«Assad or Nobody!»
- Author Yassin Al Haj Saleh
- Date April 2019
From the seizure of power to the appropriation of society: the Syrian conflict in the context of the history of Ba’ath Party rule For most people in the West well into the 2000s, Syria was either an unknown, a rogue state, or one of many Arab dictatorships. This changed in…
Syria’s Problematic “Reconstruction”
- Author Harald Etzbach
- Date February 2019
The plans have already been made. The dilemma: supporting reconstruction in Syria would also support the Assad regime. March 2019 will mark the eighth anniversary of the start of the Syrian revolution, and it now looks as though the Assad regime will emerge victorious from the war that has consumed…
From the Margin to the City
- Author Mira Tfaily
Documenting Lebanon’s Informal Bus System as a Tool for Social Change If, as French intellectual Bruno Latour develops in Où Atterir, Comment s’orienter en politique, describing our territories through the inequalities that traverse them is the first step towards social justice, then keeping the Lebanese bus system in the shadows…
Afrin After the Turkish Invasion
- Author Loubna Mrie
It was just after 12:30 on 11 March 2018 when Muhammad Billo, a resident of the northern Syrian city of Afrin, sent a message to his wife over WhatsApp: “Pack, we are fleeing the city.” Before that day, the 40-year old journalist had never entertained the idea of fleeing. On …
“Above the Iron Blanket, Freedom Must Be Boundless”
- Author Miriam Younes
On the upcoming parliamentary elections in Lebanon and the role of civil society This year’s elections are not only the first to be held in nine years, but are also the first to take place under the new electoral law decreed in June 2017, which, for the first time, will…
Sexual Politics: Redefining Difference in Postwar Lebanon
- Author Sara Mourad
In a June 2015 episode of “Mouthi’ al-Arab” (Arab Anchorman), a television competition show for young Arab talents seeking careers in television, one of the contestants interviewed a Lebanese woman about her experience as a victim of domestic abuse.[1] In her televised testimony on Al-Hayat TV, the woman described her…
Consociationalism: A Remedy Prescribed Based on a Wrong Diagnosis?
- Author Rima Majed
The specter of consociationalism is hovering over Syria today. After the Lebanese experience with corporate consociationalism[1], and the Iraqi experience with liberal consociationalism[2], it seems that Syria is next in the region to adopt a consociational arrangement. Consociational democracy has been proposed and adopted in many post-conflict countries around the…
Socioeconomic Roots and Impacts of the Crisis in Syria
- Author SCPR
- Date November 2017
[1] Before the crisis, Syrian institutions were unable to evolve in a way to reflect the aspirations, interests and expectations of the society. This “institutional bottlenecks” had hindered the country’s development record, marginalized large segments of society, and deprived them from effectively contributing to development. Thus, the social movement in…
Syria: The Social Origins of the Uprising
- Author Joseph Daher
More than seven years after the beginning of the popular uprising in Syria, which increasingly turned into an international war, the causes of this eruption are often forgotten. When they are discussed, the vast majority of authors reduce the uprising to a struggle against authoritarianism while neglecting its socio-economic roots…
Stuck in the System in Lebanon?
- Author Nur Turkmani
Sectarianism, Class, and Disenchantment Halba, the capital of Northern Lebanon’s Akkar Governorate, was fairly quiet on 6 May 2018 (election day). The usually congested streets were less busy, with intermittent sounds coming out from the scattered, mostly unfinished concrete houses. While the rest of the country was allegedly caught up…
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