Raqqa has been almost entirely destroyed (REACH 2019). The destruction of property records was used as a weapon in Ḥoms, Zabadānī, Dārayā, al-Quṣayr, and also by the Syrian Democratic Forces in Manbij. The property registry for Ḥoms (the country’s third-largest city) was deliberately destroyed in 2013 (Abou Zainedin and Fakhani 2020). As a result, local councils have established offices to reconstruct property documentation, with support from Syrian lawyers, especially in Idlib. However, Decree No. 11 of 2016 stipulated that property titles established outside the state cadastral system were devoid of legal value (Vignal 2021: 227). Property rights violations are flagrant and are being used to obstruct refugees from returning to their homes and their towns or villages of origin. In 2018, the regime, presenting itself as victorious, enacted Law No. 10, an urban planning law that allowed municipalities to seize refugees’ land. The refugees were given just three weeks to provide their property titles. This was a doubly impossible task: some of the refugees were wanted, and a little under half of urban property ownership in Syria is informal9 (Ababsa, Denis, and Dupret 2012; Clerc 2014). This law has led to refugees being stripped of their property (Benvenisti 2002).

    16Reconstruction has served as a pretext for the regime to expropriate residents from neighbourhoods with a well-organised opposition. It has allowed the regime to demolish areas of informal housing that served as “rebel” strongholds, to make way for major real estate projects.10 The regime deliberately bombed the historic central districts of Ḥoms to widen the thoroughfare leading to the Ḥoms Dreams real estate project. This project allows investors close to the regime to construct luxury buildings in lucrative operations on land sold off at cheap prices. Finally, in 2014, apartments in recaptured areas of the Damascus suburbs started to be allocated to Alawite families, and this process was repeated for Kurds in Raqqa in 2018.

    The revolution’s achievements: the conquering of fear, civic engagement, and democratic experiences in local committees

    17Despite the devastation, the physical wounds, and the permanent presence of violence in everyday life, these years have also raised immense hopes and brought about profound social changes. These undeniable achievements will have long-term impacts on Syrian society. First, there was an experience of freedom of expression. This came about partly through the proliferation of forms of public speech during Friday protests or martyrs’ funerals, but also through social media, blogs, newspapers, literary works (Yazbek 2012), and first-hand accounts (al‑Haj Saleh 2012; al-Dik 2016; Yazbek 2019), or even through artistic expressions such as paintings, graffiti, videos, and songs (Boëx 2013; Dubois 2018; Bader Eddin 2018; see Yazigi in this volume). These forms of public speech gave a voice back to a Syrian society that had long been silenced and made invisible under the yoke of authoritarianism (Majed 2014), imprisonment, and torture inflicted on any opposition. The regime’s establishment of several competing security services (mukhābarāt) instilled fear and forced citizens into self-censorship for half a century. What took the regime by surprise in 2011 was that people were no longer afraid. Even women and young girls came out to protest (al-Shami and Yassin-Kassab 2016; Kodmani 2017; Alabdeh and Daher 2023). In Jordan in 2014, refugees from the Zaʿtarī camp spoke about how, despite their misery, at least their children no longer had to grow up internalising a fear of the regime or learning songs of allegiance to the Assad family.11

    18The years of revolution and war have served as a testing ground for novel forms of citizen participation and organisation, embodied by the dozens of local coordination committees (lijān al-tansīq al-maḥaliyya) that emerged in areas freed from regime control (Filiu 2013; Rey 2013; Favier 2016). Organisation of these self-management entities, the principles of which were outlined by the activist Omar Aziz, who died in detention in 2013 (al-Shami 2013), was spontaneous. The committees established various sectoral offices (military and defence operations, humanitarian activities, information services, and justice) (Baczko, Dorronsoro, and Quesnay 2013; Matarmawi 2017; see Sottimano in this volume) but had no rigid hierarchy. Against a backdrop of arrests and roundups of activists, the local committees for coordinating mobilisation were not structured according to a top-down organisational hierarchy of leaders and subordinates. Instead, they brought together men and women who pursued courses of action based on their skills. To be sure, the role played by important figures and former administrators in organising these local committees was not insignificant. In some cases, the committees were integrated into councils to make governance viable (see Sottimano in this volume). These experiences have nevertheless sought to overcome the social and sectarian divisions maintained by the regime, the aim being to launch a new societal project, to which women have made substantial contributions, despite the persistence of multiple forms of resistance (Alabdeh and Daher 2023). The local committees have been groundbreaking for many citizens, affording them the experience of true everyday democracy, without a surveillance apparatus or strict hierarchy. The experience of these local committees could lay the groundwork for a new Syria in a post-Assad future that remains to be built.

    19Most Syrians who neither took up arms nor joined the local coordination committees have nevertheless engaged in the many forms of civil resistance that have emerged across Syrian territory, sometimes in besieged and starving areas, or even in exile. This is how alternative schools and hospitals came to be opened in basements, collective vegetable gardens tended by local residents, and aid collected and distributed by locals (Napolitano 2015; Coquio et al. 2022). Society, and particularly women, has become accustomed to making neighbourhood collections of zakāt for mosques, organising charitable associations, or taking part in tontines to finance their children’s education (Ababsa 2009). Another form of struggle—and of bearing witness—widely employed by civilians is the capturing of videos and photographs on their mobile phones, often risking their lives in doing so (Boëx 2013; Boëx and Devictor 2021).

    20These initiatives demonstrate the vibrancy and creativity of civil society, which had previously been held back and destabilised by the regime’s repression (Ruiz de Elvira 2010; 2019; Fourn 2018b; see Bernath in this volume). They also demonstrate that Syrian society will never revert to its former state, as it can call on its experience and the legitimacy of its martyrs, and, above all, because it has liberated itself from the fear that was keeping it resigned to its fate (see Yazigi in this volume). State violence has been so disproportionate and torture so systematic that people have spoken out at all levels, from elites and tribal sheikhs to white- and blue-collar workers, as well as women. The anti-regime demonstrations that took place in 2019 and in 2022–2024 in a context of profound despair within the city of Suwaydaʾ to protest against the high cost of living and the lack of electricity and fuel are evidence of this change that has reached every part of Syrian society (Ezzi 2020).

