Documenting life amidst the Syrian war: Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s performance of statehood through identity documents

Abstract

ABSTRACT Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham has been one of the main beneficiaries of the fragmentation of state power in Syria, developing from a transnational jihadist group affiliated to al-Qaʿida to a locally rooted actor and de facto state power. This paper considers how the group has enacted a performance of sovereignty and statehood that has developed over time, and how central legal identity has been to these efforts. It examines how Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham has attempted to perform as the legitimate governing actor using control over identity documentation and also how this performance engenders a relationship between ruler and ruled in Idlib. Each act as an authority reproduces the group as the state power. But in few other areas of governance is the act so explicit, the performance so overt, as in the use of legal identity.