Syria: Borders, Boundaries, and the State [1st ed.] 9783030448769, 9783030448776

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MOBILITY & POLITICS SERIES EDITORS: MARTIN GEIGER PARVATI RAGHURAM · WILLIAM WALTERS

Syria: Borders, Boundaries, and the State Edited by Matthieu Cimino

Mobility & Politics

Series Editors Martin Geiger Carleton University Ottawa, Canada Parvati Raghuram Open University Milton Keynes, UK William Walters Carleton University Ottawa, Canada

Mobility & Politics Series Editors Martin Geiger, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada Parvati Raghuram, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK William Walters, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada Global Advisory Board Michael Collyer, University of Sussex Susan B. Coutin, University of California Raúl Delgado Wise, Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas Nicholas De Genova, King’s College London Eleonore Kofman, Middlesex University Rey Koslowski, University at Albany Loren B. Landau, University of the Witwatersrand Sandro Mezzadra, Università di Bologna Alison Mountz, Wilfrid Laurier University Brett Neilson, University of Western Sydney Antoine Pécoud, Université Paris 13 Ranabir Samaddar, Mahanirban Research Group Calcutta Nandita Sharma, University of Hawai’i at Manoa Tesfaye Tafesse, Addis Ababa University Thanh-Dam Truong, Erasmus University Rotterdam Human mobility, whatever its scale, is often controversial. Hence it carries with it the potential for politics. A core feature of mobility politics is the tension between the desire to maximise the social and economic benefits of migration and pressures to restrict movement. Transnational communities, global instability, advances in transportation and communication, and concepts of ‘smart borders’ and ‘migration management’ are just a few of the phenomena transforming the landscape of migration today. The tension between openness and restriction raises important questions about how different types of policy and politics come to life and influence mobility. Mobility & Politics invites original, theoretically and empirically informed studies for academic and policy-oriented debates. Authors examine issues such as refugees and displacement, migration and citizenship, security and cross-border movements, (post-)colonialism and mobility, and transnational movements and cosmopolitics.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14800

Matthieu Cimino Editor

Syria: Borders, Boundaries, and the State

Editor Matthieu Cimino Oxford, UK

Mobility & Politics ISBN 978-3-030-44876-9 ISBN 978-3-030-44877-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44877-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Foreword

“One, one, one, ‘Amuda and Kafr Nabl are one, the Syrian people is one.” This was a slogan signed by the local committee of ‘Amuda, a Kurdish town in North-East Syria, at the beginning of the Syrian uprising in 2011. “Muslims, Christians, all one Syrian people” was chanted across the streets of Damascus in 2011. Even the occupied Golan Heights territory was part of this all-inclusive rhetoric: “Greetings from the bride of the north, ‘Amuda, to the bride of the occupied South, Majdal Shams,” with Majdal Shams answering with “bows to you, how beautiful would it be to live in the same country.” At this early stage of the revolution, all signs pointed to a unified country, a strong sense of a Syrian national identity, and an overwhelming feeling of solidarity among Syrians from various parts of the country. Not only did the revolution not seek to challenge the external borders of Syria—with the exception of the Golan Heights, often claimed as a part of Syria in various slogans, but Syrian protestors were also adamant in highlighting the unity of their country, sometimes in very creative ways. Language, and in particular Syrian dialect, was a tool the protestors used daily on the streets of Syria to showcase the unity of the Syrian people regardless of ethnic, regional, or religious differences. A symbolic chain of slogans emerged, where a slogan from a city would be answered by a town on the other side of the country, a powerful demonstration that indeed, “one, one one, the Syrian people is one.” In this process, the local dialectal differences of one region were used in the slogans of another, such as in the case of the slogan from Damascus to v

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Daraa, “Oh Daraa, we are with you till death,” where the term “we” used is henna, common in Daraa, rather than the Damascene nahna. Humor was present in the creation of new sayings: The protestors created a new proverb in Arabic, translating as “sectarianism is the product of the regime so avoid it,” recalling the Qur’anic verse “fitna is the product of the devil so avoid it.” All these signs pointed to the awareness, by the Syrian people, of the fragmentation strategies of the uprising by the Syrian regime. These hopes of a unified country against the regime were short-lived. In 2014, Daesh raised its flag in the Syrian city of Raqqa, making it its de facto capital a year later. As early as 2012 onward, the national borders of Syria did not de facto delineate a coherent state any longer, and Syria’s territory’s spatial continuity was broken. In this process, it is not only the physical space that was altered and fragmented, but also the very cohesion of Syria’s social fabric, which constitutes the most serious challenge for Syria’s future peace and stability. What the posters of the early days of the revolution had warned the world about had materialized, in the most inhumane and unexpected ways possible. The fragmentation of Syria’s territory was as brutal as it was rapid. A map of Syria in 2016 shows a mosaic of areas under the control of different actors: While the Syrian regime controlled some areas along the Damascus-Aleppo axis, the Kurdish PYD took charge of the Federation of North Syria, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) occupied a large part of East and Central Syria, the Syrian opposition held various discontinuous areas, and the Islamic group Jabhat Fatah al-Sham controlled a few areas in the North Western part of the country. While ISIL began minting its own gold dinars, the Turkish lira and the US dollar became used currencies in Syria along with the Syrian pound. The borders of modern Syria, which had been thought stable and socially internalized, had been challenged, opening up avenues to new imaginations of space: the possibility of a Kurdistan, but also an umma unified under an Islamic State. The Syrian case is a demonstration of the complex nature of borders and boundaries, as well as their fluctuant and transient character. As very polyvalent terms, borders and boundaries can denote a dividing line that is natural, political, institutional, historical, legal, imagined, cultural, social, hard or soft, visible or invisible. In the field of border studies, borders (understood as mostly external) and boundaries (mostly internal of imagined) are one of the most ubiquitous features of political geography. A

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burgeoning field of interdisciplinary nature, border studies has gained renewed prominence in the twenty-first century across the social sciences and humanities, in line with the current global crises and transformations of our world. Territorial disputes, resource management, migrations, or globalization are among the key topics of this field: These issues are deeply anchored in the Syrian case, as this volume skillfully demonstrates. Central to the Syrian case and to the field of border studies is the concept of the border as a process: Borders are the outcome of processes of bordering and othering, and as such, borders are active forces characterized by variability and contingency across space and time. They can be used and manipulated by various actors: state, transnational, or internal players. The Syrian case provides a formidable illustration of these processes at play. The Syrian-Israeli border, despite being a feature of the Syrian regime’s resistance rhetoric, has been the most quietest border over the past decades. As this volume shows, the changing nature of borders in the Syrian case makes their study even more necessary in the twenty-first century: Far from vanishing, borders exhibit a changing nature. As the first volume dedicated to the study of Syria’s borders from the mandate period till the rise of ISIL, this book could not come at a more opportune time, both for a better understanding of Syria, but also at the global level given the recent political, social, and environmental transformations. First, it is a timely work for a better understanding of modern Syria and the 2011-present civil war, examined here through the lens of borders as well as geographical space and imagination. The Syrian conflict is the foremost example of a local conflict that has become a global crisis: from international players leading a proxy war, transnational groups and foreign fighters establishing their battles within its borders, to global migrations and an unfolding humanitarian crisis that has impacted territories as far as Europe or the United States and Australia. With the migrations of Syrian refugees and the internationally led attacks of ISIS, Syria’s porous borders suddenly became a problem for the international community, one it could no longer ignore. If it was too late of a wake-up call, the Syrian scenario is one that reminds us of the global nature of our world, and the necessity to care and solve crises before they aggravate. Second, at the global level, it seems that borders have never been so crucial for academic examination: Their changing nature and their porosity call for a greater attention to the future of borders. While wars and instability are

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driving many outside of their state borders, climate change is becoming an alarming factor in the influx of population migrations. At the state level, but also at the local and micro level, many communities are leaving their areas as food becomes too scarce because, for instance, fishing is not an option any longer. Other communities are chased outside of their borders such as the Rohingya in Myanmar. These phenomena will, unfortunately, only aggravate in the years and decades to come. This is why this book will be a valuable tool not only for specialists of Syria and border studies scholars, but also anyone interested in pressing global issues. Starting with the creation of modern Syria and the Sykes-Picot drawing of its new borders up until the establishment of a Caliphate encompassing Syrian and Iraqi territories, this volume is unique by its many temporalities. The case studies provided go way beyond these timely markers (1920–2017): Ottoman legacy, but also the long-term history of the Kurds going back to the sixteenth century, or the references to the early Islamic empire by Daesh are all examined by the contributors. They have successfully demonstrated that each actor in the conflict should be studied through a timeline that is unique to them. When the ancient or Islamic past is recalled, there is much to satisfy the imagination in the case of Syria given the rich history of its borders. A cradle of civilization, Damascus is known as the most continuously inhabited city in the world. Following a rich prehistory, Syria was a territory under the Persian, Greek, and Roman empires, and in the latter, several parts of Syria acted as a buffer zone under the Ghassanid empire. Syria was then integrated within the Islamic empire after the conquests, becoming the seat of the Umayyad empire, and later played a key role during the Mamluk empire being united with Egypt, and finally as a province of the Ottomans up until the early twentieth century. The legacy of the Ottoman era is swiftly integrated to this volume, enabling the reader to get a grasp of a long-term border construction and internalization process. Many key questions are raised by this volume. When do borders become legitimate and internalized, and through what processes? How and why do state and non-state actors manipulate borders? What was the legacy of the short-lived Arab Kingdom of Syria under Emir Faisal in 1919? The Kingdom proclaimed Syria as a territory between “its natural boundaries” from the Taurus mountains in Turkey to the Sinai desert in Egypt and became a source of inspiration for many Arab liberation movements. What is the relationship

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between localism or regional identities and nationalism? When and how do local identities become predominant? In the height of the civil war, many Syrians spoke of their country as a historical patchwork made up of different regions that were not one entity, a discourse that was scarcely heard before that stage. These discourses were the outcome of current events and the splitting of groups who supported various factions in the conflict. This raises the question: How do perceptions of self and territory change depending on present events? Each one of the chapters in this volume is the work of a scholar who knows the local languages, has done fieldwork during their career, and has used a variety of sources ranging from archival documents, to local newspapers, interviews, geography and history school textbooks, etc. Most scholars who have contributed to this volume have been working on Syria or its neighbors for many years and are specialists in their subject matter, be it Jordi Tejel on Syrian Kurds or Thomas Pierret on Sunni Islamists in Syria, for instance. The depth and breadth of the chapters is impressive, ranging from micro-level analyses and ethnographies, such as Sule Can’s study of Antalya’s ‘borderlanders’ or Kevin Mazur’s examination of Dayr al-Zur, to more macro-level analyses such as Matthieu Rey’s work on the legacy of the Tanzimat on Syria’s modern borders, allowing for a historiography of border construction in modern Syria. The Turkish, Lebanese, and Iraqi borders with Syria are examined in detail, only leaving out Jordanian and Israeli case studies. A multiplicity of disciplines, perspectives, and methods of investigation is presented here: modern history, but also anthropology, geography, political science, or sociology. It is the aggregation of these various perspectives and studies of different actors that allows us to get a clearer picture of Syria’s challenges and shifting borders and boundaries until the present day. Because borders are defined by at least two states or groups, each border examined here looks at various border actors, such as the Turkish and French states in Seda Altug’s piece, which showcases how the border was at times made impenetrable and at times unsafe and chaotic to serve state interests. Key moments in Syria’s modern history are examined in detail: the French mandate and the popular contestation of its imposed borders on Syria by Idir Ouahes, but also Pan Arabism under the Baath party, as both a key moment and ideology in the internalization processes of Syria’s borders in Souhail Belhadj Klaz and Mongi Abdennabi’s work. Non-state actors

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and their representation of Syrian territorialities is amply examined: Daniel Meier’s study on Hizbullah’s borderland strategy, but also Ali Hamdans’s work on the various territories of the opposition, or Matthieu Cimino’s chapter on Daesh’s recasting of Syrian territory all offer in-depth investigations of specific actors and their relationship to Syria’s borders. The editor of this work is both a colleague and a friend of ours. The genesis of this volume is a conference held at Saint Anthony’s College in Oxford in November 2017 under the title “Exploring Syria’s Borders and Boundaries.” Matthieu was then a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Faculty of Oriental Studies, working with Professor Eugene Rogan. We, Nassima and Ziad, were both invited discussants to the papers of the conference—Ziad was also the keynote speaker of the conference, with a talk entitled “War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity and Territorial Fragmentation: Are Peace and Reconstruction Possible in Syria?” Both of us have deep links with Syria, both academic and personal. I (Nassima) lived in Syria for a year studying at the French institute of Arab Studies (IFEAD) in Damascus. I later wrote a paper on the impact of the Syrian revolution on Arabic language in Syria, which won an academic award by the International Sociological Association. I met Matthieu while being an Early Career Fellow and Lecturer in Islamic History at the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Oxford University (2015–2017) and a Senior Member of Saint Anthony’s College. Matthieu and I had shared interests in modern Syria, but also Iraq, as well as Islamic history. Matthieu’s work combining political analyses of contemporary Syria with an exploration of the historical sources of Daesh’s rhetoric is a case in point. He asked me to be a discussant of his work during the Conversation Series of the Faculty of Oriental Studies, where he presented his early project on Syria’s borders. Islamic medieval geography textbooks, as Matthieu demonstrated, played a key role in the rhetoric of Daesh and its conception of the space, dar al-islam; the analysis of the Islamic past was necessary to shed light on contemporary ideologies and movements. We both worked with our esteemed colleague Professor Eugene Rogan, Director of the Middle East Studies Center at Saint Anthony’s College, and author of groundbreaking work on the topic of Ottoman borders and state restructuring during the last decades of the empire, notably Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire: Transjordan, 1850–1921 (2000).

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Perhaps the most challenging border for the future of Syria is a nontangible and symbolic one: It is the border between those who have lost (their lives, their families, their homes) and those who have the feeling they have won, i.e., the regime supporters. It will take a lot of work, time, and a strong will to overcome this deep fissure in the social fabric of Syria. Dr. Nassima Neggaz New College Florida, USA Dr. Ziad Majed American University Paris, France

Dr. Nassima Neggaz is Assistant Professor in Islamic Studies at New College Florida in Sarasota (US). She was previously an Early Career Fellow and Lecturer in Islamic History at Oxford University (Oriental Studies & Saint Antony’s) and Jameel Lecturer in Islamic Studies at Cardiff University. Her research fields encompass medieval Islamic history as well as contemporary Iraq and Syria. Dr. Ziad Majed is Associate Professor and coordinator of the Middle Eastern Studies Program at the American University of Paris. His latest publications are Syrie, La révolution Orpheline (2014), Iran and Its Four Arab Fronts (2017), and Dans la tête de Bachar Al-Assad (with Subhi Hadidi and Farouk Mardam-Bey, 2018).

Acknowledgments

This book and Matthieu Cimino’s article are part of a Marie SkłodowskaCurie project entitled “The Fate of a Colonial Legacy: A Modern History of Syrian Borders (1920–2015)” funded by the European Union the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation approval (Grant Agreement No. 701923). Jordi Tejel’s article is part of a larger research project entitled “Towards a Decentred History of the Middle East: Transborder Spaces, Circulations, Frontier Effects and State Formation, 1920–1946” funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation approval (Grant Agreement No. 725269). Sule ¸ Can would like to thank Wenner-Gren Foundation and Binghamton University for supporting this ethnographic research. For their helpful comments, Kevin Mazur would like to thank Maryam Ababsa, Carl Dahlström, Loubna El Amine, Kheder Khaddour, Raphaël Lefèvre, Daniel Neep, and Isabelle Schierenbeck.

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About This Book/Conference

This book is the result of a conference hosted in November 2017 entitled “Exploring Syria’s Borders and Boundaries.” Enabled by funding from the Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions program and the Maison Française d’Oxford (MFO), the workshop was hosted by the University of Oxford (Saint Antony’s College and The Oriental Institute) and the MFO. It brought together researchers working on Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Turkey.

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Contents

1

Introduction Matthieu Cimino The Invention of Syrian Borders and the Affirmation of the Modern State Spatial and Symbolic Boundaries: Reconfigurations in Times of War “Syria as We See It”: Territorialities, Contemporary Imagined Geographies, and the Syrian Conflict References

Part I

2

1

6 11 16 21

From the Mandate to Assad’s Dynasty: Constructing, Contesting, and Legitimizing Syrian Borders (1920–2011)

Drawing a Line in the Sand? Another (Hi)Story of Borders Matthieu Rey Introduction Studying the Fabric of the Border Tanzimat Reforms, Settlements, and the Euphrates River Transport, Technologies, and Control of the Area

27 27 29 35 37

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Completing the Ottoman Reforms, the Action of the French Authorities in Syria Conclusion References 3

4

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The Turkish-Syrian Border and Politics of Difference in Turkey and Syria (1921–1939) Seda Altu˘g Introduction Retarded Presence and Politics of Border in French-Syria Turkey and the Border Region in 1920s: Ordering Through Deliberate Destabilization International Border-Making as a Turkish Domestic Matter Conclusion References Syria’s Internal Boundaries During the French Mandate: Control and Contestation Idir Ouahes Introduction Historical Outline Internal (Re)Organization Contestation of State Space in the Executive Apparatus Contestation of State Space in the Legislative Apparatus Contestation of State Space in the Press Conclusion References “The Country Should Unite First”: Pan-Arabism, State and Territory in Syria Under the Baath Rules Souhail Belhadj Klaz and Mongi Abdennabi Introduction The Country or the Countries Should Unite First? The Pan-Arabism Dilemma Hafez al-Asad Sovereignism: An Alternative to the Failure of the Arab Unionist Project?

40 42 44

47 47 49 55 63 68 71

75 75 76 79 81 83 87 89 91

93 93 94 97

CONTENTS

Syria’s External Security Versus Arab National Unity: The Consolidation of Hafez al-Asad’s Power Through the Help of the Intelligence Services From Hafez to Bashar al-Asad: The Paradox of Legitimizing the Sykes-Picot Agreement Through a Pan-Arab Policy References

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101 104

Part II Struggling for the Borderlands: The Syrian Revolution (2011) and Its Aftermath 6

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Hizbullah’s Borderlands Strategy: From Identity Shaping to the Nation-State Re-ordering Daniel Meier Introduction The Territorialisation of Political Ambitions From the South to the Centre 2006 and the Syrian War: Redeployment Conclusion References Spatialization of Ethno-Religious and Political Boundaries at the Turkish-Syrian Border Sule ¸ Can Introduction The Syrian Civil War: A Local View from the Borderlands Cityscape and Political Belonging in Antakya The Politics of Urban Space After 2011 Shifting Political Landscape at/Across the Border Conclusion References Dayr al-Zur from Revolution to ISIS: Local Networks, Hybrid Identities, and Outside Authorities Kevin Mazur Introduction Method and Sources

109 109 111 114 117 122 124

127 127 129 132 137 142 144 147

151 151 154

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Dayr al-Zur Before the Uprising 2011: Demonstrations in the City and Disparate Violence in the Countryside 2012: Armed Struggle Against the Regime 2013: Struggle Among Armed Groups and the Ascendance of Jabhat al-Nusra 2014: The Ascendance of ISIS Conclusion References

Part III

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155 162 165 171 182 189 191

Imagining and Manufacturing the Borders: Non-state Actors and Their Representations of Syrian Territory (2011–2017)

The Opposition’s Three Territories Ali Hamdan Introduction Geographies of Syria’s Conflict Territoriality and Civil War in Syria Differing Territorial Conceptions Conclusion References

199

Sunni Islamists: From Syria to the Umma, and Back Thomas Pierret Introduction The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood’s Syria-Centric Arab Nationalism Against Nationalism: Radicals and Traditionalists The 2011 Uprising and the Enshrinement of Syrianhood Conclusion References

221

The Complex and Dynamic Relationship of Syria’s Kurds with Syrian Borders: Continuities and Changes Jordi Tejel Introduction

199 200 203 207 215 217

221 223 226 231 236 238

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Nationalism, Maps and Education Kurdish Visions of Kurdistan Toward an Alternative Understanding of the Role of Maps and Textbooks Between Pan-Kurdism and Syrianization, 1920–2011 The Syrian Revolution and Its Aftermath: Continuities and Changes Conclusion References 12

The Map and Territory in Political Islam: Spatial Ideology and the Teaching of Geography by the Islamic State Matthieu Cimino Introduction Between Fixity and Flexibility: A Brief Theory of Empires Boundaries Shaping the World: The Founding Role of Medieval Geographical Thought (Ninth–Eleventh Centuries) Building and Disseminating a Collective Memory: The Question of the D¯ a’ish Schoolbooks An Injunction to Conquer: Definition and Symbolism of the Islamic World According to D¯ a’ish Conclusion References

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245 247 250 251 259 262 264

269 269 272 275 278 281 285 286

Location Index

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Name Index

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Notes on Contributors

Mongi Abdennabi is a journalist, political consultant, and analyst in Middle East and North Africa Affairs. From 2006 to 2012, he worked as a consultant in Middle East Affairs with the International Crisis Group and is currently working as a consultant with Syrian NGOs in Turkey focusing on local communities. Dr. Seda Altu˘g is a lecturer at the Ataturk Institute for Modern Turkish History at Bogazici University, Istanbul. She received her Ph.D. from Utrecht University, Holland. Dr. Souhail Belhadj Klaz is a Researcher at the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding at the Graduate Institute, Geneva. He worked on a three-year project named “Tunisia: Security Provision and Local State Authority in a Time of Transition,” with the support of the Gerda Henkel Foundation. In parallel, he is conducting a research on economy of violence and armed conflict in Syria. Dr. Sule ¸ Can received her doctoral degree from Binghamton University (SUNY) in 2018. She is currently a Research Associate at Binghamton University, Department of Anthropology. Dr. Matthieu Cimino is a fellow at the Paris Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS). Formerly a Marie Curie scholar at the University of Oxford, he is now working on territorial ideologies of jihadi non-state actors.

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Dr. Ali Hamdan is a fellow with the Social Science Research Council, a former fellow of the American Center for Oriental Research (ACOR), and an associate research fellow at the Institut Français du Proche-Orient (IFPO) in Amman, Jordan. He is from Shelburne Falls, MA. Dr. Kevin Mazur is a visiting postdoctoral fellow at the Orient-Institut Beirut and was previously a Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. Dr. Daniel Meier is associate researcher at PACTE-CNRS laboratory and teaches at Sciences Po Grenoble. He conducted extensive fieldwork on border issues and is the author of Shaping Lebanon’s Borderlands (I.B. Tauris, 2016). Dr. Idir Ouahes has completed a Ph.D. at the University of Exeter and is working on a project about the internal organization of Syria over the 1916–1966 period. Dr. Thomas Pierret is a Senior Researcher at Aix Marseille Université, CNRS, IREMAM, Aix-en-Provence, France, and a former Senior Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh. He authored Religion and State in Syria (Cambridge University Press, 2013). Dr. Matthieu Rey is a Researcher at IREMAM (CNRS-Aix en Provence) and an Associate Researcher at the IFAS (Johannesburg) and Wits University, History Workshop. A former fellow at the Collège de France (Paris), he holds a Ph.D. in history from the EHESS (Paris). Dr. Jordi Tejel is an Adjunct Professor in the History Department at the University of Neuchâtel. Currently, he leads a research program funded by the European Research Council on border-making and state-formation processes in the Middle East in the interwar period.

Abbreviations

BANP BLLC CSA CVE FSA ICC ISIS LAC PBR SIF SILF SR

Bozanti-Adana-Nisibin et Prolongements Building Legitimacy for Local Councils in Syria Civil Services Administration Countering-Violent Extremism Free Syrian Army Idlib City Council Islamic State in Iraq and the Levan/al-Sham Local Administrative Council Permanent Border Commission Syrian Islamic Front Syrian Islamic Liberation Front Service de Renseignement (intelligence service)

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List of Figures

Fig. 4.1

Fig. 7.1 Fig. 7.2 Fig. 8.1 Fig. 8.2

Map of the initial French division of Mandate Syria. Courtesy of Wikipedian “Techpete”. Available online: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mandate_of_ Syria.svg Map of Turkey and Antakya on the border with Syria (Drawn by the author) Old Antakya Street, a typical Antiochian door at a traditional house, 2017 (Photographed by the author) Towns in Dayr al-Zur governorate, by population size (Source Author) Major oil and gas fields in Dayr al-Zur governorate (and towns referenced in text) (Source Author)

80 128 135 157 169

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 8.3

Fig. 11.1

al-Buchamal sub-tribes (and towns referenced in text) Notes This chart provides only a partial list of towns in which members of each sub-tribe reside. In addition, it sketches potential bases of group identification and solidarity, rather than the actual group around which social life and contention are structured. Many tribal leaders made claims to represent a tribal grouping at the level of an entire sub-tribe, such as al-Bukayr or al-Buchamal. In practice, however, splits in patterns of action below the level of the town were common from the beginning of the upspring (see main text). Information on lines of descent comes from Zakariya (1945). For a more comprehensive accounting, see a map by Justice for Life Organization (2017), al-Mashhour (2017: 13–17), and Zakariya (1945: 568–579) (Source Author) ‘Cîranên me (Our neighbours)’ Zanistên Civakî, 6th grade, 2015, p. 117

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction Matthieu Cimino

Since March 2011, Syria has been engaged in a major revolutionary process that started in the southern city of Daraa. Located at the Jordanian border, the city was, until the uprising, one of the advanced outposts of the Syrian defense system against Israel and, pertinently, home to several regiments. Due to this considerable concentration of Syrian soldiers, mainly of Sunni origin and including many officers, Daraa provided a significant number of defectors (munshaq¯ın), who then constituted the “historic” nucleus of the Free Syrian Army (hereafter, FSA), at least for southern Syria (Winter 2013). In 2013, during a first series of interviews conducted at the Syro-Jordanian border with members of the opposition from the coordination committees (tans¯ıqiyy¯ at ) and the FSA,1 one of the interlocutors told me that, in reaction to the imbalance of the conflict, the latter was ready to “accept help from everyone, including Israel”; moreover, he continued in jest, “we might even give them the Golan back; where do we sign?” With this anecdote, the interviewee demonstrated the lack of interest shown by the opposition in territory, even for the Golan,2 which was portrayed by the Syrian regime as a key political issue, and

M. Cimino (B) Oxford, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Cimino (ed.), Syria: Borders, Boundaries, and the State, Mobility & Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44877-6_1

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M. CIMINO

had since the early 1970s constituted the very foundation of its arsenal of legitimization (Hinnebusch 2006). Although the Golan Heights had for decades been the subject of a systematic propaganda campaign in the major cities of Syria,3 in 2013 this issue seemed negligible in comparison with the opposition’s desire to put an end to the authoritarian regime of the Assad family. Thus, from the start of the uprising, it was clear to most observers of the Syrian conflict that territorial motives were not at the heart of the mobilizations. On a daily basis, the so-called local nationalist actors of the opposition were not territorializing their demands. Besides, not only were the current borders of Syria not a mobilizing factor in the conflict, it even seems that they had largely been internalized. As Vignal (2017) puts it, “Syria’s national construction, which had taken place within borders originally imposed by external actors, was not only acknowledged as a practical reality but constituted the framework within which Syrians had come to define themselves” (Vignal 2017: 809). In the weekly demonstrations, the opposition’s claims were directed against the Assad family, calling for the end of authoritarianism, and regime change (Ismail 2011). Nevertheless, the wide-ranging civil war, largely depicted by the regime as a “sectarian plot” (Cimino 2014), also attracted foreign fighters. Mercenaries and militia came to lend a hand to both the opposition and the regime, while local Syrian factions were stuck in internal conflicts around the definition of the identity of the revolution. In that context, two nonstate actors, namely the Islamic State and the PYD,4 which had each taken control of various territories, quickly engaged in contradictory statebuilding processes for the creation of, respectively, a Sunni caliphate and an autonomous Kurdistan. Although the Islamic State’s caliphate project was defeated by the war launched by the US-led Coalition,5 and Syrian Kurdish political actors have always been very cautious about the creation of an autonomous state—be it transnational or territorially limited to Syria—preferring a form of “decentralized” (l¯ a markaziyyah) confederalism, the fact remains that these different and contradictory projects revealed that a contestation of Syrian territory and its colonial boundaries was a factor for some actors, both exogenous and endogenous to Syria. This situation was made possible by a series of factors, namely the Syrian regime’s “self-fulfilling prophecy” policy and the early backing of Islamist militants (Mohand 2011); the internal fragmentation of Syria (Heydemann 2013); the porosity of its external borders (Harling and

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Simon 2015); the involvement of external actors (Wimmen and Asseburg 2012); and more. However, although a considerable number of books, scientific articles, and other think-tank notes on the subject have been published since 2011,6 few works have approached the Syrian conflict through the prism of the country’s borders. Indeed, Syrian boundaries have never been fully investigated by the academic community, unlike those of the Ottoman Empire (Ben-Bassat and Ben-Artzi 2015; Rogan 2002), Palestine (Sfeir-Khayat 2009; Ball 2012; Paul 2020); or Lebanon (Meier 2013). While some works deeply address particular aspects, such as territorial disputes (Jörum 2014), there is still a lack of major research on Syrian borders. Until 2011, this could easily be explained by the authoritarian nature of the regime and the subsequent difficulties for researchers to work there and to collect both qualitative and quantitative data. Now, as this research has become possible, this book aims to open the door to the field of border studies, which remains largely under-explored in favor of more conventional approaches in sociology or political science. Indeed, border studies is a relatively fragmented area of research. “Obscure” (Paasi 2003) and, above all, polysemic, the notion of the border is observed from multiple angles, regularly offering new perspectives in history, political science, anthropology, philosophy (Balibar 2009), and also cultural studies in the definition of “otherness” (Rovisco 2010). From a theoretical aspect, this book is based on three postulates: (1) Investigating a border implies asking the question: where? (Prescott 1999; Minghi 2017). Where is the border? What is its history, and what processes explain its location? If this aspect is today often marginalized in favor of purely processual logics, it is nonetheless fundamental, as preeminent as in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Borders materialize the sedimentation of states in our world of Westphalian sovereignty (1648): They constitute markers of division between two areas of authority. Sometimes invisible to the eye, often drawn on the ground, these lines are first of all concrete and tangible symbols, especially for the people who encounter them on a daily basis. The where therefore is crucial. In the case of Syria, exploring the borders consequently requires an examination of colonial and diplomatic history. First imposed by the territorial conquest, borders then materialize the process of state formation (Anderson and O’Dowd 1999).

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Once the situation is frozen on the ground, it then has to be cartographically translated; at the “age of Empires” (Hobsbawm 2010), this translation was carried out in the anteroom of the European diplomatic salons. Then, as the state accumulates power and becomes centralized, its authority spreads to the peripheries. As such, once created, the border must be maintained and stabilized (Barth 1998). As a “privileged place of assertion of political power” (Montenach 2016), it is part of an operational process aimed at maintaining its physical and symbolic integrity; it must therefore have a meaning both for the state but also for the local population. In the first case, the central government will strive to “rationalize” the border by installing customs officials and the military. The border then becomes a tool for defining the envelope of the state through visible markers, such as railways or surveillance posts. The state gives itself authority to manage the incoming and outgoing flows and, if necessary, to modify the demographic balance in order to secure the space and make it more compatible with its own interests. In the second case, local actors—those of the borderlands— will appropriate the border, adapt to it, or try to reconfigure its meaning and role by subverting it, notably through smuggling or revolts. After the conquest of territory, therefore, both state and local practices give an empirical sense to the border. (2) The other aspect is the how. Once the location is known and fixed, the line becomes a process. On a daily basis, the border plays a major role in building the collective imagination of a society, as a marker of otherness (the other is on the other side) and therefore as the envelope of a cultural sanctuary. Cartography plays here a key role as it provides a visual representation; as “powerful social and ideological tools” (Culcasi 2006), maps reflect previous conquests and the territorialization of the state. They constitute the unifying tools of a nation by ensuring “prestige and pride in social groups” (Monmonier 1991; Crampton and Krygier 2006). By producing maps, the state reminds us that it is first of all a “power container” which must preserve its integrity and stability, as well as a “wealth container” eager to conquer larger territories (Taylor 1994). Above all, however, the state produces maps to formalize and legitimize the process of territorialization. Yet, in the words of Van Houtum and Naerssen (2002), the where and the how constitute two distinct fields of research, “with

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their own centers of expertise, their own journals, their own tutelary figures, and (therefore) very few connections between them”. However, the exploration and understanding of borders— be they territorial or symbolic—implies the need for a multifaceted approach: What is the colonial history behind it? How was it ideologically constructed and then legitimized? And, above all, how is the border viewed and represented by the local populations and actors? (3) As a result, over the years, the study of borders as simple political lines has been largely sidelined, in favor of a focus on considering boundaries as processes. This led to a multiplicity of approaches and, as Paasi (2005) pointed out, to the “bursting of the discipline”. While some major theoreticians called for uniformity of concepts and models (Newman 2003; Liikanen 2010), others postulated the “impossibility of a single model, a large border theory” (Paasi 2009). In this book, although we wanted to avoid the pitfalls of dispersion as much as possible, the differing approaches of history, political science, sociology, and sometimes even anthropology are all represented. The aim is to present, through three different axes, the most recent research on the Syrian conflict, while following a chronological framework. Thus, this book is the result of a conference hosted in November 2017 entitled “Exploring Syria’s Borders and Boundaries”. Enabled by funding from the Horizon 2020 Marie SkłodowskaCurie Actions program and the Maison Françaised’Oxford (MFO), the latter and the University of Oxford (Saint Antony’s College and The Oriental Institute) brought together researchers working directly or indirectly on Syria, whose work had led them to investigate the significance of its borders. Over two days, these researchers shared their reflections, the substance of which is gathered in this collective work. Before presenting the spirit of the book, I extend my warm thanks to all the participants, and in particular to Dr. Ziad Majed and Dr. Nassima Neggaz whose, respectively, keynote speech and discussions considerably contributed to the reflections. From these three axes, Syria: Borders, Boundaries, and the State, is therefore divided into three parts. First, the objective is to retrace the colonial history (be it Ottoman or French) of the Syrian borders, by insisting on the local but also discursive dimensions of

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its creational process. In a second axis, we will study the territorial and urban reconfigurations resulting from the 2011 revolution, also largely polarizing on its local manifestations. Taking note of the revitalization of borderlands as an object of study in the Syrian case (Vignal 2017), this part will show how external actors (Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq) integrate into their political decision the changes induced by the conflict; and how do those transformations reconfigure the very representation of Syria and Syrians by either external or local actors. Finally, the third axis will study the productions and developments of national imaginaries and territorialities: How do the different actors (the secular and Islamist factions of the opposition, the PYD, and the Islamic State) of the conflict represent or imagine Syrian territory today? What are their strategies and conceptions of territoriality?

The Invention of Syrian Borders and the Affirmation of the Modern State The first part of this book, entitled From the Mandate to Assad’s dynasty: Constructing, contesting, and legitimizing Syrian borders (1920–2011), aims to contribute to the studies on the construction and significance of early Syrian borders. After the conclusion of the Sykes-Picot agreements7 and the fall of the Ottoman Empire (1920), France and the United Kingdom territorially divided the Middle East and, by relying on political minorities, encouraged and galvanized nationalist claims and tendencies, as a result of a long-term process that originally started in 1798, after Napoleon’s campaign to Egypt (Filiu 2018). As such, the creation of Syria was a pivotal moment in the history of the Near East, since it is particularly in this newly created territory that the mandate system was challenged until the withdrawal of the last French troops in 1946. Many authors have proposed an analogy between the 1925–1927 revolts and those of 2011, mostly with success (Zénobie 2011). However, although the recent uprisings borrowed from the past a comparable discursive register of mobilization, it seems that the territorial dimension, very present in 1925, is now absent. Nevertheless, revisiting the period of mandate, and then that of independence, using a territorial approach, seemed relevant for this book.

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How were those new borders built and viewed by the local population? By what processes did Syrian political actors legitimize them or, on the contrary, contest them, during the mandate period, or after? This first axis aims to contribute to the historiography of the border, by insisting on the fact that the border is not an “artificial” construct. Although the making of borders and territory is certainly a product of colonial history, this construction is nevertheless very clearly part of a set of precedencies and continuities, and how they prevailed during colonial times. We affirm that the architecture of the Syrian borders preexists the French mandate. The shaping of Syria’s territorial envelope began under the Ottoman Empire, materialized during the Tanzimat reform (1839– 1876), and was finally institutionalized and internalized during the French mandate. Thus, in the case of the Turkish-Syrian border, the line separating the two states is firstly the result of the modernizing policies of the Ottomans, then of its appropriation by the local communities. In fact, these “borderlanders”, long marginalized as an object of study, remain at the heart of this axis; how do the peripheries contribute to the construction of borders? And how do these abnormalities (Agnew 2007) make it possible to understand the practices of states’ territorialities? This is the subject of the articles by Matthieu Rey and Seda Altu˘g. In Drawing a line in the sand? Another (hi)story of borders (Chapter 2), Matthieu Rey presents an archeology of the Syrian-Turkish border, through the example of the city of Jarabulus. Grounding his reflections in history back to the nineteenth century, the author—whose work is in line with that of Sahlins (1989)—has explored intelligence services’ archives and conducted semi-structured interviews. He identifies three processes by which a border is created: the formal division on the ground (allocation); the establishment of places, devices, and technologies to control the environment or space, in particular the railways and the development of villages, castles, and other nodal points; and finally, the appropriation by local actors of these new borders. In an unprecedented case study, Rey reminds us that borders—Syrian or others—are not only the product of diplomatic arrangements between major powers, even in the “era of Empires”, but the result of a long process of sedimentation, administration of the territory and affirmation of central power. “Borders engineering”, i.e., the process by which a state familiarizes with its own border, requires considerable time (Dullin 2014).

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If this process is already well known in contemporary historiography, Rey’s contribution is to focus on the key role of infrastructures and technologies (border posts, railways, etc.) in the “fabric” of these borders, as tools for the states to control territory—Mann’s “infrastructural power” (1984)—and as nodal points for meeting, mediation, and confrontation between the central state, the local communities, and the tribes. Contrary to popular and sometimes academic belief, the Turkish-Syrian border materialized well before the fall of the Ottoman Empire and is primarily the product of the Tanzimat reform (1839–1876), i.e., the economic development policies and demographic changes first undertaken by the Ottoman Empire. Before the War, the Ottomans attempted to subdue the Syrian provinces. New villages were created; tribes were pushed back or subdued, in general, “control over the Euphrates River improved”. When the Treaty of Ankara was finally signed (1921), the border “naturally” followed the train line then created, the Bagdadbahn. Finally, despite minor adjustments, the French confirmed and resumed the development policies and effectively consolidated the preexisting border. Seda Altu˘g’s chapter complements that of Rey, by tackling the post1920 construction of the border, on the Turkish side, and emphasizes on the key role of the borderlands in the materialization of the state’s authority. In The Turkish-Syrian border and politics of difference in Turkey and Syria (1921–1939) (Chapter 3), Altu˘g explains that borders are above all places of instability, to which undesirable people are relegated, kept away from society. In fact, if borders are places of coexistence and confrontation between states, as well as places of interaction between states and populations located on the other side of the border, they are also markers of the relationship between a state and its own population. In this study of the Turkish-Syrian border, the author shows that the very location of a border depends first on the politics of differentiation on the part of a state toward its own population. The case of the Jazira region is illustrative in this respect: During the French mandate, as it was allegedly empty, the region was considered the ideal place to settle refugees, who would ensure a buffer zone with Turkey and thus function as a limès, i.e., the Empire’s march with its neighboring states. This policy of settling refugees, and later security reinforcements, in this area triggered often sharp reactions from Syrian nationalists and the local population, who likened the refugees to “parasites” (t.ufayl¯ı). On the Turkish side, the demarcation and then the administration of the border constituted a real challenge for the nation-building objective

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of the newly created state whose primary concern was the control of the Armenian and Kurdish populations. In fact, not only did the Turkish state establish mechanisms to control and secure the border influx, but it also relied on the boundary to define the spectrum of otherness: the we and the them, i.e., the enemy. Thus, as Altu˘g explains, the Turkish authorities “attempted to rectify the border zone from the ‘improper’ populations who were considered to form a domestic and a cross-border threat to the security of the Turkish nation”. The border was then described as a dangerous place; those who crossed it illegally were either labeled as “gangs” (in the case of the Syrians), or as infiltrating it in a “political” threat, in the case of Armenians or Kurds. More specifically, the mandate’s archives show that the Turkish state supported criminal activities at the border, where necessary, in order to justify its coercive policies against social groups identified as “impure”. Altu˘g also demonstrates that the Turkish discourse had an ethno-racial basis and contributed to the essentialization of these same populations. Ultimately, it was on the grounds of this “instability” that the Turkish state pushed France to demarcate the Turkish-Syrian border, making it a national security imperative. Although the border is indeed built via the borderlands, they are also the product of one or multiple representations of space, and of the capacity of the state to impose them, as shown by the work of Idir Ouahes, Souhail Belhadj Klaz, and Mongi Abdennabi. In Syria’s internal boundaries during the French Mandate: Control and contestation (Chapter 4), Idir Ouahes focuses on the French policies of the mandate period. Although the preliminary configuration of the border dates back to the mid-nineteenth century, the French had clearly contributed to shaping it to their own territorial representation. However, the geographic contours of post-Ottoman Syria were also represented in different ways, by different local actors. This is the crux of Ouahes’ work, which explores the colonial and local imaginations and interpretations of Syrian territory. How did France imagine Syria in geographical and political terms, and what were the control policies put in place to implement this construction? What were the reactions of the local actors? As early as 1920, Paris started to devote the first decade of its mandate to “border and order” (Van Houtum and Naerssen 2002) the country along sectarian lines, in order to gain political control while reducing the nationalist aspirations of other groups.