    21The contributions collected in this volume reveal the magnitude of these social, political, and personal transformations, situating them within the context of Syria’s prewar history. This long-term perspective is made possible by the authors’ prior knowledge of Syria, having lived in the country or conducted research there well before 2011. The contributors’ integration of different time frames goes hand in hand with their linking of several geographical spaces at the intersection of which Syrian society is being reconfigured. This applies not only to the patterns of movement and the (im)mobilities of individuals and families, but also to those of political, humanitarian, economic, and armed actors, and even to mobilisations such as those for justice (see Bernath in this volume).

    Rehumanising and resocialising knowledge about the Syrian conflict

    Moving beyond essentialist readings of the conflict

    22Due to the magnitude of the sociopolitical upheavals they cause, revolutions and wars seem to disable the analytical frameworks previously used to help us understand the social contexts and territories where these events take place (Bozarslan 2015). This blurring of reference points and loss of meaning in the face of violence is further amplified by the oversaturated media and expert coverage of these terrains of conflict, which adopts extremely short time frames that rarely allow for proper sociological and historical contextualisation. The social science approach adopted in this book aims to make sense of these contexts of disruption, which the media often labels as “complex” but then paradoxically analyses through essentialist, binary frameworks (the Assad regime versus the jihadist threat; Alawites versus Sunnis) (Trombetta 2019). Our project requires us to take a detailed look at the actors and dynamics at work in contexts of war, retracing their roots and prior trajectories. It seeks to rehumanise the conflict, because in analyses that focus on geopolitical actors and issues, men and women can quickly be swept aside. It also aims to resocialise knowledge about Syrian society, whose individuals and social trajectories are often neglected in the work of humanitarian actors or strategic analysts. This book, by contrast, seeks to put Syrians, in all their diversity, back at the heart of an understanding of their country in the midst of revolution and war.

    23Our work follows in the footsteps of the many studies that have renewed the analysis of war by shifting the focus from state and armed actors to the examination of microsociological transformations (Gayer 2018). These studies show that war does not wipe out the social dynamics that existed before it broke out, but instead disrupts individual and collective life trajectories and introduces new constraints and resources that can alter prewar processes of mobility and social ties (Vlassenroot and Raeymaekers 2004). In our book, revolution and war are considered not only as moments of rupture but also as times of social, political, and personal reconfiguration. When studying these moments, we cannot overlook either the relations of class, age, and gender domination or the multiple forms of collective belonging and pre-existing networks of migration and trade. We examine both the ruptures and the continuities that exist, at the biographical, family, and collective levels, between peacetime and wartime social dynamics (Richards 2004; Monsutti 2005; Debos 2016; Linhardt and Moreau de Bellaing 2013; Gayer 2018; Trombetta 2019). This approach should in no way be seen as normalising or trivialising violence by treating it as commonplace (Gayer 2018).

    24This theoretical approach offers many benefits. First, it lends historical depth to social, political, and economic dynamics that are sometimes seen as novel owing to the conflict’s exceptional nature, but which in fact have a precise genealogy. To understand the shaping of the protest movement, for example, we believe it is essential to examine how it has drawn on, inherited, or broken away from repertoires of action, slogans, and representations associated with other protest movements, such as those of the late 1970s and early 1980s, or even those of the 2000–2005 period.12 This long-term approach also enables the deconstruction of the “preconditioned profiles” of success stories or victimisation that are put forward by humanitarian actors and experts, with a view to reintroducing the social dimension (Trombetta 2019). This is why expert assessments of Syrian women refugees in Jordan oscillate between, on the one hand, praise for their empowerment through dedicated humanitarian programmes, and on the other, a victim-centric view that, in combining several variables, deems them the most “vulnerable” (see Napolitano in this volume). These reports, whose aim is to inform public and humanitarian policies, do not sufficiently take into account differences in education levels, social backgrounds, and geographical origins. As a result, they propose solutions that are often disconnected from the perceptions and representations of the people affected.

    Multiple territories

    25The integration of different time frames goes hand in hand with the linking of multiple geographical spaces. These spaces include regions within Syria itself, which, over the war’s many stages, has fragmented into territories that are to a greater or lesser extent autonomous and have borders demarcated by checkpoints and tollbooths. This fragmentation exists both between cities and at the neighbourhood level within war-torn urban areas (Vignal 2021; see Drif in this book). But also included among these spaces are parts of neighbouring and distant countries that have welcomed refugees—Germany, for instance. The Syrian situation is paradoxical. On the one hand, we have witnessed a proliferation of internal and external borders that have become impassable and divide entire families. Civilians have had to overcome great difficulties in travelling, working, collecting their public-sector salaries, and even simply obtaining supplies amid shortages. Families have often been unable to provide assistance or bury the dead, because movement has been hindered by roadblocks, or because entire neighbourhoods have been under siege. On the other hand, processes that have created new flows or reactivated ones that existed before the conflict can also be observed. This volume therefore builds on works that have highlighted the existence of migratory movements (labour-, commerce-, and family-related) between Syria and neighbouring countries (Doraï and Lagarde 2017; Zuntz 2021). Since 2011, long-established family and professional networks have been reactivated to organise aid and to take in refugees, as well as to create not only new forms of solidarity and social interactions (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2015; Carpi 2020; Napolitano 2024) but also new familial practices (Zuntz 2021; see Drif and Napolitano in this volume). In the industrial town of Sahab, southeast of Amman, engineers from Aleppo who used to spend three months there each year to help set up textile machinery established themselves in the town permanently and recruited Syrian refugees, revitalising local textile production.13 Throughout the war, farmers and sharecroppers who could do so returned to sow their fields in Jazīra. In 2017 and 2018, Syrian refugees in Turkey who were not wanted by the regime were able to return for two months to visit their families for the Eid celebrations. In 2013 and 2014, donors from the Gulf—Qatar in particular—managed to cross the border from Jordan to provide humanitarian aid alongside their military and financial support (Ababsa 2014).

