Bashar al-Asad Research Articles

A case study of judicial resistance in northern Syria after the March revolution of 2011

Judges and prosecutors challenged oppressive laws introduced by the regime of Bashar al-Asad to curb the popular uprising of March 2011 in Syria. When some members of the judiciary became targets of the regime’s security forces, they resigned from office and formed independent councils to administer justice in regions no longer under state control. This article focuses on the first independent council in northern Syria: the Free Syrian Judicial Council (FSJC). Unlike the majority of non-state courts and councils established by groups of armed resistance in Syria, the FSJC does not belong to the category of “insurgent/rebel justice”. Rather, members of the FSJC were engaged in a form of resistance called “judicial resistance”: the capacity of judicial officers to challenge oppressive laws in their decision-making. The article argues that even after they left office, judges and prosecutors of the FSJC were still engaged in judicial resistance: they did their best to uphold the rule of law and provide services to the population despite the breakdown of public order and the fragmentation of the non-state judicial system engendered by the armed conflict.

How Bashar al-Asad Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the “War on Terror”

Abstracts This article draws on regime newspaper archives and the Arabic-language speeches of and interviews with Syrian president Bashar al-Asad over the last two decades to track how Syrian governmental rhetoric on the question of “terrorism” has changed over time. Engaging with the literature on how ideas, technologies, and contentious repertoires diffuse and spread and how regimes learn from each other, I show how the Asad regime has moved from a discourse that saw “terrorism” as a Western and/or Israeli concept used to delegitimize primarily Palestinian and Lebanese resistance sponsored by Damascus to a discourse that embraces the rhetoric of the “war on terror” in order to legitimize the regime's counterinsurgency policies during the current conflict. I argue that this rhetorical shift is dependent on the ethno-sectarian identity of the population in question through a comparison of regime rhetoric on three separate uprisings in recent Syrian history: the current uprising (2011–present); the Kurdish uprising of 2004; and the Druze uprising in 2000. Since the current uprising is seen as a predominantly Sunni Arab affair, the Syrian regime has used “war on terror” rhetoric in ways that it did not during the Kurdish and Druze uprisings. I then situate this rhetorical move in time as a post-9/11 development by comparing current regime rhetoric with that of the Hafez al-Asad regime's rhetoric during the uprising centered in Hama in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Towards an ‘Interfaith Nationalism’? Christians and Their Relations to Muslims in the History Textbooks of the Syrian Arab Republic

This study examines how Christian–Muslim relations are presented in Syrian history textbooks and deployed by the embattled regime of Bashar al-Asad in its quest for legitimacy both at home and abroad since the eruption of the war that displaced half the country’s population. To that end, Critical Discourse Analysis is applied to selected texts from the school curricula stressing the harmonious coexistence between the country’s only two officially recognized faiths (Islam and Christianity), in addition to the Syrian Christians’ commitment to national unity from time immemorial, as nationalist discourses retrospectively assert. The historical narratives in question are juxtaposed with the ideological inconsistencies of the Arab nationalist Ba’th party that has ruled Syria since 1963 vis-à-vis religious sects and minorities, while being discussed against the backdrop of the recent geopolitical developments.

Putin’s War in Syria: Russian Foreign Policy and the Price of America’s Absence

Putin’s War in Syria: Russian Foreign Policy and the Price of America’s Absence

Reflections on Unwritten Letters and the neorealism of contingency

Reflections on <i>Unwritten Letters</i> and the neorealism of contingency

Endgames: Military Response to Protest in Arab Autocracies

Endgames: Military Response to Protest in Arab Autocracies

Sledgehammer: How Breaking with the Past Brought Peace to the Middle East

Sledgehammer: How Breaking with the Past Brought Peace to the Middle East

New Media and Revolution: Resistance and Dissent in Pre-Uprising Syria

New Media and Revolution: Resistance and Dissent in Pre-Uprising Syria

Martyrs as a conduit for legitimacy – explaining Iran’s foreign policy towards Syria

What explains the Islamic Republic of Iran’s considerable financial, military and diplomatic support for the nominally secular Bashar al-Asad government in the wake of the 2011 Syrian uprising? Iranian foreign policy is subject to realist considerations (security and power). However, realism does not adequately explain Iran’s Syria policy since 2011, given the price Iranian citizens are paying in casualties on the Syrian battlefield. This paper uses a constructivist framework to examine the role of identity in Iran’s foreign policy towards Syria. Moreover, it sketches Eid al-Ghadir as an identity marker for Twelver Shia Muslims. The aim of this paper is to show that Iranian martyrs are not only a consequence of Iran’s foreign policy towards Syria, but that martyrdom serves as a conduit for legitimacy.

Securitization as a Tool of Regime Survival: The Deployment of Religious Rhetoric in Bashar al-Asad's Speeches

This article analyzes the role of Sunni Islam in speeches given to religious scholars by Syrian president Bashar al-Asad in 2014 and 2017. I discuss how religion was used in these speeches as a security tool to consolidate authority, legitimize the Ba'thist regime, and marginalize political dissidents. I specifically highlight the emphasis Asad placed on convincing government-recognized 'ulama to support state security measures and to the novel links he constructed between Islam and national unity.