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The French policy had two notable consequences. On one side, the country’s external envelope left Syria “cut off” from Lebanon, according to Syrian nationalists. Regarded by them as a province, Lebanon will never, despite various mobilizations, be “reintegrated” into the “motherland”. On the other hand, Syria was divided internally into “administrable blocks” (Damascus, Aleppo, the Druze, and Alawites). Several sectarian statelets thus coexisted within Syria, which was fragmented according to European anachronistic or orientalist representations, in which a certain minority dominated or was supposed to dominate over this or that region. In this chapter, Ouahes explores the centrifugal tendencies and the resistance strategies of Syrian nationalists opposing the French desire to impose an exogenous conception of their territory while implementing an “ethnic makeup”. This confrontation primarily polarized on many issues: first, as the new territorial organization of the state disrupted trade routes, the confrontation was largely based on economic and commercial discontent (as, for example, Ihsan al-Jabiri’s mobilization). The author also shows how this new reality was disputed on the executive level (opposition to the creation of a Syrian Federation), legislative (by boycotting the organization of elections), but also through the press, where debates flourished on the nature and significance of Syrian territory, as well as the need to struggle for the reunification of the various statelets and the independence of the country. Thus, during the French mandate, the question of the nature of the territory was widely and hotly debated, giving rise to a multiplicity of interpretations as to its form, its structure, and, more generally, its political organization. Idir Ouahes also proves that “those debates did not show a unified dissatisfaction with French policies; instead they represented the various conceptions of the Syrian state space along ethnic, geographic and political lines”. As for the French mandate period, very few works have questioned the spatial ideology of the major protagonists who conquered and then confiscated power from independence (1946) onward. During the Baathist rule and the “authoritarian stabilization” of the Assad dynasty, research was even nonexistent. In “The Country should unite first”: Pan-Arabism, State and Territory in Syria under the Baath rules (Chapter 5), Souhail Belhadj Klaz and Mongi Abdennabi fill this vacuum. After the departure of the French troops, the debates around Syrian territorial identity, and its function and role within the regional architecture of the Arab nations, continued within the Ba’ath Party. The desire for “unionism”, popularized by the mobilizing and charismatic figure of Gamal Abd al-Nasser up to

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1958, was concretely expressed in that year by the Egyptian-Syrian union within the United Arab Republic (UAR). This attempt at building a panArab union failed and, in 1961, was dissolved (Jankowski 2002). Despite this failure, pan-Arabism remains a unifying reality in Egypt and Syria; however, it was the Assad dynasty that definitively buried the project. By relying on unpublished documents, Belhadj Klaz and Abdennabi demonstrate that during the rules of Hafez al-Assad (1966–2000) and his son Bashar (2000–today), Syria initiated and then endorsed a transitional process from unionism to what Billig (1995) describes as the most “banal” nationalism. Under the leadership of the neo-Baath, Hafez alAssad developed and strengthened the concept of “regionalism” (qutr), that Syria must exist as an independent and sovereign state, but alongside other regional states. This “sovereignism”, consecrated by Hafez al-Assad, marked the defeat of the pan-Arabists of the Ba’ath Party and of their desire to merge the different Arab national territories. Beyond the party’s ideological approach, Belhadj Klaz and Abdennabi also present the practical consequences of this paradigm shift for Syrian foreign policy. If, on the domestic level, Hafez and then Bashar al-Assad endeavored to neutralize all organizations capable or willing to maintain this project, externally, Syria also became an “expansionist” state. Formerly “subordinate” to Egypt, Syria became a predatory state, notably by annexing Lebanon (1976–2005). At the same time, the intelligence services—which were fundamentally reconfigured—metamorphosed into the armed wing of this predatory policy. Before the 2011 revolution, it was finally Bashar al-Assad who, in a three-hour speech, definitively buried unionist policies, emphasizing the unshakable character of the independence and sovereignty of the Syrian nation. Thus, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, the transition to “banal” nationalism took place.

Spatial and Symbolic Boundaries: Reconfigurations in Times of War Buried by the authoritarianism of the Ba’ath Party, the territorial question only really re-emerged in favor of the 2011 Syrian revolution. On 11 February, young children from Daraa wrote on the walls of their institution, “Your turn has come, doctor!”. The mobilization that was initially peaceful spread to most of the country’s major cities, from Aleppo to Dayr az-Zur. In response to the Syrian regime’s policy of systematic repression,

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the opposition militarized itself (Filiu 2013) and progressively adopted an Islamic rhetoric of mobilization. In this second part, entitled Struggling for the Borderlands: the Syrian Revolution (2011) and its Aftermath, the objective is to question, through three case studies, the new collective representations of space and identities in post-2011 Syria. From that date, political violence, centralized and organized by the Syrian regime, involved a double reconfiguration, firstly of representations of Syrian territory, by external or local actors, and secondly, of the symbolic, social but also concrete borders between the different sectarian groups, notably in ethno-national heterogeneous cities. These two aspects brought about profound modifications in the imaginative geographies, that is, in the way in which the social groups represent each other. According to Hewitt (2019: 258), cited by Graham (2006: 256), “war mobilizes the highly charged and dangerous dialectic of place attachment: the perceived antithesis of ‘our’ places or homeland and ‘theirs’”. War contributes to an alteration in the representation of space and leads political actors or peoples to modify the cursor of the line separating their own social group from others, generally by polarizing it. How do a state, a city, or social groups define the framework of their identity? How do political realities influence our perception of the other and how, therefore, are spatial or urban boundaries recomposed? In this second axis, the authors explore different internal and external borders and boundaries reconfigurations, in Lebanon (Daniel Meier), Turkey (Sule ¸ Can), and also in Syria, on the Iraqi border (Kevin Mazur). As in the first part, their work is largely dedicated to the borderlands, as major laboratories of reconfigurations. Due to the unavailability of authors working on Jordan and Israel, and editorial constraints, these two cases could not be included but could and should be the subject of further research. In Hizbullah’s borderlands strategy: from identity shaping to re-ordering the nation state (Chapter 6), Daniel Meier explores the Syrian-Lebanese borderlands through research on Hizbullah. Supported by dense historical reflection over an extended period of time (1982–2016), the author interrogates the mechanisms and the strategies by which the Shiite party has, since its creation, territorialized its political ambitions in Lebanon, and how the latter shifted its territorial center of gravity, by factoring Syria into its rhetoric of nationalist mobilization. In fact, Meier asks himself the following questions: How do we territorialize power and how, by studying the borderland strategy of the party, can we understand its current

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domestic strategy? By relying on Van Houtum’s triptych (2002) defining territorialization as a sequential process of bordering (shaping the region), ordering (legitimizing power), and othering (defining the other), Meier describes the process by which Hizbullah built its legitimacy in Lebanon. First, the party appropriated a territory (South Lebanon) by mounting an effective resistance to the Israeli presence, until its actual withdrawal in May 2000. Meier emphasizes on the importance of the borderland regions (particularly the Qalamoun region), which then served as key main points of its political and symbolic influence. During this period of time, Hizbullah “re-bordered the Southern limits of the Lebanese state according to a nationalistic posture” and inserted itself into Lebanese politics, with “a clear territorial occupied zone, a designated enemy and therefore a strategic goal”. After the end of Israeli occupation, by pretexts for mobilization and engaging in territorial disputes (the Shebaa Farms in particular), the Shiite party continued to monopolize the imperative of resistance to the Israeli “presence”, while at the same time developing a considerable security apparatus, and maintaining political control over its territory. Then, in 2011, the beginning of the Syrian revolution constituted a strategic dilemma for the Shiite party, although one quickly resolved. To ensure the preservation of the “resistance” (muq¯ awamah) and “refusal” (mum¯ ana ah) dichotomy—that was very largely discredited by the movement’s commitment alongside the repression of the Syrian regime (Dot-Pouillard 2012), Hizbullah spatially shifted the area of its territory to include geographical parts of Syria. By sending forces across the border, for example in Qoussayr in 2013, and then establishing itself in the Qalamoun Mountains, Hizbullah absorbed part of the Syrian borderlands within its strategic area. At the same time, the party’s engagement in the war alongside the regime was carried out in the name of the anti-imperialist struggle. As it took place outside its own territory, this anti-jihadist mobilization of the party was then legitimized in the name of Lebanese sovereignty and the defense of the country’s borders. Progressively, the movement then started to “border this area on the model developed in South Lebanon”. While Meier’s work offers a macro reflection on the construction of the territorial identity of a non-state actor, the seventh and eighth chapters propose a micro perspective, aiming to extract the local dynamics from the reconfiguration of social groups’ symbolic borders. In spatialization of ethno-religious and political boundaries at the Turkish-Syrian

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border (Chapter 7), Sule ¸ Can explores the city of Antakya, at the TurkishSyrian border. Multicultural and multiethnic, formerly Syrian but annexed by Turkey in 1939, Antakya is regularly praised by the Turkish authorities. Like many places in the borderlands, the city provides a laboratory to observe the social and political practices of different sectarian groups and their representations of their own collective identities. Antakya, a plural place of intermingling of Sunni Turks and Arab Alawites, allows us to understand the processes by which the ethno-religious, urban and local political boundaries are socially constructed, maintained, or reconfigured; more importantly, the mechanisms by which social boundaries are being translated into a spatial reality. As Can mentions, “the valorization of national territory and the contestation of national, ethnic, and religious identities are often most visible in the borderlands”, which is why studying the geography of difference in border towns remains fundamental academic endeavor. In this well-documented chapter, informed by field studies carried out in the city, Can not only offers a general and innovative ethnography of Antakya, but also questions the way in which “coexistence” between different communities has been affected by the war since 2011. Cultural boundaries and “sectarian imaginary” (Ali 2010) of Antakya’s communities were drastically reconfigured in response to the Syrian conflict with the massive influx of refugees this caused; demographic changes in the city; and political initiatives of the Turkish government, through modifications of the administrative and electoral map of ethnically heterogeneous neighborhoods, such as Defne or Arsuz. For the author, the first consequence of the conflict is found in the identitarian polarization between Alawites and Sunnites, a shift publicly visible in commercial strategies (souvenir shops selling posters of Bashar al-Assad and Imam Ali), individual initiatives (selection of tenants by ethnic category), circulatory practices (fear of being attacked by the other), behavior toward refugees, or even contestation of touristic sites. On a daily basis, cultural identification is systematic and testifies to ethnocultural tension. In another significant shift, while the urban and social boundaries of Antakya were essentially “intuitive” at the start of the conflict, they now seem very marked and almost openly present in everyday life. Finally, material borders and social boundaries clearly overlap, particularly in the identification of Alawites with the Syrian regime; in 2015, some demonstrators therefore openly shouted their support for Bashar al-Assad.

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Another microscale case study, Kevin Mazur’s colossal chapter focuses on the city of Dayr az-Zur, a hub in northeastern Syria and an interface with Iraq. In Dayr al-Zur from revolution to Isis: Local networks, hybrid identities, and outside authorities (Chapter 8), Mazur offers a comprehensive study of the changing political, tribal, and urban compositions of the city of Dayr az-Zur, from the end of the Ottoman Empire to the present day. Basing his methodology on interviews and secondary sources, notably from social networks, the author shows how the different local actors—from the Syrian regime to Salafi-jihadist groups—compose and articulate their policies to control the political, social, and economic structures of the city, in a very fragmented tribal environment. Initially, until 2011, the central state—and in particular the Syrian Baathist regime—has always worked to diminish the traditional role of the tribes by bringing out alternative mediation figures, from within or outside tribal groups (such as within the Baggarah or ‘Ageidat). By ensuring control over a panel of tribal leaders and dismissing tribes or individuals with too much local power, the regime ensured the balance of tribal structures while securing access to the economic resources of the city. Certain “historical” figures of the regime, such as Jami’ Jami’, played a major role in the implementation of these policies. Nevertheless, tribal leaders retained a symbolic role; they were not commanding everyone’s loyalty, but essentially functioned as “defense systems”. When the war started, in 2011, some of those rank-and-file members of tribes largely contributed to the creation of the opposition’s military formations. Indeed, popular mobilization deeply reconfigured the tribal environment; for Mazur, revolutionary groups were essentially the product on extended familial and/or subtribal groupings, “while broader tribal affiliations were used only in transactional, often ephemeral ways”. After the initial uprising by the FSA, Jabhat al-Nusra and later on the IS quickly gained a foothold in Dayr al-Zur, essentially as a result of “pre-existing social links forged” with local residents, notably for al-Shuhayl neighborhood who fought in Iraq after 2003, “and were predisposed to [Salafi] ideology, having developed Salafi leanings while working in Saudi”. Most of this chapter is devoted to the tribalist policies these non-state actors which demonstrated a real knowledge of the local social and tribal mechanisms. Mazur demonstrates that the non-state actors’ tribalist policies were substantially identical to the regime’s and were made of economic

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incentives, exploitation of tribal rivalries and grievances, and, when necessary, utilization of violence against local populations to gain access to natural resources (e.g., control of the oil fields, such as ‘Omar’). In general, the post-2011 dynamics brought considerably overturned social boundaries in Dayr az-Zur: On the one hand, because new leaders emerged; on the other hand, the civil war also highlighted the inability of the tribes to clearly guide the actions of their members, although the bonds of solidarity within tribal groups and subgroups were largely maintained.

“Syria as We See It”: Territorialities, Contemporary Imagined Geographies, and the Syrian Conflict Borders are not only “hard” (Eder 2006) realities but are also part of the collective imagination of a people. Boundaries are therefore also “cognitive projects” which, although first implemented by the elites (Giesen 1998), must also ultimately resonate among the people. This “social production” of borders can be of two kinds: (1) as the “naturalization” of already existing hard borders, that is to say the transformation into speech and collective acceptance of an accomplished fact. It is indeed in the history of hard borders that the necessary inspirations for the construction of the collective imagination are drawn; or (2) as the imagined, fantasized “construction” of a territory that takes shape through speech, actions, and more particularly through the production of “persuasive cartography” (Tyner 1982). Since 2011, the revolution and then the Syrian civil war have essentially taken place within national territory and have only very marginally reconfigured the “external” borders of Syria. With the exception of certain non-state actors (PYD, ISIS), the envelope constituting Syria has been little disputed at the margin and seems very largely internalized by all the actors—whether they belong to the Syrian regime or to the “opposition”. However, the conflict has considerably energized and altered the different collective imaginations of social groups. In this third axis, entitled Imagining& Manufacturing the borders: Non-state actors and their representations of Syrian territory (2011–2017), we will try to extract contemporary representations and constructions of Syrian territory, through four case studies. In The opposition’s three territories (Chapter 9), Ali Hamdan explores the political and territorial “experiments” led by the Syrian opposition in

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their enclaves, since 2011. Through a detailed theoretical explanation of how political transformations are above all the result of territorial modifications, the author explores the evolution of representations of space in wartime. How does the Syrian opposition represent and administer the territories conquered from the Syrian regime? By focusing on the borderlands, “territories of high strategic value to the war, especially for the opposition”, Hamdan shows how these spaces constituted the nodal points of war, not only for the regime (which deprived them of basic services, and besieged them) and the opposition (seeking to gain control of them), but also for external actors (which—like NGOs, international organizations, non-Syrian journalists, diplomats, intelligence operatives, and foreign fighters, among others—externally entangle them). For the author, from the very beginning of the conflict, Syria’s territoriality has then undergone lasting change as a result of these two wartime processes, i.e., “external entanglement and siege warfare”. Although it is “difficult to speak of coherent strategies of ‘rebel rule’ in territories controlled by the opposition (mu ¯ aridah)”, Hamdan shows in his chapter that the newly controlled enclaves, ¯such as Idlib, experiment and implement various conceptions of territoriality. By presenting a typology of the administration of areas and the territorialization process in the opposition’s territories, conquered, built, and shaped by numerous actors, aid workers, religious figures, and journalists, the author provides a very innovative approach, which contributes to a better understanding of the imagined territories in circulation within the Syrian opposition. He also demonstrates how, in practice, the opposition works to justify its political project and, therefore, ensures it builds political relationships with external actors, as a key element of its process of legitimization. Three classifications are presented: the “liberated territories” (al-man¯ a.tiq almuh.arrarah), “laboratories”, and “safe zones” (al-man¯ a.tiq al-¯ am¯ınah). The first category defines a fully liberated territory, “integrally and inviolably whole” from regime and foreign presences or influences, and allows the opposition to set itself up as a credible alternative in the eyes of the people (essentially as a competent administrator), i.e., as a shared countermodel. The second group essentially encompasses Islamist factions and is part of a “more calculating” representation of the territory. The laboratories are certainly experiments of governance but also and above all narratives aiming to deeply and durably modify the political, institutional, administrative and economic structures of the country. Finally, the last

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category “views territory in Syria as an unfortunate but necessary outcome of Syrians’ inability to resolve their differences on their own terms and redefines it in accordance with the military-strategic logic of those conducting armed intervention”. To put it differently, it a playground for external organizations—particularly NGOs and international organizations—wishing to operate in Syria. While Hamdan essentially addresses the so-called historical and formerly secularized opposition, Thomas Pierret, in Sunni Islamists: From Syria to the Umma, and back (Chapter 10), questions the representation of space and territory by the so-called Islamist “nationalist” movements and their theoretical and practical conception of Westphalian sovereignty. In theory, the ideology of “Islamist” movements—which allegedly calls for a community transcending ethnic or territorial boundaries, the umma—seems antagonistic and impossible to reconcile with a “modern” conception of territory, but Pierret refutes this argument by demonstrating how, notably for the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood (hereafter, SMB), the nation state and the geographical community of believers are complementary. After independence (1946), the leader of the SMB, Mustafa al-Siba’, strongly opposed King Abdallah and his project for a great Arab kingdom. In response, “historical” Syria, or Greater Syria, then became the frame of reference for the Brotherhood’s political project, also because Siba’ himself was largely favorable to nationalism. Pierret even mentions the “remarkable durability” of this nationalist orientation. Thus, not only did the SMB put forward the Arab and Syrian identities as preceding Islamist territorial unity, but they even went so far as to openly welcome the creation of the United Arab Republic with Egypt in 1958, in line with the prevailing political and popular thought of the moment. The Muslim Brothers, by adopting the dominant political discourse around a Syro-centered Arab nationalism, then validated the notion of compatibility between Islam and Arab nationalism, in effect rejecting the concept of the caliphate, while advocating for a “regionalist” conception of the state (duw¯ al al-qut.riyyah). In the 1990s, the emergence of transnational jihad and the creation of Hizb Tahrir al-Islam (HTI) led to a revitalization of the claims to Islamic unity. This mobilization took place in particular through the figure of Ramadan al-Buti, a disciple of Abu al-Hassan Ali al-Nadwi and Abu alA’la al-Mawdudi, both theoricians and sponsors of pan-Islamism doctrines. Buti, deeply and personally opposed to the nation state, called for the transnationalization of the struggle and the revitalization of the

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caliphate. However, this movement was short-lived; even among local Islamist groups, the 2011 revolution was accompanied by an enhancement of the national territory and the promotion of the Syrian people as a factor of unity. According to Pierret, “pan-Islamist hysteria” therefore very quickly receded in favor of a nationalist interpretation of the struggle. However, in Syria, the issue of transnational mobilization remains, whether through the Kurds or the project carried out by the Islamic State. In The complex and dynamic relationship of Syria’s Kurds with Syrian borders: Continuities and changes (Chapter 11), Jordi Tejel questions the discourses and spatial representations of “Greater Kurdistan”: How was this notion created? What is the spatial ideology carried by the PYD in Syria? Are the Syrian Kurds working to restore “historical” Kurdish territory and, more specifically, do they envisage secession from Syria? By relying on unpublished maps and school books, dating from the sixteenth century to the present day, Tejel demonstrates that the Kurdish territorial imagination, comprising myths, mobilizing stories and political ambitions, is relatively plastic and fluctuating. Recently established, “Rojava” (Syrian Kurdistan) is part of a mythology of pan-Kurdish unity which does not constitute a political objective for the Syrian Kurds in itself, but is rather a “cultural abstract”. For the author, “like Arab nationalists in Syria, the Kurdish movement has produced a political discourse that combines panKurdist references intertwined with local patriotism and limited territorial claims”. Yet the author shows that this imagined community is nevertheless very well documented: from the Sharafnama map of 1596 (which displays “extreme expansionist tendencies, in particular to the south”) to the Paris conference in 1919, where the Kurdish representative submitted Kurdish territorial claims, the representation of “Greater Kurdistan” is diverse and heterogeneous and is altered according to political contexts and the audiences for which it is intended. After the mandate period, a series of books and maps were produced—for example, by Mehmet Emin Zaki Bey or Kamuran Bedir Khan, sometimes revealing the difficulty of defining the geographical scope of Kurdish identity, and even the term “Kurd”, for which “linguistic affinities should not necessarily be the sole guide”. For Tejel, who then studies contemporary textbooks, it is important not to approach those productions as “official knowledge”, but rather as “persuasive cartography as suggested by Tyner, i.e. a cartography that seeks to change or influence the reader’s opinion”. Thus, the “Kurdish project” appears above all as a cultural allegory, created in response to the failure of

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successive political attempts in the twentieth century to create a coherent nation-state, as well as a mobilizing factor and a unifying myth acting as a political response to Turkish nationalism. As such, Kurdish unity was primarily thought of as a “renaissance” which needed geographical, concrete bases. Finally, in The map and territory in political Islam. Spatial ideology and the teaching of geography by the Islamic State (Chapter 12), Matthieu Cimino offers a reflection on the ideological construction, by the Islamic State, of its political and geographical imaginaries. Between 2014 and 2016, the jihadist group engaged in a considerable enterprise of narrative construction in devising the contours of the caliphate after the territorial conquests of 2014 and afterward. Echoing Tejel’s work on the PYD’s spatial ideology, and basing his research on history and geography textbooks, Cimino’s chapter explores the group’s territorial ethos. In its productions, the IS projects a Foucauldian, semi-fixed representation of the territory,8 an imaginative creation which borrows very heavily from the medieval construction of the borders and the “territory” of Islam (d¯ ar al-¯ısl¯ am). ISIS’s frameworks of mobilization are, first and foremost, part of the cartographic traditions of the Umayyad (662–750) and Abbasid (750–1258) Empires. In fact, understanding the current imagination of the Salafi-jihadist group first requires an exploration of the mechanisms of space construction in medieval Islam, particularly from the various treatises on geography (Muhammad al-Muqadissi, Abu Zayd al-Balkhi) whose substance remains one of the main sources of inspiration for the group. When the movement rapidly established itself in Syria and Iraq, in 2014, it became urgent to create a structured ideological apparatus that was breaking with the international order, and in a certain coherence with the Syrian and Iraqi local histories. In that perspective, alongside the creation of schools and an official curriculum, school books played a very important role, as they provided a new geographical framework in the conquered territories. However, those books, quickly implemented, were not elaborated from scratch: In Manbij (Syria), the locally produced textbooks showed a clear continuity with those produced under the Syrian regime. Some pages are sometimes identical rigorously identical to the Baathist-era books; in that perspective, maps were sometimes only marginally review. While the Ba’ath Party situates Syria in a unitary regional environment (which Parvin and Sommers call “secularized d¯ ar al-¯ısl¯ am”), the IS only had to re-Islamize this unitary conception of the territory, limiting it however to Sunni areas and those territories that

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the group effectively controls. Thus, this final article explores, in its literalist conception, the spatial ideology of the Islamic State and seeks to demonstrate how, at the local level, it had to accommodate to preexisting ideological and practical realities.

Notes 1. Founded in July 2011, the Free Syrian Army (al-jaysh as-s¯ ur¯ı al-h.urr) was the first prominent military faction of the opposition to the Syrian regime. 2. The Golan Heights is a Syrian territory captured by Israel during the SixDay War (1967). It was later annexed in 1981. 3. In 2010, in Damascus, a vast advertising campaign called for the recovery of the Golan: “it is ours” (al-jawl¯ anlan¯ a ). 4. For Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat, the Democratic Union Party is the main Kurdish Syrian political party, and the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). 5. ISIS’s last territorial stronghold, Baghouz, fell in November 2019. 6. Ajami (2012), Lister (2017), and Phillips (2016) comprehensively explore the different aspects of the conflict. On another level, the prison memories of Yassin al-Hajj Saleh (2015), a narrative constructed as a personal testimony and not an academic analysis, allow us to understand in great detail the mechanisms of imprisonment in an authoritarian system. 7. In May 1916, during the First World War, France (François Georges-Picot) and the United Kingdom (Mark Sykes) concluded a secret agreement— which would be disclosed in 1917 by Russia—to divide the Middle East into two spheres of influence. The agreement would be known as the SykesPicot Agreement. 8. For Foucault, the mobilization of a “people” for a territory in the name of their “natural right” to dispose of it is accompanied by a process of subjectivation of space (Cutolo and Geschiere 2008). However, although social groups constantly reconfigure around the “common regulator” (Giraut 2008), i.e. the state, they need a stable—even “fixed” or “semi-fixed”—representation of the territory to maintain their position of power and access to resources. Informal discussion with Ali Hamdan, Oxford, November 2017.

References Agnew, John. 2007. Know-Where: Geographies of Knowledge of World Politics. International Political Sociology 1 (1): 138–148. Ajami, Fouad. 2012. The Arab Spring at One: A Year of Living Dangerously. Foreign Affairs 91 (2): 56–65.

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Ali, Nosheen. 2010. Sectarian Imaginaries: The Micropolitics of Sectarianism and State-making in Northern Pakistan. Current Sociology 58 (5): 738–754. Anderson, James, and Liam O’Dowd. 1999. Borders, Border Regions and Territoriality: Contradictory Meanings, Changing Significance. Regional Studies 33 (7): 593–604. Ball, Anna. 2012. Impossible Intimacies: Towards a Visual Politics of “Touch” at the Israeli-Palestinian Border. Journal for Cultural Research 16 (2–3): 175– 195. Balibar, Étienne. 2009. We, the People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Barth, Fredrik. 1998. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference. London: Waveland Press. Ben-Bassat, Yuval, and Yossi Ben-Artzi. 2015. The Collision of Empires as Seen from Istanbul: The Border of British-Controlled Egypt and Ottoman Palestine as Reflected in Ottoman Maps. Journal of Historical Geography 50: 25–36. Billig, Michael. 1995. Banal Nationalism. London: Sage. Cimino, Matthieu. 2014. “The Name of the Enemy”: The Representation of Foreign Fighters (Hezbollah and Al Qaeda) in the Speech of the Syrian Opposition (2011–2013). Bulletin du Centre de recherche français à Jérusalem, 25. http://journals.openedition.org/bcrfj/7330. Accessed on 23 November 2019. Crampton, Jeremy W., and John Krygier. 2006. Mapping the Sovereign State: Technology, Authority, and Systemic Change. ACME: An International EJournal for Critical Geographies 4 (1): 11–33. Culcasi, Karen. 2006. Cartographically Constructing Kurdistan Within Geopolitical and Orientalist Discourses. Political Geography 25 (6): 680–706. Cutolo, Armando, and Peter Geschiere. 2008. Populations, citoyennetés et territoires. Autochtonie et gouvernementalité en Afrique. Politique africaine 4 (112): 5–17. Dot-Pouillard, Nicolas. 2012. Résistance et/ou révolution: un dilemme libanais face à la crise syrienne. Carnets de l’IFPO - La recherche en train de se faire à l’Institut français du Proche-Orient. http://ifpo.hypotheses.org/2833. Accessed on 13 November 2019. Dullin, Sabine. 2014. La frontière épaisse. Aux origines des politiques soviétiques (1920–1940). Paris: EHESS. Eder, Klaus. 2006. Europe’s Borders: The Narrative Construction of the Boundaries of Europe. European Journal of Social Theory 9 (2): 255–271. Filiu, Jean-Pierre. 2013. Le Nouveau Moyen-Orient: Les peuples à l’heure de la révolution syrienne. Paris: Fayard. Filiu, Jean-Pierre. 2018. Les Arabes, leur destin et le nôtre: histoire d’une libération. Paris: La Découverte.

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Giesen, Bernhard. 1998. Intellectuals and the Nation: Collective Identity in a German Axial Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Giraut, Frédéric. 2008. Conceptualiser le territoire. Historiens et Géographes 403: 57–68. (al-)Haj Saleh, Yassin. 2015. Récits d’une Syrie oubliée. Sortir la mémoire des prisons. Paris: Stock. Hamdan, Ali Nehme. 2017. Informal Discussion. Oxford. Harling, Peter, and Alex Simon. 2015. Erosion and Resilience of the Iraqi-Syrian Border. Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies Research Paper No. 61. Hewitt, Kenneth (ed.). 2019. Interpretations of Calamity: From the Viewpoint of Human Ecology. London: Routledge. Heydemann, Steven. 2013. Tracking the “Arab Spring”: Syria and the Future of Authoritarianism. Journal of Democracy 24 (4): 59–73. Hinnebusch, Raymond. 2006. Syria: Asad in Search of Legitimacy: Message and Rhetoric in the Syrian Press Under Hafiz and Bashar. The Middle East Journal 60 (2): 395. Hobsbawm, Eric. 2010. Age of Empire: 1875–1914. London: Hachette UK. Ismail, Salwa. 2011. The Syrian Uprising: Imagining and Performing the Nation. Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 11 (3): 538–549. Jankowski, James P. 2002. Nasser’s Egypt, Arab Nationalism, and the United Arab Republic. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Jörum, Emma Lundgren. 2014. Beyond Syria’s Borders: A History of Territorial Disputes in the Middle East. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Liikanen, Ilkka. 2010. From Post-modern Visions to Multi-scale Study of Bordering: Recent Trends in European Study of Borders and Border Areas. Eurasia Border Review 1 (1): 17–28. Lister, Charles R. 2017. The Syrian Jihad: The Evolution of an Insurgency. London: Hurst & Company. Mann, Michael. 1984. The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms and Results. European Journal of Sociology 25 (2): 185–213. Meier, Daniel. 2013. The South Border: Drawing the Line in Shifting (Political) Sands. Mediterranean Politics 18 (3): 358–375. Minghi, Julian. 2017. The Structure of Political Geography. London: Routledge. Mohand, Khaled Sid. 2011. Syrie, chronique d’une transition ratée. Lignes 3: 11–28. Monmonier, Mark. 1991. Ethics and Map Design: Six Strategies for Confronting the Traditional One-Map Solution. Cartographic Perspectives 10: 3–8. Montenach, Anne. 2016. Conflit, territoire et économie de la frontière: la contrebande dans les Alpes dauphinoises au XVIIIe siècle. Journal of Alpine Research (104-1): 1–13.

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Newman, David. 2003. On Borders and Power: A Theoretical Framework. Journal of Borderlands Studies 18 (1): 13–25. Paasi, Anssi. 2003. Boundaries in a Globalizing World. In Handbook of Cultural Geography, ed. K. Anderson, M. Demosh, S. Pile, and N. Thrift, 462–472. London: Sage. Paasi, Anssi. 2005. Generations and the ‘Development’ of Border Studies. Geopolitics 10 (4): 663–671. Paasi, Anssi. 2009. Bounded Spaces in a ‘Borderless World’: Border Studies, Power and the Anatomy of Territory. Journal of Power 2 (2): 213–234. Paul, Drew. 2020. Israel/Palestine: Border Representations in Literature and Film. Edinburg: Edinburgh University Press. Phillips, Christopher. 2016. The Battle for Syria: International Rivalry in the New Middle East. New Haven: Yale University Press. Prescott, Victor. 1999. Borders in a ‘Borderless’ World. Geopolitics 4 (2): 262– 273. Rogan, Eugene. 2002. Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire: Transjordan, 1850–1921, vol. 12. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rovisco, Maria. 2010. Reframing Europe and the Global: Conceptualizing the Border in Cultural Encounters. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 28 (6): 1015–1030. Sfeir-Khayat, Jihane. 2009. National Identification and the Making of Frontiers. Vingtième Siècle. Revue D’histoire 3: 105–119. Taylor, Peter J. 1994. The State as Container: Territoriality in the Modern WorldSystem. Progress in Human Geography 18 (2): 151–162. Tyner, Judith A. 1982. Persuasive Cartography. Journal of Geography 81 (4): 140–144. Van Houtum, Henk, and Ton Van Naerssen. 2002. Bordering, Ordering and Othering. Tijdschriftvooreconomischeensocialegeografie 93 (2): 125–136. Vignal, Leila. 2017. The Changing Borders and Borderlands of Syria in a Time of Conflict. International Affairs 93 (4): 809–827. Wimmen, Heiko, and Muriel Asseburg. 2012. Civil War in Syria: External Actors and Interests as Drivers of Conflict. SWP Comment: 43. Winter, Lucas. 2013. Modern History of the Free Syrian Army in Daraa. Fort Leavenworth: Foreign Military Studies Office. Zénobie. 2011. Les mots de l’intifada syrienne. Le monde diplomatique, June. https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2011/06/ZENOBIE/ 20746. Accessed on 12 September 2019.

PART I

From the Mandate to Assad’s Dynasty: Constructing, Contesting, and Legitimizing Syrian Borders (1920–2011)

CHAPTER 2

Drawing a Line in the Sand? Another (Hi)Story of Borders Matthieu Rey

Introduction This chapter aims to shed light on how borders were carved in the Middle East at the end of the First World War. The topic has been the subject of many stereotypes: For instance, borders are understood to be the product of secret delineations drawn in the intimacy of war councils in the capitals of European powers. The Arab nation as a whole was fragmented by the international divisions drawn up in war cabinets of the European powers. Two names have come to epitomize this idea: Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot. In 1916, while the Allies were facing different challenges on the Western and Eastern fronts, the Russians, Italians, British, and French launched a new protocol determining their respective goals of war. This became the so-called Sykes-Picot agreement (Barr 2012; Yapp 1988). According to common wisdom, this agreement paved the way for the European colonization of the Middle East and its division between the French and the British. This narrative became dominant but does not M. Rey (B) IFAS-Recherche (CNRS) / Wits History Workshop, Johannesburg, South Africa © The Author(s) 2020 M. Cimino (ed.), Syria: Borders, Boundaries, and the State, Mobility & Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44877-6_2

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reflect the real process. Undoubtedly, the Mandate regimes belonged to the colonial realm; however, the territorial borders of Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine stem from broader dynamics. The idea that borders are arbitrary lines drawn up in Western cabinets is premised on a peculiar interpretation of state-building in the colonized part of the world. From this perspective, the delimitation of territory seems to be the very first step toward establishing a state. The colonial power was able to take over control of the different provinces and then grouped them within a new state. This understanding is based on two main premises: first, the assumption that the state sets up a set of normative and administrative regulations over a territory, which it rules as a homogenous entity; and second, the perception of borders as an abnormality in the political field. In this very context, ordinary rules are suspended as none of the sovereign powers can impose their orders. These two assumptions reflect a Weberian conception of the state (Giddens 1986; Torpey 1978) as the main outcome of rational legal administration over a territory. However, this approach undermines temporalities and spatial parameters inherent in the construction of borders. If the institution of the state had been a natural outcome of the war in the Middle Eastern context or the result of diplomatic meetings in Africa (Paakenham 1992), then its establishment, its control, and the framework of its borders would not have been matters for discussion. It implies that both countries were entirely familiar with the surrounding area and took control of it. In reality, the technical stages required to build a border can take several years, which reveals the first temporality. The creation of discontinuities in the political continuum had several impacts on the communities that tried to adapt their way of living to this new institution. Moreover, it may be argued that certain conditions preexisted the emergence of new borders. These conditions are linked to the authorities’ ability to overcome any encroaching on their territory by building infrastructures to strengthen their position in this geographical space. From this perspective, when studying the nature of border delineation, we need to take into account the chronology and the geography of the area concerned, in order to analyze the interplay of processes that led to its emergence and its consolidation. Syria is a good example of ‘colonial product.’ Although the country became independent in 1946, it was shaped in the aftermath of the First World War by the dynamics generated during the conflict and their consequences in peacetime. This narrative has shed light on the general aspects

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of the history of the Mandates (Russell 1985; Khoury 1987), but it overshadowed the local histories, all those interactions that forged the communities and their legacies. My intention has been to write a history from below for certain border areas. To do so, I focused on a few localities to understand how and why inhabitants chose to settle there, and how and why their settlement changed the environment. The present chapter is based on several kinds of archive and oral interviews. The Mandate archives include intelligence services’ papers— supplied by the Service des renseignements, thereafter SR. These troops were in charge of ruling the northern part of Syria for almost a decade. Their reports provide insight into the daily life of this remote province. The Mandate archives constitute an administrative and military system designed to give regularly account on daily activities, and these papers consequently frame the reality of the mandated territory (Méouchy and Sluglett 2004). They were not intended to record all aspects of Mandate rule but established general categories in order to collect evidence of what was happening on the ground. Other documentation/documents added sensitive and meaningful perspectives to this history. Two series of interviews allowed me to go deeper into personal narratives and reveal the experiences of inhabitants of different localities. Although these interviews took place in Turkey, most of the interviewees had maintained direct links with their hometowns.1 The border area studied stretches from Jarabulus to Tell Abyad. While these places became somewhat prominent during the Syrian uprising, they had not received any attention previously. Filling in the missing blanks left by the current historiography will allow us to renew the narrative of the evolution of the Turkish and Syrian borders, by providing full accounts of these localities. This may help create a better understanding of the borders’ engineering and, consequently, of the nature of state-building.

Studying the Fabric of the Border The study of borders seems first to belong to the field of international relations and international law. Their growing number over the centuries results from the politics of states and their struggles to control their territories. From this perspective, borders and states seem closely linked topics. Two approaches to the study of borders have emerged in modern times, which have shed light on the nature of the state and its thinkers. The first one dealt with the precise location of the border. The second

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interpreted a border as an area, a borderland. From the seventeenth century onward, debates erased the differences between ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ boundaries. In the French traditions, these interpretations fueled the war rhetoric of the absolutist monarchy to the French Revolution (Smets 1998: 675–698). According to the defenders of the ‘naturality’ of borders, state borders must run along the same lines set by nature. This view implicitly encompassed a certain essentialist idea of the nation and the state. If nature provided international divisions, it meant that the ‘people’ preexisted the state, whose mission was to cluster them. Furthermore, in this approach, the main problem is how to determine the correct natural element around which to build the border. Rivers and mountains help to build international divisions. Naturally, borders remained lines. This approach has turned into a political agenda while engendering discussions on state-building. If natural elements set the limits of the ‘natural’ state, then the state can fail. Moreover, many commentators criticized the artificiality of the borders of the new independent countries (Williams 2016; Whitetaker 2011). This implicitly reminds us of the relation between the borders and the state, but it does not take the mutual nature of their relations into account. Several scholars have since reexamined the making of borders, arguing that none of the natural markers constitutes a limit uninfluenced by political convention. Recent events in the Middle East have highlighted their remarks. One of the oldest lines separated Iraq, Iran, and Turkey in accordance with the agreement of Erzurum.2 While it took more than fifty years to be recognized by all the parties, its strict delimitation remained a highly contested topic (Ates 2013). The 1975 Algiers Agreement modified the precise line, while the Iran and Iraq war erupted over this issue. All these conflicts and discussions show the importance of drawing up borders. In an insightful study, Michel Fournier expanded this argument by arguing that most of these international lines are partially landmarked (Fournier 1991). He underscored the tradition of European thought and its impact on our understanding of borders. Since the modern period, diplomats have focused on these delimitations, which became institutions as they marked out the boundaries of the state on the ground. In response to his critics, Fournier reminded them that the twin meaning of border (in French) is both frontier and border. The first meaning points at another understanding. The frontier initially referred to the shifting line which demarcated the western part of the United States. A quick overview of previous political experiments clearly indicated that the borders had been

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primarily an area rather than a precise line. Considering borders as a line belongs to some kind of ideal type or theoretical idea. Even if most of the states tried to extend their monitoring over the hinterlands in between, an area remains. This conflicting approach to borders underpins most studies of the Syrian borders. Several books have attempted to investigate their creation (Altug and White 2009: 91–104; Tür and Hinnebusch 2013). They soon developed into general discussion of bilateral relations and their outcome. From this perspective, these analyses have helped better understanding the political relations between Syria and its neighboring countries. However, such studies failed to tell anything about the processes of change undergone by the borderlands in the contemporary period, which reflected dynamics of the state control. Moreover, the bulk of this research seems to postulate that the borders are simply an abstract line. Until recently, most studies have discussed the borders’ delineation but failed to consider the importance of processes on the ground. If the borders are in fact areas that can be delineated, what happens in these precise locations? How is it possible to delimitate it? What sort of consequences discontinuities introduced? This approach examines the borderland rather than the borders in order to understand how the precise area is a reality experienced on the ground. It highlights processes that seem overshadowed in other parts of the countries. The establishment of borders exemplifies how the state attempts to wield control over its land and its population. Michel Foucault illuminates the shift in paradigm. When studying the prison, he highlights the very significance of discipline as a general practice in the public authority. Formal law, rights, and correctness of the body were all interlinked. These technologies of power reflect new practices of the state defined as ‘power above the other powers’ (Foucault 1975). In this regard, Michel Foucault has prompted researchers to locate the precise geographical position of the state. Borders in this instance underscore several aspects of these practices: How foreigners and citizens are identified, what national territory means, and how national emblems symbolize sovereignty. John Agnew tackles these issues in another way. He argues against the Weberian ideal type of border: None of the territories are fully controlled by the public authorities, and borderland constitutes a very important location to understand the roughness, the discontinuities, the abnormalities of the ordinary practices of the state (Agnew 2007: 138–148). This

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area exemplifies central dynamics such as common citizens’ rights (property, movement, etc.) but their implementation is often carefully managed as borders are considered showcases for the country. From this point of view, by paying close attention to the location of the borders we can identify the true nature of state control over both the land and the people. On the borders, some technologies were implanted to mark sovereignty and control, to impose the monopoly of the state over other actors. Therefore, this area shows what Mann calls the ‘infrastructural power’ (Mann 1984: 185–213). This approach improves our understanding of borders. All these previous descriptions implicitly recognize borders as a reality on the ground. However, none of these territories have become a border naturally. It is a political creation and, consequently, took time to enforce. Furthermore, the practices at the borders changed in accordance with the policies toward the neighboring countries, but also such policies as the emigration bill and tariff and tax laws have had a major impact on the general aspects of these borders in terms of the infrastructure built on the borders and their surrounding areas. Sabine Dullin suggests an investigation of the depth of the border would help to understand these effects (Dullin 2014). When analyzing the Soviet Union’s policies for controlling land and the flow of people across the European part of its territory, she underscores the importance of the border posts. By scrutinizing these infrastructures, she can reframe our understanding of the Soviet state: The central command managed in a decade to reshape the local communities, to take control over vast portions of the regions, to empty some of these areas, and to build a vast set of infrastructures that prevented any undesired movement. This insightful study brings attention to the extension of the borderlands and to its concrete aspect. It turns borders from abstract lines into very real networks of infrastructures. It may be objected that these processes depended on a very specific political experiment, namely the Stalinist totalitarian regime. It is nevertheless fruitful to engage the discussion by introducing temporalities and geographic considerations when dealing with borders. From this perspective, non-European examples shed light on the usefulness of Dullin’s approach. Our intention is to understand what makes a border. Do specific infrastructures symbolize sovereignty? Has it affected the landscape and the surrounding communities? Furthermore, what happened when authorities tried to establish this kind of delimitation? Studying the creation and the changes in the borderland shifts the attention from the

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‘natural’/artificial debates and, consequently, moves it away from investigating if the state is sustainable or failed. A very pragmatic posture has raised new questions: How and why have borders been created in precise locations? What did the protagonists of their creation take into consideration when they drew up their appearance? Did local communities invest themselves in the process or was the dynamic external? Finally, how long did it take to establish these borders? These questions have received several answers. Most of them dealt with the larger picture, focusing on the relations between the great powers and their impact on the general map. For example, James Barr shows the evolution of the British and French policies, their area of influence, and their antagonistic schemes (Barr 2012). But these approaches avoided the real question regarding the creation of the borders. Such as Camille Lefebvre (2015), who has tried to shed light on the invention of colonial Niger, under the French occupation. She refines the chronology to integrate the precolonial time, the period of exploration, in order to show how continuities prevailed. Then, she explores the connection between the colonial authorities, their civil servants and officers acting on the ground, and the local communities and their representatives. The latter could sidetrack the decisions of the former. Naturally, these efforts deployed by local chiefs did not affect the general process; however, their involvement caused many adjustments on the small scale. From Camille Lefebvre’s perspective, three different elements are important to our understanding of borders: the relations between local and external authorities, the geographical and social knowledge of both, and the land under survey. Adopting this stance may help us to change our view of the Syrian borders. Syria emerged as a particular entity in the aftermath of the First World War. This is the main reason why most of the scholarship closely analyzed the processes that drew up the country during the Mandate period. Three major trends have shaped our knowledge of these borders. Christian Velud has devoted his research to understanding the emergence of the cities surrounding the borders of the Mandate territory (Velud 1991; Tejel 2010: 61–76). He pinpoints the French project that led the city of Qamishli to emerge from the desert. While focusing on the urban aspect of the cities, he draws some general conclusions on the ‘urbanization of the borders.’ His main argument is that taking control over the al-Jazira Province led the French to establish certain kinds of cities, which reflected the disciplinary powers of the French. This study is very important to understanding Bedouin dynamics in the eastern part of Syria

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and to explaining the modalities of the French occupation of the Al-Jazira Province. But it seems to isolate the dynamics of the Mandate power from other processes. Recently, Jamal Baghut reintegrated these evolutions into a broader context of the control of the Al-Jazira (Barut 2013). These two studies help prove the importance of control over a hinterland. Taking another approach, Jean-David Mizrahi aimed to provide an overview of protests in the postwar period, early colonial resistance to the French occupation and their consequences in the northern part of Syria (Mizrahi 2003). He has pinpointed the close relationship between state support and gangs’ phenomenon in Syria. Moreover, he highlighted the seasonal migrations of the gangs which took up residence in the summer on the chalky plateau and returned to Turkey during the winter. He concluded that this must be due to the emergence of nationalism at the borders: a national feeling resulting from confrontation with the French troops. His work paved the way for understanding the importance of the processes taking place at the Syrian borders. All these dynamics shaped the political consciousness of the Syrians during the interwar period. Another example of these intertwined tendencies (emergence of the border and nation-building) is related to the Druze uprising in the mid-1920s. These studies clearly mention the importance of the borders. However, the chosen timescale and the dynamics examined did not take into account the very material process required to build a border. This article builds on all these studies and aims to explore what ‘the fabric’ of a border meant. Fabric refers first to the technical conditions that allow a human group to take control over a territory. It needs material and infrastructure to settle and to appropriate the space. Fabric secondly relates to the political context that fueled the previous enterprises. Establishing a border is not always connected to a clear political plan. It is rather produced by the cumulative effects of different decisions. In one sense, a path to dependency emerged. The chronology needs to be refined in order to point out the different elements that led to the creation of the border. Therefore, exploring how and why from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of the 1920s, Jarabulus, Tell Abyad, and Kobane became border town may help to understand the true processes involved in the creation of the ‘fabric’ of the borders.