    26Connecting these different spaces is essential for understanding the political reconfigurations bound up with the displacement of activists and their shifts into other domains (politics, journalism, humanitarian work), as well as the transmission of expertise and the emerging forms of collective action in refugees’ host countries (Fourn 2018a; 2018b; Picard 2018; Ruiz de Elvira 2019). It is also necessary for understanding the dynamics that have developed around the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (set up in 2012) and the Syrian Interim Government (based in Turkey since 2013), and that of the Syrian Salvation Government in Idlib, as well as the ways in which these bodies intervene and work with local actors (Favier 2016; see Sottimano in this volume). Objectives such as these require reflection on the methodological and ethical challenges of researching Syrian society.

    Ethical and methodological challenges

    27How and why should we conduct social science research in wartime Syria? Since 2011, researchers working or wishing to work on this country have faced many ethical and methodological challenges. The foremost issue is access to the field. Throughout 2011, foreign researchers based in Syria could observe the mobilisations up close, alongside Syrian intellectuals and researchers. It is important to keep in mind that Syrian researchers lack institutional structures allowing them to freely conduct research on their own country. If they want to study their own country, Syrian social scientists must enrol in foreign universities, because the regime makes sure that doctoral students focus on other countries (Al-Dassouky and Pierret 2021). However, from 2012, the militarisation of the conflict compelled both foreign and Syrian researchers to flee the country. Syria has since become exceptionally dangerous. Crucially, though, most researchers do not want to return, because doing so might legitimise what is a criminal regime. Only a handful of foreign researchers have chosen to venture from Turkey and northern Iraq to Aleppo and some areas of the Jazira region that have been freed from regime control. But this choice raises many ethical questions, particularly related to endangering local interlocutors and guides. It also raises questions about research practices that increasingly resemble war journalism or consultancy for international agencies. Such projects are undertaken as brief missions, often at sites chosen for their accessibility rather than their heuristic relevance.

    28Faced with the impossibility of accessing the field in Syria—particularly for foreign female researchers, who are more noticeable in the public space than men are—the contributors to this volume have adopted a series of alternative (and, admittedly, imperfect) research practices to overcome this hurdle. First of all, the researchers maintained connections and telephone contact with trusted, socially situated individuals with whom they had often become acquainted before the war, and who could provide first-hand accounts on the situation from the inside, while at the same time developing ties with new interlocutors. Possibilities in this regard varied by region and changed as the violence and destruction advanced, with individuals being forced to relocate.

    29At the same time as these windows into Syria were closing, new sources of information emerged via social media and online newspapers. These took the form of the thousands of images and videos that, since the beginning of the revolution and the war, have provided real-time access to events (Boëx and Devictor 2021; see Yazigi in this volume). Many independent Syrian newspapers, such as al-Jumhuriya, Enab Baladi, and Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (al-Raqqa tudhbaḥ bi-l-ṣamt), which publish in-depth articles in Arabic and English and are run by courageous journalists from within Syria or in exile, have become valuable sources of information.14 After careful triangulation with other sources, these can be integrated into documentation processes.

    30The impossibility of accessing Syria from within has also provided an opportunity to discover new, more collaborative and equitable ways of conducting research in conjunction with scholars inside and outside Syria. In this respect, the “Wartime and Post-Conflict in Syria” project, coordinated by Agnès Favier at the European University Institute in Florence, is pioneering.15 It has produced valuable knowledge about Syria from within the country by mobilising Syrian researchers and journalists in dialogue with European researchers. Other programmes supporting researchers in high-risk contexts have also been established, fostering scientific production within Syria, particularly in the northern regions under Turkish control, where the NGO CARA (Council for At-Risk Academics) supports Syrian researchers.16

    31It has also been possible to study Syrian society via its millions of members in exile in Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan, as well as in Germany, France, and across Europe (Fourn 2018b; see Bernath in this publication). The prolonged presence of Syrians in these host countries means that these more readily accessible territories are not simply the default fields for studying Syria; they have become integral components of a Syrian society that is in the process of being reconfigured. This is the case both for the new social and economic practices (movement of people and goods) that link these territories, and for the long-term socialisation processes experienced by Syrians, particularly the younger generations, in these countries. This proliferation of fields for studying Syria “from the outside” means that a multiplicity of distinct political, legal, social, and linguistic (Arabic, Turkish, and Kurdish) contexts must also be considered, though this will not be without its challenges. However, incorporating exile contexts into field research has allowed scholars to once again engage in the kinds of extended immersions that are typical of social science work, and which have been hampered by the war’s frenetic pace (Boissière 2015).

    32Our approach also questions the ethics of research on countries in the midst of war, which are often considered “laboratories” for developing new social science theories, with no thought given to the benefits that this scientific production should, as a matter of priority, bring to the societies of these countries themselves (Abdelnour and Abu Moghli 2021). In our view, examining the Syrian society of today is a civic duty, in order to produce a counternarrative that goes beyond the simplistic opposition between Daesh and Assad, as Sana Yazigi emphasises in this volume. For not only have we had the fortune of knowing this country before it was destroyed, of being shaped by it on an intellectual and human level, but also and especially because “Syria concerns us all,” to quote Lorenzo Trombetta (2019, xiii). The crushing of peaceful revolutionary forces with help from foreign powers has reminded many observers of the Spanish Civil War. And the decision not to undertake military interventions against Assad after his use of chemical weapons in August 2013 spoke to the cowardice of our democracies. We must take up Catherine Coquio’s invitation to fight against the indifference and resignation that have taken hold of Western public opinion in response to the intensity of the belligerents’ barbarism and radicalisation, doing so by reporting on Syrians’ courage in their quest for dignity and justice (Coquio et al. 2022).