Fighting for a Monopoly on Governance: How the Asad State "Won" the Syrian War and to What Extent

This article argues that the functional continuity of the Syrian state has been a key factor in the "victory" of the regime of Bashar al-Asad in the country's civil war. State continuity has not only meant first maintaining the structure of the military but sustaining the bureaucracy and preserving its reach within society. While elements of the opposition have been able to create state-like structures, the regime has managed to undermine its competitors and ensure the indispensability of the Asad state, though challenges remain.

The Rule of Violence: Subjectivity, Memory and Government in Syria

The Rule of Violence: Subjectivity, Memory and Government in Syria

الـــــدعاية الأجنبية في الصحــــافة الإلكترونية إزاء الأزمـــــة الســـــوريـــــــة دراسة مقارنة لموقعي روسيا اليوم والحرة - بحث مستل من رسالة ماجستير

The research problem lies in the ambiguity of the usage of propaganda contents by two main media outlets (the Russian RT and American Alhurra) in their news coverage of the Syrian crisis through their websites and the methods used by them to convince users taking into account the mutual propaganda conflict between the United States and Russia in the war against Syria. The objectives of the research can be represented by the following: investigating the contents of American and Russian electronic propaganda towards Syrian crisis. • Identifying the contents that received most of the coverage in the Syrian crisis by the two news outlets. • Identifying the terms and phrases that have been most used by the websites of RT and Alhurra. • Investigating the diversity in the use of explanatory and persuasive techniques such as info graphic by both websites. The research can be classified under descriptive researches. The survey methodology has been adopted and the content analysis has been used. The research population consists of all the news reports that were published on RT and Alhurra websites on Syrian crisis from 11/ 01/ 2006 to 12/ 31/ 2006 according to the comprehensive sampling method. The number of the news reports that were analyzed was (466), (327) from RT website and (89) from Alhurrah. The research tools included (scientific observation), interview and (coding scheme). The most important results of the research are: 1. The Syrian president Bashar al-Asad: the Russian propaganda focused on supporting him, and to ensure that he remained in office, while US propaganda focused on removing him from power. 2. The characters of the presidents: the Russian propaganda focused on the character of the Russian president Vladimir Putin, while the American propaganda did not amplify the character of US president Barack Obama. 3. The style of repetition ranked first among the other Russian propaganda styles in support of its ally al-Asad in the battle of Aleppo, while the distortion style ranked first among the American propaganda styles to show a negative image of al-Asad and his allies. 4. The Russian propaganda described the Russian-Syrian operations as (liberation operations), while the American propaganda described it as (brutal murdering), (random bombing), (crimes against humanity), (war crimes), and (massacre). 5. Al-hurrah website has not used an infographic, while the RT website has published 3 info graphs that denote the Russian propaganda dependence on diversity in electronic journalism by following intimidation policy with the enemies to manifest the Russian military power during Aleppo battle.

The Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian TragedyWe Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from SyriaSyria: The Making and Unmaking of a Refugee State

The Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian TragedyWe Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from SyriaSyria: The Making and Unmaking of a Refugee State

The Pre-2011 Roots of Syria's Islamist Militants

Islamist militancy is not a new phenomenon in Syria; indeed, many of the groups active since the outbreak of the popular uprising in 2011 have existed since the early 2000s. The emergence of these Islamists and the Islamization of the Syrian conflict can primarily be traced to the earlier foreign policy of the regime of Bashar al-Asad, of which harboring and collaborating with Islamist militants was an integral part. The outcome of this policy was the rise of a radical and apocalyptic type of Islamist movement that the regime cannot effectively control and that is at odds with Syria's more ecumenical and intellectual Islamic tradition.

In Memoriam: Sadiq Jalal al-ʿAzm, 1934–2016

In Memoriam: Sadiq Jalal al-ʿAzm, 1934–2016

In Memoriam: Sadiq Jalal al-ʿAzm, 1934–2016

In Memoriam: Sadiq Jalal al-ʿAzm, 1934–2016

Salafism in Lebanon: From Apoliticism to Transnational Jihadism

Salafism in Lebanon: From Apoliticism to Transnational Jihadism

Opposition visions for preserving Syria’s ethnic-sectarian mosaic

The excessive violence that has spread across virtually all of Syria since the 2011 uprising against the regime of Bashar al-Asad has so far prevented a serious debate about feasible solutions. Together with internal power struggles and the intervention of external actors, ideational factors and identity construction are playing a key role in shaping the dynamics of the Syrian conflict. Fear of exclusion in a future order dominated by radical Islamist forces is keeping the minority groups and some secularists close to the regime. However, there are also grounds for cautious optimism: as this paper shows, most actors from the moderate opposition acknowledge the need to take the minorities’ fears seriously and to provide them with guarantees of participation in a future political order, while stopping short of the option of a power-sharing arrangement between community representatives.

Building Support for the Asad Regime: The Syrian Diaspora in Argentina and Brazil and the Syrian Uprising

ABSTRACTBrazil and Argentina are hosts to two of the largest populations of Syrian descent in Latin America. While Syrian immigrants and their descendants have usually defined their identities based on broad Arab nationalistic references, creating and affiliating themselves to Syrian-Lebanese and/or Arab institutions, the ongoing civil war in Syria has triggered an unprecedented mobilization around specifically Syrian issues. Most diasporic organizations have shown an unconditional support for the Baʽthist regime. This article aims at understanding the political mobilization of the Syrian diaspora in Argentina and Brazil, as well as unveiling how Bashar al-Asad's government has tried to build on their support.