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Tanzimat Reforms, Settlements, and the Euphrates River It is well established by archeologists and historians of the Middle Ages that different portions of the current Syrian and Turkish territories were densely occupied. The so-called dead cities on the chalky plateau to the east of Aleppo have exemplified the process of occupying a land, establishing towns, creating sustainable buildings, and the reverse. From the tenth century, populations left. Other forms of political control emerged in this area. This example only reminds us that the contemporary settlement of the populations in Syria needs to be historicized. Concerning the area spanning from Aleppo to the Euphrates River, the density of ruins proved evidence of an old settlement. These human activities nevertheless ceased between the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries for several reasons. Ecological changes, political instability, the rise of local powers in the main cities and in parallel, the expansion of the tribal realm contributed to push aside sedentary activities (Lewis 2009; Tabak 2010). Villages became temporary places to be occupied. These different processes seemed to reinforce one another. For example, local power could grow if the local chief was able to collect taxes and enforce his orders. Applying fiscal pressure forced the populations to migrate. Similarly, when settlers were weak and partially protected by the towns, which occurred when local chiefs focused on their own rise to power, then tribes took control over the populations, imposed the khuww¯ a, a tax on production for protection, and these dynamics exacerbated the weakness of the settlement. In the wake of the nineteenth century, as Norman Lewis clearly demonstrated (Lewis 2009: 36), the eastern side of the Aleppo wilaya was a theater of population movements. Contradictory processes affected settlement. On the one hand, when Aleppo was ruled under a stable governor permitting him to mobilize the local janissaries and unofficial troops, then the surrounding provinces were pacified and villages reinstalled.3 Tribes could reconquer the lands whenever the rulers became weak. Therefore, settlement expanded and decreased in the first decade of the century. On the other hand, in the tribal world, important migrations took place as the general configuration of the tribes changed. In the mid-eighteenth century, many tribes of the central Arabian Peninsula started moving to the north. Drought and economic weakness explained the first movement (Winder 1965). Then, the rise of Wahhabism through

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its alliance with the Sheikh Ibn Saud led to attacks against the rebellious tribes. The latter escaped and participated in the great migration. Due to the lack of grassland, their arrival forced the Syrian and the Iraqi tribes to move. The northern part of the Euphrates River was delimitated by a series of ruined castles such as Raqqa and Karkamish. It may be inferred that these infrastructures were used as temporary settlements or as landmarks on the seasonal migrations. In the region of Karkamish, a new tribal geography emerged in the first decades of the nineteenth century. The Ta’y and the Jayss dominated the lands, moving from the Zor to the Taurus River (Zakariya 1963). Their installations animated the region. They competed with the urban powers of Aleppo, Aintab, and Urfa, while at the same time collaborating with the urban populations to acquire basic products and sell their goods. Nothing clearly indicated a caravan route in the area of Karkamish. The attempts to establish permanent settlements were situated in the southern part of this area, around the line between Aleppo and Meskene. The whole area was affected by the major upheaval generated by the process of reforming the Empire: the Tanzimat. Mahmud II and his heirs initiated a new policy to centralize the Ottoman Empire, to expand its resources, and to strengthen its cohesiveness. At the same time and similarly, the Egyptian governor Mohammad Ali launched the same reforms (Salim 1983; Sulayman 2001; Ma‘oz 1968). Both aimed to fight against disorder, one of the main causes of which remained tribal activities against the settlers. For internal reasons, Mohammad Ali sent his son, Ibrahim Pacha, to control the Syrian provinces against the Sultan. While occupying the provinces of Aleppo and Damascus, the new authorities helped increase agricultural output by securing the nomad regions and by settling populations. A certain number of soldiers received plots of lands for this purpose. This choice changed the area around the Euphrates River. Oral history relates the very first encroachment of the settlers in this region. ‘My family settled with the Egyptians soldiers. Mohammad Ali conquered this area and, my elders (kubb¯ ar) stayed afterward’4 : This testimony collected in 2017 highlights how families have kept the memory of the settlement. On the contrary, none of the other interviewees originating from Jarabulus and its surrounding area could trace his/her family’s history back to these ages, or they added some tribal origins. A new initiative launched by Ibrahim Pacha, son of Muhammad Ali and governor of the province of Syria, pushed back the tribes. New villages emerged.

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In the mid-nineteenth century, a new geography of settlement was drawn up by policies of reform. Along the Euphrates River, in the northern part of Meskene, a myriad of villages animated the regions. Their continuities were highly dependent on the support of the public authorities. When Ibrahim Pacha was forced to quit Syria, some of the settlements were dismantled under tribal pressure. A new expansionist trend nevertheless continued to develop. During the second half of the nineteenth century, agricultural production had grown in the eastern part of the Aleppo province, while new commercial networks invigorated the area. Aintab, Urfa, Aleppo, and Mardin were better connected.5 This did not mean the end of tribal disruptions. However, a change in migration patterns was witnessed. The shores of the Euphrates River were better protected. From this perspective, Abdulhamid II’s reign constituted a decisive step. He promoted new bastions in Raqqa and DeirezZor (David and Boissière 2014). Furthermore, he established colonies of Cherkessk people along the line between Aleppo and Mardin (Kasaba 2009; Lewis 2009). During the previous decade of his reign, the authorities achieved locally the goals of the Tanzimat. Settlements expanded, agriculture seemed in better shape, and control over the Euphrates River improved. All these dynamics were directly connected to an urban renaissance. In the same period, the major cities witnessed the rise of the notables, those great families who managed economic activities, mostly trade and production, invested their wealth in land, controlled agricultural production, and mediated between the central authorities and their communities (Khoury 1983). While wealth increased in the cities, their limits expanded beyond the old walls; new intellectual activities appeared. At the same time, in the northern part of Syria, the influence of the notables spanned from Aleppo to Deirez-Zor and Raqqa (Barut 2013: 104). This movement underpinned settlement and gave the cities a new function: as the real center of power and its exercise on a local scale. At the end of the nineteenth century, cities administered central control over the steppes.

Transport, Technologies, and Control of the Area At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, several technical innovations changed the Levantine landscape. Eugene Rogan has correctly argued that the Ottoman authorities implemented a new technological power in this period. He has pinpointed in

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the Jordanian case, how the telegraph and the road network affected the dialogue between the populations and the political leaders. These phenomena need further investigation. In the northern part of Syria, which has not been well studied apart from the Al-Jazira region, the building of new infrastructures strengthened other dynamics of settlement and prompted new forms of dialogue and control. Europeans started to invest in new means of transport during the nineteenth century. From this perspective, the great ambition of the British was to connect the Mediterranean Sea and their Indian colonial possessions. The Euphrates River was seen as the corridor that could invigorate the British Empire. However, the major attempt to reach Baghdad from the Syrian coast in the 1840s revealed the geographical obstacles and the technical difficulties related to the navigation of the river (Guest 1992). Further projects were proposed but none were implemented. When the Suez Canal was inaugurated, for many it became irrelevant to invest in navigating the upper reaches of the Euphrates River. In the 1890s, certain companies, mostly French, started to equip the Syrian provinces with railway lines (Philipp 1992). These enterprises set up a network connecting the coast to Damascus, and the major cities (Hama, Homs, Aleppo and Damascus). In this context, Sultan Abdulhamid II had a particular interest in two major rail projects. The first one would run from Constantinople to Mecca and, therefore, improve the journey on the pilgrimage road. The other would run from Constantinople to Baghdad, and then Basra (MacMeekin 2010), later known as the Baghdadbahn railway line. These two plans were deeply connected as they aimed to reinforce control over the further provinces, the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq. It completed the previous missions directed toward the Euphrates River, the Iraqi provinces, and the Persian Gulf. Railways permitted the Sultan to balance foreign influences in the region. Inviting several backers and investors to contribute led the Ottomans to take control over the infrastructure. The new line, from Constantinople to Baghdad, integrated this scheme of actions. The French and Germans set up a company mostly to finance the line, and after several controversies, work started in the 1900s.6 Engineers planned to cross Anatolia to Tchoban Bey, then the line curbed toward the Euphrates River. The railway was planned to reach the river near Karkamish. On the eve of the First World War, Karkamish witnessed an intense change in which both internal and external actors played a role. A group

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from the British Museum investigated the ruins. The mission exemplified new archeological trends in the area. Among the group, the young T. E. Lawrence recorded the movements of the Bedouins, discovered the presence of the tribes and noticed the arrival of the train. On the opposite side, Germans engineers were busy working on the construction of the railway, as the project was already behind schedule. This line required the installation of major new infrastructures, bridges, and tunnels, to pass over the Cilician Gates.7 In 1914, a new station was inaugurated in Ras al-Ayn, as the war was breaking out in Europe. On the route between Aleppo and the Euphrates River, new stations were created. Workers and technicians lived first in camps.8 Then, buildings emerged. These points in which groups of people were staying attracted other populations. Merchants established small shops to supply everyday needs. This synergy led to the growth of large villages, next to Karkamish, in Jarabulus, then in Kobane and Tell Abyad. All shared common denominators. A spring permitted access to water for the machines, a first settlement gathered around the building of the station, the first street in which traders, workers, and inhabitants from the surrounding area met. This was the landscape of the Jarablus-Tell Abyad area at the beginning of the war. During the war, the Ottoman Empire joined the Alliance against the Entente. The Alliance authorities used the railway as a new means of transporting troops. German officers gave several testimonies of their passages through the country (Strauss 1992: 314–315): For example, they described Jarabulus as a dirty place. The muddy roads in the camp did not offer good living conditions. However, the new governor of Syria, Jamal Pacha, tried to improve these settlements. He gathered workers in order to enhance these stations. It was in this context that the plan against the Armenians in Anatolia and the Aegean coast was implemented. The Armenian genocide consisted of murders and massive deportations (Ternon 1977). Columns of inhabitants walked toward the southern part of the Empire, mainly Syria. The authors of the plan aimed to destroy all Armenian settlements in Anatolia by sending them through the steppes to Deirez-Zor. While the machinery of death has been well documented, the Syrian aspect of the genocide needs further insight. Nevertheless, researchers agree on several elements. There were no major massacres, other than those in Ras al-Ayn. The attitude of the Syrian governor differed from his counterparts in Constantinople. He imposed hard work on

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the Armenians who took refuge in his provinces. Several areas of Damascus and Aleppo became places of refuge, but also smaller locations such as the cities that grew up around the railway. The Armenian exodus, the need for workforce to improve train stations, the war imperative, which imposed the movement of troops, all changed the aspect of the Baghdadbahn. It quickly became an arterial crossing through the tribal areas. Sedentary populations gathered around the new railway stations, and this state of affairs created new needs for basic goods, food supply, etc. Newcomers arrived and set up businesses to provide for these needs. In the far east of Syria, a new line linking various small cities emerged across the tribal areas at the end of the war.

Completing the Ottoman Reforms, the Action of the French Authorities in Syria In 1918, the Ottoman troops surrendered. The Allies won the war. They did not agree on the outcome of the war, mostly in the Arab lands. In the northern part of Syria and Cilicia, several actors competed to control the territory. The Arab troops, following King Faisal’s orders, reached Aleppo (Russell 1985). Gangs that gathered together Ottomans officers, ordinary soldiers, peasants, tribal members, spread in the Cilicia region. They quickly pleaded allegiance to the new Turkish army under Mustafa Kemal’s orders. At the same time, the French landed in Beirut and progressed toward Cilicia. Following the Sykes-Picot agreement, the Taurus piedmont region and the plains around Aleppo would become a French possession. On the Syrian mainland, the British organized military rule. These four actors shaped the new political entity on the ground in the aftermath of the First War World. The main political evolutions have been well studied by Philip Khoury, Jean-David Mizrahi, and others, and it is not my purpose to further explore the collapse of Faisal’s regime and the rise of the French Mandate. Between 1918 and 1920, a constitutional monarchy ruled the Syrian lands, facing pressures from the French. Change in the presidential command and in the national assembly led the colonial party to order the conquest of Syria and the disbandment of Faisal’s rule. While these notable episodes occurred, other dynamics animated the northern part of the country. When the hostilities ceased, groups of Armenians went back to Cilicia. Following the French troops, they established themselves in the main cities of Urfa, Marash, and Aintab (Tachjian 2004). The French

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argued that the Armenians were owed compensation for the massacres, thereby adopting the ordinary humanitarian aid grammar invented in the wake of the events of the 1860s (Laurens 2017). The French took control over the towns but failed to secure the countryside. Guerillas spread from the Kemalist troops forcing them to leave Cilicia. Fearful of repercussions, the Armenians fled once more into the French territory. The uprising also affected areas of Aleppo where French intelligence services quickly understood that Kemalists, Ottoman officers, and peasants joined forces fighting against the occupiers. The high cost of the occupation forced the French to reach a compromise with the Kemalists. Their goal was to secure the newly established border between the two countries. Franklin Bouillon and Yusuf Kemal Bey met several times and reached an agreement dividing the Syrian Mandate and Turkey (Altug and White 2009: 93). They stated that the division would ‘naturally’ follow the Baghdadbahn line, as it clearly demarcated the territory. Suddenly, the tools of technical power became part of the administrative machinery. But other claims and demands required a more nuanced response. In the southern part of the line, next to Kilis, the Turkish asked for villages.9 They obtained some concessions as they were supporting gangs crossing the borders and looting certain regions. This example highlights how the railway could not be considered as a ‘natural’ line but it helped to build a political convention for delimitating the two countries. The intelligence service (SR) became responsible for controlling the areas. They established new technologies to strengthen their hold on the country. Barracks in the main stations and monitoring posts helped them to maintain surveillance of the borders.10 They observed the tribes, studying them in order to better understand their composition (Neep 2012: ch. 5). All these processes related to the construction of the new border. This surveillance remained largely a part of the military practices employed to manage a colonial population. The first infrastructure reinforced the railways as a delimitation of the new country. However, control was fragile beyond the different stations. The SR confessed it was hard for them to control the Bedouins’ migrations. Moreover, several clauses of the Bouillon-Franklin agreement (the Treaty of Ankara) mentioned the allowance for transnational movements. People who had property could keep their belongings and managed them,11 tribes could bring their herds to the pasture land, etc. These authorizations blurred the real line of the borders.

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When the Armenians went back to the Syrian Mandate, they settled in the different locations previously occupied. Some of them stopped in Jarabulus, Kobane, and Tell Abyad.12 This phenomenon is quite common to the migrations: after exploring a place, displaced people often went back to their first place of settlement (Chatty 2010). These small cities, which have not yet been studied in depth compared to Aleppo or Damascus (Ternon 1977), offered a proper shelter. As they were under French sovereignty, the Armenians felt secure. They were familiar with the area, and they could practice their own activities. They brought new skills to the cities, mostly mechanic expertise. They also had a certain idea of the city, transforming these camps into towns. By requesting schools for their children, promoting small industry and trade, they participated in the urbanization of the borders. In the mid-1920s, the troubles ended. The new authorities made the new towns key points for controlling the borders and shaping the country. In each city, financial funds permitted the building of a Sarai in the center.13 This building, which became the headquarters of the city and the regions, reproduced the architectural norms of the main town. It reshuffled the general plan of the town. It became the central point from which two main roads began, along with their commercial activities. This initiative very quickly changed the camp into a city. In 1928, when the borders were finally drawn up with the Turkish authorities, a new area had emerged from the past troubles. Surrounding the railways, in its southern section, a collection of small towns allowed the SR to control the northern part of Syria. This shows how the Mandate experiment with state-building accelerated ongoing trends. The Tanzimat cast its shadow over the first decade of colonial order. Similar elements were set up on a smaller scale: The towns were the center of the state, which radiated its power from these locations. In this precise instance, settlements led to the invention of a new urbanity. State-building, borders, and urbanity went together. Therefore, understanding the emergence of the borders requires taking a broader view rather than simply relying on diplomatic accounts.

Conclusion The Sykes-Picot agreement has generally been understood to mean the division of the Middle East between colonial powers. Close attention to the different processes allowing the emergence of the borders proves the

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inexactitude of the diplomatic approach. From this perspective, long-term history reveals other key elements. First, a process of reconquering the land took place during the nineteenth century. It followed the broader guidelines of the Tanzimat. It permitted the establishment of sedentary populations. Then, at the turn of the century, technical powers were implemented. Through the telegraph and the railways, the central authorities encroached into local communities, they drew up new lines and these phenomena stimulated new ways of living. The marginal effects, such as the creation of camps for workers and railway stations, became structural. At the end of the war, all these elements helped the French to delimitate their new colonial domain. This long-term history also highlights why the borders are resilient. Their establishment supposed a complex task combining political activities and economic and technical enterprise. If it took a long time to precisely demarcate the land, then these dynamics explained the strength of this line in the sand.

Notes 1. Adopting a biographical approach, the interviews targeted several people, originated from Jarablus, Tell Abyad, and Kobane, who had spent most of their life there. The range of age spanned from 35 to 55. This methodology helps define the meaning of the events and the ordinary aspect of life as Hughes Everett argued in The Sociological Eye: Selected Papers (London: Routledge, 1971). 2. The agreement of Erzurum in 1937 established a collaboration between Iraq, Turkey, and Iran over Kurdish activities and formally settled the borders’ issues between the different partners. 3. Dispatch of the French Consul, Aleppo, Tome 25–28 (1792–1829), Commercial and Political Correspondence, French Diplomatic Archives (Paris: La Courneuve). See also Bodman (1963). 4. Interview of an inhabitant of Jarablus, Gaziantep, 26 April 2017. 5. Dispatch of the French Consul, Aleppo, Tome 35–36 (1875–1882), Commercial and Political Correspondence (Paris: La Courneuve). 6. Tome 10 à 15, Commercial and Political Correspondence, Turkey (Paris: La Courneuve). 7. Tome 18, Commercial and Political Correspondence, Constantinople (Paris: La Courneuve). 8. Interview of an inhabitant of Jarablus, Gaziantep, 30 April 2017. 9. Tome 358, Commercial and Political Correspondence, Turkey (Paris: La Courneuve), and notes in 1/L/V/1445, Diplomatic Archives (Nantes).

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10. See the notes in 1/L/V/1842 to 1/L/V/1847 Diplomatic Archives (Nantes). 11. Interview of an inhabitant of Jarablus, Gaziantep, 1 May 2017. 12. Interviews of inhabitants of Jarablus and Kobanî, Gaziantep, 28–29 April 2017. 13. Note «Mois de Mars 1924», 1/L/V/1844, Diplomatic Archives (Nantes).

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France: Genesis of an Idea During the Revolutionary Period, 1789–1799]. Annales historiques de la Révolution française: 314. Strauss, Johan. 1992. The Disintegration of Ottoman Rule in the Syrian Territories as Viewed by German Observers. In The Syrian Land in the 18th and 19th Century: The Common and the Specific in the Historical Experience, Thomas Philipp. Stuttgart: F. Steiner. (Sulayman) Sulaym¯an, Hal¯a. 2001. Athar al-h.amlah al-Mis.r¯ıyah‘alábil¯ ad alSh¯ am, 1831–1840: Wil¯ ayatT ar¯ a bulusnam¯ u dhajan [The Influence of the Egyp. tian Conquest over the Levant, 1831–1840]. T.ripoli: al-Mu’assasah alH . ad¯ıthahlil-Kit¯ab. Tabak, Faruk. 2010. The Waning of the Mediterranean, 1550–1870: A Geohistorical Approach. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Tachjian, Vahé. 2004. La France en Cilicie et en Haute-Mésopotamie: Aux confins de la Turquie, de la Syrie et de l’Irak [France in Cilicia and the Upper Mesopotamia: On the Margins of Turkey, Syria and Iraq]. Paris: Karthala. Tejel, Jordi G. 2010. Un territoire de marge en haute Djézireh syrienne [A Territory of Margins in Upper SyrianJaz¯ıra]. Etudes Rurales 186: 61–76. Ternon, Yves. 1977. Les Arméniens, histoire d’un génocide [The Armenians: History of a Genocide]. Paris: Seuil. Torpey, John. 1978. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press. Tür, Özlem, and Raymond Hinnebusch (eds.). 2013. Turkey-Syria: Between Enmity and Amity. London: Routledge. Velud, Christian. 1991. Une expérience d’administration régionale en Syrie Durant le Mandat Français: conquête, colonisation et mise en valeur de la Gazira: 1920–1936 [An Experiment with Regional Administration in Syria During the French Mandate: Conquest, Colonization and Improvement]. PhD, Lyon II. Whitetaker, Brian. 2011. What’s Really Wrong with the Middle East. London: Saqi Book. Williams, John. 2016. The Ethics of Territorial Borders: Drawing Lines in the Shifting Sand. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Winder, Richard B. 1965. Saudi Arabia in the Nineteenth Century. London: Macmillan St. Martin’s Press. Yapp, Malcolm. 1988. The Making of the Near-East 1792–1923. London: Routledge. Zakariya, Ahmed W. 1963. ‘Ash¯ a‘ir al-Sh¯ am [Tribes of Syria]. Damascus: s.n.

CHAPTER 3

The Turkish-Syrian Border and Politics of Difference in Turkey and Syria (1921–1939) Seda Altu˘g

Introduction It has become a truism to argue that neatly delimited borders are an ideal of the states. Borders are not firm and precisely fixed lines of delimitation between two coherent, previously existing, mutually respecting state authorities. It is rather the process of the delimitation of the border itself that permits the state authorities on both sides to increase their control over the territories they claim. Thus, the making of borders is not a top-down, linearly progressive process of inter-state diplomacy and high politics. It is rather a process constantly in-making, whereby political, economic, social and territorial claims of various state and non-state actors with unequal organizational and infrastructural capacity strive for power and sovereignty through different means at various levels—global, regional, national and local.

S. Altu˘g (B) Ataturk Institute for Modern Turkish History, Bo˘gaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey © The Author(s) 2020 M. Cimino (ed.), Syria: Borders, Boundaries, and the State, Mobility & Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44877-6_3

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In this sense, borders are zones of contention impelling the imposition and intensification of the state authority throughout their constitution. In the case of the Turkish-Syrian border, the simultaneous process of border- and state-making on both sides has occurred in the immediate aftermath of the former’s delimitation intensifying at times of political upheaval and state-sponsored ethnoreligious violence directed against Kurds and Christians in Turkey throughout the 1920s and 1930s.1 The geographical space was attempted to be organized according to underlying principles of national/colonial rules. Borders, then, were used as a barrier, notably by the state authorities, to keep the ‘undesirable elements’, namely the people, goods and ideas that the new national space does not accomodate, away from the national territory or under the control of the ruling authority. However, the organization of space can not be simply understood as solely sustained by the Turkish or French state classifications, surveillance and procedures of administration alone. Various local actors on both sides of the border having economic, political or social motivations contributed to its organization, too. Moreover, despite the near-absence of technologies of border-making, the presence of two territories under different state jurisdictions, opened up a space of evasion for the undesirables where they could flee away from the hostile state’s sovereignty and confine themselves. These simultaneous and interrelated processes stimulated the accretion of concrete state authority in the border region as well as governance of a geographical space in line with the domestic politics of difference in Turkey and French-Syria, respectively. Borders are signs of the eminent domain of states. As much as they are markers of the relations between neighbouring states, they are indicative of the state-society relations, too. However, the Turkish-Syrian border is not only a physical evidence of the Turkish state’s past and present relations with Syria nor with its own borderland population in Turkey; but it is also a record of its relations with once-its own populations who coerciblely fled to the Syrian side of the border and turned out to be Syrian citizens following the partition of the region between Turkey, France and Britain in the early 1920s. Syrian political actors, living in the territory under the French rule mandated by the League of Nations (1921–1946) did not have a seat on the table negotiating the exact place and the terms of the border passages, but the border question was hotly debated by the Syrian public as it implied significant questions related to central and local power and sovereignty. On one side, for the once-Ottoman citizens

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in Syria under the French mandate, the Turkish-Syrian border embodied a dual effect, evoking an old imperial relationship dressed in a new nationalist ideology. On the other side, for the borderland populations in Turkey, the separation was a mark of the modern Turkish state’s extent, power and violence as implied in its ethno-religious, socio-economic and administrative policies. Looking into the local, national and interstate discussions concerning the delimitation of the Turkish-Syrian border in the first two decades of the twentieth century, this chapter aims to demonstrate the ways in which the governing of both the domestic territory and the cross-border region are intimately linked to (re)production of domestic politics of difference. Through reconstructing the dynamic, yet unequal relationship between the two state powers and the local actors on both sides of the border, this article attempts to display the multi-sited and interrelated histories of state, border and nation-making.

Retarded Presence and Politics of Border in French-Syria The Franklin-Bouillon/Ankara agreement of 20 October 1921 terminated the state of war between the newly-founded Turkish government in Ankara and France sketching out the frontier between Turkey and Syria under the French mandate. Nevertheless, the border’s transformation from a line on the map to a space that makes sense in the lives of peoples, goods and ideas has continued up until the early 1940s. The border roughly followed the Baghdad railway. According to Article 8 of the agreement, the frontier began at a point south of Payas, 15 km north of Alexandretta, passed eastwards thence to a point on the Baghdad railway some 45 km north of Aleppo and thereafter followed the course of the railway to Nusaybin in such a way as to place the actual railway in the Turkish territory, except the section between the railway border gates, Meydanekbez (Ar: Maidan Akbas) and Çobanbey (Ar: al-Ra‘i), where the railway made a V-shaped deflection towards the south in order to pass through Aleppo. The stations and sidings of the section between Çobanbey (al-Ra’i) and Nusaybin belonged to Turkey as forming parts of the track of the railway. From Nusaybin, the new frontier turned north-east to the Tigris at Cizre (Ar:Jaz¯ıra). Following this agreement, the French troops evacuated the territory under their occupation, namely Adana, Mersin, Dörtyol, Ceyhan,

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Osmaniye in January 1922, a disastrous event for the local Armenians and others who disfavored the newly-founded Ankara government, the forerunners of the Republic of Turkey (Tachjian 2004). Article 3 of the Lausanne Peace Treaty (24 July 1923), formalizing the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, adopted and confirmed the frontier laid down in the Franklin-Bouillon agreement. However, the final settlement of the most eastern stretch of the borderline, namely the Nusaybin-Jaz¯ıra ibn ‘Omar stretch was left on suspense. Concerning its settlement, Article 8 in the Ankara agreement stated that the border would follow the old Roman route and called for a mixed commission of delimitation beginning to operate as late as September 1925. The Turkish government demanded a number of localities to the south of the Franklin-Bouillon line, namely the railway station at Payas, a strategic stopover; a dozen of Turkoman villages dependent on the border town of Kilis so to increase the number of ethnic Turks along the borderline; some villages belonging to the notorious Hadjo Agha of the Kurdish Heverkan tribe; and most importantly some modifications in the Nusaybin-Jaz¯ıra ibn ‘Omar sector in order to be able to encompass the local Kurdish populations living on both sides of the border.2 Concerning the exploitation of the Baghdad railway, the 1921 agreement foresaw the concession of the railway line between Pozanti (Ar: alBadandum) and Nusaybin to a French company (BANP being BozantiAdana-Nisibin et Prolongements) where both parties had the right to utilize the railway line in each other’s territory; that is, the Turkish side would be free to use the Meydan Ekbez-Çobanbey stretch in the Syrian territory and the French would inherit the Çobanbey-Nusaybin stretch in the Turkish territory. An average toll would be agreed on between both parties in order to guarantee at least the commercial interests of Aleppo which lost its main economic hinterland after the delimitation of the border.3 However, the Turkish party soon claimed for full rights over the railway line passing from its own territory. Eventually, with the dismissal of BANP in October 1932, Turkey endowed the official right of exploitation of the Pozanti-Nusaybin line where the former accrued the control over the tariffs for the transports between Aleppo and the sea resulting in further strangling of Aleppo. The delimitation of the most eastern end, the Nusaybin-Jaz¯ıra stretch of the Turco-Syrian border and the Bec de Canard region which is located in the south of this line were not formalized and the region remained contested between France and Turkey until early 1930s.

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For the French, the border implied colonial economic, political and strategic interests to be realized in Syria. Unlike the domestic nationalist connotations that the border has evoked in the Turkish ruling elites’ imagery, the significance of the exact delimitation of the border was rather indirect for the French as it was immersed in colonial economic concerns and local Syrian matters. Hence, they adopted an unhasty and passivist line in their yet-belated attempts of establishing order and security in the region thanks to the preoccupation of the French military with repressing the Great Syrian Revolt (1925) in southern Syria.4 They rather preferred to creatively exploit the Turkish politics of border-nation-space-making in order to meet their own economically-motivated colonial ends. For the French, the delimitation of the frontier and the withdrawal of the Turkish posts on the Nusaybin-Jaz¯ıra stretch of the border were viewed as the necessary preconditions for the organization and administration of north-eastern part of French-Syria.5 Colonial anxieties regarding Arab nationalism and the refugee issue were explicitly played out in the French border politics. Attempting to contain Arab nationalism, the French mandatory administration undertook various measures ranging from administrative policies to demographic engineering and various political maneuvers. If changing Syria’s inner borders by dividing Syria into autonomously administered units (Khoury 1987: 493) was one such measure, settling the “loyal” refugee populations from Turkey along the borderline in northern Syria was seen as yet another remedy.6 North-eastern part of Syria, Jaz¯ıra, has turned into a significant site in this colonial endeavour. The words of Père Antoine Poidebard, a devoted French researcher on the Roman boundaries of Mesopotamia and one of the most respected officials of the Central Refugee Committee (Comité central des réfugiés ) in Hassake, confirm this point: We tend to, in fact, install refugees mainly along the Turkish border, offering the advantage of establishing Christian populations in these regions where their interest turns towards France and thereby constitutes a separation between the Syrian Muslim element and Turkish Muslims.7

Jaz¯ıra, so-called being vacant and unpopulated, turned out to be one of the most favourable regions for the settlement of refugee populations.8 Economic concerns played a significant role in this choice, too. The exact

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delimitation of the Turkish-Syrian border was viewed as an inevitable precondition for the flourishing of domestic and international trade in the region as well as for the economic and agricultural exploitation of the vast fields of the Jaz¯ıra. The security question is of fundamental importance to the stability of the refugee centres. From a military point of view, Hassake is indispensable as a centre for the policing and the defence of Upper Jaz¯ıra and also as a recruiting station. Here Assyro-Chaldeans and other mountainous people from Jabal Tour, immigrants to the French-mandated territory, can be recruited for the Syrian Legion. To encourage these excellent recruits, their loyalty should be rewarded with a generous pay. Experienced officers and professional soldiers who know the area should be retained and each company should be well provided with local reservists. To this end, it will probably be both advisable and necessary to grant land, in one form and another, to military families. This method of guarding the border lands would echo what took place in the same area under the Roman Empire. From the middle of the third century A.D., surveillance of the frontier was entrusted to a special division which was comprised of both soldiers and settlers. Land had been granted to them in the border area and they were responsible both for cultivating and defending it. It was hoped that they would serve the empire with greater loyalty if at the same time they were defending their own personal property.9

Syria and especially its eastern borders bear a symbolic meaning in French domestic politics in France, as well. The region is constructed in terms of the notion of “Greater Syria” that is gratified owing to its prestigious past during the Roman times. France, then, is singled out as the inheritor of the classical Roman civilization that is to be rejuvenated through its mission of protecting the civilization and defending the frontiers of the east (le “limès oriental” ).10 Inspired by the idea of an imperial France revitalizing the glorious Roman civilization,11 Jaz¯ıra, then was seen as promising future economic gains to the French despite the fact that the region was still unknown to French circles (de Gontaut-Biron 1923: 92).12 Nevertheless, the border-related controversies in Jazira such as the uncertainty in the delimitation of the Bec de Canard region, Turkish encroachments in the Syrian territory, “Turkish politics of discrediting the French in the eyes of the local population and lastly the hostility of the majority of the Syrian Kurdish-Arab tribes against the French presence in the region”13 were viewed as obstacles to be overridden in order to deal with the

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refugee issue and undertake economic investment in the region (Altu˘g 2011). Despite these local concerns, the Quai d’Orsay and the French HighCommissioner in Beirut adopted a tardy and relatively passive line concerning the governance of the border region, while the French local authorities in Jaz¯ıra, namely the intelligence service officers and the military personnel, were more determined and ambitious for the formalization of the border and pacification of the region. At times, the local officials undertook action against the wishes of the French central authorities in Beirut and Paris. For the former, the establishment of a border post was a self-reification and a form of victorious resistance. The response of the Intelligence Service Officer Pierre Terrier (Tejel 2007: 93) to General Gaston Billotte’s letter where the latter describes the perilous situation in the French post in Qamishli is revealing in this respect. Terrier in his initial letter to General Billotte emphasizes “the exigency of the French occupation of Kamishlié [Qamishli] in order to present to all, namely the tribes and the Turks that they [the French] are determined to stay in the region” (Velud 1991: 296). General Billotte agrees the proposal and gives consent to the reinforcement of troops in the region. The response of Terrier is outstanding: “reading this message, I started dancing with joy. I will consider that this sector is from now on beaten down [gagné]” (Velud 1991: ibid.). The letter dated 1 December 1926 by Terrier following his inspection tours and some detachments of the Gardes Mobiles in the camping zone of the Arab Tayy and Kurdish Chitan tribes manifests the colonial pride regained following the establishment of the French rule in the border region despite and against “the rebellious powers”: Fully returned to us, aspiring, above all, to forget the mistakes that were committed against us in the past, anxious, above all, to find peace and tranquillity under our aegis, the former rebels of Behendour and Qubur al-Bid can today be considered sincere in their statement of submission… therefore, our mission could be considered as secured and the expansion of our influence over this part of the [Syrian] territory under our mandate is positive.14

Where and how does the Syrian local agency stand in the course of the delimitation of the Turco-Syrian border? Similar to other colonial contexts, the border question for Syrians living under the French mandate

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rule evoked questions of power and national sovereignty. Despite Syrian Arab nationalists’ aspiration for the contrary, the political actors lacked the political power in the process of the delimitation of the border (Khoury 1981: 443), leading up the formation of a deficiency-based narrative in Syrian Arab nationalist imagery, as encapsulated in the widely shared motto that the borders of Syria were drawn by foreign powers without taking the Arab nationalist claims into account (Salama 1987: 59). The Damascene press of 1920s is full of heated articles complaining about the absence of local initiative in the governance of Syrian affairs and lack of public knowledge regarding the delimitation of the Turco-Syrian border. Absence of Syrian border officers and intelligence service officers is stated as the main reason underlying the lack of Syrian agency in the making of the border.15 The French rule seizing the local Syrian agency underlie the anti-colonial anger and is usually formulated through a legalist discourse without directly confronting the French colonialism in 1920s. The absence of Syrian representatives defending Syrians’ rights gives the French freehand to act disrespectfully and neglect the formers’ interests. The French grants the Syrian land to the Turks, while actually they have no right to dispose it in such a way. It stands in contrast with the requirements of the mandate charter. They do so in order to enchant the latter and blink away the Syrian land.16

Nevertheless, the border question together with the refugee issue was played out in an opposing yet, interrelated process, namely the territorialization of the Syrian land (White 2017: 141–178; Altu˘g 2018). The refugee flows brought the geographical borders of Syria into much sharper definition, drew state authority into rural areas and stimulated its intensification in the cities: state practices of territorialization, from border checks to agricultural engineering, were then stimulated by and applied to these movements (White 2017: 143). In the early 1920s, the main characteristic of the discomfort of Syrian society was the colonization of Syrian space by the refugee population. At certain moments, the refugees (muh¯ ajir¯ un) were labelled as “parasites” (t.ufayl¯ı) who infiltrated the country through the uncontrolled borders and seized the locals’ jobs.17 The debates around the new nationality law of September 1924 granting of Syrian citizenship to the Armenian refugees evoked similar responses. The arrival of Kurdish and Christian refugees from Turkey in late 1920s and early 1930s and their settlement

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in north-eastern Syria in a still undisciplined frontier zone are viewed as the gravest discharge of the French presence in Syria of the time. The French settlement of the last wave of refugees from Turkey is perceived as a venture which aims to create an “Armenian homeland” in Syria similar to the Zionist homeland in Palestine.18 The settlement of these refugees in Jazira was considered as, in the words of the newspaper al-Cha’b, “the violation of the sanctity of the Syrian body and national-self”, while the refugees were viewed as French “colons”19 whose settlement bears “lack of respect to Syrians and to the Syrian land”.20 Neither the differences between the Turkish and French meanings attached to the Turco-Syrian border nor the Syrians’ contestations and unfulfilled aspirations for independence did bring about a violent confrontation about the precise place of the boundary line or the management of the border area following the signing of the Ankara treaty in 1921. It is the common priority of the motto of security and order that tied the neighbouring states to each other in a mutually dependent manner. The means of ensuring security and order were not identical for the Turkish state and mandatory France, despite violence was the common tool employed by both in different settings.