    33In this contexte, using Syrian sources and translating social science research into Arabic is an ethical imperative, as is engaging in dialogue with academics and civil society actors who are training the next generation of Syrian researchers. The same holds true for dialogue with legal scholars and practitioners involved in laying the groundwork for transitional justice (see Bernath in this volume). At any rate, the matter of which research methodology is best suited to capturing the transformations of a war-torn Syria remains an open question. The authors brought together here attest to the fruitfulness of an approach that combines multiple sources: observations; individual and group interviews; consultation of newspapers, blogs, and videos; and ethical protocols designed to preserve interlocutors’ anonymity and safety.

    Social, economic, and political transformations

    34This work is organised around three major thematic strands: social transformations examined through the lens of migration and gender; economic, subsistence, and governance dynamics in urban and rural spaces; and the reconfiguration of affiliations and political mobilisations.

    Migrations, social and gender transformations

    35Revolutionary and wartime contexts can prove to be drastic moments of redefinition of social boundaries and mobilities. However, these processes are fragile and disproportionately determined by volatile political and legal situations. Extreme downward mobility can be observed—for instance, that experienced in Syria by some former military officials who, having not found a place for themselves within the armed opposition movements, went into exile (Napolitano 2021). However, we also see new windows of opportunity being opened, enabling the renegotiation of social, gender, and generational roles. Participation in protests and civil society entities has created new sociabilities and solidarities, encouraging, in some cases, the acquisition of new skills and forms of social capital (Baczko and Dorronsoro 2017; Fourn 2018b). Beyond social mobilities, a set of new social and familial practices has emerged, particularly as a result of migration (Napolitano 2023). Within Syria and in neighbouring countries, forced displacements have brought together populations from different regions and social backgrounds, leading, for example, to new marital unions among Syrians in Jordan (Zbeidy 2020). Moreover, the dispersal of kinship and neighbourhood networks, which played a role in surveillance and the maintenance of social order, has offered women unprecedented margins of freedom, fostering the acquisition of new responsibilities, as Charlotte al-Khalili demonstrates in this book. By tracing the trajectories of several women from urban middle-class backgrounds who participated to varying degrees in the revolutionary movement before seeking refuge in Gaziantep, Turkey, she shows that their conceptions of social, family, and gender relations have changed. From an intersectional perspective, she proposes that there is a continuity between the political and private spheres, wherein the struggle against an oppressive and unjust regime is, for these women, intrinsically linked to their resistance against other forms of subordination and oppression at the family level. According to al-Khalili, this perspective makes the defeat of the revolutionary movement easier to take, because despite being unable to achieve its objectives at the moment of the research, it nevertheless succeeded in bringing about lasting transformations in social life and in women’s self-perceptions, aspirations, and capacities for action.

    36However, shifts in gender roles vary according to the refugees’ social origins and the context in which they are being hosted. In the case of families from rural areas near Darʿa, Damascus, and Ḥoms who have taken refuge in Jordan, Valentina Napolitano demonstrates how Jordan’s reception policy has created disparities in access to work and freedom of movement within the territory along gender lines. Seen as more “vulnerable,” women have received preferential access to aid and job opportunities offered by humanitarian actors, particularly in the Zaʿtarī camp. They have therefore taken on an indispensable role in their family’s subsistence. Men, on the other hand, have faced greater difficulties in finding employment because of the security treatment they receive from the local authorities and humanitarian actors, but also because of physical injuries sustained during the conflict. The role changes occurring in this context are a painful experience and are taken as evidence of social downgrading, both for men and women, especially because these populations come from rural backgrounds where gender roles are strictly codified and centre on men’s ability to provide for their family’s needs. Syrian women’s access to work has not been accompanied by any disruption of pre-existing gender representations and inequalities. Domestic tasks, therefore, continue to be their responsibility. Moreover, in a context of profound uncertainty where family remains the only thing that can be counted on, women are actively involved in developing protective strategies aimed at preserving both men’s self-esteem and the family unit.

    37The effects of legal and security constraints on migratory trajectories and gender reconfigurations are the focus of Leïla Drif’s contribution. She studies how Syrians have dealt with legal ambiguity and the lack of recognition of their refugee status in Lebanon. In Drif’s view, the 2014 border closure and the introduction in 2015 of a sponsorship system (kafāla) marked a turning point, after which the Syrian presence, despite dating back to economic migration before the conflict, became precarious and subject to an arbitrary system for renewing residence permits. She maps the continuum of migratory trajectories within Syria and into Lebanon, showing how the constraints on internal mobility imposed by the territorial fragmentation linked to the war are connected to the systematic reversal of Syrians’ legal status in Lebanon. In particular, she emphasises the gendered effects of these measures, demonstrating that migratory statuses and time frames vary between men and women. Accordingly, contrary to the narratives propagated by humanitarian actors, men face a high degree of insecurity that compels them to resort to different forms of invisibilisation on Lebanese territory. The author emphasises how different legal statuses can co-exist within a single family, forcibly determining the roles that each member can take on within the family economy.

    38Although the family is a particularly illuminating scale of analysis when it comes to appreciating social, economic, and gender transformations, the scale of individual trajectories and their interplay with the collective level has proved to be equally relevant. Sana Yazigi’s contribution takes the personal experience of these collective upheavals as its starting point, as she documents and archives the artistic expression of these upheavals during the revolution. Her project, “Creative Memory of the Syrian Revolution,” gathers works (graffiti and political tags, paintings, videos, and so on) through which citizens and artists have expressed their voices in cities and villages across Syria and on the internet since 2011. Her goal is to preserve and convey Syrians’ voices, which have become obscured in a binary media discourse that reduces the conflict to a struggle between the regime and jihadists. She highlights the political stakes involved in documenting and archiving works that have been made ephemeral as a result of the destruction of walls and the deletion of online content. Her approach, which seeks to give meaning to a situation of extreme violence, is also a political act in a context where producing evidence, narratives, and archives has become a real power issue, contested by the various belligerents.

