War-Torn: The Unmaking of Syria, 2011-2021 by Leila Vignal

Abstract

Reviewed by: War-Torn: The Unmaking of Syria, 2011-2021 by Leila Vignal Mona Yacoubian (bio) War-Torn: The Unmaking of Syria, 2011-2021 by Leila Vignal Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021, 328 pp. Too often, outside observers become inured to the impacts of war; the conflict in Syria is no exception. The Syrian war may have faded from international headlines, but its evolving legacy of physical ruin, lives destroyed, and a society forever transformed stands as a reminder of the perils of conflict. In her new book, War-Torn: The Unmaking of Syria, 2011-2021, Leila Vignal chronicles the first decade of Syria's brutal conflict in painstaking detail. The book provides a poignant survey of the war's devastating impacts both inside Syria and beyond. In so doing, she offers readers important insights into the conflict's origins and trajectory. While drawing on her years as a researcher working on Syria since the late 1990s, Vignal acknowledges that safety and access issues since the onset of the conflict forced her to adopt an approach of "see[ing] the local from afar." She also rightly highlights the many Syrian experts and observers who have made critical contributions to our understanding of the war. she relies on secondary sources, primary visual sources (e.g., satellite imagery, photos published on Facebook), and interviews with Syrians abroad (primarily in Lebanon, Egypt, France, and the United Kingdom) to piece together a richly textured narrative. In it, she seeks to answer the question, "What does conflict do to society and how is society transformed by it?" Given the scope, complexity, and volatility of the conflict in Syria, Vignal's question will take years to answer if there can ever truly be a comprehensive response. Nonetheless, War-Torn endeavors to begin that process by analyzing the war's social, spatial, and economic transformation of Syria. The book's nine chapters offer a useful entry point into this inquiry—of course, each chapter could be drawn into a book(s)-length exploration of the topic. Beginning with an anatomy of the conflict and then tracing the country's fragmentation, destruction, displacement, war economy, and spillover, War-Torn concludes with a reflection on the future of regime-held areas through the lens of dispossession and regime-driven reconstruction. Vignal opens with the astute observation that Syria was already in the [End Page 77] midst of radical transformation before the 2011 uprising. She notes mounting social grievances in the shadow of economic liberalization that widened income inequality, enriching those connected to the regime at the expense of everyday Syrians. Gone were the days of Hafez al-Assad's austere economy where even toilet paper was scarce and privilege was hidden behind the dark curtain of dictatorial rule. Instead, a crass crony capitalist class emerged, seeking to exploit the benefits of economic opening for personal gain. She highlights urbanization as a key dynamic that helped foster an awakening by Syrian youth. Separately, she focuses on the decentralized nature of the protests which inhibited the movement from unifying broadly but also imbued it with resilience and the capacity to adapt and expand depending on local circumstances. The heart of War-Torn delves into Syria's downward spiral into conflict and the many dimensions of the war's impact. Starting at the macro-level of Syria as a nation-state within the international order, Vignal then drills down to the conflict's "geography of destruction" on different scales: city, village, neighborhood, and then most significantly to its impact on individuals through the war's mass displacement of more than half of Syria's population, either internally or outside the country's borders. Across several, interconnected chapters, she develops well the themes of fragmentation, destruction, displacement, and economic exploitation. With the benefit of some perspective and distance, she paints a compelling picture of the Assad regime's preponderant role in the country's destruction. War-Torn leaves the reader with several important takeaways for understanding the Syrian conflict and the nature of conflict more broadly. Vignal underscores the distressing disconnect that accords Syria's brutal Assad regime the formal markers of international sovereignty—United Nations membership, diplomatic recognition by other countries—while...