Turkey and the Border Region in 1920s: Ordering Through Deliberate Destabilization It is the Turkish nationalist movement in the newly founded Republic of Turkey that took over the remains of the Ottoman Empire, a dynasticimperial state. Similar to other post-imperial state nationalisms, a somewhat “conflicted” ideology of territory, with the abstract notion of homeland (vatan) still imbued with an imperial anxiety that hesitated to accept the “shrunken” map of the post-Ottoman state’s territory—and correspondingly hard to match to the real, concrete human and physical geography of Turkey. Paradoxically, Turkish nationalism’s reluctance to accept concrete frontiers became an ideological weapon in the Turkish state’s attempts to extend and intensify its authority across its territory. In this context, the making of the border for the Turkish state appears as yet another facet of nation-making. Various aspects of Turkish state’s border politics vis-à-vis its southern border with Iraq and Syria between two world wars have been implicated and at times submerged in the Armenian and Kurdish issues, the governance of which oscillated between employing direct military measures and various political/administrative

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governing techniques. This particular relationship between nation and border making is revealed in the debates concerning the governance of the frontier region, one of the most salient issues in the meetings of the Permanent Border Commission (daimî hudut komisyonu, hereafter PBR). From the signing of the Lausanne treaty in July 1923 onwards, the weight of the Turkish politics moved towards disciplining the border through stigmatizing the groups and mechanisms that “disturb” and “form a threat” to the firmness and security of the Turkish-Syrian border.21 Between the years 1923 and 1925, the Turkish press was heavily engaged in promoting the Turkish state’s border politics through circulating news regarding the cleansing of the border from “usual suspects”. From then on, the most favourite subjects of the Turkish press were the installation of Armenians on the Turco-Syrian frontier, ethnic profile of the French-Syrian government officials operating in the border region and trans-frontier raids on the Turkish villages. (Mis)information about the “French settlement of Armenians brought from Greece and Syria to Antioch so that the percentage of the Turkish-Muslim majority in the Sanjak of Alexandretta shrinks” formed the most-attractive topic in thousands of Turkish intelligence reports of the period, too.22 Trans-frontier raids were classified in two different ways depending on the profile of the raiders. In case the raid was carried out by Syrian villagers, tribesmen or gangs, it was represented as a criminal incident; however, in case it was a territorial infiltration of the Syrian gangs formed of Armenians and Kurds living in the frontier zone, then the raid was marked as a political issue that required official protests.23 French social and political disregard of Turkish interests in the frontier zone,24 malevolent French officials distributing arms to “evil souls” settled in the frontier zone, Armenians crowding out the local administrative posts in the border have become the aphorisms of an overlooked border zone and French misgovernance of Syria in the early 1920s in Turkey.25 Following the Kurdish Sheikh Said Rebellion in Turkey (1925), Kurdish rebels being settled in the border zone was added onto the Turkish nationalist markers of insecure border.26 The Turkish authorities regularly asked the French to remove the Armenian settlements or certain Armenian and Kurdish officers away from the border region towards inner Syria. Stateled media campaigns were initiated immediately before or during the interstate negotiations for the signing of a border agreement or a protocol, such as prior to initializing of the Convention of Friendship and Good Neighborly Relations between France and Turkey on 18 February

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1926 and its signing on 30 May 1926, six days before the signing of the Turco-Anglo-Iraqi treaty that resolved the Mosul controversy (Soysal 1983: 309–317). The Turkish state authorities attempted to rectify the border zone from the “improper” populations who are considered to form a domestic and a cross-border threat to the security of the Turkish nation. Security and order along the Turco-Syrian border, a sine qua non jargon of the official Turkish and French state documents has been continuously employed over 1920s and 1930s in order to define a Turkish national space and negotiate its limits, thereby legitimize state violence on the local population living on both sides of the border and increase state leverage in interstate relations. Economic and fiscal interests are not less significant; however, they are played out as much as they collapsed with political and ideological apprehensions and vice versa (Bora 2007: 26–36; Öktem 2004: 559–578; Öztan 2020). These two concerns were justified by the discourse of insecurity, the frontier as insecure and dangerous. This representation was in turn fuelled by judicious doses of insecurity by the Turkish State itself. The deliberate destabilization of the border zone, as an article of policy, permitted the state to legitimize its own existence as guardian of the security of the “nation”—a discourse essential to the expression and enforcement of the state’s control over its territory. Thus, the state’s creation of a “wellprotected domain” in Turkey was partly achieved through mobilizing a fear of insecurity. Meetings of the PBR (1929–1938) were marked on the Turkish side by “narratives of alarm”, taken up and amplified in news reports and political campaigns. While it rallied in the interests of “order, stability and security” in the border zone, a state of low-intensity war and instability continued to be the norm in the region—a situation that benefited certain actors and (state) structures. The Turkish state in fact creatively exploited the cross-border reality in order to solidify its own claim to rule, both domestically and crossborder wise. The border and the Turkish national identity were formed and mutually reinforced by the “cross-border fantasies” of Turkey’s ruling elites—stigmatization, misinformation about the border zone and its inhabitants that evil groups live, work, wander freely in the border zone and at any time may organize an anti-Turkish nation political action. The sense of a national territory that needed to be protected from such groups living on the Syrian side of the border, namely Armenians, Kurds, political dissidents and socially illegible people, and of a national identity to which

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they did not belong, was propagated throughout Turkey through mobilization of fear. In this sense, the trans-border region (hudud mıntıkası) was a necessary metaphor and a space for the symbolic dominance of the Turkish state in the society living on both sides of the border. It is these border fantasies that enabled the construction of state discourse of order, security and discipline. Indeed, the institutionalization and maintenance of this knowledge of difference between the national territory and the cross-border is what has made and reproduced the borderline between Turkey and Syria. Throughout the 1920s up until the Turkish annexation of the Sanjak of Alexandretta (1939), the Turkish state attempted to impose its nationalist mark on two basic constituents of the Turkish-Syrian border in different platforms using several means: the legal borderline which simultaneously separates and joins states and frontiers, territorial zones of varying width which stretch across and away from borders, within which people negotiate a variety of behaviours and meanings associated with their membership in nations and states (Wilson and Donnan 1998: 9) The spatial effects of this domination were not restricted to the actual line on the map, but extended into adjacent territories, the zones that are “significantly affected by an international border” (Baud and van Schendel 1997: 206). Compared to the western stretch of the Turkish-Syrian border, the presence of the Turkish state in the eastern end took the form of relatively more oppressive military, political and ideological measures up until late 1930s. The state aimed to be publicly visible as much as possible in order to “adjust” the imprecise fit between the nation and the state in the region. Turkish state’s colonization of the frontier zone and adjacent regions through diverse measures has been an ongoing endeavour since then. In accordance with its claim that it has the sole authority in controlling over the movement of goods, ideas and people, making the border a marker of the extent and power of the state, the Turkish state strived hard to win over other local loci of power in the first decades of the twentieth century. Paradoxically, the drawing of the Turco-Syrian border and assigning nationalist meanings to the delimited territory has not necessarily followed a progressive and unilinear course that has eventually aimed to establish a “secure” and peaceful coexistence in the border region. The states may have an interest in the continuation of violence and thereby

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support the means of violence as long as it is under their control (Weizman 2007: 8). Depending on the local, national and international context, the states may deliberately delay the exact delimitation thus territorialization of a region; or the delimitation treaties may deliberately be refrained from a full-fledged implementation. And that is the very history of the making of both the eastern and the western stretches of the Turkish-Syrian border. Both prior to, during and following the formal delimitation of the frontier, the Turkish nationalists in Ankara employed various means to propagate and solidify their territorial claims concerning the border zone. The repertoire included controlled violence such as upholding armed activities of irregulars in the contested territory against the local (Christian) population or the French and lobbying activities of the local Turkish military officers among the local leaders. A policy of deliberate destabilization is revealed in the Turkish state’s material and ideological support to the gang (Ar: ‘is.¯ abah, Tr: çete) activities in the Kilis-Antakya stretch of the border from 1920 until the signing of the Convention of Friendship and Good Neighbourly Relations between Turkey and France (18 February 1926). The Turkish state tried to keep the region in a state of instability through various endeavours in rivalry with the French. Providing material support to pro-Turkish local bands/militia groups materially and ideologically through Turkish nationalist organizations along the frontier was only one instrument of the Turkish state’s crossborder political activity (Mizrahi 2003; Ghaderi-Mameli 1996: 98–106). Despite all the disavowals by the Turkish authorities, the British sources openly state that the “çetes are commanded by Turkish governors and the central government. They justify their political activities on the grounds of sustaining security, that is to say with the excuse that they indeed chase after the Syrian çetes ”.27 French intelligence reports about the Aleppo countryside in the first half of 1920s are full of records concerning the incursions of Turkish çetes in the Syrian territory. These groups were argued to be mostly based in the Turkish frontier towns located in the north-western part of Aleppo such as Kilis, Aintab and the Antioch plain in the abandoned Armenian quarters (Mizrahi 2003: 24). According to the British reports, they were commanded and financed by some Syrian refugees in these towns or Turkish local notables who fought alongside the Turkish nationalists between 1919 and 1921 during the Turkish War of Independence and were afterwards awarded with

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local administrative posts following the foundation of the Turkish Republic (Mizrahi 2003: 20–25). The French intelligence reports take a similar stance like the British and overinterpret the politics of the çetes with a security anxiety that these brigand bands that have already appeared in Syria are the forerunners of larger organizations: “These committees do not form out of local initiatives, as there is no such a thing in Turkey; on the contrary they are created by the instigation of the central government in order to pursue an undeclared aim”.28 Another Turkish border-making activity was the media campaigns and official notes forwarded to the French Foreign Ministry, a powerful instrument to protest against the French refugee settlement politics and unmake the French claims concerning the Turkish sponsored-çetes, namely that the Armenians and Kurds were settled in the frontier zone and instead argue that they are the Syrian çetes and violate territorial integrity of Turkey.29 The Turkish authorities regularly asked the French to remove the Armenian settlements or certain Armenian and Kurdish officers away from the border region towards inner Syria. However, the protests voiced by the Turkish press and the official correspondences in early 1920s contested the exact place of the border only briefly, thanks to the signing of the Ankara agreement in October 1921. Resentful articles about the inclusion of the Sanjak of Alexandretta in Syria (rather than Turkey which is argued to be its rightful possessor) and Aleppo’s Turkishness, hence the superficiality of a border separating it from Turkey start to gradually wane following the Ankara agreement to be reviving again in mid 1930s. One of those rare pieces is an article published in the Turkish daily, Tevhid-i Efkar, states that “Aleppo is a Turkish city despite the French efforts to prove that it is an Arab city. Turkish-Syrian border is not a natural border, but a border which is established by force”.30 The piece continues by referring to France to justify the Turkish arguments: “the French themselves also confessed its superficiality; therefore, they divided Syria into three Statelets”. The article ends with the wishful thinking that sooner or later Syria would return to “her mother”.31 The same years also suggest an obvious and exponentially increasing differentiation between the Turkish and Syrian nationalist concerns. Between 1922 and 1925, while the Turkish side was persistently highlighting the border incidents and territorial violations in the western stretch of the border trying to consolidate the newly founded nationstate power (during when the eastern sector was still obscure and chaotic),

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Syrian Arab nationalists were involved in anti-colonial nationalist politics aspiring for independence where French administrative division of Syria into statelets formed one of the most burning issues. The formation of the Sanjak of Alexandretta as an autonomous political unit and interruption of traditional relations between Aleppo and its northern hinterland was mentioned with despair as exemplified in an editorial in Barid al-Suri, “Alexandretta is the mouth of Aleppo, its economic life and its most active member. If the body, however, is deprived of such a soul-like part, then the whole body suffers. The poor revenues of the Sanjak and its great dependence on the export of agricultural products and industrial articles produced in the new state of Aleppo makes its separation from the body unfeasible”.32 A brief glance at the Turkish press in the same years demonstrates, however, that the presence of a formal border separating Turkey from Syria becomes less of a disputed topic with the exception of the “Sanjak question”. The Turkish press, strategically distinguishing between the good and the bad French, expresses its dissatisfaction with certain French civil servants such as Robert de Caix33 for his ambitious plans concerning Adana as well as social and political disregard of the frontier zone by the French officers.34 Inaccurate information, erroneous statistical figures and all-inclusive essentialist categories frequently appear both in the Turkish national media, but also in the Turkish official correspondences and reports addressing Paris and Beirut, as exemplified in a newspaper article in a local Adana newspaper. Kilis currently has only 185 villages out of 600 which it used to have as dependency before 1921. Those villages which has remained on the Turkish territory are located in a mountainous zone and are less fertile than the ones which have been surrendered to Syria. The vineyards, gardens, olive plantations and fields belonging to the inhabitants of Kilis which are left on the Syrian territory cover an area of 4,000 parcels. Thus, several thousand locals of Kilis need to cross from one country to the other every day. The people of Kilis the majority of whom are women and children are cultivators suffering under the current frontier regime where no social and administrative control is assured and which has turned into a field of anarchy.35

The news conveys no information about the owners of the villages which are left on the Syrian side nor the audience is informed why those ten villages located in the outskirts of Kilis, but not others are highlighted

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and even officially asked for retrieval by the Turkish authorities during the treaty negotiations in 1925. Unveiling these gaps in the news piece informs the ethnoreligious and political dynamics behind the making of the Turkish-Syrian border. These villages, which were eventually retrieved to Turkey after the Friendship Agreement of May 1926 were actually owned by the local notables of Kilis who has sided with the Turkish nationalist government in Ankara and were active in the foundation of Kilis People House, which financially and morally backed the irregular armed activity in the region (Mizrahi 2003: 47). A brief glance at the Turkish news about the border incidents and the French and Turkish intelligence reports of these years displays the ethnocentric arguments, built on disinformation and surrounded by nationalist/imperial obsession. Such a reactionary stance furnished by the flow of inaccurate information should not be taken as a characteristic solely peculiar to the Turkish party; yet “obsession” was shared by the rivalling parties, namely France, Britain, Turkey, too. For example, the apprehension of the British government that the French were delaying the military occupation of northern Syria, thereby facilitating a possible Turkish territorial extension into its south including Iraq, has often surfaced in British Foreign Office reports, such as the following: 95 percent of Aleppans and the surrounding districts desire to join to Turkey and the inhabitants are revolting against the French. State of affairs in the land is very critical. General Weygand held a general meeting where all the officers present in the meeting decided to evacuate Aleppo as soon as any trouble arises.36

What are the implications of the “public acceptance” of the states’ claims, protests and territorial demands which are built on distortions, manipulations and misinformation by the rivalling state actors, the Turkish nationalist elites and the Turkish local notables? Why do these actors “publicly accept” that the undertakings of Turkish state stand for maintaining security and order? What does such a “public acceptance” speak and imply for the Turkish state-society relations? I contend that the public acceptance of the truth of the Turkish nationalist arguments in particular by the new “Turkish nation” demonstrates the link between the rhetoric and the brute reality of political power. A useful comparison may be made here with Lisa Wedeen’s work on Syria under Hafez al-Asad. Wedeen (1999) argues that Syrians did not

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really believe in the elaborate propaganda of Asad’s personality cult— but nor did the regime. However, the Baath regime’s absurd claims, and Syrians’ public acceptance of them, formed part of the regime’s symbolic domination of the Syrian society and reinforced the former’s domination in other, more concrete fields. In Wedeen’s words, “power manifests itself in the regime’s ability to impose its fictions upon the world. No one is deceived by the charade, but everyone is forced to participate in it” (Wedeen 1999: 73). The Turkish sate in 1920s was nowhere near as all-pervasive as the Ba‘ath state of 1990s. However, regardless of its accuracy, the public acceptance of the dictum that Turkey’s security as a state, society and territory is threatened by the “undesirables” residing across the border suggests that there is an increasing awareness of Turkey’s symbolic domination of the Turkish society, primarily among the pro-government/state local notables and the new republican elite—a domination that was enforced by other, more concrete forms of power.37 This argument holds less true for the Syrian side, thanks to the illegitimacy of the French rule in the eyes of the majority of the Syrian population, hence the Syrian scepticism vis-à-vis the French discourses about border.

International Border-Making as a Turkish Domestic Matter The making up of the Turco-Syrian frontier, when viewed from Turkey, calls into question the dual role attributed to borders as tools aimed at distinguishing between “internal” and “external” spheres of action, creating external distinction and at the same internal homogeneity not of space and territory as such, but mainly of what becomes a territorialized population (Giddens 1987). The Turco-Syrian border and its custody, instead of creating distinctiveness outwardly and integration inwardly, created a buffer internally and blurred the distinction between “inside” and “outside”. It made the Kurds and the genocide-survivor Christians in Turkey share the hardship of trapped minorities, namely minorities who are entrapped in between the incongruent demarcation lines of state control and ethnocultural belonging (Rabinowitz 2001: 64–85; Kemp 2004: 76). The Turkish state, through legal codes and disciplinary practices of constant surveillance, supervision of individual and group conducts and internal pacification conflated the general category of the “enemies” of the state and the Kurdish and Armenian citizens of Turkey. Similar to

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the “control system” of the state of Israel towards the Israeli-Palestinians (Weizman 2007; Lustick 1985: 76), the Turkish state authorities neither wanted to liquidate nor integrate the frontier populations into the fabric of the new society, but to control and render them manageable and transparent to state power. They strived to cleanse the border zone from the “undesirable” populations who were considered to form a domestic and a cross-border threat to the security of the Turkish nation. In other words, the Turkish ethno-national project did not limit itself only with internal pacification and was not confined solely to the Turkish territory, but included both sides of the frontier zone (Bora 2007: 26–36; Öktem 2004: 559–578). As mentioned earlier, the Turkification policy was implicated in the border politics of the Turkish state owing to the fact that the “fear of an attack from inside” was intrinsically linked to “outside”, as part of its “dangerous populations” residing on the Syrian side would infiltrate and disturb the security in the Turkish territory. In other words, internal border-producing practices and pacification of both sides of the frontier zone were interrelated and simultaneous processes. As seen above, both the state legal endeavours and the state-backed militia activities along the border were instrumental in the constitution of the Kurdish minority population in Turkey as “enemies inside”. In this sense, the borders turned out to be the “front lines” of the entire state territory as far as the Kurdish population on the Syrian side is concerned. The Turkish border politics was intended more towards the outside, when it referred to the Armenians who had already found refuge in French-Syria without any prospect of return following the Armenian Genocide (1915). The state attempted to preserve the outside–inside distinction neatly as the Armenian threat had already been an “outside threat” by 1920s. Hence, the Turkish treatment of the SyrianArmenians as implicated in the border politics of Turkey points out to the link between domestic politics of difference and border-making. As Oren Yiftachel argues for the case of ethnocratic societies, in particular Israel/Palestine, space is not only influential but a dynamic in producing new ethnic geographies and becomes a main kernel of national identity (Yiftachel 2002: 222). Regardless of their socio-economic backgrounds, an Syrian-Armenian in 1920s was a usual suspect whose taming was possible only through removal away from the Turkish border zone. Starting from the meeting of the Permanent Border Commission in Adana on 8 December 1929, the Turkish state authorities strived to include Aleppo in the border zone as the city, being close to the border

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was a shelter for the undesirables and anti-Turkish venturer abjects (maceraperest bedbahtlar). Relying on the map of the Turkish military headquarters (scale: 1/200,000), they indicated that the border zone passes through Aleppo by dividing it into two parts. Accordingly, they argued for the full inclusion of Aleppo into the border region as it was not reasonable that half of the city would be included and the other half not. The French party refused the Turkish condemnations that Aleppo was a shelter for the Turkish undesirables. They objected to the Turkish proposal on the basis of the French map prepared by the French topography service (scale: 1/50,000) which located the city in parallel or in partial contact with the border zone. After long discussions in consecutive border meetings with all sorts of maps, the Turkish and French border authorities decided to entrust the settlement of the issue to the respective state authorities.38 One of the most repeated complaints of the Turkish party was the French negligence of the Turkish concerns in the border zone that are argued to be central to the Turkish state’s domestic security. More particularly, it concerned the so-called French favourable treatment of the group of undesirables and those individuals whom Turkey asked for their submission to the Turkish authorities. In every meeting, the Turkish authorities presented tens of pages-long lists of names of “harmful” (¸saki) individuals who fled from Turkey and found refugee on the Syrian side of the border. Sahinzadeler, ¸ Yado, Haco or Abid Agha were some of the mostly mentioned names. The list included the names of thieves, groups of indebted people and the amount of animals or plants they stole or smuggled. The list of the Turkish party was always longer than the list presented by the French party, and the Turkish party was aware of the discrepancy. Hot debates about the border incidents that occurred in the previous months formed one of the most important agendas of the meetings. The underlying reasons and the provocateurs of any violent incident were usually contested between the parties. There were usually two versions of the same event. For example, while the French-Syrian version stands as such: that a violent incident occurred in the east of Nusaybin, where the leader of the Mersinié tribe argued that a Turkish troop attacked a village of his tribe, namely Hasdê Fowqani, without any reason. The village was bombarded by the Turkish artillery again without any reason, and later pillaged by the Turkish soldiers which resulted in the injury of sixteen Mersinié-Syrians. The typical pattern of

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events of the same incident in the Turkish version, however, shows as follows: “The incident is provoked by the rebellious Kurds who found refuge among the Mersinié tribe. The rebellious Mersinié Kurds have attacked to a lorry in the Turkish territory and killed the driver. Then, a detachment of Turkish troupes started fighting with the dissidents”.39 Following French complaints dated 12 April 1922 about the Turkish agitation and the armed bands effective in the north-west of Aleppo and inciting the local population, the response of Ahmet Ferid Bey—representative of Turkey in Paris to Raymond Poincaré, minister of French Foreign Affairs—is a good example revealing how the border may turn into a metaphor in the construction of domestic “others” in exclusive nationalist ideologies. Ferid Bey twists the French accusations that the local instigators along the border zone were supported by the Turkish state-led institutions in such a way that the Armenians and Greeks, the two major undesirables of Turkish nationalism before the Kurdish Sheikh Said Revolt (1925), figure out as the usual suspects threatening the security on both sides of the frontier: It clearly appears that a certain Vahram Agop arriving at Alexandretta carrying the instructions of the Hellenic Government disembarked the weaponry hand in hand with the Sheikh of Suwaida (present-day Samanda˘g, Antakya) to be distributed to the newly-organized bands in the region.

The Turkish Foreign Affairs Ministry report continues as such: A group of people from among the Greek armed irregulars has been sent to Alexandretta to incite troubles. Thus, relying on the Turkish intelligence received, it may be concluded that the disturbance along the Turco-Syrian frontier is caused by Armenian and Greek committees whose ranks are formed by the Armenians and Greeks of Adana together with a few Turks who has been subsidized by the British.40

The report continues with the list of the names and place of origin of the members of these committees. The Greek and British governments are singled out for providing financial and moral support to these irregulars who threat the security of the border whose presence is to the disfavour of both the Turkish state and the French in Syria.41 As well as this, the border could easily turn into a metaphor of Turkish/Ottoman imperial superiority confirming the imperial disdain of the

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new Turkish republican elites towards the Syrians. The statement of Muhiddin Pasha Pacha following his return from Beirut in October 1922 for the Franco-Turkish agreement on customs is telling in this respect: The impression of our victory on the Syrians was profound. Indeed, they became orphans following their separation from Turkey. Our last victory, considered as an Islamic victory gave way to the materialization of a new movement. Nowadays, their eyes are kindled by hope and vivacity. The lips corrugated by humiliation and despair are now smiling thanks to our victory.42

Another substantial issue that saturated the interstate correspondences blurring the distinction between the domestic and international is the treatment of the (political) rebels (¸saki). In every Border Commission Meeting, the lists with names of the rebels (politics or otherwise) residing in Syria and asked by the Turkish authorities from the French to be deported to Turkey grow longer and reach up to tens of pages. The Turkish party demands their strict surveillance and removal of these individuals or groups 50 kilometres away from the border zone. Turkish border authorities condemn the French for abandoning the assigned tasks such as the removal of the rebels and ignoring the strict surveillance of the border zone. In an official meeting between the Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Bekir Sami Bey and his French counterpart, Sami Bey argued that the Turco-Syrian frontier is composed of two segments: the western segment, which extends from Payas to the Euphrates, and the eastern segment, which extends from Tell ‘Abyad to the Tigris: “The western part is a sensitive region for the French and they need the collaborative support of the Turks especially in order to fight the çetes in Kilis; whereas the eastern part is sensitive for the Turks due to the Kurdish movement”. Sami Bey continues as follows: While we took the necessary measures in order to stop the incursions of the çetes into Syrian territory, the French did not manifest their goodwill. Hence, there is complete liberty for the hostile elements to enjoy their fortunes on the Syrian side of the border.

The French responded to the Turkish accusation by arguing that they were also the victims of the undisciplined frontier zone where the local forces operate freely:

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The Bayandour incident of July 1925; disturbances caused by Ismail Hakkı and Hadjo Agha with the support of Said Agha of the Kurdish Daqqouri tribe; the kidnapping of a car by a Turkish band on the way between Karamanié and Hassatche on 15 October 1925 prove that we are not the sole authority in the flow of events in the region.

Soon after this correspondence, the two states would opt for cooperation in favour of the security of the territory of both states against the “undesirable” centrifugal forces and sign the Convention of Good and Neighbourly Relations anticipating the following measures: increasing the number of posts at Tell Abyad and Nusaybin, establishment of new French military posts at Derbessié, Amouda and Nusaybin. The French party promises not to recruit Armenians and Kurdish rebels as gendarmes in Hassatche and appoint Turcophile commanders to the border posts.43

Conclusion Similar to the making of other post-imperial frontiers, the process of making of the Turco-Syrian border went hand in hand with the making of the nation-state authority on both sides in between two world wars. As well as this, the making of this international border and the cross border zone cannot be considered independent of the domestic politics of difference, including racial taxonomies, as well as economic and political difference in Turkey and in Syria under the French mandate. The making of the border is formative in (un)making communities, namely their sense of themselves, their sense of their relations to the broader society around them and their relationship with the state controlling the territory on both sides of the border. The Turkish-Syrian border played multiple functions, and in sociopolitical, economic and affective terms evoked plural meanings; it acted as a shield, in particular for the politically dissident and dispossessed groups in Turkey, it provided socio-economic opportunities for the borderlanders; it generated fear as it decomposed once a continuous space and livelihoods; Cross-border mobility and the terms of its permeability have been negotiated violently or otherwise between the locals and the states at every level, ethnicity, religion, class and political loyalty being the major terms of negotiation.

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Notes 1. There is a burgeoning of historical literature on state violence, minorities and the making of modern Turkey. See Üngör (2011), Ekmekçio˘glu (2016), Van Bruinessen (1992). 2. Centre des Archives diplomatiques de Nantes (CADN), Fonds Beyrouth, Inventory 6, Box 550, “Dossier frontière Syro-Turque”. 3. For the effects of the delimitation of the border on Aleppo, see David and Boissière (2014). 4. For the Great Revolt in Syria, see Provence (2005). 5. CADN, Fonds Beyrouth, Inventory 6, Box 550, “La Question de Djézireh”, p. 3. 6. For the French views on Jazira, see Jalabert (1927: 581–582); de GontautBiron (1923: 92). For the various schemes proposed as a solution to the Bedouin question, see Velud (1991: 58–60). For propositions concerning the creation of an autonomous Bedouin state, see Müller (1931). 7. MAE Levant 1918–1940, Arménie, vol. 21, “Lettre de Poincaré au service français de la SDN”, 11 August 1928, pp. 197–198; see also Poidebard (1925: 162–163). 8. For a detailed environmental history of Jazira, see Dolbee (2017). 9. CADN, Fonds Beyrouth, Inventory 6, “Rapport du Révérend Père Poidebard” on the “Situation des Réfugies en Haute Djézireh”, October 1927, p. 11. 10. CADN, Fonds Beyrouth, Inventory 6, Box 550, “Rapport Berré”, p. 8. 11. Archives Diplomatique, Ministère des Affaires Etrangères (MAE), ELevant Syrie-Liban, vol. 299. 12. See also CADN, Fonds Beyrouth, Inventory 6, Box 550, “La Haute Djézireh et le Sindjar”. The archbishop of Baghdad and the apostolic delegate to Mesopotamia, Kurdistan and Lesser Armenia (1921–1927), François Berré argued that Jazira possessed an agricultural potential especially for cotton cultivation that would compensate for the economic loss that arose due to the abandonment of Cilicia to Turkey with the Ankara agreement of 1921. He proposed for cotton cultivation. Its geological richness of the region as well as the fact that it lies in the Sindjar oil field would also be used to convince the anti-Syrian public in France. 13. Cited in the report of Berré, CADN, Fonds Beyrouth, Inventory 6, Box 550, “La haute Djézireh et le Sindjar”, p. 3. 14. Centre d’archives du Service Historique de la Défense, Vincennes, Série H 1920–1940, Box 4H134, “Note du Capitaine Terrier”, 1 December 1926; see Velud (1991: 298). 15. Alifba’, 20 December 1932. 16. Ibid. 17. Alifba’, 26 October 1923.

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18. 19. 20. 21.

22.

23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33.

34. 35. 36.

Al-Cha’b, 28 January 1930. Al-Cha’b, 13 November 1935. Ibid. The cities of Alexandretta and Antioch, until the Turkish annexation (1939), were conceived as a separate “Sanjak question” independent of the general Turco-Syrian border issue, as stated in one of the editorials of a pro-Ankara newspaper, Yeni Adana: “We have left to Syria the territory in the south of our frontier inhabited by 500.000 Turks. These Turks hold our hand and ask for return to the motherland”, in Yeni Adana, 19 November 1922. Turkish Republic Priministry Archives (TC Ba¸sbakanlık Cumhuriyet Ar¸sivi), Muamelet 94A/47, Ministry of Interior, Directorate of General Security (Dahiliye Vekaleti Emniyet Umumiye Müdüriyeti), 94A/47. MAE, Syrie-Liban, vol. 169, “Politique extérieure Syro-Turque”, Service des Renseignements, November 1922. Yeni Adana, 4 December 1922. Ibid. ˙ Ikdam, “Türkiye-Suriye hududu”, 26 July 1925, p. 1. National Archives, (Foreign Office) FO 371-9056, E3255, “Kemalist activity in Syria”, 1923. In Meouchy (2004: 649–672). MAE, Syrie-Liban, vol. 169, “Politique extérieure Syro-Turque”, Service des Renseignements, November 1922. Ibid. The term territorial violation makes its first consistent appearance in administrative correspondence of the later eighteenth century in France during the involvement of the state to protect their territories from the violations of foreign guards and from the usurpations of local communities across the boundary. In the same century, the French foreign ministry organized its archives and created numerous border commissions (commissions des limites ) with the intention of formally delimiting France’s territorial boundaries, end up local border disputes between “Spanish” and “French” villages in Pyrenees. See Sahlins (1990: 48–49). Tevhid-i Efkar, 3 November 1921. Ibid. Barîd al-Suri, 19 December 1923. Robert de Caix was a very influential actor of the French rule in Syria and Lebanon. He was also the chief editor of the L’Asie française. He would then be the general secretary of the French High-Commissariat in Beirut in 1921. See Khoury (2006). Yeni Adana, 4 December 1922. Ibid. FO 371-9056, E10578, 29 October 1923, “Turkish propaganda regarding Aleppo”, from Consul Damascus to Eastern (Syria).

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37. Turkish rule in the region was maintained by, among other things, aerial and artillery bombardment of civilian populations, imprisonments and exiles on political grounds, uprooting and acculturation of, till: Leiden, chy and Peter Sluglett (eds) up lled Syria and Lebanon. he la eoples’te actors. 7 September 2019. n in the post cKurds and non-Muslims. 38. Turkish Prime Ministry Republican Archives (TC Ba¸sbakanlık Cumhuriyet ˙ U.M, muamelat, Ar¸sivi), Ministry of Interior (Dahiliye Vekaleti), V.I, 418/4, 24.5.1931. 39. MAE, E-Levant, Syrie Liban 299, Haut-Commissariat de la République Française: État de Syrie, Région de l’Euphrate, Service des Renseignements no. 14747/D.Z,“Compte Rendu sommaire de l’entrevue FrancoTurque du 7 Mai 1926 à Derbessié”. 40. MAE, Syrie-Liban 169, E 411, Folder 2, 10 August 1922. 41. Ibid. 42. Yeni Adana, 9 October 1922. 43. MAE, Syrie-Liban vol.177, “Relation Turquie-France, installation des Arméniens”.

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CHAPTER 4

Syria’s Internal Boundaries During the French Mandate: Control and Contestation Idir Ouahes

Introduction Sample Syria’s internal organization was continuously contested in the 1920s as French mandatory administrators sought to gain control over their new Levantine territory. Shifting discourses and organizations of modern Syria’s internal borders related to alternating visions of its territorial scope. Using French philosopher Henri Lefebvre’s work on state space, an analysis of the contestation of visions of Syrian state space provides an understanding for the overlapping and contesting claims to territory in this formative period. This analysis evidences that such contestation was not limited to ethno-national visions; politico-economic ties rooted in commercial and political networks such as the Aleppine and Damascene merchant-notable nexuses also occasioned contrasting approaches to the space that would be occupied by the new Syrian state.

I. Ouahes (B) Marbella International University Centre, Marbella, Spain © The Author(s) 2020 M. Cimino (ed.), Syria: Borders, Boundaries, and the State, Mobility & Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44877-6_4

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This consideration of internal organization provides two key contributions to scholarly understanding of Syrian affairs. Alongside providing in-depth archival documentation of these previously understudied shifts of territorial and administrative boundedness, it offers a complementary account to the general tendency to emphasize Syrian state space as being primarily preoccupied with outward-looking or ethnoreligious identity (such as pan-Arabist, pan-Islamist, pan-Kurdish, Baathist or Assadist realpolitik conceptions). The point here is to demonstrate that Syria’s identity and coherence was just as much contested and problematic from the internal viewpoint as from the external one. Before outlining some of the alternative visions of internal organization, it is worth briefly going over the history of the early mandate. This will offer some evidence of the problematic nature of the initial French organization evidenced by economic, demographic and political tensions that the initially erected artificial internal frontiers encouraged. The first section of this chapter will offer a brief examination of French designs, and the setbacks they suffered in the first five years of mandate rule due to popular contestation. A following section discusses how the French decision to create local legislature for each of the internal state of Syria enabled an increasing opposition to French conceptions of the state space. Finally, an examination of the Aleppo and Damascus press’ opposition and debate regarding the degree of separation and integration of the Syrian state space provides further evidence of the important internal contestation that was ongoing in this early mandate period. This initial research, which can be exhaustively extended to cover a longer period and more regions of the Syrian space, suggests, along the lines of Lefebvre’s thinking, that the conception and imposition of variable Syrian state spaces were not simply and technocratic-geographic imposition of a bureaucratic body, but instead a dynamic, animated and at times shaky diverging and converging processes.

Historical Outline It is now somewhat commonplace to remark that Syria’s boundaries were the result of artificial colonial designs. The oft-recalled Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 was a culmination of Franco-British sparring for the Middle East stretching back centuries. Yet, though it signified a rethink of granting Arab nationalists independent sovereignty over the Levantine mosaic, it also signaled the beginning of a period of inter- (and intra-)imperial

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uncertainty that lasted at least until a treaty formalized British-French mandate borders in February 1922 (Zamir 2014). The 1921 Ankara Accord recognizing Turkey’s sovereignty and evacuating French troops from Cilicia was thus a means for French authorities to give up this agriculturally rich province in order secure the northern border and to retain the strategically placed Syrian interior. Internally, Syria is a diverse country in demographic and geographic terms, not simply in ethnicities. Alongside the multitude of studies looking at the distribution of ethnic groups in Syria, such as Benjamin Thomas White’s work, it is worth taking note of Michael Van Dusen’s characterization of Syria’s population centers as “agro-cities”, with regional hubs like Aleppo or Damascus dominating spokes of agricultural and mercantile sub-regions such as Alexandretta for Aleppo and Deraa for Damascus (White 2011; Van Dusen 1972). The League of Nations afforded France a mandate over Syria and Lebanon following the break-up of the Ottoman Turkish Empire after the First World War. The Mandate lasted from 1920 to 1946, though a key period was the first five years, when the French sought to impose a specifically colonial vision of their new possession’s organization and future. The mandate was supposed to signify a new type of late-colonial tutelage, getting a nascent nation-state ready for independence. Instead, France designed a façade of parliamentary procedure to satisfy the requirements of this mandate. Yet local peoples were not satisfied with such cosmetic changes. The early years of the mandate demonstrate an active belief, participation and exploitation of the parliamentary politics that had already emerged in an earlier period of Syrian and Lebanese democratic actions (Gelvin 2006; Thompson 2013). It is worth noting that, though the latter country has experience of democratic activity, postindependence Syria has been thoroughly populist and dictatorial. Cultural institutions such as schools, museums and the press were also key sites for the contestation of French and various local visions of the future of Syria (Ouahes 2018). Parliamentarism was not a purely French importation. In the Ottoman period, some basic forms of democratic representation manifested themselves. A superficial system of Syrian and Lebanese delegates to the Ottoman assembly in Istanbul was in force in the late Empire and especially after the 1908 Young Turk Revolution. As James Gelvin has shown parliamentary activity was also ongoing throughout the two-year interregnum between the end of Ottoman rule in 1918 at the hands of the

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British and Arab army and the beginning of French occupation, which saw King Faisal proclaimed the ruler of an independent Arab state. In this state, based at Damascus, there was a national congress whose deputies were to be elected to office, though this development was not without controversy within the Syrian and Arab ranks. However, already during this brief, seemingly indigenous, democratic experience, tensions between the executive government, popular opinion and parliamentary politics were evident. On 7 July 1920, a few weeks before the battle of Maysalun, where the French crushed the Faisal experiment, the French officer delegated to liaise with Faisal’s government in Damascus wrote to his High Commissioner in Beirut. He explained that members of the Syrian Congress had been told by King Faisal that they would no longer receive their monthly stipend in a move intended to encourage the dissolution of the congress. Yet these people’s congresses resisted such moves, calling for the formation of a parliament and, if such a parliament could not be created, the Congress reclaimed for itself Parliamentary rights in the interim.1 Regardless of these early disputes, the Arab democratic experiment was cut short by the French invasion of Syria in 1920 and its military administrative control over larges spaces which would be forged into the new country. The formal League of Nations mandate, which required the mandatory power to organize the state’s political, civic and cultural apparatuses, was only declared in 1923, giving France a three-year pause before it instituted the changes it believed would aligned into the spirit of the mandate, that of tutelage; a pause that allowed it to seek maximal control over the state space and societies. Two core principles seem to have motivated the first High Commissioner, General Henri Gouraud, and his influential general secretary, Robert de Caix, who stayed on when Gouraud was replaced by General Maxime Weygand in 1923. In Lebanon, there was an attempt to co-opt the favored minorities, such as the Maronites (a Catholic francophone community), by encouraging the participation of community leaders. In Syria, there was project to divide the territory into several “states”, of Damascus, Aleppo, the Druze and Alawites, based on a mix of amalgamated Ottoman-era “provinces” (vilayets ) and orientalist assumptions about the ethnic dominance of one minority or group in each region. The divergence between these two was already beginning to show itself in these first few years of the mandate; Lebanon was given a degree of autonomy and internal self-governance much earlier than Syria, where the French maintained a firmer hand and indeed held out an iron fist to

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repress the 1925–1927 Great Syrian Revolt (Zamir 1985; Mizrahi 2003; Provence 2005; Thomas 2008). Before this consequential Revolt, the popular and elite Syrian opposition to the French vision of state spaces meant that by 1922, a Syrian Federation was uniting the Damascus and Aleppo representatives within a wider Federal body and, in 1924, a State of Syria was declared; an act that formalized this legislative union at the executive level. In the following examination of these contestations of the French organization of Syrian state space, there is an evident echo of the key point made by Lefebvre: state apparatuses and actors produce space, but they do not do so to their own liking. Nature, social groups and other states limit and distort plans and visions thus leading to multiple processes.

Internal (Re)Organization A report on the internal organization of Syria by a member of the Levant intelligence service recalled that two fundamental events during the early mandate were the creation of autonomous Levant states in September 1920 and the organization of a Syrian Federation in July 1922. The report’s author, the Commander Gros de Vaud, claimed that the separation of Syria into five states (Greater Lebanon, Damascus, Aleppo with the Sanjak of Alexandretta, the Alawite state and the Jabal Druze) had been a logical solution to the country’s centrifugal ethnic makeup. According to him, High Commissioner General Henri Gouraud had sought to create a Syrian Federation with the aim of uniting all five states as early as 1921. However, this project had met Lebanese and Druze disdain, given their newfound post-Ottoman autonomy from the Levant’s Sunni Muslim majority. He also claimed that this project was further harmed by the “rudimentary” public opinion in Syria, a reference to the AleppoDamascus press’ rivalry to be discussed later2 (Fig. 4.1). Gros de Vaud traced the further developments of the Federation as it changed from being purely consultative to gaining governmental powers. The appointment of Subhi Barakat al-Khalidi, a Turcophone politician from Alexandretta who had been sentenced to death in absentia in 1920, as president of the Syrian Federation was another sign that France’s efforts at forging a façade of democratic politics was instead providing an arena for challenging mandate meanings and methods. What Gros de Vaud omitted was the important commercial, demographic and legal implications that France’s internal divisions of mandate Syria entailed.

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Fig. 4.1 Map of the initial French division of Mandate Syria. Courtesy of Wikipedian “Techpete”. Available online: https://commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/File:Mandate_of_Syria.svg

The internal organization of state spaces encouraged fundamental rethinks of the trade routes. To give just one example of the political importance of this economic shift, one key thorn in the French side in the early mandate year was nationalist activists Ihsan Al-Jabiri. He was born into a prominent merchant family which had seen its fortunes impacted by the creation of borders between Aleppo and Turkish Anatolia (Khoury 1981). That this cutting up of traditional trade routes had an impact on the agro-cities was noted in February 1925, by the American Consul in Beirut. The consul reported that French authorities had been forced to make Alexandretta a free-trade port in order to secure the continuing commercial routes through Aleppo. This was because there was a risk that the southern Turkish port of Mersin could become the dominant one in the region. The consul explained that an: Agitation caused recently in northern Syria by the customs agreement and the separate administration of the Alexandretta region is due very largely to the fear that Northern Syria will, in the not from distant future, be

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ceded to the Turks and, they are also interpreted as being new evidence of further concessions by the French to the Turks…. There is no doubt that the customs agreement is disadvantageous economically to Syria and particularly to the city of Aleppo. Before the War, this city was the distributing point for goods sent to the southern and central Turkey.3

Aside from this, other changes, such as the Franco-British mandate states’ increasing control of Bedouin pasturage, the rise of new transport technologies and the movement of ethnic minorities, were equally important in shifting the spaces and nodes of traditional Levantine commerce (Ouahes 2015).