    Economic, subsistence, and governance dynamics

    39The second part examines the economic cogs of the war and of reconstruction, analysing the regime’s economic strategies to ensure its survival, as well as the everyday subsistence and governance dynamics that have emerged both in areas controlled by the regime and in those under siege or held by the predominantly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (Boissière and Ruiz de Elvira 2018; Vignal 2018). The contributions highlight the targeted bombing of neighbourhoods to clear land for neoliberal construction projects, as well as structural changes associated with the stripping of property rights through the law on absentees’ property and the confiscation of apartments, a measure that has prevented the 6 million refugees from reclaiming their immovable property (Said and Yazigi 2018). Indeed, the recentralisation of Syrian power was accomplished through a legislative arsenal designed to seize land and drive out populations in the name of a “reconstruction” that rewards regime supporters and expropriates opponents’ property.

    40Joseph Daher shows that the Syrian government’s economic policy during the war has enabled it to consolidate its power and its clientelist networks but has not marked a major ideological departure from the peacetime era. The war has intensified neoliberal policies, while reinforcing the regime’s authoritarian and patrimonialist aspects. The regime’s economic strategy, announced in February 2016, is one of “National Partnership”; it encourages public-private partnerships not only to invest in new infrastructure on public land, but also to manage public assets (factories and networks, including the electricity grid), with the exception of oil. Reconstruction is fostering new forms of capital accumulation in the services, trade, and real estate sectors. However, this rentier approach to managing natural resources and infrastructure, including oil exploitation monopolies, is leading to the deterioration of the productive sector.

    41In this context, Myriam Ababsa examines the governance and reconstruction challenges faced in the city of Raqqa, 80 per cent of which was destroyed during the battle against Islamic State in the summer of 2017. Only a third of the former residents have returned to live among the ruins. Most inhabitants hail from rural areas around Raqqa, Dayr al-Zūr, Ḥamā. This population was more inclined to accept the Kurdish-Arab administration set up by the Free Syrian Forces with the support of the PYD and the US military. With international assistance, irrigation networks are gradually being repaired. Residents adapted to the new authority, which continues to implement the regime’s procedures for confiscating property from Islamic State supporters. Municipal decrees issued by Raqqa Civil Council allowed for the confiscation of apartments in 2018. Civil society was closely supervised, and critical journalists faced arrest. However, the city was still extremely dangerous, especially at night, when Islamic State cells roam the streets. The population appeared to have pragmatically resigned itself to the Raqqa Civil Council, because it was, in any case, preferable to the return of the regime.

    42Narrowing the focus to capture Syrian refugees’ economic practices and their integration into host territories, Mathilde Gingembre examines a little-known population: Syrian shepherds who have sought refuge in Jordan, leaving their flocks behind. These pastoral refugees have utilised century-old tribal solidarity networks in order to enter the labour market either by working as shepherds for large Jordanian livestock owners or by building up small herds of twenty-five head in Jordan. Gingembre studies shepherds from the Bani Khais tribe of Aleppo who are located in Ṣubḥā (in Mafraq Governorate) and in al-Tuneib, south of Amman, and who originate from the Muālī tribe (Ḥamā). In Jordan, traditional contracts between large flock owners and shepherds—which had combined in-kind benefits with wages—were gradually replaced by straightforward wage arrangements in the 1990s. However, the arrival of Syrian refugee shepherds has brought about more complex relationships in livestock farming. Syrian shepherds are considered more skilled than their Jordanian counterparts, because they also know how to care for ewes during lambing and process dairy products. The author shows that a “moral economy” of subsistence has driven Syrian shepherds to forge ties with Jordanian livestock owners to ensure their own protection and that of their flocks, which others covet. However, the intratribal mutual support that shepherds were accustomed to in Syria is far less common in Jordan, where impoverished communities are struggling to survive. Shepherds must negotiate with jabbān-s—intermediaries in the dairy market—for the loans they need to buy fodder for their flocks.

    43This part concludes with a personal account from the intellectual Salam Kawakibi, who reflects on his experiences in the city of Aleppo, the country’s major cultural and commercial centre. He recalls the Baʿth Party’s rise to power in 1963. Aleppo then fell under authoritarian control, with prominent local families being displaced from positions of power by figures from other regions. Opponents faced increased repression between 1979 and 1980, which left a mark on the city’s and Kawakibi’s memory. In the 2000s, the city’s economic elites profited from the liberalisation policy adopted by Bashar al-Assad. Trade with Turkey increased, which may explain why there was little mobilisation in the city at the start of the revolution. Aleppo entered the revolution under the impetus of university students and rural populations in the eastern districts. The militarisation of the mobilisation was followed by years of siege and bombings that destroyed the old city and the eastern districts.

    Political reconfigurations, affiliations, and mobilisations

    44The third part of this book examines transformations in the political realm, viewed not from the vantage point of the regime and the centres of power, or from that of the armed actors and the “international community,” but rather via local experiences. Analysis over the long term reveals both the enduring strength of regional identities that bridge communal divides, and geographical and social fractures whose origins stretch back to the Ottoman period. It sheds light on the long-standing clientelist and authoritarian practices in place since the Baʿth Party came to power. Yet it also unveils the desire for change that is materialising in new forms of organisation, mobilisation, and reflection on civic relationships in the Syria of tomorrow.

    45In his contribution, Matthieu Rey traces the dynamics of state formation since the end of the Ottoman Empire, demonstrating how resistance to this process has persisted and been reactivated—reinforced, even—by the Assad regime and the violent repression of the revolutionary movement since 2011. Employing the concept of “terroir,” borrowed from Achille Mbembe (2001) and understood as both a physical place and a framework of identification, Rey presents an overview of different physical and symbolic territories. He reconstructs the genealogy of these fractures in their geographical, social, economic, and political dimensions, while rejecting a sectarian interpretive framework. In the context of the revolution, Bashar al-Assad’s strategies for suppressing dissent through microsocial management mirror those of his father, relying as they do on interference in family affairs, selective co-optation, and deliberately fostering divisions between different social groups. Rey notes that the systematic division of major roadways through checkpoints has deepened the country’s fragmentation, causing each area to follow different paths through the revolution and the war. These fractures have been further deepened by the intervention of international actors, military and humanitarian alike, who are pursuing their own ends.