Contestation of State Space in the Executive Apparatus As was mentioned in the historical outline above, the early forms of administering Syria underwent continual changes because of popular and elite, peaceful and violent, contestation. The organization of executive level governmental institutions was quickly subsumed by inter-regional rejection of French state spaces. To give an insight into France’s early executive government arrangements, consider the State of Aleppo’s organization. The Aleppo assembly was outlined by High Commissioner Gouraud on 25 October 1920. Another statutory order regarding the government of Aleppo divided its state into three sanjaks: Aleppo, Deir ez-Zor and Alexandretta, which were further subdivided into kaza and nahiye districts. Already, then, it is noteworthy that the French space was designed to separate Aleppo and Damascus, but also maintained the Ottoman-era subdivisions to a certain extent. In Lefebvrian terms, the French mandate authorities were seeking to produce “a physical space, mapped”, which would be overlaid upon pre-existing, variegated and contradictory mental spaces that included “the representations of the State that people construct… directly lived or conceptually elaborated” in places such as assemblies and newspaper columns (Lefebvre 2009). The French organized space was thus seemingly logical, technical and fully overseen from the High Commissioner in Beirut, who was himself directly linked back to the Foreign Ministry in Paris. Thus, in the Aleppo State’s executive branch, a delegate officer of the High Commissioner was stationed as a liaison to the government of Aleppo, and he was supported by technical advisors. The government’s executive powers were exercised,

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in theory, by its governor, though mandate statutes made it clear that he would be directly responsible to the High Commissioner. This governor appointed directors of various departments including those of the interior, finances, justice, public works, economic interests and gendarmerie. The statute for Aleppo outlined how the governor would be helped by a parliament of the government and an administrative commission. This initially organized parliament was composed of the governor, the department directors, religious leaders who had been among the members of administrative councils in Ottoman times, two delegates from the local councils of each sanjak and the mayors of Aleppo, Alexandretta and Antioch. This parliament was to meet only once annually. A separate administrative commission was to examine the state’s budget. Each sanjak was under the regulation of a mutassarif who was the chief though he was assisted by another of the High Commissioner’s advisors who retained control. His key role was the collection of taxes and enforcement of laws though he was also able to request budget, boundary and tax changes and official appointments through the governor of the state. For each sanjak there were administrative commissions which could discuss local problems with the mutassarif. The kaza was overseen by kaimakam who was responsible to the mutassarif. Under this, each nahiye was overseen by a mudir. The Ottoman-era municipalities were maintained, though Alexandretta was given a special status. Another exception was also made for the Bedouin tribes in the eastern confines of Aleppo State. Their customary autonomy would be respected though they were expected to pay taxes to local districts which signified a revival of Ottoman arrangements.4 Overall, the initial French construction of the Aleppo State, and the organization of its administrative space, as with other mandate states under the High Commission’s League of Nations-granted supervision, demonstrated a degree of maintaining the Ottoman status quo: There was to be government as taxation with little representation. This initial organization was immediately contested by local peoples, whether they were nationalists seeking Syrian unity, separatists or those who were feeling increasingly disillusioned by the lack of autonomy on offer. Responding to the pressure, High Commissioner General Gouraud gave a speech that set out a vision for a Federation of Syrian states on 30 June 1922. The speech focused on maintaining the autonomous state structure (Aleppo, Damascus, Alawite…) which Gouraud saw as “a structure corresponding to the local particularities and the needs for governance education which is not an obstacle to unity… Switzerland and the

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United States are examples of… federations that ensure unity within variety”.5 He claimed that a Syrian Federation was the answer, saying: “These fundamentals of liberty the exercise of which the Mandatory Power wishes to ensure, are all that is currently possible in a country where the Turkish [Ottoman] regime allowed no chance of a political education”.6 The Federation was to be based at Aleppo but after union the capital was in Damascus. It would be held together by a joint council with five delegates from each state, directed by a president appointed by the High Commissioner. Despite French hopes to take the initiative and spin the reorganization as being the outcome of a more considered mandate policy, even politicians with this Federation and the assemblies of the states of Damascus and Aleppo proved very difficult to manage. A British consular report noted that there was little enthusiasm for the Federation given that it was perceived to be a new trick to contain autonomous development and ultimate independence.7 The cause of this was constant pressure and contestation of a revived mass-politics akin to those described by James Gelvin that occurred during the postWorld War, pre-Mandate interregnum (Gelvin 2006). Pressure on French authorities and co-opted local political notables emerged through cultural and administrative institutions, such as the press, but also on the city streets. One evident example of this comes from a US consular report from January 1925. He reported that Nuri Al-Malleh resigned as governor of Aleppo after protests against the arrest of leaders who had urged a boycott of elections to the State of Syria’s assembly. Indeed, the governor had “narrowly escaped serious injury at the hands of angry demonstrators”.8

Contestation of State Space in the Legislative Apparatus The French organized legislative apparatus also became an avenue to contest the French governmental space envisioned at the outset of the mandate. A British report outlined how seven kaimakams in Damascus state were gathered by French authorities to be told how the election process for the Federation would be undertaken. This resulted in a protest by one of the kaimakams, Sami Al-Baqri.9 A later dispatch provides information on how this initial election for the Syrian Federation’s assembly was to be organized. Each district (kaza) would elect a representative

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(kaimakam) to be sent to the state-wide representative council made up of one delegate for every six-eligible voter, though some districts had assigned slots for minority candidates from the Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholic and Syriac communities. The state representatives then selected five among them to send to the Federation-level assembly, with five members to be delegated from Aleppo, five from the Alawite State and five from Damascus. It is worth noting that the regulations overseeing this “second round” of the elections was, yet again, based on Ottoman laws. The British consul alleged that this initial opposition to the Federation’s organization of elections was fomented by Antioch-bases Turcophone notable Subhi Barakat al-Khalidi. Critically, the consul judged that Subhi Barakat’s “party” opposed the structure of elections because it had insisted that the first president of the Federation would be a Damascene. This would have ensured the election of Damascus state governor, and French-friendly notable, Haqqi al-‘Azm along with support from Badi alMu’ayyad, the president of the Damascus assembly and another of the ‘Azm dynasty so dominant in Ottoman Damascus (Khoury 2003). However, Subhi Barakat managed to gather significant popular and notable support in Aleppo as well as his native Alawite state, including popular protests against the declaration of the election. He also gained the support of certain “nationalist” (better considered as anti-imperialist, panArabist or pan-Islamist) Damascus notables such as Emir Said al-Jazairi, Ali Rida al-Rikabi, Shakib al-Hanbaly (ex-mutassarıf of Damascus) and Muhammad Kurd ‘Ali (ex-director of education for the Damascus state). Such was Subhi’s political acumen that the High Commissioner caved in and canceled this provision for the elections, allowing anyone from any of the autonomous regional states to contest the presidency. Upon hearing this, Subhi immediately dropped the opposition and returned to Aleppo to form a new “party”. In reply, Badi‘ al-Mu‘ayyad formed his own so-called government party. Yet, despite Subhi’s volte-face political opportunism, the so-called opposition party that he had whipped up in the first place did not recede. Even in Damascus it was also able to continue recruiting members, particularly among those opposed to the ‘Azm family’s entrenched influence. They organized a fortnight-long boycott, shutting down shops in the city and refusing to take part in the Federation Assembly elections. The boycott was successful; although the first round was expected to gather 56,000 votes, only around 10,000 Damascenes participated.

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Indeed, of those participating in the voting, many had been forced to the ballot through intimidation. The British consul noted that the election commissioners appointed by the French authorities had aided the “government party” through illegal rigging. This included changes in timing and location, negligence in identifying repeat voters, leaving ballot boxes unprotected and obstructing observers from the “opposition party”. Despite being aware of these problems, the High Commissioner’s delegate did not seek to remedy the situation. The second-round election was easier to manipulate. Secondary electors were summoned on 26 October 1923 to a municipal building and told to vote for the government party’s list. Most of the secondary votes were cast through intimidation.10 Policemen and gendarmes were reportedly coerced to vote a certain way, lest they wished to lose their jobs.11 Despite these efforts, Subhi Barakat was still elected the first president of the new Syrian Federation. As a testament to the increasingly febrile political situation, and the complex calculations that inevitably accompany the diverse mosaic that is Levantine demography, Subhi Barakat’s election sparked unrest in his own hometown of Antioch. This was likely a result of Arab citizens’ fears that his ascendance would mean pro-Turkish policies would be implemented on the Alexandretta Sanjak from the new Federal government.12 Thus, just as the “opposition party”, better considered as the amalgamation of anti-imperialists in the various Syrian territories, opposed French conceptions and plans for a division of their mandate into separate and manageable ethno-political blocs, so too did local Arabs in the demographically charged sanjak of Alexandretta bordering Turkey (and later conceded to Turkey in 1939) voice opposition to the Federation-level conception of a Syrian state space when this was being headed by a Turk. Nevertheless, the legislative structure enabled consistent opposition to French designs of the Syrian state space. On 26 December 1923, president Subhi Barakat and his vice-president and seven members of the Damascus state’s assembly protested the proposed limits to new Federation’s executive council of state’s scope and the attempts toward unity that the unison of the states of Aleppo and Damascus had realized. During the third sitting of the spring 1924 session of the Damascus Assembly one representative, Rashid Barazi, expressed frustration that the French were exceeding the limits proscribed by the Mandate charter. Barazi also broached the subject of Syrian unity saying: “Unity is already decided upon; the opinion of the nation is already made up, since the councils

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of state have already asked for this unity and the federal council has confirmed it”. The rest of the spring session was reported to be calm as was the following session of autumn 1925. It was during this session that the Federation’s new council of state first sat. French intelligence reported that the council kept its discussion within the remit of budgetary questions that it had been assigned. Yet it also noted that, despite the seemingly simply procedural debates: “In no case, and at no point, did the majority [of council members], who are supposedly submissive [to French policy], intervene against the [independentminded] activist minority during contentious debates… [they] never opposed the activities of five or six deputies who already represent ‘Syrian nationalism’”.13 In the Aleppo State, an opening session for the 1923– 1924 year was opened on 12 November 1923 and closed 12 December. The High Commissioner’s delegate to the state said that “the members of the council discussed in complete calm the questions submitted to them by the government”.14 However, he also noted that a number of the representatives of “Arab tendencies” [!] gained influence in the council and directed the council toward questions of Arab unity. Among the wishes that were expressed were that of Syrian unity and the reunion of the various state representative councils into one national assembly. The president of the Aleppo State council, Subhi Barakat, was deemed to have been favorable to this “Arab party”. The report added that “the political tendencies manifested by the representative assembly must be closely watched”.15 Disappointed, the French report writer noted that “although arrêté number 2197, of 24 September 1923, constricted this session solely to the scrutiny of the budget, it was impossible to stop the assembly from adopting clearly political aims… outlining goals that appear little in favor of the extension of French influence”.16 This ongoing opposition to the French-conceived state spaces of the Levantine mandate led to major reconsiderations. By February 1924, Damascus’ Alif Ba was reporting that the French authorities were planning to annex Alexandretta to the Alawite State while Damascus and Aleppo would form two wilayas (governorates) of the State of Syria.17 However, French authorities sought to curb the effects of this newly conceded Syrian unity policy toward their own interests. One British report described the Federation as a project that had “laboriously evolved from the brain of Monsieur De Caix” which was now being dropped for a Syrian union in name only. In reality, the French authorities were now seeking to fuse Syria as one, while isolating the coastal

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regions of Alexandretta, the Alawites, Lebanon and potentially even the Jabal Druze. A British diplomat in Damascus concluded that this French policy was intended to separate the loyal coastal bulwark against Syria “proper” where he was informed by one high commissariat official, the French could not hope to regain any trust.18 Unfortunately for the “government party” of old, led by Haqqi al‘Azm, the new structure of a Syrian state that the French were willing to agree to also entailed the abolition of the states of Aleppo and Damascus in favor of circumscribed governorates for them. This meant a diminution of his importance and that of his “clique which has been associated with Damascus particularism as against federation during the past three years”. These changes would have a definite impact of centralizing power from the various regions of the Syrian state space to be centralized at Damascus. The new Syrian State’s assembly held its opening session on 20 July 1925, attended by president of the Syrian State Subhi al-Barakat who promised ministerial oversight for the assembly. His speech also promised greater healthcare provision and other budgetary aspects. A range of tax reform was also considered. The assembly elected a president, Subhi Bey’s long-time enemy and former “government party” partisan Badi’ Mu’ayyad. The vice-president, however, was one of Subhi Bey’s fellow Aleppines, Fakhri Al-Jabri and the deputy vice-president was Christian ex-British consular dragoman [translator] the Christian Shakir Al-Kaim.19 By now, however, on the eve of the outbreak of the Great Syrian Revolt, even the “government party” affiliated representatives in this new Syria assembly agreed to a joint statement that called for further opposition to the French. They praised the move from Federation to unification though they asked for greater efforts to reattach the Alawite state and Lebanon; no doubt a calculation that if these littoral states joined the Syrian State, then the political calculus within the assembly and executive would shift against Subhi Bey and the “nationalist” grouping.20

Contestation of State Space in the Press The press played a key role in examining the debates over a proposed union of the Alawite, Aleppo and Damascus States. This was in response to the deep discontent over the continuing separation of these states within an umbrella Syrian Federation. This debate, however, did not show a unified dissatisfaction with French policies; instead, they represented

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the various conceptions of the Syrian state space along ethnic, geographic and political lines. There were nuanced discussions about the country’s political development. Some newspapers took a pro-French government line, arguing in favor of maintaining these administrative divisions. Others were less supportive. As early as 1921 the Damascene and Aleppine press struck a more militant tone with the Aleppo papers al-Taqqadum (The Progress), al-Ummah (The Nation) and Sahiqa (In-Depth) undertaking what the French reported to be a “violent” campaign against more French-friendly Damascene newspapers like AlifB¯ a’, D . ammar (Honor) and Abunawass (Father of The Change).21 At the end of 1921, an administrative report coolly stated that “censorship has put an end to the polemic which had occurred […] between the unionist press of Damascus and that of Aleppo with its separatist aspirations”.22 It was a complete misjudgment of the scale of dissatisfaction with the initial regional-focused organization of the Syrian state spaces. In December 1923, the Aleppine newspaper al-Taqqadum published an editorial arguing that the Alawites had rejected overtures from Damascene nationalists to reunite their countries in opposition to the French-created Federation of Syrian States. The paper highlighted regional disputes and Aleppine fears of Damascene dominance.23 Al-Taqqadum was joined in its pro-regionalist anti-unionist campaign by another Aleppo newspaper al-Bar¯ıdal-suri, which wrote of the heavy cost paid for the Federation by Aleppines. It also railed against the deputies from Aleppo who had failed to defend their hometown interests, let alone the peripheral interests of the annexed sanjaks of Alexandretta and Deir ez-Zor. The editorial explained that they did not: “want a minister, nor a king nor great titles nor people who will colonize us and take our money”.24 Another Aleppo newspaper al-Tarikhial-suri [The Syrian Record] received and published a letter from young students in Al-Ala near Hama. They explained that the impact of a full union would be to reduce their bursaries, which would be diverted toward Damascenes to finance education in this new Syrian state capital. The letter went on to rather melodramatically suggest that this would leave Aleppine students without food. The students explained that there could be unity in “their ideas and their laws but not in their finances since each [state] will look after their own in the aim of perfecting their education […] or for unimportant projects such as the opening of a Syrian University paid for by the Federation”.25 They concluded by alleging that the unionist Damascene press wielded undue influence on mandate administrators’ opinions.

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Set against these regionalist voices there were also pro-union viewpoints that were not confined to the Damascus press. Aleppo newspaper al-Tabakial-Suri (the Cry of Syria) printed an editorial endorsing a US style federated country and advocated a referendum on Lebanon returning to Syria. It rejected Alexandretta’s separation and encouraged the creation of one organization for the three states (Alawite, Damascus and Aleppo) as well as the unification of their public education budgets. Another Aleppo journal, Suriyaal-shamaliyya (Northern Syria), also argued for unity as an “ideal for all interested in the future of the Fatherland” and praised Rabih Al-Kobanih’s speech in favor of unity in the Aleppo State representatives’ council.26 Another Aleppo newspaper, alNah.da, also proclaimed that “the song of unity is well liked by Aleppines and is their sacred anthem”. It railed against “certain [local] people […] [who] had petitioned members of the mandatary government to parcel up Syria […] in order to gain a profit”.27 Some of these newspapers, however, developed nuanced critiques of unionist positions. In an editorial Al-Bar¯ıd Al-Suri exhorted the Damascene press to gain a subtler understanding of local developments in the Syrian Federation and the upcoming Syrian State. The editorial alleged that the unionist Damascene press had labeled Aleppo’s religious chiefs and Kurdish representatives as traitors for their failure to oppose the creation of “juridiction sétrangères ”; Ottoman-legacy legal loopholes that were created to maintain extrajudicial privileges for foreign citizens. AlBar¯ıd al-suri argued that “fanaticism does not exist in Aleppo and all her inhabitants respect the community leaders”. The newspaper wryly noted that: “it would be in the interest of the Damascene newspapers to insist [on the matter] with the Director of Justice [of the Syrian Federation]”. This pointed to the fact that the Arabist Damascene newspapers were busier complaining about this seeming “fifth column” that would undermine Syrian unity rather than pursuing direct protests with the government.28 As whole, the press demonstrated to difficulties in envisioning the Syrian state spaces in these formative initial year of the French mandate; as a modern Syrian state was being tussled into existence.

Conclusion This analysis of the organization of the Syrian state space(s) over the initial years of the French mandate underscores the shifting nature of state formation; particularly the intrinsic contradictions between physically

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imposed, governmental, plans for spatial organization and the imagined and lived experiences of various political, as well ethnic and commercial, spaces. The consistent and vocal contestation of French designs for splitting the Levanting space into manageable and seemingly logical (in an Orientalist sense) blocs by a variety of regionalist and nationalist actors in Aleppo and Damascus demonstrated the difficulties of producing the seemingly neat and defined state space in the social and political arena. The executive and legislative bodies organized by the French authorities to enforce what Lefebvre calls the “physical space” was contradicted by the “mental spaces” elaborated by those militating within these bodies and in the press. Further examination of the development of Syrian state spaces in the later mandate period, and early independence era, would provide further evidence of these tensions between cleanly produced and represented government spaces and the various mental and lived conceptions of Syrian stakeholders.

Notes 1. CADN/1SL/V/2372, Lieutenant-Colonel Cousse, French Liaison Officer in Damascus to Gouraud, High Commissioner Aley (7 July 1920). 2. CADN/1SL/V/1362, Historique des États sous Mandat français au Levant (31 March 1928). 3. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), US Confidential Diplomatic Post Records: The Middle East, Beirut (Microfilms), Reel 1 of 21, Paul Knabenshue, “Customs Agreement Between Syria and Turkey. Signed August 24, 1924” (2 February 1925). 4. BL/IOR/L/PS/10/801, General Allenby to Lord Curzon (30 December 1920). 5. CADN/353PO/2/Le Caire/116, Gouraud, High Commissioner, Aley, to French Embassy, Cairo (21 June 1922). 6. Ibid. 7. TNA/FO684/1/9103721, British Liaison Officer in Beirut to General Staff Intelligence, Cairo, “Political Situation in Syria” (1922). 8. Microfilm/U.S. Diplomatic Post Record/The Middle East/Beirut/Reel 12, Maurice W. Altaffer, Vice Consul in Aleppo to Department of State, Washington (15 January 1925). 9. TNA/FO684/1/9103721, British Consul, Damascus to Lord Hardinge, Foreign Secretary London (27 September 1923). 10. TNA/FO684/1/9103721, British Consul, Damascus to Lord Hardinge, Foreign Secretary London (29 September 1923). 11. TNA/FO684/1/9103721, British Consul, Damascus to Foreign Office, London (31 October 1923).

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12. TNA/FO684/1/9103721, Major Ollie Callum, British Liaison officer in Beirut to General Staff Intelligence, Cairo. 13. CADN/1SL/V/1369, Haut-Commissariat, Aley “Les premiers conseils représentatifs des États de Damas, d’Alep et des Alaouites: 1923–1925” (n.d.). 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. TNA/FO684/1/9103721 W.A. Smart British Consul, Damascus to Foreign Office, London (15 February 1924). 18. TNA/FO684/1/9103721, W. A. Smart, British Consul, Damascus to Foreign Office, London (4 July 1924). 19. TNA/FO684/2/9103719, W. A. Smart, British consul, Damascus, to Foreign Office, London (25 March 1925). 20. Ibid. 21. CADN, 1SL/V/2372, French Delegation, State of the Alawites, “Rapport mensuel pour le moisd’août 1921” (1921). 22. CADN, 1SL/V/1842, French Delegation, State of the Alawites, “Rapport Trimestriel” (12 November 1921). 23. CADN, 1SL/V/949, “Extrait du El-Takkadom du 22-12-23” (24 Décembre 1923). 24. CADN, 1SL/V/949, Fadhel, “Contrel’unité [translated by SR]”, AlBarid (16 December 1924). 25. CADN, 1SL/1/V/1623, “Un écho de Damas” (10 January 1924). 26. CADN, 1SL/V/949, “Extrait du Sourya el Chamalia du 11-12-23” (18 Décember 1923). 27. CADN, 1SL/V/949, “Extrait du Journal En Nahada du 17 Décembre” (December 1923). 28. CADN, 1SL/V/949, “Presse des 15 & 16 Décembre” (1923).

References Archives and Manuscripts Centre des Archives Diplomatiques de Nantes (CADN). National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD (NARA). The National Archives of the United Kingdom, Kew (TNA).

Secondary Literature Gelvin, James L. 2006. Divided Loyalties: Mass Politics at the End of Empire. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.

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Khoury, Philipp S. 1981. Factionalism Among Syrian Nationalists During the French Mandate. International Journal of Middle East Studies 13 (4): 441– 469. Khoury, Philipp S. 2003. Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism: The Politics of Damascus 1860–1920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lefebvre, Henri. 2009. State, Space, World: Selected Essays, ed. Neil Brenner and Stuart Elden. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Mizrahi, Jean-David. 2003. Genèse de l’État mandataire: Service des Renseignements et bandes armées en Syrie et au Liban dans les années 1920 [Genesis of the Mandatory State, Intelligence Services and Armed Gang in Syria and Lebanon during the 1920s]. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne. Ouahes, Idir. 2015. Une “ceinture” d’espace étatique: le contrôle des Bédouins au debut du mandat français en Syrie. L’Espace Politique 27 (3). http:// journals.openedition.org/espacepolitique/3695. Ouahes, Idir. 2018. Syria and Lebanon Under the French Mandate: Cultural Imperialism and the Workings of Empire. London: I.B. Tauris. Provence, Michael. 2005. The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Thomas, Martin. 2008. Empires of Intelligence: Security Services and Colonial Disorder After 1914. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. Thompson, Elizabth. 2013. Justice Interrupted: The Struggle for Constitutional Government in the Middle East. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Van Dusen, Michael. 1972. Political Integration and Regionalism in Syria. Middle East Journal 26 (2): 123–136. White, Benjamin T. 2011. The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East: The Politics of Community in French Mandate Syria. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Zamir, Meir. 2014. The Secret Anglo-French War in the Middle East: Intelligence and Decolonization, 1940–1948. London: Routledge. Zamir, Meir. 1985. The Formation of Modern Lebanon. London: Routledge.

CHAPTER 5

“The Country Should Unite First”: Pan-Arabism, State and Territory in Syria Under the Baath Rules Souhail Belhadj Klaz and Mongi Abdennabi

Introduction How did Syria go from Arab unionism with the experience of the union with Egypt (United Arab Republic, 1958–1960) to sovereignism, under the rule of the Baath regime and Hafez al-Asad, affirming the State, its borders and its security forces to defend itself? How can we explain that the Syrian borders established by the French, result of Sykes-Picot agreement in 1916, were consolidated by the pan-Arab Baath Party, whose raison d’être was to realize the opposite project, namely an Arab political and territorial unity?1

S. Belhadj Klaz (B) Graduate Institute, Geneva, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] M. Abdennabi Tunis, Tunisia © The Author(s) 2020 M. Cimino (ed.), Syria: Borders, Boundaries, and the State, Mobility & Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44877-6_5

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Sovereignty, pan-Arabism and state formation issues in Syria have to be placed in the historical context of the 1960–1970s to be understandable. The transformation of the territorial policy of Syria from unionism to sovereignism, even expansionism, was influenced by at least three factors: the failure of the United Arab Republic (1961); the ideological and factionalist fights over the control of the Syrian government and the Baath Party (1963–1970); as well as the capacity of Hafez al-Asad to impose his authoritarian rule in Syria after 1970 and Bashar al-Asad to follow on his father footsteps. Indeed, the Syrian path of consolidating its territory and constructing a Baathist state in the colonial borders illustrates the way how in the Middle East the project of establishing an Arab sovereignty (Zartman 2017: 937–948) stumbles over the question of sovereignty of post-colonial states under construction, and the stabilization of authoritarian regimes. The role of the Baath Party in the historical project of Arab unity and its support to the ideology of Arab nationalism cannot be fully grasped with the sources and documentation currently available. Notably, the Party, apart from its constitution and some theoretical texts, did not produce anything criticizing the ideological turning point of the Arab Baath nationalism led by the “regionalists tendency.” The Syrian newspapers in the 1960s reveal the ideological struggles, but with the establishment of the state-media under the regime of Hafez al-Asad, the official line does not get criticized any more.2 Hence, to be thorough on this subject, access to the archives of the Foreign Affairs Ministry and the Presidency would be required, but currently impossible due to the ongoing civil war.3 Therefore, the question remains whether the Baath, against its core identity and ideology, was not finally a powerful instrument in the modern Syrian state building, accelerating the failure of the Arab unitary project.

The Country or the Countries Should Unite First? The Pan-Arabism Dilemma Since its independence in 1946, foreign policy has always polarized the Syrian public debate. During the period of the parliamentary regime (1943–1963, Belhadj 2013), governments could fall over the question of defending the sovereignty of the country and the choice of regional alliances (Iraq, Egypt). Thus, part of the legitimacy of the leaders was based on the commitments made in foreign policy and the defense of nationalism, whether Syrian or pan-Arab (Lawson 2000: 529–556). The

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proclamation of the United Arab Republic in February 1958 was a decisive step for the Syrian leaders of the time in favor of belonging to a state with “stretchable borders which reminds of the Soviet state.”4 Indeed, the union was to serve as a territorial basis for the gradual accession of other Arab countries. This territorial union was thus imagined as the concrete realization of Arab sovereignty. In reality, it corresponded to the subservience of the Syrian leaders of that time and the dilution of the country’s political institutions in the Egyptian power structures. The Baath, though a part of this union, was thus provisionally dissolved and only the single Nasserist presidential Party was maintained. The SyrianEgyptian experience thus consisted of a classic enterprise of regional hegemonic domination more than an attempt of a territorial construction of a pan-Arab sovereignty. The failure of this political-territorial alliance had the effect of exacerbating the internal political divisions in Syria in the 1960s5 and in particular the disputes within the Baath between regionalists and pan-Arabists. This conflict could be roughly summarized as follows: Syrian Baathist nationalists advocated for the creation of an Arab polity by merging various Arab national territories, whereas regionalists based their project on the idea of an alliance of independent Arab states, named regions (qut.r). Both of those Baathi groups claimed that the final objective to achieve is to create a pan-Arab nation-state (wah.da wataniyya); and both considered that their pan-Arabism was a solution to three important problems for Syria at the time. First, to give an alternative to the situation of an artificial political and territorial partition which was a result of the 1916 agreement of Sykes-Picot. This agreement, also known as the French map of Syria or French Syria, was rejected by all political parties in Syria after independence—Nasserists, communists, even the National and People’s parties from the right wing; second, to avoid having its sovereignty challenged by Saudi Arabia, Iraq or Egypt which had regional hegemonic aspirations and considered Syria as a country to be subordinated; third, to mobilize and rally the “masses” around a long-term project in order to countervail the extreme fragmentation of the Syrian political scene. At the moment of the proclamation of the United Arab Republic in the late 1950s, high-level officials of the Baath broke away from Michel Aflaq accusing him of having dissolved the Party without their knowledge.

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These high-level representatives (notably Muhamad al-Zo’bi, Prime Minister from 1987 to 2000) formed the core of the “regionalists.” They criticized that the experiment of the Arab Union with Egypt led to the subordination of Syria under Egyptian dominance, making the Syrian political leaders’ vassals of the Egyptian President Nasser.6 These regionalists advocated the project of accomplishing the “socialist revolution” in Syria and to constitute, in the mid-/long-term, an Arab union, but without in the short-term giving up an ounce of Syrian sovereignty.7 Logically, these regionalists were to be found within the Regional Command of the Baath Party. It was through exactly this body that they opposed themselves against the National Command (pan-Arab leadership), which was constituted of old Party leaders: Michel Aflaq, Salahedin al-Bitar, Mansur al-Atrash, Munif al-Razzaz, etc. In 1966, after the coup d’État of general Salah Jdid, which was at the same time also an internal putsch within the Baath, the provisional constitution defined the Regional Command as the highest authority leading the country, hence giving the “regionalists” the upper hand within the Baath. From this point on, the legal predominance of the National Command over the Party was de facto lifted. The outcome of this conflict between the regionalists and nationalists is well-known: The side of the regionalists also called the “neo-Baath” became dominant. In consequence, the former direction of the Party, unitarian, civilian and in favor of a relatively liberal socialism, was pushed away and even eliminated by a military and Marxist dominance group. Since this date, the military has never been dismissed from the Baath and Syrian state leadership and Hafez al-Asad, after fighting with Salah Jdid for access to power, imposed for good the regionalist approach in the process of Syrian state and nation building. The majority of scholars and experts of Syria of the period after the independence have well explained, commentated and analyzed this internal fight within the Baath, its different tendencies, the ideology disputes, the generational cleavages and the increasing weight of the minorities (Alawites, Druze and Kurds). Scholars have also looked at the consequence of these cleavages, namely how they transformed into factional dynamics which led to a new internal balance of power within the Baath Party and in the leadership of Syria. Even though the emergence of a new Party and power elite was highlighted, scholars did not always draw conclusions about the project of political and territorial unity in Syria.

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More precisely, they did not show how the regionalist vision advocated by the neo-Baathist shaped the structure of Syria’s state apparatus and foreign policy and transformed the Syrian pan-Arab project into that of Syrian “sovereignism.” On the domestic level, sovereignism has consisted in “syrianising” Baath and state institutions. In 1972, the National Progressive Front was created exclusively of Syrian parties under the political leadership of the Baath. In 1973, a new constitution was promulgated making the State the “guarantor of Syrian sovereignty.” At the regional and international level, sovereignism resulted to some degree in expansionist policies from the 1970s that sought to counter the expansionism of neighboring countries, including Israel, Turkey and Iraq. The historian Patrick Seale related this part of Syria recent history in two well-known books: The Struggle for Syria and The Struggle for the Middle East. The “regionalist” vision shaped the structure of Syria’s state apparatus, its foreign policy—and ultimately transformed the Syrian pan-Arab project with consequences for Syrian borders and territory. The important role of Hafez al-Asad in these structural changes within the Syrian state, and more precisely within the Baathist state, has to be underlined. This includes notably that intelligence services were established, lending their services to support this sovereigntist policy.

Hafez al-Asad Sovereignism: An Alternative to the Failure of the Arab Unionist Project? Since he came to power in 2000, Bashar al-Asad followed in his father’s footsteps, accepting a large part of his political legacy, particularly with regard to the territorial policy of Syria and the endorsement of military/intelligence chiefs in the country’s leadership. As a Party leader and President, Bashar justified the sovereigntist credo over unionism in a discourse in June 2005 to close the tenth Regional Congress of the Baath Party. This Congress was held to define the new direction of the Syrian domestic and foreign policy and to elect the new leadership of the Party. It was a three-hour speech, which until now is not officially known and was kept secret. In this non-official closing speech, he asked the Party members: Today we have a status quo which is in place since several decades. We have a nation-state of Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, etc. (“homeland” - watan) – the nation being an Arab nation. Imagine some Arab nationalists, active

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in an Arab nationalist party but based in Egypt, who want to realize an Arab entity with Syria. Would you accept, once unity is done, that it would be an Egyptian that would reign over Syria? The answer would probably be no; you would not accept it. As a consequence, if we, as a Ba’ath party, would not accept an Egyptian to head Syria once it is dissolved into a political and territorial Arab union, it is certain that a Syrian reigning Egypt would not be more acceptable. Hence, the status quo of a nation state (dawla wataniyya) has become a fact that is difficult to change, and which is profoundly linked to our history.8

This extract is particularly noteworthy because it is the first time that an Asad, as a Head of State and Party leader, affirms in an explicit and categorical manner that the belief in an Arab political and territorial unity (first fundamental principal of the Party’s Constitution), which was the number one raison d’être of the Baath, is no longer the aim of the Party, neither its principal ideology, nor its principle of organization. To give more weight to his final speech, Bashar al-Asad refused at the end of the Congress to be named “¯ am¯ın al- am” which means Secretary General of the pan-Arab Baath, i.e., Baath national leader. Instead, he was named “¯ am¯ın-al qut.ri,” i.e., Secretary General of the Syrian Baath. The last “¯ am¯ın al-‘am” was hence Hafez al-Asad, his father. Contrary to Bashar, Hafez al-Asad never really clarified in a statement the ambiguity if the Syrian sovereignty would need to be given up in order to fulfill an Arab unity. Nevertheless, he put into place in the structure of power the basis to affirm a Syrian sovereigntist credo and his personal power at the same time. This led certain commentators to say that Baathism’s ideology was “hijacked” (Terrill 2004), also referring to Saddam Hussein and the autocratic tendency of the Iraqi regime. For example, even if the National Command (pan-Arab) was kept in place in the structure of the Baath and the State—the constitution of 1973 enacts that the Baath Party is the leader of the society and the State—it remains under the predominance of the Regional Command (Syria). Ironically, the former higher Baath pan-Arab leadership was from this point forward in charge to propagate the sovereigntist policy of Hafez al-Asad in the Arab world. The National Command was also in charge of constituting a network of politicians, high-level officials and intellectuals which supported such policy.9 The National Command looked, for example, for support in Arab countries to promote the “Syrian presence” in Lebanon, even though certain officials of the Command were not in

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favor of such predatory tutelage. More recently, it was through the intermediary of Iraqi contacts of the National Baath Command that Syria supported a number of operations which target US interests in Iraq during 2003–2007.10 The National Command was not implicated though in the Syrian policy toward Iran. This was handled almost exclusively by the Presidency and the intelligence services. In a sign of his hegemony within the power structure, Hafez alAsad had diverted the unionist and pan-Arab vocation of the National Command of the Baath to make it an instrument of defense of Syrian sovereignty. However, it is mainly through the army and the intelligence services that the Syrian president conquered this sovereignty, notably by neutralizing all the organizations able to concretely carry out the unionist and pan-Arab cause.

Syria’s External Security Versus Arab National Unity: The Consolidation of Hafez al-Asad’s Power Through the Help of the Intelligence Services The intelligence services were the “armed branch” of the foreign policy of the Asad regime. They get re-organized in the early 1970 with an enlarged mandate, as well as reinforced competences and means, not only to pursue regime opponents and to protect the new leaders in place, but also to serve a sovereigntist/even expansionist policy. This policy was implemented in the favorable context of a ceasefire at the Syrian-Israeli border following an agreement negotiated by the Americans and Russians in the United Nations Security Council in 1973.11 It has also benefited from the renewal of diplomatic and economic relations between Syria and the Gulf countries, particularly Saudi Arabia (Mann 2006: 761– 776). The establishment of personal relations between Hafez al-Asad and King Faisal has allowed Arabia to convince American diplomacy to include Syria as a key participant in the Israeli-Arab negotiations. Saudi influence was also decisive in legitimizing Syria’s intervention in the Lebanese civil war through the support of Faisal’s successor, King Khalid. Finally, Saudi Arabia provided the Syrian regime with significant direct and indirect economic support through an economic and trade agreement in 1972.12 From that moment on, Syrian sovereignism did not limit itself any more to mediation and indirect interventions abroad but justified instead a clear military intervention. It is the intelligence apparatus, notably the

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Military Intelligence and Air Force Intelligence, which organized in concrete terms the Syrian predominance over Lebanon starting from 1976 and not the Syrian army.13 They serve as coordinator and intermediary of the relations between the Syrian leadership and Lebanese and Palestinian parties and factions, and later also between the Syrian and Lebanese Governments. They contributed to weaken those political forces—the Lebanese national movement supported by the Lebanese Communist Party, the Progressive Socialist Party of Kamal Jumblatt and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)—which represented at that time a competitive force to the Baath with their potential capacity at the Middle East level to mobilize “masses” on a “Arab national unity” cause.14 In doing so, the intelligence services have thus made it possible to remove the remaining factors that threatened the consolidation of Hafez al-Asad’s power: the Syrian army, which has traditionally played a decisive role in the changes of power since the country’s independence; Lebanese parties and movements fighting against isolationist doctrine and targeting the unity of pan-Arab forces; and finally, the PLO, an agent for mobilizing the “masses” throughout the Arab countries. Indeed, the relative marginalization of the Syrian army in matters concerning the territory, the sovereignty and the national/state construction becomes evident during the failure of an attempt to become closer or even united with Iraq in 1979. Following this failure, the two countries suspended their relations and the Syrian border with Iraq was kept closed under the control of the Syrian secret service. The border with Jordan was also closed approximately at the same period and the intelligence was even stronger implicated in this closure because the Syrian leadership evoked a threat for the external and internal security of the country. As a result, the Syrian authorities accused Jordan to support the attempted insurgence of the Muslim Brotherhood by allowing them to have its fallback base in Jordan (Quiades 2009). As for the “Lebanese national movement” and the PLO, they have been considerably weakened following the assassination of Kamal Jumblatt in 1977, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the subsequent expulsion of the PLO (Brynen 1989: 48–70). The last fractions of the PLO in Lebanon are destroyed by pro-Syrian militias, themselves formed by Syrian, Palestinian and Lebanese fighters. By neutralizing these “counter-forces” in Lebanon, Hafez al-Asad has sought, through the intelligence services, to consolidate Syrian sovereignism/expansionism at the same time as its own power.

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The actions of the Syrian intelligence in Lebanon were justified within the Syrian leadership and Baath with the necessity to ensure the external security of Syria. This is an important point to underline: The concept of “external security” takes a significant place in the Syrian policy under Asad. It shows to what extent Syria goes from a subordinated State (a prey) to a predator State in the Middle East. The secret services, for their part, use this pretext to expand their internal and external areas of intervention, their means and their predominance over the Syrian army (Belhadj and Abdennabi 2020). Indeed, even if the army remains the institution which is supposed to protect the Syrian territory and its borders, it will undergo a progressive loss of influence within the Syrian leadership because Asad thought that it would represent the biggest threat to his power. Progressively, the Syrian army was hence removed and dispossessed from its historical role as guarantor of national unity (unity of the Syrian people) and Syrian territory. It would only keep this role in a symbolic way since the intelligence services were never able to represent this national unity for the reason that the Alawite minority held a primary role within the intelligence apparatus (Belhadj 2013). Obviously, the Syrian army was not completely deposed of its role to safeguard the integrity of the country. Hafez al-Asad mobilized several times the army by assembling the troops at the Jordanian border in 1980, but also the Turkish border in 1998, an episode of strong hostilities between the two countries Turkey and Syria, which almost ended in war (Belhadj 2013).

From Hafez to Bashar al-Asad: The Paradox of Legitimizing the Sykes-Picot Agreement Through a Pan-Arab Policy Taking all these elements into consideration, one can ask the question: Did the Baathist regime under Asad, while wanting first and foremost to create a Syrian state before creating a pan-Arab state, renounce any intention at all of a union or pre-union with other Arab countries, or even the idea of Arab unity which was at the core of Baathism? It was not a renouncement but it was not a firm intent either: In order to justify its line of action Hafez al-Asad affirmed as President during the twelfth National Party Congress (pan-Arab Congress) in 1975 that the Syrian policy is based on “Arab solidarity” (tad.amun arab¯ı), regardless

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the regimes in place.15 In his discourse, he argued that the experience has shown that the Arab unity could only come in stages, and that the Arab solidarity is the first stage. For him, the alliance with Egypt in 1973 to go to war against Israel was an example of such solidarity. The engagement of Saudi Arabia in favor of Syria and Egypt by releasing financial aid and putting pressure through its oil production on the US leadership to stop its arms supply to Israel was another example (Wissa-Wassef 1974: 185– 199). From this moment, the ideological discourse of the Party did not make reference any longer to pursuing a pan-Arab state as a concrete policy aim. On the contrary, Baath recognized for the first time that there are sovereign Arab states (dawla al-qut.riyya) and Asad’s foreign policy aimed to have Arab leaders recognize that Syria is a sovereign state. In addition, the “discourse of ‘Arab solidarity’” has been incorporated as a reference in the Baath’s doctrine in the same way as the 1947 Party Constitution or the 1963 “theoretical proposals.” Reality subsequently confirmed the ideological positions because all attempts of unions in which Syria participated, the union of Arab Republics with Libya and Egypt in 1971 and the unity talks with Iraq in 1979, were complete failures (Barnett 1995: 479–510). This question was only discussed in intellectual circles. Bashar al-Asad did the final stroke at the Regional Congress of the Baath in 2005 with the quote previously mentioned. However, we can observe that despite a relatively aggressive sovereigntist policy, notably vis-a-vis Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq, the policy of Hafez al-Asad did not lead to a recovery of lost territories (Vignal 2017: 809– 827): the Hatay province, “al-Askanderun,” taken over by Turkey in 1939 and particularly the Golan Heights by Israel in 1967 (and annexed in 1981). In 2006, the Syrian media even referred, for the first time in the history of the Baathist regime, to Hatay being Turkish, though there was no official recognition by the Syrian authorities.16 One can argue, despite all these elements, that the regime contributed to the consolidation of the territory inherited at the independence in 1946. Despite the fact that the Syrian regime did not stop to scourge the borders stemming from the Sykes-Picot agreement, it finally reaffirmed and hence legitimized them. Finally, the initial Baathist project of an Arab state for an Arab nation did not resist the challenge of power and the domination by the regionalists who affirmed that there is an Arab nation, but that it is spread over several countries which “should unite first” (dawla wataniyya). The question which continues to arise is why a

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project of regional integration has not been a real alternative to a unionist project, particularly in the 1970s? Another question that one could ask: Does the fact that the Alawite minority is strongly entrenched in the leadership play a role in the affirmation of this particular Syrian national project, in which this minority community is well ensured to maintain its privileged situation? It is difficult to answer this question since the regionalists had its supporters in the various Syrian communities, notably within the Sunni majority. What is certain, however, is that the Baathist regime of Hafez and afterward Bashar al-Asad did not build itself on the idea of a pan-Arab nation-state.

Notes 1. According to the Constitution of the Baath Arab Socialist Party: First fundamental principle of the Baath party’s constitution: The Arab Nation Unity and Liberty. The Arabs are One Nation, which has its natural right to live under One State and to be free in running its potentials. Therefore, the Baath Arab Socialist Party considers that: 1- The Arab Homeland is an indivisible political and economic entity, and that no Arab country can make up for the conditions of its existence away from the other Arab countries. 2- The Arab Nation is one educational entity. All differences existing among its natives are casual and fake. They can be removed by the awakening of the Arab conscience. 3- The Arab Homeland belongs to the Arabs. They alone have the right to administer its affairs, wealth and the running of its potentials. Available online; Baath Arab Socialist Party Web site: http://www. baath-party.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7615: the-baath-arab-socialist-party-national-leadership-the-constitution-of-thebaath-arab-socialist-party-approved-by-the-first-congress-of-the-party-in1947-fundamental-principles&catid=307&Itemid=327&lang=en. 2. The archives of the Center for Arab Unity Studies based in Beirut since the 1970s could provide information about criticism in the political and intellectual circles in Arab countries regarding Baath shift in its pan-Arab policy and ideology.

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3. This article is mainly based on secondhand sources, but also on interviews conducted in Damascus from 2003 to 2008 with actors of the 1950–2000 period, as well as in 2017 with former Baath party cadres. 4. “The Soviet constitution was addressed to the socialist countries,” while the leaders of the United Arab Republic wanted to encourage “the Arab countries to join them,” see Conac (1958: 540–566). 5. Interview with senior Baa’th official, Damascus, 2008. 6. Interview with Georges Sadaqni, former Minister of Information (1973– 1974) and member of Baath Regional Command (1971–1980). Damascus, 2003. 7. Interview with Faez Ismail, General Secretary of the Socialist Unionist Party, Member of the direction of the National Progressive Front, Former Baath senior official, Damascus, 2003. 8. Bashar al-Asad address at the Tenth Baa’th Party Regional Congress. Damascus, 10 June 2005. Interview by the authors with a Baa’th National Command member. Damascus, July 2006. 9. Interviews with two Baath senior officials, members of the National Command, Damascus, April and May 2004. 10. Interviews with journalists of Syrian Al-Baath and Al-Thawra newspapers, Damascus, 2004–2005. 11. The United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), a peacekeeping mission, was deployed by the UN Security Council in June 1974 to oversee the ceasefire between Israel and Syria following the October 1973 Middle East war. UNDOF’s mandate consists in supervising the mutual disengagement of Israeli and Syrian forces, monitoring compliance with areas of separation and limitation, and overseeing the removal of minefields in the areas of operation, see Rudloff and Diehl (2015). 12. Syria Energy Policy, Laws and Regulations Handbook Volume 1, Strategic Information and Basic Laws (2015), Washington, DC, International Business Publications. 13. Interview with former Baath senior “cadre” of the Baath Party, 2017 (Skype). 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. As Hinnebusch and Tür (2013) mentioned, “in October 2006, the Syrian Arab News Agency for the first time referred to Hatay as the ‘Turkish province of Hatay’. The same news item was not presented in Arabic.”

References Barnett, Michael N. 1995. Sovereignty, Nationalism, and Regional Order in the Arab States System. International Organization 49 (3): 479–510.

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Belhadj, Souhaïl. 2013. La Syrie de Bashar al-Asad. Anatomie d’un régime autoritaire. Paris: Belin. Belhadj, Souhail, and Mongi Abdennabi. 2020. The Role of the Security Sector in the Economy of Syria (forthcoming). Brynen, Rex. 1989. PLO Policy in Lebanon: Legacies and Lessons. Journal of Palestine Studies 18 (2): 48–70. Conac, Gérard. 1958. Les institutions politiques de la République Arabe Unie. Revue internationale de droit comparé 10 (3): 540–566. Hinnebusch, Raymond, and Özlem Tür. 2013. Turkey-Syria Relations: Between Enmity and Amity. Farnham: Ashgate. Lawson, Fred H. 2000. Westphalian Sovereignty and the Emergence of the Arab States System: The Case of Syria. The International History Review 22 (3): 529–556. Lefèvre, Raphaël. 2013. Ashes of Hama: The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. New York: Oxford University Press. Mann, Joseph. 2006. The Syrian Neo-Ba’th Regime and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, 1966–70. Middle Eastern Studies 42 (5): 761–776. Quiades, Ismael. 2009. The Hamah Massacre - February1982. Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence. http://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacreresistance/en/document/hamah-massacre-february-1982. Accessed June 12, 2019. Rudloff, Peter, and Paul F. Diehl. 2015. United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF). In The Oxford Handbook of United Nations Peacekeeping Operations, ed. Joachim Koops, Thierry Tardy, Norrie MacQueen, and Paul D. Williams. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Seale, Patrick. 1987. The Struggle for Syria: A Study of Post-War Arab Politics, 1945–1958. New Haven: Yale University Press. Seale, Patrick. 1998. Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East. London: I.B. Tauris. Terrill, W. Andrew. 2004. Nationalism, Sectarianism, and the Future of the U.S. Presence in Post-Saddam Iraq. Honolulu: University Press Of The Pacific. Vignal, Leïla. 2017. The Changing Borders and Borderlands of Syria in a Time of Conflict. International Affairs 93 (4): 809–827. Wissa-Wassef, Cérès. 1974. L’Arabie Saoudite et le conflit israélo-arabe du mois d’octobre 1973. Politique étrangère 39 (2): 185–199. Zartman, William I. 2017. States, Boundaries and Sovereignty in the Middle East: Unsteady But Unchanging. International Affairs 93 (4): 937–948.

PART II

Struggling for the Borderlands: The Syrian Revolution (2011) and Its Aftermath

CHAPTER 6

Hizbullah’s Borderlands Strategy: From Identity Shaping to the Nation-State Re-ordering Daniel Meier

Introduction Most of the political analysis of Hizbullah’s involvement in the conflict in Syria deals with its relationship with Iran’s regional goals and more directly with the interest to secure the alliance with the Baathist regime in Damascus or the expansion of the Shiite and/or the so-called Resistance axis throughout the Middle East from Teheran to Beirut. But so far, Hizbullah is primarily a Lebanese political movement with local interests and constituency. And in the meantime, very few analyses have focused on the party’s strategy towards borderland regions of Lebanon (Hof 1984; AbiSaab and AbiSaab 2014; Meier 2016) while most of time limiting the reasoning to the Shiite community. One may therefore raise the question of the cross-border strategy of Hizbullah less as a regional strategy to strengthen its power but more

D. Meier (B) Sciences Po Grenoble, Saint-Martin-D’Hères, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Cimino (ed.), Syria: Borders, Boundaries, and the State, Mobility & Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44877-6_6

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as an asset to secure its grip over what became its “heartland”, namely Lebanon. In other words, studying the borderlands strategy of the party, in the South and more recently in the Eastern flanks of Lebanon and across the Syrian border might help to understand the national strategy of party. Instead of focusing on the recent military development only, this chapter would like to reflect upon a larger historical trajectory of the Shiite movement in Lebanon. To do so, it aims to focus at its previous territorial and political strategy in the southern borderlands as well as a way to understand and analyse its recent political strategy on the eastern Syrian border regions (Anti-Lebanon/Qalamoun region). In sum, this contribution intends to highlight that beyond its transnational military deployment, today Hizbullah’s strategy in Lebanon’s eastern borderland regions seek to enhance its political and military stronghold in Lebanon, thus enforcing its agenda to erect a state of resistance. The focus on borderland regions in order to examine and assess Hizbullah’s strategy will lead us to take into account several dimensions linked to its political action: its territorial strategy since its appearance in 1982 as an ideological and political actor, its use of violence in order to shape its environment and the processes of legitimisation of its strategy through the (re)definition of the others, beyond the borderlines. The clear purpose here is to identify the main patterns of power at stake when it comes to Hizbullah’s territorialisation of power in borderland regions. In order to do that, I would like to rely on border studies concepts that are bridging territorial stakes with political goals and identity definition. Stemming from a tradition at the crossroad of political geography and socio-anthropology, Van Houtum and Van Naerssen (2002) highlighted this triple process thanks to the notions of bordering/ordering/othering as interdependent dimensions that border issues are articulating. Considering the three notions as processes, this theoretical framework rests on a perception of borders as a mobile and changing entities, subjected to representations and therefore in need of a larger understanding capable of linking materialities and subjectivities. In other words, borderland regions, in the definition proposed by Widdis (2005), will allow the research to explore the interactions between legitimisation process and the use of violence at the edge of the state. In this perspective, any intervention of any actor in the bordering process implies a re-ordering process and a subsequent re-definition of the relationship with the others through this re-definition of the self. Therefore, this theoretical framework may help us to analyse through the lens of the borders’ strategies adopted by

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Hizbullah the process of the enforcement of the “state of resistance” goal as a process of state re-ordering. In a first section, I will show how the Shiite movement shaped the borderland region of South Lebanon in a vantage ground for its resistance ideology. While defining the other (othering) and reshaping the region (bordering) after 1985, this initial process that took part in the last years of the Lebanese civil war played a significant role in the erection and legitimisation of its power (ordering) among the Shi’a community. While this process set the ground for Hizbullah’s national political ambitions, the 2000 Israeli withdrawal, detailed in a second section, conferred a national dimension to the party and highlighted the territorialisation process of Hizbullah’s power over the former occupied borderland region. Together, this “liberation” and its control over the South provided a legitimisation/re-ordering processes which ratified its use of violence. In a third section, we will see how the Syrian border is taking place in Hizbullah’s b/ordering strategy. While justifying its involvement alongside the Baathist regime, the Shiite movement succeeded to justify its role as a national border guarantor and more largely to re-instate the political status quo ante (signed in Doha) thus implementing deeper its project of the state of resistance, a process that I called re-ordering the nation-state.

The Territorialisation of Political Ambitions Hizbullah was born in the aftermath of the Israeli invasion of 1982. While being itself the result of a self-consciousness identity, shaped by religious values and promoted by clerics and political actors (Mervin 2008), it has been formed by inspiration with the Iranian revolution and Khomeiny’s radical doctrine setting religious principles at the core of its involvement to confront the enemy—the resistance against Israel (defensive jihad) becoming a religious duty for each believer. At the onset of its public existence, Hizbullah claimed/s to have two main goals: the erasure of the “zionist entity” and the establishment of an Islamic republic in Lebanon. In the civil war context and breakdown of the state, the mobilisation of the Shiite community in South Lebanon became easier after the third Israeli withdrawal in June 1985 when the IDF hunkered down with the Lebanese surrogate militia of the South Lebanon Army (SLA) in the “security zone”. Hizbullah was therefore able to implant itself in a Shiite environment, providing social support to an entire population

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largely abandoned by the State. In this sense, the pullback of Israel offered the movement a vantage ground for waging a war of attrition with key components: a clear territorial occupied zone, a designated enemy and therefore a strategic goal which goes beyond the simple “liberation” of a national territory, as reminded by Hassan Nasrallah in one of his speeches at that time: “our strategy is to build ourselves a future through confrontation with the Zionist enemy” (Noe 2007: 29). The existence of a defined occupied zone after 1985 helped the movement to start bordering South Lebanon and ordering its political hegemony. In the 1980s rival militias became enemies, as the main goal was territorial control over the southern borderland. In order to (re)define the meaning of “resistance” and being granted with a full legitimisation for any anti-Israeli operations, Hizbullah needed to have full control over territorial accesses to monitor operations against IDF and SLA troops. As Henk Van Houtum and Ton Van Naerssen (2002) remind us: “the making of a place must hence be understood as an act of purification, as it is arbitrarily searching for a justifiable, bounded cohesion of people and their activities in space”. In this regard, Hizbullah seized the opportunity that arose from the 1985 withdrawal to build a new definition of “resistance”, still under the previous Palestinian legacy, to control and progressively monopolise the anti-Israeli struggle. To this end, Hizbullah slowly eliminated rival movement in the southern region, like the Communist militants who were threatened or assassinated, or like the other Shiite movement, Amal to whom confrontation turned into the favour of Hizbullah (Lamloum 2010). The movement also rooted its political and military apparatus more firmly in the borderland and involved the population in the military struggle in each village by means of a re-organisation of tasks and a division of work/territory (village guard units, liaison officers, informants, etc.). It also increased its influence over South Lebanon’s Shiite inhabitants, who constitute a majority of the population in this area and whose values and cultural references fitted well with Hizbullah’s religious-political message. By doing so, it sought to create a community by defining, in cultural, religious and political terms, a group bound by common perceptions of reality. In other words, it succeeded to re-order South Lebanon thanks to its bordering which was supported by a principle of vision in which the othering process was rooted in an already long and agonistic relationship with Israel.1 The political ambitions linked to this territorialisation process of Hizbullah appeared more clearly with the establishment of the Second

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Republic in 1990. The end of the civil war fuelled by the internationally recognised Ta’if Agreement (1989) monitored by the Syrian regime leaded to another agreement between Teheran and Damascus imposed on the Shiite movement (Lamloum 2009). In exchange of the recognition of the Lebanese national territory as a legitimate entity and the final homeland for Lebanese citizens, Hizbullah was granted with the task of the continuation of its armed resistance strategy towards Israel in South Lebanon. With Lebanon under the Syrian tutelage, this task became also part of a larger geopolitical strategy driven by the alliance between Iran and Syria (Goodarzi 2009). But locally, the social impact of the continuation of its bordering process over the South—without any restrictions from the Lebanese Army at that time under reconstruction—created the opportunity for Hizbullah to continue to shape its local environment. Moreover, the internal structure of the movement knew some expansion during the 1990s as Hizbullah was able to take profit of the peace era in the political centre of Beirut to legitimise its action within the scope of a political force taking part in the parliamentary life. The growth of Hizbullah’s apparatus is noticeable at the scale of several municipality of Southern suburbs of Beirut (Harb 2010) as it became a major governance actor in health, education and housing sector while being a job provider and a key supply actor for strategic resources (water, electricity, gas, oil). But in the meantime, the movement was also able to take profit from a state of war in the South as a leverage for mobilisation as well as for the legitimisation of its role as a security protector of the State in the South. Hizbullah also gained international legitimacy as a key actor able to resist the occupation and to launch attacks within the territory of the occupied zone.2 The successful enrolment of thousands of volunteers empowered Hizbullah in its moral and religious role and contributed to order a “resistance society” or counter-society as the moral values at its core started to define what one started to call “the Islamic sphere” (h¯ ala isl¯ amiyya) following Harb (2010: 145). Thus, one can see the national process of institutionalisation that went along a growing legitimacy based on a more complex types of governance tasks mixing daily management of municipal environment and national sovereignty recovery. Linked to the process of territorialisation of the resistance and the political ordering of the southern region up to the occupied zone, Hizbullah succeeded to spread a legitimate understanding of the othering process: the definition of Israel as a legitimate enemy in the 1990s Second Republic.

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From the South to the Centre By 22 May 2000, Israel unilaterally evacuated its troops from the occupied zone while most of the SLA militiamen fled to Israel and others surrendered to Hizbullah men. For Hizbullah, the “liberation” of the South, perceived as a result of its own strategy, legitimated its ideological programme based on the efficiency of the religious mobilisation and the armed struggle towards the occupation and a lack of any compromise. On the other hand, the absence of state actors and institutions during this process of recovery of the national territory is noticeable as it will then be confirmed by the President of the Republic in a speech when he justified the absence of the deployment of the Army in the South as a means to avoid any acknowledgement and legitimisation of Israel’s incomplete withdrawal.3 This will immediately lead to a de facto ordering power of the Shiite movement over the evacuated region and the implementation of its local governance agenda, including the re-definition of the Self and the Other rather apparent in Nasrallah’s speeches. As part of the territorial control strategy over the “liberated south”, Nasrallah symbolically delivered his first speech from Bint Jbeil, defined as “the capital of the liberation”, thus giving new meaning to the town and classifying it in opposition to the formerly occupied capital town of Marjeyoun. He also talked about the resistance as “a positive force for Lebanon” and reminded his audience that the resistance had to thank all the former martyrs from Amal, the Lebanese and Syrian armies and the Palestinian fid¯ a’¯ıy¯ın for their role in achieving victory in 2000. In this speech, Nasrallah blurred the boundaries between resistance fighters from different times and political orientations in order to make Hizbullah appear to be a synthesis—the heir apparent—of all these other groups. He also defined South Lebanon as a region that had been a victim of Israel’s behaviour and required order, respect and unity among Christians and Muslims. From this perspective, he made statements lumping Hizbullah and the local population into one single group with regard to what needed to be done: “We, in this area, should prove that we deserve this victory (…) This area needs to be reinforced (morally) after the dark period it went through”. In order to enforce the othering of South Lebanon towards Israel and to satisfy the logic of resistance that promotes defensive jihad against Israel as a duty, the party promoted martyrdom from the start, as it is a significant aspect of Shiite cultural references. The rationale that Hizbullah promotes tends to enhance the honourable life

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that results from the resistance, in opposition to the humiliating life that one lives under occupation (Saad-Ghorayeb 2002). Far from redefining the South simply as a liberated area, Hizbullah reinforced its “resistance” trend by advocating for the liberation of the Shebaa Farms area, a tiny piece of land in the mountainous confines of the tri-border space with Israel and Syria. Bringing back this forgotten piece of land into the debate—despite the fact the UN sees it as a Syrian territory pertaining to the UN resolution 242 and not the 425 under which Israeli withdrew—Hizbullah was re-bordering the Southern limits of the Lebanese state according to a nationalistic posture (followed by Prime Minister Fouad Siniora in the aftermath of the July war in 2006). Ultimately, the fact that Israel did not evacuate the Shebaa Farms helped the Shiite movement to justify the continuation of its armed struggle. The expansion of Hizbullah’s power over the territory of the former occupied zone entitled the Shiite movement to define and re-order the region politically while shaping the region into a military stronghold. The movement continued and intensified its strategy of abductions of Israelis (the first occurring only few months after the Israeli withdrawal) in order to perform exchanges of prisoners and combatant’s dead bodies, thus grabbing more symbolic power at the national scale as well as among the other resistant actors (like the Palestinians). With this powerful strategy, Hizbullah continued to build its own political identity as a nationalist and Islamist movement, an actor that is capable of recovering state territory as well as fighters who became prisoners. In other word, the Southern borderland clearly brought up Hizbullah’s political identity on the Lebanese political scene. The withdrawal as well as its local political hegemony strengthened the grip of the movement over the definition of the nation, territorially and politically. In 2005, the local political equilibrium changed when the Syrian Army had to pull back from Lebanon by the end of April under the international pressure, following the suspicion of a Syrian plot that lead to the assassination of the former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri. Lacking the political protection provided by Damascus since 1990, Hizbullah chose to seek executive power in the legislative elections in the summer of 2005, and for the first time it took part in the government. In order to appease the political tensions that took place between the two political blocs, 8 and 14 March, the Prime Minister Fouad Siniora set up a Conference of National Dialogue, early 2006, that brought together 14 of the nonelected sectarian leaders around a table, downtown Beirut. During the

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summer 2006, the war broke up at the initiative of Israel, following the killing and abductions by Hizbullah of several of its soldiers during a border patrol. Launched with the goal to erase Hizbullah, this war severely hit Lebanon but Hizbullah managed to oppose a fierce resistance on the ground, eventually stopping a land invasion. In the middle of the July war, on 3 August 2006, the General Secretary of Hizbullah Hassan Nasrallah took the opportunity of the Israeli counter-bordering attempt towards Hizbullah on the Lebanese soil to display a new political slogan that will become at the heart of its new legitimisation speech, the interdependency between “The people”, “The Army” and “The resistance” (a self-designation formula to name Hizbullah) as a means to protect Lebanon against any aggression (Khatib and alii 2014: 73). By doing so, Hizbullah intends to highlight the necessary link that exists between its movement and the Lebanese state, suggesting the “Resistance” is an equal component of Lebanon alongside its people and the national Army. Since then, Hizbullah stuck to these triple interrelated terms defining Lebanon—people, army and resistance—until it became part of the Najib Miqati ministerial declaration in 2011 in a moto intending to describe a “sacred union” towards the regional dangers faced by Lebanon. During the summer 2017, it was recalled by Nasrallah as a key element for the success of the struggle against the Jihadists on the Eastern borderlands of Lebanon.4 As we can see from the 2006 speech, the rebordering of the South in 2000 was later translated in a coined formula that is providing a re-ordering of Lebanon’s security-society relationship. In other words, the southern borderland region allows the Shiite movement to do entryism on the basis of Hizbullah’s shaping of the Southern borderland into a resistant frontline towards “the invader” (Israel). It is, therefore, ipso facto promoting a vision of Hizbullah as the guardian of the national borders. While the 2006 war tended to widen the gap between the two political blocs, the Shiite movement entered into a confrontation with the majority in the government by boycotting the Council of Ministers and setting up a blockade surrounding the city centre. In this crisis, Hizbullah showed a real interest in the penetration of the governing state institution, measuring the risk for its very existence as an armed resistance to leave the monopoly of the political decision to the anti-Syrian actors. In such a tensed context, two academics analysts saw the state power as a key element for Hizbullah and identified the “public sphere and the national arena” and the state as being part of its global project (Alagha 2007; Haenni

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2007). At that time, prominent members of Hizbullah acknowledge that two main goals were at stake: safeguarding the resistance and containing the US influence in Lebanon. In an ICG interview, the vice president of Hizbullah’s research centre confirms the main goal of the party and its interest for the state: “[P]aradoxically, some want us to get involved in the political process in order to neutralise us. In fact, we intend to get involved - but precisely in order to protect the strategic choice of resistance and political participation” (ICG 2007: 15).

2006 and the Syrian War: Redeployment While the Shiite movement repelled the Israeli military assault, it had to abide by the UN resolution 1701 which implements a new security order in South Lebanon thanks to an upgrading of the UN local mission, the UNIFIL, enhanced from 2000 up to 14,000 troops. Hizbullah had to redeploy its weaponry north from the UN patrolled area in South Lebanon but also hide part of it (Leroy 2012). In the meantime, the post-conflict era and the reconstruction process in the South tended to highlight the permanence of Hizbullah’s influence on local agenda as well as its key role in many municipalities in the heavily damage villages of the South. This redeployment soon appeared also as a part of a larger political project of reshaping the national politics. It is a fact that since 2005, the movement became deeply involved in Lebanese politics when it joined the executive level (council of minister) in the aftermath of the legislative election that followed the Syrian military withdrawal of Lebanon in 2005. In the unstable period 2005–2008, the Shiite movement appeared as a driving force of the 8 March coalition and a key political actor in the reordering of post-Syrian Lebanon while the Doha Agreement of 23 May 2008 highlights the achievement of its strategy to secure the Lebanese state as a non-hostile environment. This agreement was the result of the 7 May 2008 confrontation in Beirut with the 14 March forces the moment Hizbullah felt its perimeter over the Lebanese sovereignty (territorially but also politically and militarily) was endangered. The ruling coalition of 14 March took the decision on 5 May 2007, to close the private cell phone network of Hizbullah and dismiss the higher LAF officer in control of the airport security, linked to Hizbullah, thus targeting two key components of its securitised perimeter, slowly built as a parastate system with the intention of staying out of reach of the state. This

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attempts to curb Hizbullah’s apparatus faced a heavy answer from the Shiite movement when its militiamen and allies took control of West Beirut overnight, surrounding the 14 March leaders’ houses. To re-order the state in accordance to its interests and goals, Hizbullah appeared ready to turn its weapons inward to remind the other political forces on the Lebanese scene its red lines. This coup de force revealed its strong interest in framing the state in the perspective of its own vision—the state of resistance—while continuing playing the power-sharing rule under certain conditions of autonomy towards the state apparatus. In the aftermath of this confrontation, the Qatari mediation led to the Doha Agreement which secured rules of governance thus preserving Hizbullah’s interests as a para-state organisation as well as its capacity to influence the state’s orientations. Hizbullah’s redeployment in the centre also follows a will expressed in various speeches of Nasrallah to erect the state of resistance, in the larger geopolitical goal to preserve Lebanon as a sanctuary of the “axis of resistance” alongside Damascus and Tehran regimes. This became clear in the aftermath of the July war when the General Secretary of the party used the term mum¯ ana ah (refusal), which is a synonymous of muq¯ awamah (resistance) referring to the politically confrontational stands assumed by Syria and Iran (Saad-Ghorayeb 2007). In this vision, the state is the new locus, as was the South before, for Hizbullah to display its political programme of resistance in order to shape the Lebanese state conveniently to its political and strategic goals. The movement expressed publicly this vision while describing its role and scope of action in Lebanon, in its new manifesto publicly displayed in late 2009. The document reads: “From a force of liberation, the resistance has then reached a balance in its confrontation and has now become a defensive and deterrent force in addition to its political role in Lebanon, which allows it to influence the construction of the State as an efficient and fair entity”5 (Alagha 2011). In a speech on the commemoration of the Liberation day of the South on 26 May 2008, just after the ratification of the Doha Agreement and the nomination of Michel Sleimane as the new President of the Republic, Hassan Nasrallah explained that Hizbullah can “coexist” with the Lebanese state only if the latter adopts its project and vision and allows the movement to continue to operate in parallel to the state. In the years that followed, the Shiite movement was able to implement this dual strategy. On the one hand, influencing the state’s decisions sometimes to the point of pushing the 8 March ministers to withdraw from the government when its security and

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legitimacy might be damage as it was the case early 2011 with the indictment of four party members by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in the inquiry on the assassination of Rafic Hariri. On the other hand, continuing its autonomous existence as an armed political movement—most of the political forces understood its weaponry was a red line not subject to negotiation—and keeping Lebanon within the scope of the Syrian-Iranian “axis” thanks to several event—from the normalisation of the diplomatic ties with Syria, with the opening of a Syrian embassy in Beirut (2008) to the state visit of the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2010) highlighting the strategic and economic ties linking the two states. The scope of Hizbullah’s redeployment changed and adapted when the Syrian regime faced an international contestation with the popular uprising and revolutionary movement that took shape since March 2011. With the beginning of the war in Syria, Hizbullah’s strategic calculation was quite clear: after a blurred period labelled “dissociation policy” and supported by the Miqati government—intended to claim a neutral posture of the Lebanese government—Hizbullah came out and publicly revealed its support of the Syrian regime at the time of a decisive battle (for the Baathist regime) in the Syrian city of Qusayr. The register of justification for its involvement alongside the globally unpopular Syrian leader6 referred to the presence of “takfirists” fighters that are threatening Lebanon’s security and therefore that needed to be contained by sending troops in order to avoid the collapse of the Baathist regime. In order to contain the de-bordering of Syria, Hizbullah took the risk of a de-legitimisation of its “resistance” trend. Built as a tool to mobilise the oppressed towards the “oppressors” and “occupiers”, the notion of “resistance” turns to be less the very identity of the movement (Saad-Ghorayeb 2002) and more an ideological term, a means or a tactic. Less legitimate than ever, the “resistance” discourse needed an othering as a scapegoat to avoid the emptying of its content and thus its breakdown: the jihadists and their state sponsors became those to wage resistance. More largely, Nasrallah immediately attempted at a process of re-legitimisation of the term by linking it to a larger geopolitical perspective in one of its first speeches after Hizbullah military involvement in Syria. Thus, in the commemoration speech of 25 May 2013, Hizbullah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah underlined the necessity for Lebanon to become a “state of resistance” to protect its citizens in such a dangerous environment.

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This state of resistance, explained Nasrallah, is not the military domination of the state by Hizbullah, but the acknowledgement of the pertinence of Hizbullah’s regional analysis. This means a full support to the Lebanese Army and state institutions that recognise the positive key role of Syria (“the backbone of the resistance”) and Iran in Lebanon’s survival in front of Israel. It already was the line of argument regarding the Lebanese state in Hizbullah’s new charter displayed in 2009 but it turns to be, in Nasrallah’s 2013 terms, a necessary solidarity due to the war in Syria, “fortifying the resistance and its backbone, fortifying Lebanon and its backbone”.7 The weak point of the strategy to support the Syrian regime pertains to a loss of legitimacy in Lebanon among some segments of the population highlighting the contradiction between a “resistance movement” acting alongside an oppressive regime. In other words, the process of othering is clashing with the previous ordering process while crossing lines and expanding its bordering. In the summer of 2014, near the village of Arsal—a border town in the Bekaa valley—appeared a group of jihadists of al-Qaeda’s local branch of Jahbat al-Nusra alongside militiamen of the Islamic State (IS) from the barren land (jurd) of Arsal, a mountainous area of the anti-Lebanon bordering Lebanon and Syria. Reacting to the capture of one jihadist by the Army, they suddenly attacked troops, killed 20 Lebanese soldiers, kidnapping 42 others and took control of the village and its surroundings (Aziz 2014). Taking opportunity of this borderland incident, Hizbullah presented its mobilisation against IS as a national duty to protect the Lebanese sovereignty at its eastern borders. In the perspective of appearing more Lebanese and less Shiite and therefore to avoid any further Sunni suspicion, Hizbullah started to involve the Lebanese Resistance Brigades, created in 1998 to gather pro-Hizbullah non-Shiite combatants. A Hizbullah informant explained: “Its (the Brigades) objective was initially to make the resistance against Israel a national resistance, not just a Shiite resistance” (Al-Monitor 2014). The Shiite movement explain also the recent recruitment of young Christians in the Bekaa in these Brigades since 2012 as part of a reflection on the limited combatant’s reservoir the Shiites may have in front of IS’s larger Sunni reservoir. Therefore, since autumn 2014, Hizbullah organised a larger recruiting mobilisation in Lebanon—its military operations in Syria brought the internal recruitment process under pressure. The key purpose was to expand the scope of its involvement in the Qalamoun region from the protections of Shiite villages to the struggle against the Jihadists on the Eastern borderlands

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and thus slowly bordering this area on the model developed in South Lebanon, as the protector of Lebanon’s sovereignty. Besides, this military strategy is taking place in its political agenda which aims at a re-legitimacy of its military involvement in Syria. Three years later, its military campaigns in the Qalamoun barren land have borne its fruits: the ground operations on both sides of the border finally squeezed the Jihadists combatants in the summer 2017, forcing them to negotiate their withdrawal. This recent development and the securitisation of the Qalamoun border region are the result of a close collaboration with the Lebanese Army—whose action in the Jurd of Aarsal was put under the spotlight (El-Khoury 2017). Aside of its military might and constant effort on the Qalamoun from the Syrian side, Hizbullah helped the Lebanese Army to put a significant pressure on the jihadists militiamen on the one hand and on the other secure the Syrian government agreement to allow the transfer of the jihadists to Dayr az-Zur in exchange of the return of the dead bodies of the remaining Lebanese troops as well as the liberation of Hizbullah fighters (L’Orient le Jour 2017). The success of this process of b/ordering of the Eastern borderland region appeared clearly in the following days when Michel Aoun, a political ally of Hizbullah since their agreement in February 2006 (Dumontier 2008) was elected as the President of the Lebanese Republic. In an interview few days after the success of the military operation against the Jihadist in the Jurd of Aarsal, he acknowledged the key role of the Shiite movement as a guarantor of Lebanon’s security and as key component of the global peace solution in the region. For the head of the Lebanese state, this collaboration with Hizbullah is fruitful and cannot cease as long as there are threats posed by Israel (Al-Monitor 2017). This remark highlights again the interdependency of the process of territorial definition of the state (bordering), its political definition (ordering) and its position towards neighbours (othering). In the words of Michel Aoun, Hizbullah’s regional position transformed it into an inescapable actor on the Lebanese political stage. As an echo of this statement, Hassan Nasrallah’s recent speech underlined the current strategy of the movement in Lebanon by ensuring a strong presence in various level of power in order to immunising the resistance politically.8 This process is deeply linked to the war in Syria as we have seen it from the viewpoint of the borderland and Qalamoun mountain strategy. The successful support to the Syrian regime, alongside other international

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powerful state partners, highlights a shift in the vector of the interdependency between the Syrian regime and Hizbullah. This may have an implication in terms of territorial representation. While the Bekaa was long perceived as a soft belly and strategic depth for the Syrian regime since the Syrian occupation of Lebanon in 1976, nowadays, the Syrian territory might now appear as a strategic depth for Hizbullah. This shift of perspective implies a reassessment of the spatiality of the Lebanese state which can be seen as a sanctuary for the Shiite movement. The recent military and political successes of the movement highlight this change rather well: it is not anymore, the Southern borderland that worked as a sanctuary for the party now that the Eastern borderlands entered under their influence. The bordering process conducted there between 2014 and 2017 alongside the military projection on the Syrian battlefield with a successful campaign brought Hizbullah to another level thus transforming what Lebanon’s territory means for the Shiite movement. The war in Syria revealed Hizbullah as one of the most powerful actors in the strategic map of the Middle East today. For the Lebanese state the consequences seem rather clear: it appears more than ever in control of the nation-state re-ordering process.

Conclusion This chapter aimed at studying the political use of the borderland region by the Shiite movement of Hizbullah. The Hezbollah example helped us to understand how borderland regime can be political resources in order to influence/control the political orientation of the State as well as reshaping Hizbullah’s political legitimisation in fighting the Islamist threat. While of particular interest in the present context of the Syrian war and investment of the party alongside the Baathist regime, we tried to explore the larger historical background of the movement to identifying the main patterns of power when it comes to the territorialisation of power in border regions. We first highlighted the steps of the military and political control of Hizbullah over the South of Lebanon battlefront since 1985 and its slow subsequent b/ordering of the region while providing a clear definition of the Self through the othering of Israel as an evil entity. International post-cold war era and the Syrian tutelage over Lebanon allowed the movement to be granted with a national duty to continue to bear arms against

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the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon which eventually saw the unilateral withdrawal of the army of Israel and of its surrogate SLA militia. This re-bordering of the Lebanese national territory granted Hizbullah with a national stature and legitimacy the movement understood clearly as Nasrallah already mentioned the orientation towards the centre after succeeding in the margins of the state. The Israeli attempt to eradicate the party during the 2006 July war ended up with a counter-bordering of the South that saw UN mission enforcing a new delineation process of the Blue line in order to secure the southern borderland region. At that time, Hizbullah already redeployed its power relations within the state apparatus as it entered in the government since fall 2005. The political uncertainty in the power struggle that occurred until the signing of the Doha Agreement in 2008 underscored the para-state nature of the movement as well as its political project to influence state’s geopolitical orientations. While it appeared as a dangerous path, the support to the Baathist regime and more precisely recent Hizbullah’s strategy in Lebanon’s eastern borderland regions towards the threat of the so-called takfiris enhanced its political and military stronghold in Lebanon. Appearing as a guarantor of the eastern borderlands after its successful strategy to evict the last jihadists, and capitalising on its previous southern success, the Shiite movement was able to enforce a political success with the election of Michel Aoun as the new President of Lebanon, thus improving its agenda to erect a state of resistance. Here again as well as with Israel, the othering process helped the Shiite movement in re-ordering the Lebanese state while contributing to its bordering.

Notes 1. One may remember the “Iron fist policy” of the Israeli Army toward the Shiites villages when facing resistance in their attempt to dominate the South (Schechla 1985). 2. As stated in the Memorandum of Understanding following the 1996 Israeli operation “Grapes of Wrath” (Hollis and Shehadi 1996: 40). 3. Leaving 13 reservations along the Blue Line delineated by the UN mission. See Meier (2016). 4. See the Nasrallah Speech on Manar TV, August 24, 2017, https://english. almanar.com.lb/cat/news/lebanon/s-nasrallah-speeches. 5. See the document in Arabic on Hizbullah’s website: http://www. moqawama.org/essaydetails.php?eid=16230&cid=199#.VGPpeUsYn75 (Accessed March 5, 2014).

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6. Due to its extremely brutal repression and mass executions largely documented. See for instance the testimony of the photographer Cesar (HRW 2015) while ordinary Syrian people collected evidence of the attack of the regime on its civilian population. See for instance the Al-Jazeera reportage on it: https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/specialseries/2016/11/ syria-witnesses-prosecution-161115091502071.html (Accessed April 2, 2018). 7. Speech available in English at: http://www.voltairenet.org/article178691. html. 8. See al-Nahar online edition, April 8, 2018, http://www.naharnet.com/ stories/en/244631-hizbullah-chief-sayyed-hassan-nasrallah-in-televisedaddress (Accessed on April 8, 2018).

References AbiSaab, Rula J., and Malek AbiSaab. 2014. The Shiites of Lebanon: Modernism, Communism, and Hizbullah’s Islamists. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Alagha, Joseph. 2007. Lebanon: Hizbullah, A Progressive Islamic Party? Interview with J. Alagha. Religioscope, May 17. https://english.religion.info/ 2007/05/17/lebanon-hizbullah-a-progressive-islamic-party-interview-withjoseph-alagha/. Accessed March 28, 2018. Alagha, Joseph. 2011. Hizbullah’s Documents: From the 1985 Open Letter to the 2009 Manifesto. Amsterdam: Pallas Publications. Al-Monitor. 2014. Hezbollah Calls for Resistance Against IS, August 27. Al-Monitor. 2017. Aoun Sees Role for Hezbollah Until Threats to Lebanon Cease, September 21. Aziz, Jean. 2014. Arsal: The Battle That Begins a Long War, August 11. Dumontier, Bertrand. 2008. L’entente du Hezbollah avec le CPL. In Hezbollah, état des lieux, ed. Sabrina Mervin, 109–116. Paris: Actes Sud. El-Khoury, Bachir. 2017. With Win Over IS, Lebanese Army Jostles Hezbollah, September 15. Goodarzi, Jubin. 2009. Syria and Iran. Diplomatic Alliance and Power Politics in the Middle East. London: I.B.Tauris. Haenni, Patrick. 2007. Interview with Patrick Haenni. NOW Lebanon, October 12. Harb, Mona. 2010. Le Hezbollah à Beyrouth (1985–2005). De la banlieue à la ville. Paris: IFPO-Karthala. Hof, Frederic C. 1984. Galilee Divided: The Israeli-Lebanon Frontiers 1916–1948. Boulder: Westview Press. Hollis, Rosemary, and Nadim Shehadi. 1996. Lebanon on Hold. London: Royal Institute for International Affairs & Center for Lebanese Studies.