    46Aurora Sottimano adds to this analysis of entrenched geographical, social, and political divisions by examining how authoritarian power structures perpetuate themselves even within opposition bodies. Her reflections centre on the novel experiment in governance represented by local councils in regions that have come under the control of the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces and the Syrian Interim Government (SIG) based in Turkey. She demonstrates how local councils have existed since the Baʿth Party came to power and how they have undergone multiple reforms. They were founded on deeply entrenched dynamics of co-optation and social control that have subsequently shaped the priorities and operating methods of the opposition’s local councils. Although these bodies include local activists from the revolution, they continue to be dominated by influential families and tribes, facilitating a collusion of interests with war profiteers and the regime. The SIG for its part initially pursued a policy aimed at bringing down the regime, without dismantling state structures. Rather than promoting the establishment of local governance, this approach sought to integrate these bodies into a hierarchical structure under its control. All of this occurred in a context of strong dependence on external actors and the persistence of nepotistic practices and corruption.

    47Adopting a microsociological scale of analysis of political events, Anna Poujeau examines the shifting allegiances and internal divisions within the Druze minority community. She does so by examining how various armed factions conducted mass kidnappings of minority group members, using them as leverage to negotiate the lifting of sieges or secure the release of prisoners held by the regime. These incidents represent rare instances in which the belligerents were willing to negotiate. Her study of these kidnappings reveals interfaith dynamics by moving beyond mere discourse analysis to focus on the social interactions at play. Poujeau examines the case of the mass kidnapping of Druze women and children by Islamic State in July 2018 and the ensuing negotiations to free them. She demonstrates that during these dramatic enactions of individual, family, local, regional, and religious identities, allegiances to those in power and to religious leaders were reconfigured, and new political and intercommunity adjustments came about. Poujeau also shows how over the course of the war Syrians have reclaimed their social history, breaking free from the “quasi-aphasia” induced by political repression.

    48The reactivation or reconfiguration of territorial, political, social, and religious affiliations has gone hand in hand with intense reflection among Syrians around the issue of justice as an indispensable prerequisite for any future societal project. Julie Bernath addresses this issue, studying the mobilisations for transitional justice undertaken by lawyers and activists in neighbouring countries and in Europe. She highlights how their operating methods have evolved in response to a lack of political transition and the impacts of the different contexts in which refugees have been hosted. Bernath argues that although transitional justice has indeed provided important resources for the mobilisation of Syrians in exile, this has changed over time, with the established avenues for international criminal justice appearing to be out of reach. Mobilisation is more difficult within the “near diaspora” (Lebanon, for example) than it is within the “far diaspora” in Europe (particularly Germany). Initially, it was characterised by a strong focus on documentation, mainly of Islamic State crimes, neglecting violations committed by other Syria-based and external actors. Syrian activists, NGOs, and lawyers have begun to explore the principle of universal jurisdiction and alternative avenues for justice and reconciliation (El Bunni 2020). They have utilised “invented spaces” for justice—spaces that are mediated by civil society actors and that are more open and deliberative than a courtroom. These spaces are the work of transnational survivor-led organisations such as Families for Freedom, the Caesar Families Association, and the Coalition of Families of Persons Kidnapped by ISIS.

    49Studying these citizen mobilisations sheds light on the principles and visions around which Syrians are seeking to forge a new social bond. According to the writer and opposition figure Yassin al-Haj Saleh, this bond must be based on equality between citizens and the affirmation of their democratic rights and duties, rather than on a sectarian division of society. This would involve overturning the existing political order, without a minority groups detaining the power or allowing jihadist groups to pose a threat. It also means deconstructing the Western vision of threatened minorities that must be protected at all costs. Al-Haj Saleh redefines what the ruling majority should be: not the numerical majority of Sunnis, who are deeply divided and could be manipulated by Islamists, but an intercommunity majority united in its aim to cast aside the regime’s torturers and the Alawites specifically implicated in crimes, rather than targeting them based on their faith alone. The idea would therefore be to prosecute criminals. In response to Kurds playing the card of a minority in need of protection, al-Haj Saleh proposes the idea of quotas. The theme of social class runs throughout his work, highlighting the conflict between an impoverished population and those who have benefited from the war economy. The latter includes both displaced groups whose loyalty was secured through the allocation of confiscated apartments and a new unscrupulous business elite who have amassed wealth through regime-sanctioned trafficking operations. He describes how Islamic State was initially tempting for some young people amid the corrupt behaviour of local militia members driven by a quest for power and profit and who used the weaponry provided by the Gulf states to loot civilian populations. According to al-Haj Saleh, the war has brought to light regional coalitions that the dominant discourse attempted to conceal or that were viewed solely through a communal lens. In fact, what emerged during the revolution were solidarities of struggle that included—for instance, in Ḥoms—the most disadvantaged people, Alawites, Sunnis, and Christians alike.

    50These forms of solidarity and citizenship offer a glimmer of hope in this war-torn country, providing a foundation upon which Syrians can rebuild in the long term. The contributions compiled in this volume are a valuable testament to the simultaneously lethal and pioneering legacy of this decade of revolution and war, which has not only transformed Syrian society but also endowed it with frameworks for local governance and dignified self-expression.

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    Daher Joseph, “The Dynamics and Evolution of UAE-Syria Relations: Between Expectations and Obstacles,” EUI RSCAS, Middle East Directions (MED), Wartime and Post-Conflict in Syria Technical Report 8 (online, <http://hdl.handle.net/1814/64727>).

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    Doraï Kamel, and Lagarde David, “De la campagne syrienne aux villes jordaniennes. Un réseau marchand transfrontalier à l’épreuve du conflit syrien,” Espace populations sociétés 2017/2 (online, <http://eps.revues.org/7212>).