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Human Rights Watch (HRW). 2015. If the Dead Could Speak. Mass Death and Torture in Syria’s Detention Facilities, Brussels. https://www.hrw.org/sites/ default/files/report_pdf/syria1215web_0.pdf. Accessed May 12, 2018. International Crisis Group (ICG). 2007. Hezbollah and the Lebanese Crisis. Middle East Report. No 69. October 10, Brussels. https://www.crisisgroup. org/middle-east-north-africa/eastern-mediterranean/lebanon/hizbollah-andlebanese-crisis. Accessed July 30, 2018. Khatib, Lina, and alii. 2014. The hizbullah Phenomenon. Politics and Communication. London: Hurst. Lamloum, Olfa. 2009. L’histoire sociale du Hezbollah à travers ses médias. Système de représentation et inscription territoriale. Politix 22 (86): 169–187. Lamloum, Olfa. 2010. Retour sur les traces d’un conflit. Amal vs Hezbollah (1988–1990). In Mémoires de guerres au Liban (1975–1990), ed. Franck Mermier and Christophe Varin, 205–225. Paris: Actes Sud. Leroy, Didier. 2012. Hezbollah, la résilience islamique au Liban. Paris: L’Harmattan. L’Orient-le Jour. 2017. Le prisonnier du Hezbollah remis par l’EI accueilli par la foule dans son village natal, September 14. Meier, Daniel. 2016. Shaping Lebanon’s Borderlands: Armed Resistance and International Interventions in South Lebanon. London: I.B. Tauris. Mervin, Sabrina (ed.). 2008. Hezbollah, état des lieux. Paris: Actes Sud. Noe, Nicholas (ed.). 2007. Voice of Hezbollah: The Statements of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. London: Verso. Saad-Ghorayeb, Amal. 2002. Hizbullah: Politics and Religion. London: Pluto. Saad-Ghorayeb, Amal. 2007. What the Modern Arab World Is. Al-Ahram Weekly, 842. Schechla, Joseph. 1985. The Iron Fist: Israel’s Occupation of South Lebanon 1982– 1985. Washington, DC: ADC Research Institute. Van Houtum, Henk, and Ton Van Naerssen. 2002. Bordering, Ordering and Otherin. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 93 (2): 125–136. Widdis, Randy W. 2005. Migration, Borderlands, and National Identity. In The Great Lakes Basin as Transnational Region, ed. John Bukowczyk, 152–174. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

CHAPTER 7

Spatialization of Ethno-Religious and Political Boundaries at the Turkish-Syrian Border Sule ¸ Can

Introduction Antakya, the southernmost border city of Turkey with Syria, is renowned as one of the few multi-cultural cities left in Turkish Anatolia, and its ethno-religious diversity is often promoted by the Turkish state to draw attention to the Turkish model of inter-faith dialogue (Dagta¸s 2012). Until the Syrian uprising, the city’s celebrated ethnic cohabitation and its symbolic place in Turkey as home of cultural differences (Dogruel 2005) overcame local sectarian tensions and confrontations with the Turkish state. However, the Syrian civil war revived bonds between Arabs, particularly Alawites, in Antakya (see Fig. 7.1) and Syria and changed the perception of ethno-religious identity and political boundaries, as well as the urban sentiments attached to national identity in this border region. The reproduction of ethno-religious boundaries in Antakya due to the Syrian war (Can 2017, 2019) and the Syrian refugee influx not only

S. ¸ Can (B) Department of Social Work, Nisantasi University, Istanbul, Turkey e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Cimino (ed.), Syria: Borders, Boundaries, and the State, Mobility & Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44877-6_7

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Fig. 7.1 Map of Turkey and Antakya on the border with Syria (Drawn by the author)

shifted locals’ relations with the “border space” but also spatialized the encounters and divisions between locals and Syrian refugees. This paper examines the spatialization of ethno-religious and political boundaries in relation to the Syrian civil war and the sectarian underpinnings of border politics. It seeks to understand how urban space in Antakya such as touristic sites, housing, and the s¯ uq (marketplace in downtown) has become contested since 2011. It also focuses on how border communities construct space and its meanings, and how urban space is negotiated considering the role of the state; nation-building and changing political identity at the Turkish-Syrian border. Lastly, it demonstrates the spatialized political transformation after 2011 by analyzing local Alawites’ relationship to Syrian refugees and the Syrian regime through a political ethnography of Antakya residents and Alawite political groups that emerged thereafter. The valorization of national territory and the contestation of national, ethnic, and religious identities are often most visible in the borderlands. Borderlands are also mostly paradoxical spaces and far from being static (Hamilakis 2016). Identity building as well as nation-building experiences at the border regions coincides with state practices such as territorial expansion. In this sense, Antakya is a key site for understanding the relationship between local ethno-religious conflicts and interstate conflicts, colonial and national dominations (Altu˘g 2002) via Turkish territorial expansion and nation-building processes in the Levant. Antakya was

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not included in the territorial boundaries of the Republic of Turkey in the National Pact of 1923, when the republic was officially founded. Antakya, then known as the Sanjak of Alexandretta, was annexed by Turkey from Syria in 1939, after diplomatic bargains over the territory and shifting power alignments before World War II (Stokes 1998). Syria opposed to the annexation as it saw it as an act of treachery on the part of French colonial powers and aggressive territorial expansion on the part of the Turks. The modern Syrian state, which emerged in 1946, has continued to claim the territory up to this day. The annexation, hence, animated a conflict between the two countries through colonial boundary making. The territorial border both spatialized the ethno-religious identities in new forms and disengaged Arabs (among other communities) from their histories in a significant way. Therefore, for some border populations, the border signifies what Stokes (1998) calls a “rupture,” both from Arab history and from ethnic and religious groups—left at the other side of the border—in Syria. It erases memory of ethnic, religious struggle on the Syrian side and re-constructs history as the “beginning” on the Turkish side. The border is, thus, a line dividing not just order/disorder, Sunni/Alawi, and Arab/Turk, but also past and present. Today, about 30% of Antakya is composed of Arabs, mostly Arab Alawites1 and Sunni Turks make up most the population of the province. Since 1939, Arab Alawites have maintained a strong Arab identity in terms of familial, tribal, and linguistic affiliations across the border, including political loyalties to the Assad regime. However, Antakya2 residents have long established a culture of coexistence to prevent antagonisms from becoming full-scale ethno-religious conflicts after the annexation. In this post-integration period, maintaining a sense of coexistence and accommodating differences without losing a sense of belonging and community identity became a central issue. The Syrian civil war both enabled re-emergence of ties with Syria and made politicized sectarian identities more visible particularly for the Alawites.

The Syrian Civil War: A Local View from the Borderlands The Syrian civil war was not seen as a revolutionary act against the Syrian regime’s oppression in Antakya. Therefore, the focus on the Syrian civil war and regional alliances in Antakya stops along the lines of regional Sunni-Shiite rivalry and external forces which amplify such rivalry (Can

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2019: 7). Tense relations between Turkey and Syria contributed to the positions border populations took during the war. Therefore, discussions in Antakya revolved around Islamist aspects of the civil war, alliances with Western powers and Israel and Turkey’s reluctance to collaborate with an anti-Western bloc. During my fieldwork, interlocutors responded to the war in diverging ways however the community often reiterated how sectarian identities are drawn into the Syrian conflict by regional powers, and how Syrians and locals in Antakya should oppose the sectarianism imposed upon the region. Thus, in Antakya, the Syrian “revolution” was a complex uprising, despite the common outsider perception of a “Syrian Spring” in 2012. The common narrative in Antakya squarely fits into the shared discourse of some “leftist” organizations across regions, which was that Syria was considered the only country left standing that has continuously rejected Western domination (USA and NATO influence). The goals of the Syrian opposition were presumed to be “jihadist” in its purpose and exploited by larger powers, due to the rapidity with which the opposition received support and resources. Other groups in Antakya kept their distance from the Syrian conflict in order not to create additional clashes or tensions over ideological differences. Although there were protests against Western intervention, the role of ISIS and potential Turkish interference in the Syrian conflict, there was less emphasis on sectarian clashes and the Alawite aspect of the regime in local conversations (Can 2019: 6). Turkey took a poignant position on the uprising in Syria by openly stating that it was “not on the side of the regime but on the side of the people” (Güçer et al. 2013: 2), which has been a major point of discussion in both journalistic accounts and policy forums. In 2011, Turkey’s statement was acclaimed by the international community as it would mean to keep refugees safe. The course of the uprising has changed since this statement was first made, although it was reiterated a few years after the outbreak. People of Antakya particularly Alawite and Christian groups were anxious about what that statement entailed after they began seeing the uprising as a religious “extremist” movement obstructing the Syrian people’s freedoms. It had been claimed often that Turkey not only condoned armed opposition members’ entry into Syria through Turkey, but that it was also unwilling to act against armed groups possibly finding shelter in the Turkish borderlands especially in Reyhanli (the first entry point at the border).3 Although Turkey’s humanitarian response to the refugee influx through an “open-border policy” was initially applauded by the international community, it was claimed multiple times that the porous borders

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enabled foreign fighters to freely travel in and out of Syria.4 Turkey’s Syria policy included rejection of a Kurdish independence/semi-independence in northern Syria and the Turkish government has even threatened to intervene in the conflict and eventually intervened through military operation in northern Syria.5 Moreover, the Turkish government’s approach has been also largely shaped by its new Islamization project both through its neo-Ottoman legacy and its claim as the sole great power of the region (Demirta¸s-Ba˘gdonas 2014). In late 2015, Turkey’s negotiations with the European Union over a “refugee deal,” interventionist attempts in Syria, and limited legal and humanitarian efforts for Syrian refugees brought the government’s migration policies under scrutiny and criticism. The conflict’s impact on bordering territories has overtaken debates over the Syrian war and foreign involvement. One of the most important regional impacts of the Syrian war and the cause of a global crisis today is the influx of Syrian refugees. The Syrian civil war has displaced more than ten million people, internally and externally. Many have found refuge in neighboring countries, such as Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. Turkey has the highest number of refugees, approximately four million (as of 2018, the official number is 3,523,044).6 Turkey’s Syrian refugee issue, which began with 252 people breaking through Antakya’s Yayladagi district border fence in April 2011, has since acquired a greater magnitude. Turkey followed an open-door policy from the outset, unconditionally accepting all Syrians fleeing from violence. In 2014, Turkey closed its TurkishSyrian border. Yet, an approximately equal number of refugees continued to enter the country unofficially. As the war continued, Turkey’s shortterm solutions like tent cities and temporary-protection status for refugees appeared to be insufficient and dangerous. Thus, Turkey’s refugee crisis has also revealed a lack of governance in such a severe crisis. Turkey’s response to the Syrian crisis and the failure in governance became more visible at the Turkish-Syrian border cities. Five border cities—Sanliurfa, Mardin, Kilis, Antakya, and Gaziantep—have hosted more than half of the Syrian refugees. The refugee population along with bombings in Reyhanli (close to the border gate) and the assassination of a Free Syrian Army commander7 in Antakya sparked a controversy regarding the operations of the Syrian opposition in the border cities. Although most of the Syrian opposition groups reside in Gaziantep and/or Kilis, there is a significant number of Syrian refugees in Antakya (as of 2016 the number is 378,000). From 2013 on, Antakya has been the center of fear and anxiety over the issue of

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internal security and therefore Alawite residents of Antakya began negotiating how to accommodate Syrian refugees. Moreover, the Syrian civil war and the changing power relations among Islamist groups in Syria have not only created concerns about security at the border region but also have become a determining factor in locals’ relations with the Syrian refugees. The spatial dimension added another complication to the political and sectarian boundaries and divisions within this border city.

Cityscape and Political Belonging in Antakya The spatial dimensions of identity have been theorized under many frameworks, like embodied spaces, post-conflict and contested spaces, urban geopolitics, and transnational spaces. However, spatiality of ethnoreligious identities or geography of difference in the Middle East has been a recent academic endeavor (for instance, see Deeb and Harb 2013; Monroe 2016). Antakya is a border city where ethno-religious identifications are spatialized in subtle and obscure ways. I refer to “spatialize” following Low’s 1996 definition which is to “locate,” both physically and conceptually, social relations and social practices in social space. Exploring the relationship between “urban space” and how it is used or construed to enforce certain sense of belonging in Antakya, I posed the following questions: How do Alawites and Syrian refugees situate themselves in Antakya in relation to its urban sites in everyday life context? What are the existing divisions that have changed and/or spatialized after the Syrian war? What kind of permanent forms, embodiment, and shared practices create interconnectedness and political belonging in this city? Certain historical streets and neighborhoods such as Affan, known as the center of Arab nationalist movement in the 1930s and Harbiye, a neighborhood in Defne municipality of Hatay, provide an important illustration for how identities are spatially defined or inscribed onto space (Can 2019: 57). Harbiye is one of the touristic districts of Antakya (Hatay) and appears to be an Alawite town, which certainly strikes a researcher to identify it as Alawite. Harbiye is representative of a peaceful, modest, but entertaining life for Alawites. Its waterfalls, green areas, mountainous landscape with hill-side views, its cuisine and all kinds of cafes and restaurants attract both local visitors and tourists from different Turkish cities. Although Harbiye residents constantly complain about the problematic infrastructure and assert that “it is due to its being an Alawite district,” it is one of the most popular destinations for weekend trips or for cooling down on hot

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summer days. Walking down the famous pedestrian-only street to meet with my next respondent, I stopped in front of a small souvenir shop at the entrance of Harbiye waterfalls (Can 2019: 58). Items on sale were clear signs of how to make a place publicly “Alawite,” with its all complex connotations and paradoxical politicized souvenirs. One of the most striking depictions was part of a series of hand-made art bits: Posters of Bashar al-Assad, along with Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and Imam Ali, are displayed side by side, along with Syrian flags carved onto different types of stones. Besides the posters, a Turkish flag was swaying. On the counter below there were little statuettes of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk along with Che Guevara key chains and some portraits of various Turkish celebrities. Harbiye’s landscape demonstrates both the way national identity extends beyond state borders and Alawite psyche in representation of their political and religious identity. As Goldsmith (2015) suggests the Arab Alawites of Levant are a contradiction and exceedingly diverse and fragmented collection of people. A reading of Syrian iconography in Harbiye is illustrative of such contradiction, as a simple walk through the small roads of Harbiye may show everyday manifestations of sectarian and political divisions and their inscriptions onto places identified as Alawite. Moreover, in her discussion on the ways in which Hafez al-Assad legitimized his power in Syria through spectacles, Lisa Wedeen (1999) proposes to situate Assad cult’s content in state-building processes, which helps us understand basic aspects of boundary making. Harbiye’s landscape and identity symbols that one can easily notice corroborate the assertion that nation-building and state formation are two different processes. Having the image of Ataturk and Turkish flags over at the vendors selling trinkets may seem conflicting at first, but in fact it fits squarely into formation of a collective identity of Arab Alawites with multiple belongings. Arab Alawites claim both ethnic identities: Turkishness and Arabness, which imply being a Turkish citizen loyal to their state and an ArabAlawite loyal to their nation across the border (Can 2019: 56). They also claim Ataturk as the figure of “savior” who fought for his “motherland” (watan) and as a secular leader as opposed to current Turkish government. Certain ethnic or religious groups do not seek self-determination but still see themselves as nations, or as parts of nations who have their homeland there or elsewhere (Wilson and Donnan 1998: 13). In the case of Alawites, territorial demarcation of the province of Antakya complicates the position of Alawites, who are in their homeland under the sovereignty of Turkish state but have not given up their homeland across

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the border. The cult of Assad attests to religious references such as heroic acts of Imam Ali in reference to the battle within the “Rightly-Guided” Caliphate (Cleveland and Bunton 2016). It is too simplistic to equate all three religious and political figures in terms of their meanings for the Alawite community. However, Imam Ali, Assad, and Ataturk represent a struggle both for territory, for their own “rights” against “imperial powers,” which relates to the sense of national ambiguity. The process of differentiation between Sunnis and Alawites in Antakya is concretized through political, spatial, and cultural realms with references to a homeland elsewhere—Assad’s Syria. Lara Deeb points out how sectarian identity becomes visible in public space in Lebanon’s al-Dahiyya: “piety is constituted in and through public space in a way that sets it apart from other areas in the city, namely through dress, conduct, and the pervasiveness of certain images: portraits of orphans, religious leaders, and martyrs” (2006: 51). Spatial construction of identity is conveyed through signs. Signs serve to represent and spatialize certain meanings and identities while operating as mechanisms for laying claim to parcels of a contested cityscape (Bermant 2015: 451). Harbiye is one such place of spatialized ethno-religious and political belonging. Indeed, in Antakya’s public space, ethnic and religious identifications as well as being a Syrian refugee are profiled through signs and symbols: Arabic or Turkish accent, preferred leisure sites, cafes, markets, and shops in this case Harbiye as a space of alliance and symbols. The production of difference and divisions in Antakya is materialized and spatialized not only in the Alawite districts. In the districts identified mostly with the Sunni population, Islamist elements and symbols become discernible. The symbols that show one’s pilgrimage to Mecca or Ottomanist tendencies can be seen in old streets of Antakya and streets such as old Antakya streets and Cumhuriyet street (see Fig. 7.2). Antakya has often been advertised as a unique city where cultural fluidity and inter-faith dialogue (Da˘gta¸s 2017) have been reflected on urban landscape through shared sacred places. A frequent example is a street that includes a church, a mosque, and a synagogue next to each other. Antakya reflects the historical and cultural boundaries, distinctive and complex notions of “togetherness” and “difference” all at the same time. The ambiguous relationship that Alawites maintain with the Turkish and Syrian states; the tensions between secular public life and hegemonic SunniIslam culture, and historical repression of different Christian groups create

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Fig. 7.2 Old Antakya Street, a typical Antiochian door at a traditional house, 2017 (Photographed by the author)

unique locale and ethnographic complexities in Antakya. The places identified with certain ethno-religious groups became a matter of security and politics within the city after the Syrian civil war. The spatial divisions became more apparent when the mobility for Alawite women in certain neighborhoods was restricted. For instance, Sena (45),8 who works as an administrative assistant in a journalism office, told me that she did not feel free to go any part of the city any more. She is afraid of being harassed or attacked by Islamist men. Just like the Syrians who do not feel comfortable being confined in certain neighborhoods of the city where they might not be welcomed, Alawites and Christians avoid being mobile in areas populated by refugees and relatively conservative Islamic neighborhoods. City residents thus coexist as long as the

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boundary is kept in order. Faruk (45),9 who is a local Alawite journalist from Antakya, thinks that there was always a divide in the province, but it became acutely visible after the Syrian war: There has been a divide in this city even before the war. There is a saying in Arabic: “Let every believer succeed in their own religion.” Do you know what it means? It means we (Alawites, Sunnis, Christians) have nothing to do with each other. Here in Antakya, we manage to live with no conflict because we need to make it happen, not because we are not divided. Everybody is in their own “corner” and comfortable in their own corner. But they carved out a new municipality called Defne and re-mapped the city. It is a border between Sunni and Alawite citizens.

Faruk refers to the metropolitan map of the province of Hatay. The province became a metropolitan municipality in 2012 and this transition also required some changes within the internal municipal borders of the province. As a result, two municipalities, Defne and Arsuz,10 became new administrative areas. The re-configured municipal borders sparked a controversy since they were presumably based on ethno-religious affiliations. In fact, these new municipalities included an almost homogeneously Alawite population, rendering them more receptive to political oppression. After a while, it was apparent the borders were grounded on the ethno-religious population and the designated internal borders were determined for political elective purposes.11 The community objected to this modification because ethnic-religious divisions in the city became more visible, challenging the identity of the city as a space of peaceful coexistence. These new designations made way for growing fears of violence that would change the identity of this peaceful city. Once it is easily apparent that there is a clear distinction between certain towns and places where Alawites or Sunnis live then divisions might become substantial. The sectarian geography (Monroe 2016) that was once subtler became more visible after the Syrian war, which triggered concerns over the politicization and fragmentation of ethno-religious boundaries. However, as much as Antakya residents fear and share “dividedness,” they somehow participate in the crystallization of ethno-religious boundaries between Sunni Turks, Syrians, and Alawites. The reinforcement of symbolic boundaries, difference and opposition remains a feature of social and political spheres in Antakya, as long as nobody oversteps certain bounds.

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The Politics of Urban Space After 2011 Space is constituted through and constitutive of social relations and material social practices (Deeb and Harb 2013: 26). Spatialization of boundaries includes the ways in which mundane everyday practices are inscribed in space and the cityscape in Antakya as a border city shows the complexity of ethnic and religious diversity particularly after the Syrian civil war. Symbolic boundaries are conflated at the margins—materialized and spatialized through the territorial border itself and through state-induced practices or physical segregation. As Wilson, an anthropologist of borders, suggests that it is in the confluence too of space and place that borders and cities overlap as objects and subjects of ethnographic research, as political fields of contest and alliance, and as nested territorialities (Wilson 2014). In regard to the border region, I use spatialization and placemaking as instrumental notions to understand how difference and opposition are embodied in a multi-cultural context as “refuge” manifests in Antakya’s public spaces during the war and under the shadow of Turkey’s border policy. After 2011, Antakya held over 400,000 Syrian refugees, hundreds of journalists and researchers, and tens of non-governmental organizations. Russian intervention and the increasing violence in Idlib forced more Syrians to flee to Turkey, but Syrians were not given official “refugee” status, as Turkey does not bestow refugee status to immigrants from the Middle East. Syrians in Turkey have been under temporary-protection status since their arrival. Hence, Antakya has become an urban buffer zone, with tensions rising between Syrian refugees and Turkish residents, alongside increasing state violence and oversight. When I began my long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Antakya in January 2015, the frustration I observed among many residents resulted from the Turkish government’s policies and the increasing number of refugees in a city with limited resources. For Syrians, the precariousness and uncertainty of their conditions created inequality, ambiguity and limited their “right” to the city. For the locals, the fear of an ISIS attack amidst claims that armed groups were in the city overshadowed their everyday life. The insecurity that Alawites expressed was similar to what Larkin and Midha discussed in their work on Alawis of Tripoli (Larkin and Midha 2015). The political history of Tripoli as a “buffer zone” and Jabal Mohsen seen as “the abandoned orphan” informs conflicting allegiances and client dynamics among Alawites. The Alawites of Antakya often told me they

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were scared to leave their villages and go to crowded places and how the sectarian underpinnings of the government’s approach to the Syrian regime jeopardize the Alawites’ safety in the region. The struggle over places can take many forms, such as conflicts about territory and borders, or about the right to move or the right to stay. Thus, the relation between conflict and space/place is of course a dual one: Conflicts take place in space and in particular places, but they are also about spaces and places claimed by antagonists (Sokefeld 2015: 12). After spending a few months in Antakya, I was able to discern a spatial dimension to the way Syrians and local ethno-religious groups were accommodated. Until the war, the social distinctions among Alawites, Christians, and Sunni Turks were as invisible as they were intuitive. During my research, I attempted to understand to what extent local places and everyday spaces of interaction included Syrians to analyze urban encounters between locals and refugees. I anticipated an anti-Syrian sentiment among the Alawites and pro-Syrian regime residents. However, as I further pursued my research, I noticed it was more complicated. Placemaking, in relation to the inclusion of different ethno-religious identities and the locals’ relations with Syrians, was in flux and the core of constant negotiation. The complexity of those encounters involved mundane everyday life decisions, such as housing, employment, recreational choices, like which parks to take walks. These seemingly minor negotiations were fraught with historical and political meaning, such as the historical marginalization and the construction of Alawite community, confrontations with the states and their institutions, and the suffering of Syrians in Turkey. Ethno-religious differences and social distinctions were being reproduced and challenged in everyday life at the borderlands. In sum, it was clear that the locals’ relations with Syrians were not confined to a simple native vs. refugee or host vs. guest dichotomy. My observation was confirmed when I began interviewing local employers and real estate agencies. When I met shop owners and landlords, who hired Syrian laborers or refused housing to refugees, I understood an aspect of what Nosheen (2010) calls “sectarian imaginary”—a normalized mode of seeing and interacting with the sectarian other through suspicion and resentment—and the way it has come to structure inter-sect and, to some extent, intra-sect relations (Nosheen 2010: 738). The local employers, real estate agencies, and shop owners criticized the influx of Syrian refugees; however, they chose to work with the Syrian refugees whom

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they could “trust,” which was often determined on the basis of ethnoreligious identification and/or political affiliation. For instance, some employers hired the Syrian refugees who were not supporting the opposition. The politics of the Syrian civil war and sectarian identifications were key to the relationships between locals and the Syrian refugees. Some local employers resisted the idea of sectarian affiliations in order to hire Syrians which disrupted an essentialist understanding of “Syrian refugees” and the Syrian opposition. However, the divisions within the city were maintained in one way or another. Despite preservation of sectarian and spatial boundaries in the city, ethnic and sectarian solidarity in Antakya is not simple and straightforward. It shapes “cultural-social mobility and access” and reconfigures every social and economic relation by creating an “economy of identity” (Oflazoglu and Arslan 2015). Ethnic and sectarian solidarity complicates simple migrant/local and refugee/host dichotomies in Antakya (Dahi 2014) as it contributes to determining factors even with everyday life routines. In Antakya, symbolic and cultural practices, such as speaking Arabic and/or employing shopping assistants from the same sect, directly influence consumption choices, shopping rituals, and choice of recreational areas. In this sense, the choice of neighborhoods, shopping places, and housing are all indicators of the ways refugees navigate local idiom, semi-urban practices, and sectarian dynamics. During my research, I noticed that neighborhood choices for housing especially in terms of refugees and Alawites were further spatialized the reception of Syrians and Islamists. In November 2016, I went to Hasan’s café close to the grand Antakya recreational park (in downtown) to conduct a group interview. The group was a diverse one. There were three people besides Hasan. One was Turkish Sunni (Yasin), one was Arab Christian (Gabriel), and the third was an Arab-Alawite woman (Pınar) from Armutlu. Armutlu is a well-known Alawite-populated neighborhood in Defne (a municipality with Alawite majority). Hasan, who introduced me, is an Arab Alawite who distances himself from radical politics and political organizations. My goal was to understand how different ethnoreligious groups responded to the arrival of Syrians into the city and to what extent they shared city spaces. One of the main issues that came up was housing. Pınar complained about Syrians living around downtown among the locals. Although she avoided giving the details of the events or problems experienced in Armutlu, the tensions were apparent after some of the residents rented out apartments to Syrians despite objections in the neighborhood:

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The landlords are greedy and they rented their apartments for money. Then we began having problems in the neighborhood. So, the neighborhood official decided, along with the residents, not to rent to Syrians. Now, there are no Syrians residing in Armutlu.

My realtor respondents shared examples similar to Pınar’s, and their evasive answers made it clear that they turned away Syrian customers particularly in certain neighborhoods. Yunus seemed to agree with Pınar, but he also added that he would not mind helping Syrians he “trusts.” Yunus helped some Syrian Turkmenis (Turks who have Syrian nationality) find apartments and hosted them during Ramadan. Gabriel and Hasan also agreed that Syrians should not reside in Armutlu or even Defne due to potential tensions, even though they were “welcoming” toward Syrians. For my interlocutors in the focus group, “living together” meant something similar to what Deeb and Harb describe about how residents of Beirut decide where to spend their free time, ideas about the relationship between sect, politics, and space are often crucial factors (Deeb and Harb 2013: 24). In Antakya as well, there was no harm in living together as long as certain boundaries were recognized, in symbolic and spatial terms. My Syrian interlocutors confirmed that they feel judged when they live in central neighborhoods and preferred to settle in peripheries of Antakya, such as Narlica (a non-Alawite part of Antakya) or New Antioch, which were relatively new residential areas populated by Sunni Turks. What housing choices indicate is the spatialization of cultural boundaries and re-configuration of urban space along ethno-religious lines. It appears that although Antakya residents reject accommodating Syrians in their urban everyday life, regardless of their ethno-religious affiliation, ethnicity and sect clearly demarcate the margins of “outsider” in different ways. Negotiating ethnic and sectarian solidarity informs mundane everyday practices, such as housing rentals and employee selection. Their varying approaches to Syrians serve, however inadvertently, as a means of both expressing and naturalizing ethno-religious boundaries between Sunni Turks, Alawites, and Syrians. It is important to understand the local dynamics within its own historical situatedness and post-colonial power struggles. Being an Alawi is more of communal cultural symbol than a deeply religious phenomenon, which indicates a complicated notion of ethnic and sectarian solidarity in Antakya. Ethno-religious solidarity and sectarian approaches lead to two overlapping conclusions that scholars of Alawite culture and society

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have often missed. The first is the power struggle among different ethnoreligious groups in the city that determine hegemonic approaches toward Syrians. For Alawites, the privilege of Sunnis and Turks in the city compels Alawites to not only hold onto cultural communal codes and sectarian identification but also to the “economic value of collectivity,” to maintain a powerful position in the city. The political power that Alawites had in Syria was absent for the Alawites in Antakya. In the 1920s, French prowess at divide and rule was brought to bear on the Alawite community in the northwest (Weiss 2015: 67) and other communities in their designated territories. However, an anthropological focus on the Levant reveals “ambiguities of domination” (Wedeen 1999) and political power and representation (Salamandra 2004) for Alawites in relation to the Syrian state. Alawites were empowered as the “lords of Syria” (Zisser 1999) through Hafez Al-Assad’s policy of communal favoritism (Balanche 2015). The upward mobility of the sect and the fear of ethnic cleansing positioned Alawites as vigorous defenders of Syrian nationalism and, to some extent, the Syrian regime in its secular form. In Turkey, however, Alawites had been disadvantaged via demographic warfare through settlement laws in the 1930s during annexation, which empowered Turks in the city and enabled industrialization of agriculture. The neoliberal transition in the late 1970s benefitted Turkish Sunni capital, which was sponsored by the Turkish state. However, during the late 1980s the positions occupied by Turks and Arab Alawites changed. The Iran-Iraq war and the decline of heavy industry in Turkey encouraged the growth of agricultural and small-market gardening businesses (Stokes 1998: 275). In addition, Arab Alawites, most of whom were peasants and deprived of the social capital needed to go to college, migrated to the Gulf as seasonal laborers. In effect, this meant prosperity for Alawites and a decline for some Sunni Turks. Being disadvantaged for decades, Alawites invested in the Alawite-dominated economy and cultivated loyalty to their community. However, capital and power still belonged to rich Sunni Turkish families in Antakya. Hence, power struggles within the city generated an “economy of identity” through sectarian and ethnic solidarity and proximity. Today, Syrian refugees are also identified with certain “asabiyya” (Goldsmith 2015) depending on their choice of markets, housing, employment, and neighborhoods. The politics of “us” in defense of “one of your own” against external danger is a means of naturalizing

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sociocultural formation, in which belonging and status are valorized only through ethno-religious identity and history. Power of membership in the Sunni, Christian, or Alawite community is intractable and capitalized only through social relations that disregard the well-being and value of those other than “being from us.”

Shifting Political Landscape at/Across the Border Syrian refugees fleeing the escalating violence in Syria were forced to confront internal Turkish disputes and get a solid grasp of their place in the province after 2011. The arrival of refugees changed the demographics in the province and generated debates over electoral zones and identitybased spatial claims. Therefore, Syrian refugees grappled with politics in some border cities were due to political change that was entrenched with the political dynamics in Syria. Until the Syrian war, Alawites in Turkey distanced themselves from armed struggles, like the Kurdish one and performed their religious identity within secrecy. Their involvement in political parties consisted of either national “revolutionist” socialist parties or the CHP (Republican People’s Party), known as Ataturk’s party. Arab Alawites overwhelmingly voted for the secular, moderate nationalist mainstream party CHP (Can 2017: 185). The shift toward identity-based or sectarian politics can be explained by the existential character the struggle in the Levant is taking, whereby both “communities,” however imagined or constructed, are coming to perceive themselves as defending not only their share of resources or power, but also their survival (Bahout 2013: 2). However, the new visibility of Alawite activism and shifting political identity has a paradoxical relationship to the Syrian regime and Syrian refugees. During the on-and-off protests in 2015, one of the ways the changing dynamics and intensity of political affiliation could have been epitomized was with the slogan “With our soul, with our blood, we are yours Bashar” (bi’ruh, bi’d-dem, nefdik ya Bashar), heard on the streets of Defne. It is one of the most well-known political expressions in Arab countries. The slogan became contentious during the protests I observed in Antakya. Although some of the protesters chanted it proudly, others clearly did not approve. They found it too partisan and divisive: For them, opposing the Turkish government’s policies did not necessarily mean support for Assad.

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Thus, the question is whether emerging political activism in12 Antakya is a manifestation of loyalty to the Syrian state (or an independent state) or if it is a quest for cultural/linguistic rights within a more democratic Turkey (Can 2017: 185). Although conflicts among political organizations were mostly about Assad’s politics, they all seemed to agree that their fight was against the Turkish state’s support for the Syrian opposition and for their own cultural continuity. Hearing the slogan “We, and Syria are one” (wahed, wahed, nihna wa Suriyah wahed) from all local political groups at rallies was not a coincidence. Protests and demands for cultural rights were mainly in opposition to the Turkish government’s attempt to oppress identity-based claims. But they also addressed the Turkish-Syrian border and Turkey’s Syria policy. Most of these groups have emphasized that their struggle is not against Syrian refugees. On the contrary, it addresses problems like exploitation and discrimination of refugees. Political identity and everyday life politics in Antakya cannot be reduced to partisan politics. However, the way the war rejuvenated ties with Syria calls into question what the state represents for local political organizations and what criticism of Assad means for people who identify with a transnational political belonging—not as a marker of citizenship but as a nostalgic notion of “home” across the border. Scholars of the Middle East who criticize an essentialist understanding of “sect” address how the notion of “sect” and sectarianism overlap with other issues. For instance, Martin Sokefeld demonstrates how Sunni-Shia conflict in Gilgit intersects with other issues, most significantly with the dispute about the political status of the area. In a similar vein, I emphasize how sect and ethnicity function in terms of political context—what a Syrian state as a safe haven even entails and how Alawites in Antakya imagine their relationship to the city and the border. Sectarian affiliations of locals and refugees reproduce these imaginations of space and communal alignments. On the one hand, the Turkish government’s role in the Syrian civil war and the sense of insecurity Alawites have under Turkish sovereignty and violence across the border is not baseless. On the other hand, Alawite-Sunni divisions indeed have very practical results. For instance, local and national politicians constantly tend to exploit sectarian sentiments and use sectarian loyalties to gather more votes. The politicization of urban space brings new forms of immobility for Syrian refugees, increases hostility toward migrants, and deepens the existing divisions.

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Furthermore, the spatial divide within cities, the influx of refugees, and the shift in spaces of political activism all have an impact on patterns of negotiation of urban space and belonging. In her work on the spatial dynamics of Zapatista and Kurdish movements, Gambetti argues that placemaking is not only about locality or physical setting but also about constructing a form of struggle in its own right (Gambetti 2009: 44). Similarly, placemaking in Antakya and reproduction of ethno-religious boundaries are mutually constitutive and directly related to the ways in which Alawites desire to speak to the Turkish state. It is clear that allocated resources within the province, local power struggle, and refugee policies in Turkey directly impact local negotiations of Syrian refugees and their accommodation in Antakya and reproduction of Arab-Alawite allegiance to Syria and/or to the Syrian regime.

Conclusion The spatial divisions and ethno-religious boundaries in Antakya indicate that border cities are often internally and significantly divided cities, and the product of external forces acting on a city with the intent to engage it in a larger struggle from which it cannot benefit (Calame and Charlesworth 2009: 8). The conflicts in Antakya squarely fit in the historical framework of borders as processes of nation-building, the cultural complexity of interstate clashes, and the long-term consequences of nationalism. However, the urban culture and Antakya residents’ desire for living together seems to compete with its “dividedness.” In Antakya, the residents situate the Turkish state as the external force that imposes cultural erasure on the part of Arabs and creates sectarian divisions. The paradoxical urban identity in this border city was transformed into a frontier of fear and anxiety after the outbreak of the Syrian war. By looking at the transformation of a border city, this paper rethinks conflict in historical contexts and negotiations of religion and displacement after the Syrian civil war. This study offers an anthropological approach toward the investigation of cultural aspects of international relations and intra-national conflicts and civil wars in the contemporary Middle East. In her work on a border region in northern Greece, Manos argues that ethnography in borderlands can shed light on how belonging in national or other collective categories operates today, on how versions of identity and culture are used (2005: 132). The Alawites’ belonging

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operates within a paradoxical relationship, which clearly shows how the national identity extends beyond the limit of one state. In this chapter, I have discussed that the culture of “living together” in Antakya has been transformed into a spatialized form of belonging. The rise of Arab-Alawite identity and the changing discourse of peaceful antagonisms indicate a rupture from the assimilative politics of the Turkish state, through re-definition of national identity, political identity; “Syrianness” (Can 2019) and the Syrian state. Antakya as a buffer zone has also been spatially re-configured, whereby places of difference become more concretized after the influx of Syrians and new ideologies. I also showed that the visibility of Arab-Alawite identity in public space and its politicized manifestation is not independent from the TurkishSyrian border-making process. Following the annexation of the Sanjak of Alexandretta (Antakya) by Turkey, Alawites could assimilate with relative ease into Turkish Sunni society. Nonetheless, Syrian refugees and the politics of the Syrian civil war reinforced the boundaries between Sunnis and Alawites. Alawites and Sunni Turks systematically valorize their differences in economic practices and in discourse on the Syrian regime and the refugees. These are often dramatically expressed in the realms of placemaking and appropriating national identity, which most often occurs at borders (Donnan and Wilson 1999: 4). Antakya shares commonalities with divided cities; border cities are not only material forms of ethnoreligious, social, and political histories and conflicts, they are also pieces of the present that are in flux temporally and spatially. The production of difference and spatialization of ethno-religious identities, then, seems to have historically taken place and the threat of sectarian violence resurfaced due to Turkish government’s border policies, Islamist overtone of the Syrian war and the arrival of Syrian refugees. As Brandell (2006) presents in the cases from Cyprus to Southern Turkey and from Syria and Lebanon, nation-building in relation to resistance against colonial powers has largely determined borders, boundaries, and frontiers in the Middle East and in Turkish-Syrian relations. Both Turkey and Syria have a unique geopolitical and ideological position in the Middle East. Analyzing the relations between space, power, and politics, I seek to contribute to anthropological geopolitics in the Levant, considering history as continuity: “to connect the struggle for control over territory and the struggle over historical and social meaning” (Said 2003).

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Notes 1. The term “Alawite” usually refers to the Arab-Alawite community from Syrian origins and the term “Alevi” in Turkish is used to refer to the Turkish/Kurdish Alevis in Turkey. The Arab Alawites share the same belief and similar political history with the Turkey’s Alevis; however, there are slight differences regarding religious rituals between the Alawites and the other Alevis. Although Alawites in both Turkey and Syria are “minority” populations that share the same belief system, trajectories of their political and social history differ significantly despite geographical proximity. The Alawite belief system, also known as Nusayrism, is based on secrecy and batini (esoteric) understandings of Islam (Can 2011: 43). 2. I use Antakya instead of Hatay, which was invented when the territory was annexed, as many residents of the city view the name of Hatay as a “colonial invention” and non-native. I respect local criticism and the term Antakya used here refers to the whole province of Hatay today (Can 2019: 4). 3. http://www.businessinsider.com/turkey-isis-syria-border-problem2016-4. 4. The following news article claims that Turkey is a facilitator of the Syrian rebels. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-security-idlib/ turkey-sends-weapons-to-syrian-rebels-facing-russian-backed-assaultsyrian-sources-idUSKCN1SV0FA. 5. A year after I completed my fieldwork Turkey indeed intervened in Afrin with the claim of ending Kurdish militia operations in collaboration with PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) in Turkey. http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/02/24/u-s-backed-fighters-insyria-worry-more-about-turkey-than-isis/. 6. The numbers belong to the UNHCR and NGO Support to Life (Accessed on February 8, 2018). 7. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syriaturkey/syrian-fsa-commander-dies-in-attack-in-southern-turkeyidUSKCN0QV1H720150826. 8. Sena, a pseudonym, is an Alawite woman, a single mother, and a local journalist. She is from Antakya. 9. Faruk, a pseudonym, is a local Alawite journalist who grew up in Antakya. He owns a newspaper and a TV channel in the province. 10. The seat of the province Antakya is divided into two. One part became the municipality of Defne, while the other part remained an Antakya municipality. The municipality of Iskenderun is also divided into two parts, one of which became Arsuz. Such a shift in local border-policy created more anxiety over state investment in the development of certain towns. The separation would identify the votes for the ruling party AKP (Justice and

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Development Party), which would facilitate surveillance and the settlement of the Syrian refugees. 11. If a province has a population of more than 1.5 million, it must be designated an administrative metropolitan municipality. The reactions were understood as rumors at first. However, after seeing the chaotic mapping of those municipalities and conducting some interviews with urban planners, I also understood the sectarian underpinnings in the urban plans of internal borders. 12. The shift in the political landscape or new visibility of activism refers to the revival of the political activities and the way the Syrian civil war has fueled public protests, mobilized the masses to take political action and finally, has intensified ethnic and religious identifications and ties with Syria.

References Quoted material Altu˘g, Seda. 2002. Between Colonial and National Dominations: Antioch Under the French Mandate (1920–1939). Unpublished Master thesis, Department of History, Bogazici University. Bahout, Joseph. 2013. Sectarianism in Lebanon and Syria: The Dynamics of Mutual Spill-Over. United States Institute of Peace Peacebrief 159: 1–4. Balanche, Fabrice. 2015. ‘Go to Damascus, My Son’: Alawi Demographic Shifts Under Ba’ath Party Rule. In The Alawis of Syria: War, Faith and Politics in the Levant, ed. M. Kerr and C. Larkin. London: Hurst Publishers. Bermant, Laia Soto. 2015. A Tale of Two Cities: The Production of Difference in a Mediterranean Border Enclave. Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale 23 (4): 450–464. Brandell, Inga. 2006. Introduction. In State Frontiers: Borders and Boundaries in the Middle East, ed. Inga Brandell. New York: I.B. Tauris. Can, Sule. ¸ 2011. Nusayrilik: Sır ve Direni¸s. Unpublished Master’s thesis, Department of Cultural Studies, Istanbul Bilgi University, Istanbul.

References Calame, Jon, and Ester Charlesworth. 2009. Divided Cities. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Can, Sule. ¸ 2017. The Syrian Civil War, Sectarianism and Political Change at the Turkish-Syrian Border. Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale 25 (2): 174–189. Can, Sule. ¸ 2019. Refugee Encounters at the Turkish-Syrian Border: Antakya at the Crossroads. London: Routledge.

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Cleveland, William, and Martin Bunton. 2016. A History of the Middle East. Boulder: Westview Press. Da˘gta¸s, Seçil. 2012. Tolerated Identities: Secularism, Religious Pluralism and Nationalism in Antakya, Turkey. In Cultural Difference and Social Solidarity Critical Cases, ed. S.H. Boyd and M.A. Walter. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Da˘gta¸s, Seçil. 2017. Whose Misafirs? Negotiating Difference Along the TurkishSyrian Border. International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 49: 661–679. Dahi, Omar S. 2014. Syria in Fragments: The Politics of the Refugee Crisis. Dissent 61 (1): 45–48. Deeb, Lara. 2006. An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi’i Lebanon. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Deeb, Lara, and Mona Harb. 2013. Leisurely Islam: Negotiating Geography and Morality in Shi’ite South Beirut. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Demirta¸s-Ba˘gdonas, Ozlem. 2014. Reading Turkey’s Foreign Policy on Syria: The AKP’s Construction of a Great Power Identity and the Politics of Grandeur. Turkish Studies 15(1): 139–155. ˙ Do˘gruel, Fulya. 2005. Insaniyetleri Benzer: Hatay’da Çoketnili Ortak Ya¸sam ˙ ˙ sim Yayınları. Kültürü. Istanbul: Ileti¸ Donnan, Hastings, and Thomas M. Wilson. 1999. Borders: Frontiers of Identity, Nation and State. Oxford and New York: Berg. Gambetti, Zeynep. 2009. Politics of Place/Space: The Spatial Dynamics of the Kurdish and Zapatista Movements. New Perspectives on Turkey 41: 43–87. Goldsmith, Leon. 2015. Cycle of Fear: Syria’s Alawites in War and Peace. London: Hurst Publishers. Güçer, Mehmet, Semra Karaca, and Osman B. Dinçer 2013. The Struggle for Life Between Borders: Syrian Refugees. International Strategic Research Organization (USAK), 1–70. Hamilakis, Yannis. 2016. Archaeologies of Forced and Undocumented Migration. Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 3 (2): 121–294. Larkin, Craig, and Olivia Midha. 2015. The Alawis of Tripoli: Identity, Violence and Urban Geopilitics. In The Alawis of Syria: War, Faith and Politics in the Levant, ed. M. Kerr and C. Larkin. London: Hurst Publishers. Low, Setha M. 1996. The Anthropology of Cities: Imagining and Theorizing the City. Annual Review of Anthropology 25: 383–409. Manos, Ioannis. 2005. Border Crossings: Dance Performance and Identity Politics in a Border Region in Northern Greece. In Culture and Power at the Edges of the State: National Support and Subversion in European Border Regions, ed. Hastings Donnan and Thomas M. Wilson. Munster: LIT Verlag. Monroe, Kristin V. 2016. The Insecure City: Space, Power and Mobility in Beirut. New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press.