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    Dubois Simon, “Négocier son identité artistique dans l’exil. Les recompositions d’un paysage créatif syrien à Berlin,” Migrations Société 174/4, pp. 45–57.

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    El Bunni Anwar, “Breaking New Ground: Transitional Justice in Syria,” Washington D.C., Brookings Institution :, (online, <https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/breaking-newground-transitional-justice-in-syria/>.

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    Ezzi Mazen, “Sweida Protests: The Start of a New Syrian Revolution?,” in Wartime and Post-Conflict in Syria (online, <https://blogs.eui.eu/medirections/sweida-protests-start- new-syrian-revolution/>).

    Favier 2016
    Favier Agnès, “Local Governance Dynamics in Opposition-Controlled Areas in Syria,” in L. Narbone, A. Favier, V. Collombier (eds.), Inside Wars: Local Dynamics of Conflicts in Syria and Libya, San Domenico di Fiesole, Cadmus EUI (online, <https://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/41644>).

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    Fiddian-Qasmiyeh Elena, “Refugees Helping Refugees: How a Palestinian Refugee Camp in Lebanon is Welcoming Syrians,” The Conversation, November 4.

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    Filiu Jean-Pierre, Je vous écris d’Alep. Au cœur de la Syrie en révolution, Paris, Denoël.

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    Fourn Léo, “L’installation des réfugiés syriens en Europe face au recul de l’hospitalité,” Migrations Société 174/4, pp. 17–31.

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    Gayer Laurent, “La ‘normalité de l’anormal’ : Recomposer le quotidien en situation de guerre civile,” Critique internationale 80/3, pp. 181–190.

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    Hatahet Sinan, “To Stay or to Leave? The Dilemma for Independent Syrian Businessmen,” European University Institute, Policy Brief 55 (online, <https://hdl.handle.net/1814/73098>).

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    Heydemann Steven, “Beyond Fragility: Syria and the Challenges of Reconstruction in Fierce States,” Washington D.C., Brookings (online, <www.brookings.edu/research/beyond-fragility-syria-and-the-challenges-of-reconstruction-in-fierce-states/>).

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    UNHCR, Seventh Regional Survey on Syrian Refugees’ Perceptions & Intentions on Return to Syria, 3RP-UNHCR (online, <https://www.3rpsyriacrisis.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/RPIS_2022.pdf>).

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    Notes de bas de page

    1In this book, we have chosen to use the term “revolution” for the Arabic thawra. Our terminological choice is based on a desire to retain the term used by Syrians to refer to the popular movement that broke out in the country in 2011 and that, even though it did not overthrow those in power, nevertheless reflects the major social and political upheavals that Syrians have experienced since then.

    2The conference, entitled “Syria Today: Social, Political and Economic Changes at the Interface between National Territory and Migratory Spaces,” was organised by Myriam Ababsa, Valentina Napolitano, and Jalal Al Husseini, with the support of the Fonds d’Alembert and the ANR project SHAKK-Syria: Conflicts, Shifts, Uncertainty. We thank all the participants for two days of fruitful discussions: Jalal Al Husseini, Charlotte al-Khalili, Julie Bernath, Chiara Calabrese, Joseph Daher, Kamel Doraï, Leïla Drif, Agnès Favier, Mathilde Gingembre, Patrick Haenni, Pauline Khoury, Ahmad Mhidi, Anna Poujeau, Arthur Quesnay, Matthieu Rey, Lorenzo Trombetta, and Leïla Vignal. We would like to give special thanks to Élizabeth Picard, who guided us with kindness and patience throughout the process of editing this book. We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and to the Ifpo team for their meticulous work.

    3For a detailed chronology of these events, see the “Chronology of the Revolution and the Syrian War” created by the Creative Memory initiative, organised by Sana Yazigi. See <https://creativememory.org/fr/chronology-list/>.

    4Regime hired hands who are recruited from among thugs and paid to sow terror on a daily basis and during demonstrations.

    5According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the number of victims of the conflict was close to 606,000 in 2021: <https://www.syriahr.com/en/217360/>.

    6Data published in 2022 by the Syrian Network for Human Rights. See <https://snhr.org/blog/2021/08/14/record-of-arbitrary-arrests1/>.

    7By 2023, there were around 5.2 million refugees in neighbouring countries and 7.2 million internally displaced persons. Data from the UNHCR—respectively, the webpage of the Syria Regional Refugee Response: <https://data.unhcr.org/en/situations/syria> and the webpage on Syria: <https://data.unhcr.org/en/country/syr>.

    8SANA news agency, 20 August 2017, “President al-Assad: Everything Related to the Destiny and Future of Syria is a 100% Syrian Issue, Unity of Syrian Territory is Self-Evident and not up for Debate,” <https://sana.sy/en/?p=112238>.

    9According to a 2016 study of Syrian refugees in Jordan, two-thirds had proof of property, while in Lebanon, two-thirds had not brought proof of ownership of their property with them (Yassin 2019).

    10Decree No. 66 of 2012 allows residents from an informal district to be relocated so that property development projects can be carried out.

    11Interview conducted by Myriam Ababsa in 2014 in Zaʿtari as part of a study on Gulf donors and international NGOs (Ababsa 2014).

    12A reflection on how memories and narratives of past protests have been reactivated since 2011 began at a conference titled “History and Memory through the Test of Revolt and War in Syria,” held at Ifpo in Beirut in January 2021 and organised by the ANR project SHAKK-Syria: Conflicts, Shifts, Uncertainty, led by Anna Poujeau. See <https://shakk.hypotheses.org>.

    13Field survey conducted by Kamel Doraï and Myriam Ababsa in Sahab in March 2015 as part of the Lajeh programme. Presented at the Ifpo Amman seminar in May 2017.

    14<https://aljumhuriya.net/en/>; <https://www.enabbaladi.net/>; <https://english.enabbaladi.net/>; <https://www.raqqa-sl.com>.

    15<https://middleeastdirections.eu/wpcs-project/>.

    16See there the programme’s webpage for Syria: <https://www.cara.ngo/what-we-do/cara-syria-programme/>.

    Auteurs

    • Myriam Ababsa

      Ifpo

      myriam.ababsa@gmail.com

      Geographer and urban planner, associate researcher at the Institut français du Proche-Orient (Ifpo Amman), the Géographie-Cités laboratory, and the CAREP Paris. A graduate of the École normale supérieure Fontenay-Saint Cloud, she obtained her PhD in 2004 from the University of Tours (Raqqa, territoires et pratiques sociales d’une ville syrienne, Ifpo, 2009). Myriam Ababsa is the author of Amman, de pierre et de paix (Autrement, 2007). Together with Rami Daher, she co-edited Villes, pratiques urbaines et construction nationale en Jordanie (Ifpo, 2011); with Éric Denis and Baudouin Dupret, Popular Housing and Urban Land Tenure in the Middle East (American University in Cairo Press, 2012); and the Atlas of Jordan: History, Territories and Society (Ifpo, 2013). Her most recent book, co-authored with Norig Neveu and Falestin Naïli, is: Amman Social History through Photography (Ifpo, 2025). She is a member of the scientific council of Mondes Arabes (CNRS, Collège de France) since 2022.

    • Valentina Napolitano

      IRD, LPED/AMU

      valentina.napolitano@ird.fr

      Sociologist, research fellow at IRD (Institut de recherche pour le développement) and associate researcher at the Institut français du Proche-Orient (Ifpo) in Amman, her work focuses on forced migration, political violence, and collective action in the Middle East (Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon). After studying political mobilisation within Palestinian refugee camps in Damascus, her current research explores the transformations of the Syrian family sphere in the context of war and forced displacement. Among her recent publications: “Donner sens et cohérence à la désertion en contexte de guerre : les émotions d’ex-militaires syriens”, Critique internationale 91/2 (2021), pp. 67–87; with Jalal al-Husseini, “La politique jordanienne à l’égard des réfugiés syriens : entre hospitalité et protection des intérêts nationaux”, Confluences Méditerranée 110/3 (2019), pp. 127–142.

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    1In this book, we have chosen to use the term “revolution” for the Arabic thawra. Our terminological choice is based on a desire to retain the term used by Syrians to refer to the popular movement that broke out in the country in 2011 and that, even though it did not overthrow those in power, nevertheless reflects the major social and political upheavals that Syrians have experienced since then.

    2The conference, entitled “Syria Today: Social, Political and Economic Changes at the Interface between National Territory and Migratory Spaces,” was organised by Myriam Ababsa, Valentina Napolitano, and Jalal Al Husseini, with the support of the Fonds d’Alembert and the ANR project SHAKK-Syria: Conflicts, Shifts, Uncertainty. We thank all the participants for two days of fruitful discussions: Jalal Al Husseini, Charlotte al-Khalili, Julie Bernath, Chiara Calabrese, Joseph Daher, Kamel Doraï, Leïla Drif, Agnès Favier, Mathilde Gingembre, Patrick Haenni, Pauline Khoury, Ahmad Mhidi, Anna Poujeau, Arthur Quesnay, Matthieu Rey, Lorenzo Trombetta, and Leïla Vignal. We would like to give special thanks to Élizabeth Picard, who guided us with kindness and patience throughout the process of editing this book. We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and to the Ifpo team for their meticulous work.

    3For a detailed chronology of these events, see the “Chronology of the Revolution and the Syrian War” created by the Creative Memory initiative, organised by Sana Yazigi. See <https://creativememory.org/fr/chronology-list/>.

    4Regime hired hands who are recruited from among thugs and paid to sow terror on a daily basis and during demonstrations.

    5According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the number of victims of the conflict was close to 606,000 in 2021: <https://www.syriahr.com/en/217360/>.

    6Data published in 2022 by the Syrian Network for Human Rights. See <https://snhr.org/blog/2021/08/14/record-of-arbitrary-arrests1/>.

    7By 2023, there were around 5.2 million refugees in neighbouring countries and 7.2 million internally displaced persons. Data from the UNHCR—respectively, the webpage of the Syria Regional Refugee Response: <https://data.unhcr.org/en/situations/syria> and the webpage on Syria: <https://data.unhcr.org/en/country/syr>.

    8SANA news agency, 20 August 2017, “President al-Assad: Everything Related to the Destiny and Future of Syria is a 100% Syrian Issue, Unity of Syrian Territory is Self-Evident and not up for Debate,” <https://sana.sy/en/?p=112238>.

    9According to a 2016 study of Syrian refugees in Jordan, two-thirds had proof of property, while in Lebanon, two-thirds had not brought proof of ownership of their property with them (Yassin 2019).

    10Decree No. 66 of 2012 allows residents from an informal district to be relocated so that property development projects can be carried out.

    11Interview conducted by Myriam Ababsa in 2014 in Zaʿtari as part of a study on Gulf donors and international NGOs (Ababsa 2014).

    12A reflection on how memories and narratives of past protests have been reactivated since 2011 began at a conference titled “History and Memory through the Test of Revolt and War in Syria,” held at Ifpo in Beirut in January 2021 and organised by the ANR project SHAKK-Syria: Conflicts, Shifts, Uncertainty, led by Anna Poujeau. See <https://shakk.hypotheses.org>.

    13Field survey conducted by Kamel Doraï and Myriam Ababsa in Sahab in March 2015 as part of the Lajeh programme. Presented at the Ifpo Amman seminar in May 2017.

    14<https://aljumhuriya.net/en/>; <https://www.enabbaladi.net/>; <https://english.enabbaladi.net/>; <https://www.raqqa-sl.com>.

    15<https://middleeastdirections.eu/wpcs-project/>.

    16See there the programme’s webpage for Syria: <https://www.cara.ngo/what-we-do/cara-syria-programme/>.

    Syrian Society in Revolution and War (2011–2024)

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