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Nosheen, Ali. 2010. Sectarian Imaginaries: The Micropolitics of Sectarianism and State-making in Northern Pakistan. Current Sociology 58 (5): 738–754. Oflazoglu, Sonyel, and Zerrin Arslan. 2015. Paylasilan Kulturel Sembol Etkisinde Perakende Magaza Tercihi ve Etnik-Sosyal Dayanisma Iliskisi: Antakya Ornegi. Suleyman Demirel University: The Journal of Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences 20 (3): 175–202. Said, Edward W. 2003. Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. London: Penguin Classics. Salamandra, Christa. 2004. A New Old Damascus: Authenticity and Distinction in Urban Syria. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Sokefeld, Martin. 2015. Spaces of Conflict in Everyday Life: Perspectives Across Asia. Munich: Verlag. Stokes, Martin. 1998. Imagining “the South”: Hybridity, Heterotopias and Arabesk on the Turkish-Syrian Border. In Border Identities: Nation and State at International Frontiers, ed. Thomas M. Wilson and Hastings Donnan. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Weeden, Lisa. 1999. Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Weiss, Max 2015. Community, Sect, Nation: Colonial and Social Scientific Discourses on the Alawis of Syria During the French Mandate and Early Independence Periods. In Alawis of Syria: War, Faith and Politics in the Levant, ed. Michael Kerr and Craig Larkin. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wilson, Thomas M. 2014. Borders: Cities, Boundaries and Frontiers. In A Companion to Urban Anthropology, ed. Donald Nonini. Malden: Blackwell. Wilson, Thomas M., and Hastings Donnan. 1998. Nation, State and Identity at the International Borders. In Border Identities: Nation and State at International Frontiers, ed. Thomas M. Wilson and Hastings Donnan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zisser, Eyal. 1999. The Alawis’ Lords of Syria: From Ethnic Minority to Ruling Sect. In Minorities and the State in the Arab World, ed. O. Bengio and G. Ben-Dor. Boulder: Lynne Rienner.

CHAPTER 8

Dayr al-Zur from Revolution to ISIS: Local Networks, Hybrid Identities, and Outside Authorities Kevin Mazur

Introduction During the 2011 uprising and ensuing civil war, Syria’s eastern Dayr al-Zur governorate was the site of both intense armed conflict and a range of experiments in governance. The violent struggle between al-Qaidaaffiliate Jabhat al-Nusra and its offshoot, Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant/al-Sham (ISIS),1 unfolded primarily in Dayr al-Zur, creating new enmities between local communities and providing a forum for pursuing old rivalries. At the same time, the absence of a central political authority created space for new local arrangements to deliver services, provide local security, and render legal judgments. Looming over any explanation of these complex patterns of conflict and cooperation are the region’s natural resources and social structure. Dayr al-Zur governorate is home to a substantial share of Syria’s oil and gas reserves, and its population is

K. Mazur (B) Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA © The Author(s) 2020 M. Cimino (ed.), Syria: Borders, Boundaries, and the State, Mobility & Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44877-6_8

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predominantly of semi-nomadic heritage, with most residents retaining a tribal affiliation. The headlines emerging from Dayr al-Zur suggest little role for tribal hierarchies in patterns of contention and conflict. Local activists organized to challenge the regime in spite of efforts by some traditional leaders to suppress them; oil and gas resources were often monopolized by opportunistic militia leaders once they fell out of regime control; and Islamist armed groups would eventually come to dominate the region. Traditional tribal leaders did little to direct the process at any stage. Yet one need not look far beyond those headlines to find traces of a tribal idiom; kinship ties played an important role in recruitment into many of the militias and even Islamist armed groups that would dominate the conflict from 2013 onwards, and prominent local actors frequently invoked tribal concepts and affiliations to accomplish their purposes. To better understand the role of these composite identities and social networks in patterns of cooperation and conflict, this chapter examines local-level dynamics in Dayr al-Zur governorate from the beginning of the uprising in early 2011 through the ascendance of ISIS in late 2014. It argues that tribal linkages and symbols played an important role in patterns of contestation, alliance, and violence, but not through formal tribal hierarchies, nor at the level of entire tribes. Local networks contained within sub-tribal groupings formed the core of many military formations, while broader tribal affiliations were used only in transactional, often ephemeral ways. Men occupying the historical positions of status and prestige in their tribes were all but irrelevant to these dynamics. Though traditional leaders were sidelined and the tribal confederations they nominally led played virtually no role in motivating solidary action, tribal ties and identities at lower levels—such as the town and the subtribal grouping—played an important role in the unfolding of conflict. Militias formed primarily among residents of the same town, who generally shared extended family linkages and hailed from the same sub-tribal unit; these local linkages proved an important source of solidarity, underpinning calls to collective defense—and to collective profit from nearby oil and gas wells. To the extent that broader tribal affiliations played a role in patterns of action, they functioned tactically, to deter attacks from armed groups with the same tribal identity, rather than as a basis for solidary group action. Islamist groups quickly recognized this characteristic of the localized militias and would often recruit a battalion from a powerful tribe in order to “shield” themselves from attacks by that tribe. But even this

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shielding dynamic could be overtaken by acts of opportunism; rival factions often recruited an individual or battalion from within a sub-tribe to switch affiliations, turning ever-smaller segments of a tribal grouping against one another. It is in such situations that traditional tribal leadership found a role, mediating disputes among tribe members. Tribal settlements often broke down quickly, however, with the material interests of currently powerful actors taking precedence over the shaykhs’ authority based upon a historical legacy. Patterns of social action in moments of contention can yield important clues about the social and political organization of a polity in the years preceding conflict, and Dayr al-Zur proves no exception to this rule. The limited role of traditional tribal leaders in the uprising and civil war constitutes an important strand of continuity with pre-conflict social life in Syria. State penetration in the preceding decades offered increasing opportunity to rank-and-file members of tribes, diminishing their reliance on customary leaders and developing new webs of dependence—both on the state and among themselves. These linkages functioned at the level of extended families and not broader tribal groupings. A rank-and-file tribe member, for example, might go to a cousin working in a government ministry to obtain privileged access to an agricultural aid scheme, rather than a senior tribal figure with long-standing relations to the security services. These same local, non-elite linkages would be crucial to the formation of armed groups when Dayr al-Zur began to fall out of regime control; townbased militias were often formed in spite of traditional leaders’ attempts to “calm the street” and maintain their ties to the regime. Even as violent entrepreneurs came to dominate the revolutionary process, patterns of governance and social organization preceding the uprising remained central to patterns of conflict. Islamist groups sought to connect with local leaders and play upon pre-existing rivalries between towns and within and among tribes. For its part, the Syrian regime attempted to contain contestation through the informal channels into local society that it had constructed before the uprising. Understanding this period of contention is also important for making sense of ISIS rule and thinking about the future of Syria’s eastern region. The local-level view of contestation provides insight into the social relations, incentives, and imperatives that impelled local communities to tolerate, collaborate with, and, in some cases, actively embrace the ideology of ISIS. By explicating how governance emerged once state authority

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faded away—and, especially, how it built upon and altered historical patterns of social organization—this chapter suggests continuities in places where media accounts have often characterized ISIS rule as rupture, imposition of order in a territory otherwise in chaos. The civil war and prolonged ISIS rule broke many of the linkages between local communities and state authorities; the process of reconstruction in Syria will require reparation of many such ties and the reconstruction of new ones. Understanding the conditions that snapped some but not all of these ties—as well as new ones that began to arise with the appearance of new outside authorities in the form of Islamist groups—suggests configurations that may be conducive to stability and prosperity in this region of Syria.

Method and Sources The conditions of sustained intrastate conflict and ISIS occupation that obtained while I conducted this research made on-the-ground research impossible. To establish and illustrate the chapter’s claims, I rely on Arabic-language secondary sources and interviews conducted outside the country. Interviews with Dayr al-Zur residents and participants in the uprising were conducted in person in Istanbul between July 2015 and August 2016 and via phone. Interviewees were selected for their knowledge of a particular town or sequence of events. The secondary sources come primarily from local media outlets and reports produced by Syrian researchers and journalists specializing on the region, including a comprehensive reading of one news magazine based in Dayr al-Zur governorate, Ain al-Madina, from its first issue in March 2013 through the end of 2015. While these materials—like any other press or historical material— reflect the biases of their authors and the agendas contemporary to their production, they provide local-level details and interviews with influential local actors that would otherwise be impossible to obtain. To address potential biases and blind spots, I employ a strategy of triangulation and fact-checking between sources, enabled by the broad range of print media available to me. These techniques help to establish a reliable narrative of events, not dependent upon a single source or individual. Nonetheless, many critical details of governance—such as the precise forms of linkage between the regime and its local agents, or the terms of agreements made between local actors and radical Islamist groups—are unknowable on the basis of the information available to me; exploration of these topics awaits further research.

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Dayr al-Zur Before the Uprising The settlement patterns and contemporary political economy of Dayr alZur were created virtually from scratch in the Ottoman Tanzimat period. The region only came to be continuously settled in the beginning of the nineteenth century; the raiding of nomadic tribes prevented continuous settlement for centuries, and eighteenth-century Ottoman efforts at settling it were largely undermined by incursions of Wahhabis in the early nineteenth century (Barout 2013: 61–62). The second half of the nineteenth century brought rapid expansion of the population and change in the economic activity of the area; Dayr alZur was the site of considerable Ottoman attention, aimed at encouraging agriculture that might improve the tax base and build transit links to the eastern part of the Empire. The administrative status and personnel given to the province reflect this. Between the 1860s and 1918, it was first made a qad.¯ a , then raised to a sanjak attached to Aleppo vilayet, then afforded an independent status directly attached to Istanbul—a status shared only by Jerusalem and Lebanon. Increased security and very low rates of taxation encouraged farming on the fertile banks of the Euphrates around Dayr al-Zur and contributed to the growth of towns in the region. The groups settling the area were primarily of semi-nomadic origin and continued to practice a mixture of livestock herding and farming (Barout 2013: 67–74; Lange 2015). The majority of the governorate’s residents have retained tribal affiliations down to the present. Generationally urban Dayr al-Zur residents generally lack tribal affiliation and may identify by family lineage or neighborhood provenance, but residents with rural origins generally have tribal affiliations. The majority of the governorate’s population belong to one of two tribal confederations, al-Baggara and al-Agidat.2 The latter was constituted in the eighteenth or nineteenth century by semi-sedentary populations in the area seeking collective defense from the raiding of nomadic tribes (Bishara 2013: 145).3 Each confederation has a paramount tribal leader, a shaykh al- ash¯ıra, as do many sub-tribal units. The shaykh is chosen by elder members of the tribe, rather than the position being passed mechanically from father to son. But the shaykh must come from within a given extended family lineage (bayt ), however; the term for this shaykhly lineage is bayt al- ash¯ıra.4 Tribal ties occupied a more important role in social and political life in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries than they do today, owing

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to the absence of state institutions that provide physical security and some material sustenance. Even prior to state penetration, however, broad tribal confederations never mechanically commanded the solidarity of their members; they functioned as units of defense in times of major violent conflict and for political representation to outside imperial or national authorities. Even in the early twentieth century, al-Agidat was so large and dispersed that the role of its main shaykhly family, al-Hifl, was only to represent members at tribal conferences (Zakariya 1945: 569). The contemporary urban structure of the governorate’s population has its roots in the urban expansion of the late Ottoman period. The major towns of the area—Dayr al-Zur, al-Mayadin, and al-Bukamal— grew rapidly in this period, attracting primarily town dwellers from other areas. Barout (2013: 76) estimates that about 80% of the population of al-Bukamal in the early twentieth century came from Mosul or the towns of Rawah and Ana in present-day Anbar province of Iraq. Al-Mayadin’s original population was composed of people living in a nearby disused citadel (qal a), giving rise to the name of a major “tribe” in the town, al-Kilaiin. The town also attracted many people from the neighboring town, al-Ashara. In addition, many Christians came from other parts of the Empire, fleeing mass killing by Ottoman authorities. The economic returns on the land settled by the semi-sedentary tribes went primarily to new urban notables (a y¯ an), particularly in Dayr al-Zur city (Barout 2013: 74–80; Abd al-Rahman 2016). Settlements of Dayr al-Zur governorate are in close proximity to the region’s two rivers, the Euphrates and Khabur (see Fig. 8.1). In its residents’ popular imagination, Dayr al-Zur governorate is divided along two axes: the Euphrates river itself and a line passing through Dayr al-Zur city perpendicular to the river, dividing the east of the governorate from the west. The left bank of the river is referred to as the Jazira side (jaz¯ıra meaning “island” and being the term used to describe lands between the Tigris and Euphrates), and the right bank the Shamiyya side (“Sham” being a colloquial name for Damascus). Villages west of Dayr al-Zur city, on both sides of the river, were inhabited mostly by members of alBaggara and al-Busaraya branch of al-Agidat confederation (Lewis 1987: 207). Villages east of the city mostly have tribal affiliations with other branches of al-Agidat. In addition to physical distance and varying tribal affiliations, the Euphrates river acted to separate Jazira and Shamiyya populations economically and socially; no bridge connected al-Mayadin,

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Fig. 8.1 Towns in Dayr al-Zur governorate, by population size (Source Author)

the second largest city in the governorate, to the town directly across the Euphrates, Dhiban, until 1976 (Abd al-Rahman 2016). State Penetration and Changing Social Structure State efforts to provide basic services and schooling, beginning in the Mandate and Republican periods and accelerating under the Bath, raised the basic standard of living for villagers and reduced distinctions between semi-nomadic peasants, town residents, and city dwellers. The openness of higher education and the military to the ablest villagers placed many of them in positions of relative power in the cities. Villages and their new schools also became the site of significant political activity against old landholding classes in the 1950s. The village of Muhasan, located between al-Mayadin and Dayr al-Zur, became known as “Little Moscow” for the number of Communist party members in the town and its successful organizing—led by newly arrived school teachers—to block landlords’ expropriation of common land and establish a cooperative to purchase irrigation pumps (Batatu 1999: 120).

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State penetration and structural economic change have made semipastoralism and agriculture a decreasing part of the governorate’s economic life and drastically increased the role of state services and public employment. The growth of employment opportunities and modern facilities, in general, encouraged migration from the countryside to larger cities like Dayr al-Zur. The urban share of the governorate’s population rose from 26% in 1960 to 45% in 2010.5 In addition, significant segments of the still-rural population circulated between their villages and the city or migrant work in Lebanon and the Gulf States. The developmental gap between Dayr al-Zur city and the rest of the governorate’s settlements is clear from figures in the 2004 census, the last before the uprising (see Table 8.1); 60% of the city’s workforce is employed by the state, while the rest of the governorate lags the national average considerably. Moreover, levels of education and employment in the city parallel the national averages, while the rest of the governorate is far behind. Careers in the state and military attracted young men from village and city alike— Muhasan would also become known as the “House of the Officers (bayt al-d.ubbat.)” during the Bath period for the number of police and military officers it produced; many village residents also pursued university education and entered the liberal professions. Yet the careers of state employees Table 8.1 Development, employment, and public services (percentage of the population)

National average Dayr al-Zur city Jazira gharbiyya Shamiyya gharbiyya Jazira sharqiyya Shamiyya sharqiyya

Public employment

School enrollment

Secondary education

Unemployment

Adult illiteracy

31

61

73

12

19

60

67

70

9

14

11

50

42

13

55

12

56

43

20

54

11

55

55

15

41

19

57

59

17

35

Note The denominator for public employment data is total workforce, not total population Source Central Bureau of Statistics 2004

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from Dayr al-Zur, particularly in the army, bumped up against the limits of the Alawi-dominated regime. In spite of the large number of army officers from Muhasan, for example, it was rare to see one above the rank of colonel (Allawi 2016). Part of the draw to state service was the lack of other economic opportunities in the region. Farming and livestock-raising were harmed by increasing salinization of the region’s lands long before the drought of the late 2000s caused a mass exodus from the land. The numerous oil fields and pumping stations in the area could have, in theory, provided low-skill work for local laborers and technical work for the region’s engineers, but these highly remunerative jobs went almost entirely to men from other regions of the country, particularly Alawis from the coastal region (Bishara 2013: 141; Ain al-Madina 2015: 7). Little other industry existed outside Dayr al-Zur city; the only industry in al-Mayadin, for example, consisted of a few workshops to repair irrigation equipment and a small state factory (Abd al-Rahman 2016). As a result, local communities depended heavily on state salaries and remittances from family members working in Lebanon and the Gulf. Moreover, this centralization of economic opportunity was replicated within the governorate; civil service work in Dayr al-Zur governorate was heavily concentrated in cities. While some village natives could commute from the village to work in Dayr alZur city or a large city like al-Mayadin, many had to move for such opportunities, and many of the most qualified moved to large cities outside the governorate, like Damascus and Aleppo, and stayed there (al-Mashhour 2017: 20–25). The increasing penetration of state institutions not only made tribe members less dependent on the tribe for security and material sustenance, it broadened the set of individuals who could exert authority within the tribe. The state absorbed many rank-and-file tribe members into its institutions, including the Bath Party, the Peasants’ Union and other trade unions, the civil service, and local Municipal Councils. These positions provided their holders points of entry and influence with the state; in many cases, local security branches dealt directly with holders of these positions, sometimes affording them privileges not available even to shaykhs. As a result, rank-and-file tribe members increasingly resorted to state employees from their tribe, rather than shaykhs, “for mediation (alwis¯ a.tat ), to solve problems, secure public employment jobs, and pursue

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their interests in the various state institutions.” For example, a member of a tribe would use his6 connections to a cousin in the Peasants’ Union, rather than the leader of his sub-tribe or shaykh al- ash¯ıra, to access better allotments of fodder or agricultural supplies (al-Mashhour 2017: 20, 24). Relations with the Regime In spite of this diminution of traditional shaykhs’ power over tribe members, the symbolic importance of the shaykh’s position remained. Moreover, the Syrian regime granted shakyhs al- ash¯ıra privileges that helped to reproduce their role and authority over non-elite members of tribes. The appointment of many tribal leaders as the Parliamentary representatives for their localities is the primary manifestation of this relationship; this practice provided some material privileges to members and formal recognition that a tribal leader could be a source of informal access to the regime. Members of numerous shaykhly lineages in Dayr al-Zur governorate, including al-Bashir (al-Baggara), Shalish (al-Busaraya branch of alAgidat), Dindil (al-Bukamal branch of al-Agidat), al-Hifl (al-Buchamal branch of al-Agidat), and al-Nijris (al-Thilith branch of al-Agidat), won seats in the last two elections before 2011 (Tishreen 2003; Arabic News Agency 2007; Bishara 2013: 145). Yet this granting of authority and privilege was conditional, providing the regime leverage over client tribal leaders; the regime, as patron, could revoke benefits to punish the non-compliant and undermine clients whom it saw as building an independent base of authority among their followers. For example, when Nawaf al-Bashir, shaykh al- ash¯ıra of alBaggara, signed the Damascus Declaration in 2005, the regime increased its contact with his brother and uncle, but renewed its preferential treatment when he distanced himself from the Damascus Declaration in 2010. Similarly, the regime encouraged competition within shaykhly families by cycling members of the families through seats in Parliament; this strategy saw alternating members of al-Hifl family, shaykhs al- ash¯ıra for al-Agidat, occupying the same seat (al-Mashhour 2017: 19–21). Regime techniques of affording informal access and privilege to members of tribes also had a security dimension. Tribal leaders were obliged to be in regular contact with local regime security chiefs; the techniques used by Jami Jami, the head of Military Security (one of the regime’s multiple, overlapping security forces) for Dayr al-Zur in the late 2000s exemplify this form of

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relations. Jami cut his teeth working under Ghazi Kanan during the Syrian regime’s de facto rule over Lebanon and was sent to Dayr al-Zur following the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon in 2005. Jami quickly established a reputation for being tough and indiscriminate in his willingness to punish, but also disinclined toward petty corruption and willing to grant favors that would ingratiate him with local leaders and provide future leverage (Deir EzZor 24 2015b). Jami both cultivated strong relations with lower-level tribal leaders and took measures to make shaykhs al- ash¯ıra appear complicit with the regime. One shaykh al- ash¯ıra interviewed by Hasan (2017), who declined to be named, related how Jami entrapped him to create this perception—the shaykh assiduously avoided Jami’s invitations to visit him at his office upon the latter’s appointment to his position in Dayr al-Zur, so Jami told the shaykh that members of his tribe had been arrested for non-political crimes, which would compel him to intervene on their behalf. Upon arriving at Jami’s office, the shaykh was greeted as though he were paying Jami a congratulatory visit on his new position. This, in the shaykh’s telling, accomplished Jami’s purpose of making the shaykh complicit with the regime in the eyes of his tribe’s members. The other side of these security-tribal leader connections was the wide autonomy regime agents granted tribal leaders in many spheres, such as the policing of serious non-political crimes. While police would intervene in cases like petty crimes, they would often not intervene in major cases like murder or rape, leaving clan leaders to judge and compensate victims according to local customs (Rae 1999: 219). Moreover, the regime allowed members of tribes to possess weapons to a far greater degree than other segments of Syrian society; light weapons were customarily present among tribe members in Dayr al-Zur, as local residents had never been fully disarmed by the state. Heavier weapons became increasingly present in the area after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, though this did not qualitatively change the degree to which local society was armed (al-Mashhour 2017: 32). As oral historian Sadiq Abd al-Rahman (2016) notes, “the weapons were present in the hands of sons of tribes to begin with, and it’s known that the state did not intervene to break up tribal disputes, and every tribe armed itself to create a balance and protect its sons.”

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2011: Demonstrations in the City and Disparate Violence in the Countryside Patterns of challenge to the regime during the first ten months of the uprising, from its inception in March 2011 until the end of the year, exhibited a city/countryside divide. The cities of Dayr al-Zur, al-Mayadin, and al-Bukamal were characterized by slowly escalating, mostly nonviolent protests, but little protest activity occurred in villages and small towns. While Dayr al-Zur’s cities did not experience early mass demonstrations on the scale of those in Damascus’ eastern suburbs, nor the regime siege and shelling of entire neighborhoods seen in Homs (Bishara 2013: 120, 128), the cities were home to significant challenge, making the same demands for democratic reform seen in the rest of the country and experiencing the concomitant regime repression. Protests in the early months of the uprising were led by educated, young residents; the main demands were for reform and an end to violence used against demonstrators in Deraa, Homs, and Baniyas. Demonstrators stressed the political nature of their participation. For example, at a small protest in the center of Dayr al-Zur in April 2011, they chanted “where’s the sense of honor, oh Nawaf? (wayn al-nakhwa, ya nawaf?)” This slogan was an appeal to Nawaf al-Bashir, shaykh al- ash¯ıra for al-Baggara, to join the uprising. The governorate’s most deprived residents would only later be pulled into demonstrations, particularly after the regime began to use violence in Dayr al-Zur. Educated protesters in urban centers played an important role in this process, spreading contention back to their smaller hometowns (al-Mashhour 2017: 26; Abd al-Rahman 2016). Demonstrations began in Dayr al-Zur city on March 25, 2011, and continued on a weekly basis, intensifying through April and May. In these early months of contention, the regime used conciliation and its existing networks, rather than the violent repression it employed in Deraa and other cities, as its primary means of containing the demonstrations; security forces typically arrested several demonstrators and urged others to go home (Allawi 2016; Darwish 2016: 8). The regime used institutional levers to sanction and pressure those materially dependent upon the regime. Bath Party and Peasants’ Union members were promised that reforms would happen and asked to restrain family members from anti-regime protests and to help put on pro-regime demonstrations (al-Mashhour 2017: 27). Local government employees, such as Electricity Ministry workers, lost their jobs for supporting the

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uprising (Zafir 2013). An even more important tool employed to stop protests was the regime’s network with tribal notables. Jami Jami immediately sought meetings with tribal shaykhs and made offers of material rewards in exchange for restraining local masses and promoting proregime demonstrations (Deir EzZor 24 2015b). The regime convened a meeting between representatives of the Presidential Palace—the upper reaches of the regime—and leaders of the major tribal confederations (including Khalil al-Hifl of al-Buchamal branch of al-Agidat, Hajem alBashir of al-Baggara, and Muhanna al-Fayyad of al-Busaraya branch of al-Agidat) in the Dayr al-Zur Bath Party branch in late April, and additional meetings in smaller cities like al-Bukamal. The President personally held a two-day meeting with a large number of shaykhs and notables in Damascus in May. The regime’s goal in these sessions was to get antiregime protesters off the street and mobilize members of tribes for large pro-regime demonstrations (al-Mashhour 2017: 27; al-Furat 2011). The response of heads of tribes to regime entreaties varied, but mostly came down to their pre-uprising relationship with the regime; these reactions exposed splits within many tribes’ bayt al- ash¯ıra. A small number of tribal leaders, including Nawaf al-Bashir, publicly declared their support for and participated in protests—al-Bashir was arrested for his participation in July 2011 and freed in October. Many others remained in the middle, attempting to appear neutral and preserve their relations with both revolutionary members of their tribes and the security apparatuses. Still others would publicly declare their support for the regime and attempt to mobilize members of their tribes to support the regime. This action set in motion an internal struggle within many tribes, with different members of bayt al- ash¯ıra taking opposite stances. Some tribes attempted to prevent leaders from taking any stance toward the uprising, but these efforts failed almost immediately. The political stances of tribal leaders, to a great extent, grew out of pre-existing networks—those already close to the regime stood with it initially, while those excluded from its networks largely supported or remained neutral vis-à-vis the uprising (al-Mashhour 2017: 29–31). Events in the second largest town in the governorate, al-Mayadin, exemplify both social and regime dynamics of this early period of contention. Local residents who engaged in the early demonstrations were mostly educated and not organized primarily on tribal or family lines. Protests began on March 24, 2011 and continued weekly; police dispersed protesters with little violence and arrested several people. Protests

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quickly became confrontational, however, with thousands turning out in front of the city’s Military Security headquarters on April 22, 2011, some chanting “Traitors (khawana)”! They moved to the city’s central squares and tore down statues of Hafez al-Asad and his son Basil. Security forces beat people with sticks and fired into the air to disperse demonstrators. This state response is remarkable because at roughly the same time, security forces responded to the toppling of statues in small cities in Homs governorate, al-Rastan and Talbisa, with random gunfire into crowds and a siege of neighborhoods perceived to be responsible for the toppling (Barout 2012: 251). The hard work of repression in al-Mayadin was done mostly by masked men speaking in local accents. Protesters described them as shab¯ıh.a, regime thugs, and identified them as men sent from neighboring Dhiban by Khalil al-Hifl, who was known to be close to Jami (Abd al-Rahman 2016).7 Even as protests escalated in al-Mayadin, the regime continued to use these restrained tactics, making few arrests and firing into the air to divert protesters away from government buildings. It used little direct violence against demonstrators and worked through notables and government employees to persuade youths not to demonstrate. At the same time, demonstrators were often keen to avoid violent escalation. When protesters began marching from the center of al-Mayadin to the bridge to Dhiban on June 3, 2011, the security forces on the bridge ran away to avoid conflict; a sixteen-year-old boy took one of the machine guns the security agents had abandoned and began shooting as they ran through the fields, but was quickly and forcefully restrained.8 Participants even returned the weapon to security forces the following day (Abd alRahman 2016). Eventually, the regime resorted to violent repression in Dayr alZur, occasioning a forceful societal response. After regime security forces beat a demonstrator to death in Dayr al-Zur city on June 3, 2011, the pace and intensity of protest in all of the governorate’s cities increased dramatically. Thousands turned out for the funeral the following day and regime forces killed two additional civilians, setting the stage for a massive protest the following Friday, June 10. Roughly 50,000 turned out in Dayr al-Zur city, and security forces were withdrawn from the streets to their barracks. Protests continued throughout June and July, with a protest on July 22 estimated to have well over 100,000 participants (Bishara 2013: 152; Darwish 2016: 12).

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These demonstrations occasioned an even stronger response by official regime agents, who began raids on contentious neighborhoods. Protesters set up checkpoints to prevent these security raids and began carrying sticks, knives, and light arms in the name of “protecting the revolution.” The week following the massive July 22 protest in Dayr al-Zur, repression killed six demonstrators, and challengers engaged in their first sustained clashes with regime agents in the governorate; the regime sent tanks into the streets and shelled civilian areas of several neighborhoods on July 30, killing tens. The regime then set up checkpoints and occupied entire neighborhoods for six days. Similar regime raids and checkpoints followed in the governorate’s other major cities, al-Mayadin and al-Bukamal, as well as several smaller towns, including Muhasan, al-Quria, al-Ashara, and al-Busayra (Darwish 2016: 17; al-Mashhour 2017: 32). This repression pushed the less educated, more economically deprived residents of Dayr al-Zur governorate, particularly in the peripheral towns and villages, into the uprising; violence against local community members constituted the “spark” that activated solidarities in a way that material deprivation alone had not (al-Mashhour 2017: 31). Armed challengers began to attack checkpoints, and this escalation effectively pushed regime forces out of the countryside. Though cities remained firmly in the hands of the regime, security forces had to return to their barracks at night, limiting them to city centers (Darwish 2016: 17–10). By the end of the year, organized Free Syrian Army (FSA) brigades were increasingly common, and the Army had moved in to confront these armed groups (Allawi 2016; Abd al-Rahman 2016). Tribe members in these villages and small towns generally gave cover to the revolutionaries moving out of the cities, but the organization of these forces resisting the regime was primarily on the basis of individual commitment, political ties, and a shared sense of grievance against the regime, rather than on the basis of tribal ties; even shaykhs giving public support to the demonstrators played little role in actively organizing the opposition (al-Mashhour 2017: 32).

2012: Armed Struggle Against the Regime With the countryside mostly out of regime control, urban activists and army defectors alike turned their attention to pushing the regime out of cities; these actors coalesced into loosely organized armed groups under

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the Free Syrian Army banner. At the same time, new local armed factions began to arise; some began securing funding from Gulf actors with religious agendas, and others had narrower aims, including defending their locality or monopolizing local resources. Alongside military activity, activists and local residents focused on organizing to govern and provide services to territories they liberated. Kinship relations played an important role in political and military organization and action, but they did not operate through traditional tribal hierarchies. The actors disbursing resources were primarily rank-and-file members of tribes, not its traditional leaders, and the ties used to access those resources tended to be those between extended family members or residents of the same town, rather than membership in a broader tribal grouping. Al-Rasafa: Urban Battle and Rural Linkages The first truly urban clashes in the governorate broke out in Dayr alZur’s al-Rasafa neighborhood during March 2012. In the preceding months, rebels and army defectors increasingly sought refuge in al-Rasafa, a sparsely populated neighborhood still under construction. A regime surprise attack on the rebels led to intense fighting; rebels used heavy weapons and were able to hold out against regime forces for six hours. The fighting killed over twenty rebels and at least as many members of the regime’s security forces. The security forces, shocked at the ferocity of the rebels’ resistance and the loss of their comrades, tossed the bodies of rebels from the top floor of the apartment building in which the rebels had been hiding and left them for residents to see (al-Ayed 2016; Allawi 2016). Much of the city would soon thereafter fall out of the control of the regime, with the regime retaining a firm hold over only two central neighborhoods, al-Jura and al-Qusur. The regime’s tactical withdrawal to and fortification of these neighborhoods formed the basis for its strategy toward Dayr al-Zur throughout the uprising. It would continue to hold these neighborhoods and use them as a base for military and administrative affairs (Mhidi 2013). The fighting in al-Rasafa turned the entire eastern countryside into what one journalist described as “a genuine war zone,” as rebels turned to expelling regime forces from the cities, in addition to the countryside (Ain al-Madina 2013b). The events that followed in the town of Muhasan demonstrate how extended family ties expanded fighting to many areas of the governorate. Muhasan is roughly 40 kilometers from

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Dayr al-Zur, and most of its residents are members of al-Bukhabur tribe, a part of al-Agidat confederation. Demonstrations in this town of several thousand in 2011 remained small, in large part because so many of its youth were working outside the town, in Dayr al-Zur, the larger Syrian cities, or abroad. Yet links formed by shared town provenance and family ties would prove crucial to escalation of conflict. Defected army officers and activists from Muhasan constituted a large contingent of the rebel fighters in al-Rasafa—the Uthman bin Afan Battalion, which constituted the primary fighting force in this battle, was drawn heavily from a single Muhasan extended family, al-Yunis/al-Busaid. The great majority of the rebel casualties in al-Rasafa hailed from Muhasan and more than half of them came from this family (Allawi 2016). Aware of the enormous discontent in Muhasan following events in alRasafa, the regime attempted to bargain with the families of Muhasan martyrs; Jami Jami personally intervened in an attempt to prevent a funeral procession for Muhasan martyrs from coming into Dayr al-Zur city, but these entreaties were refused; the massive procession went to the center of Dayr al-Zur with the fathers of the Muhasan martyrs at the head of it (Ain al-Madina 2013b; Allawi 2016). Clashes between FSA fighters and regime forces broke out in Muhasan later in March and, by April 26, 2012, regime forces were pushed from the town entirely. Jabhat al-Nusra fighters drove a truck full of explosives into the checkpoint and the town was fully wrested from regime control on June 8, 2012 (Allawi 2016). Rebels expelled regime forces from the region’s small towns during the summer. Rebels in al-Mayadin made regime forces retreat to a single military site near the city’s citadel in August 2012 and pushed them out entirely in November; al-Bukamal was cleared of regime forces entirely at roughly the same time, leaving the entire east of Dayr al-Zur governorate, from the Iraqi border to Dayr al-Zur city, outside regime control (Abd alRahman 2016). By the end of 2012, the only remaining regime foothold in Dayr al-Zur governorate would be two neighborhoods in Dayr al-Zur city, al-Jura and al-Qusur, and the military airport (Allawi 2016). Experiments in Local Administration and Defense Around the time of regime expulsion, local residents began to establish Local Councils (maj¯ alis mah.aliyya) aimed at administering their towns’

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public services and police forces. Activists who organized demonstrations worked in collaboration with a wider swathe of residents—many of whom, including technocrats and local notables, had not been as active in the early phases of the uprising—to create these institutions. Groups formed in the town of al-Quria illustrate the forms of organization taking shape; after the expulsion of the regime in August 2012, a group of local residents formed a committee and made a police force with divisions to patrol the town, maintain a prison, investigate serious crimes, and even patrol the Euphrates to combat illegal fishing; a spokesman noted that the committee made an effort to include people from more remote villages in the b¯ adiya, so as not to create the impression that a particular group was monopolizing power (al-Ahiya 2013a). The town formed a Local Council several months later to maintain public services, irrigation canals, and roads. It even held government school exams for students and paid the salaries of former state employees whose activity in the uprising got them blacklisted (many others were able to travel to regime-held areas to collect their salaries). Much of the funding for these units came from natives of the town living abroad, and from the Syrian National Coalition, the umbrella opposition group, which received international donor funding (al-Ahiya 2013b). While much armed activity was undertaken by battalions loosely connected to the Free Syrian Army, groups with explicitly Islamist ideologies began to appear by mid-2012. The earliest stages of armed struggle, in late 2011 and early 2012, were carried out mostly by local revolutionary activists transformed into fighters and lower-level army defectors, often using weapons taken from the army and regime storehouses. By mid2012, however, these sources were largely exhausted, and battalions had to search for outside funding. Much of it would come from Gulf backers, for whom commitment to a radical, political form of Islam was a crucial condition for supporting an armed group. Many of the groups that received such funding cut ties with the FSA and began using more explicitly religious discourse and symbols, voicing aspirations for an Islamic caliphate, referring to the regime as “Nusayri” (a derogatory term for Alawis), and raising Islamic flags rather than the flag of the revolution (the three-star Syrian flag used in the Mandate and independence periods) (Darwish 2016: 25–28). Moreover, many of the armed factions that might affiliate with the FSA or a more Islamist umbrella group were recruited based upon shared town

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provenance and extended family ties. The appearance of town-based military formations among members of al-Shaitat tribe—one of the largest within al-Agidat confederation—illustrates these dynamics. While Ibn al-Qaym Battalion drew mostly local residents following Salafi religious trends, the remainder of the major battalions joined by al-Shaitat members were organized on town lines—Ahfad Aisha attracted mostly Gharanij residents, Jaysh al-Umma mostly al-Kishkiyya residents, and Liwa al-Hamza mostly Abu Hamam residents (al-Mashhour 2017: 38). All of these battalions initially received funding from Saudi family networks and incipient Local Councils, and later begin to fund themselves based upon oil wells they controlled in the nearby al-Tanak oil field (see Fig. 8.2). The parallel processes of building local institutions and liberating territory from the regime can be seen in the trajectory of events in al-Bukamal. Much of the city was wrested from regime control in late August 2012

Fig. 8.2 Major oil and gas fields in Dayr al-Zur governorate (and towns referenced in text) (Source Author)

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and it was totally liberated when rebels forced the regime out of the local military airport in mid-November. A Local Council was established in October and oversaw public service and security provision (Manawir 2013). The construction of the police force reflects the ad hoc, collaborative nature of governance in the months immediately following the regime’ exit from Dayr al-Zur countryside; the Permanent Secretary of al-Bukamal’s Local Council, Humam al-Zazu, stated that security was provided “through cooperation between the city’s Local Council, battalions of the Free Syrian Army, and local notables (al-shakhs.iyy¯ at alijtim¯ a iyya al-mu aththira),” further noting that these bodies “agreed to form a civil defense battalion to undertake local policing operations, and put this battalion under the authority of the Local Council,” selecting policemen for their “good reputation and demeanor” (Ain al-Madina 2013a). The men recruited came from a variety of different backgrounds: Many were defected police officers of al-Bukamal origin who had been serving in other regions before 2011, while others were local residents who took up arms against the regime. One Local Council police officer from this second category was working as a mobile phone salesman before the uprising and became involved in anti-regime demonstrations; he was arrested and tortured by regime security services and joined the armed uprising upon release, but transitioned into the local police force when al-Bukamal was liberated (Alwani 2013). Though opportunism was not the dominant process during 2012, forces with more narrow goals were already operating during this phase of the uprising. Dayr al-Zur is home to many of Syria’s major oil installations. The regime held onto the major oil extraction sites and pumping stations even as it lost the territory through which pipelines passed; one of the ways it did so was by making “protection contracts,” beginning in June 2012, with local extended families to defend the pipelines from the Free Syrian Army and looters alike (Ain al-Madina 2015: 8). The Evolving Role of Tribal Identity and Networks The period of liberating the countryside exposed the extent to which traditional tribal leadership was powerless to direct the action of tribe members and the enduring importance of social ties among members of a tribe as tribe members. The tribal hierarchy was virtually inverted; traditional shaykhs were all but irrelevant to both revolutionary activism and armed struggle, while the leaders of revolutionary demonstrations and

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the armed rebellion were overwhelmingly young and largely came from outside the historical bayt al- ash¯ıra lineages; many came from poor and marginalized parts of their tribes. This fact made it impossible for the new leaders to simply occupy positions of primacy vacated by old leaders. Instead, it gave rise to composite governance arrangements, combining in various forms Local Councils, revolutionary activists, FSA-affiliated militias, and militias formed around family networks with narrower, material aims. This hybridity, in turn, occasioned competition, both among members of a single tribe or sub-tribe, and between those of different tribes. At the same time, however, tribal lineages formed a source of solidarity and physical security for their holders. Individuals and families displaced from cities by clashes and regime depredations, for example, were received and sheltered in their villages of ancestry and origin (al-Mashhour 2017: 35). The continuing relevance of tribal linkages and scripts of action is also evident in the protection afforded shaykhs al- ash¯ıra by local militias; many of the traditional shaykhs attempted to preserve their influential role, traveling back and forth from their villages to Damascus to meet regime members. Though these attempts worked at cross purposes with the efforts of militias fighting to expel the regime, the militias generally refrained from kidnapping or targeting the shaykhs. In fact, they actively intervened on the shaykhs’ behalf when they were kidnapped, freeing Khalil al-Hifl (al-Buchamal) from ISIS, and twice freeing Muhanna alFayyad (al-Busaraya)—once from FSA battalions and once from Ahrar al-Sham (SyriaNow 2014; al-Mashhour 2017: 36).

2013: Struggle Among Armed Groups and the Ascendance of Jabhat al-Nusra By early 2013, the regime’s absence had significantly altered social relations within local communities. The formerly predominant agricultural and livestock economies were dwarfed by revenues from oil and gas wells, capture of state storehouses, and smuggling. This was no small increase in the revenues available to local entrepreneurs—the region’s oil and gas wells were capable of generating roughly $2 million per day (Ain alMadina 2015: 4).9 The most powerful individuals in local communities were those controlling the resources: young leaders of local militias. As a result, the non-violent activists and loosely organized anti-regime armed groups that were central to the earlier phases of contention in Dayr al-Zur

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were almost completely sidelined, and control of territory in Dayr al-Zur governorate was fragmented among different militia groups. While some local militias continued to be associated with the Free Syrian Army and aligned with its political agenda, many others embraced a narrower religious ideology, and still others were organized purely for looting. These developments set the stage for conflict between local armed groups and provided an opening for radical Islamist groups— including al-Qaida-affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra and its ISIS offshoot—to build alliances with and incorporate local fighting forces. Jabhat al-Nusra would rapidly expand its presence in the governorate to become the strongest military power in the governorate by late 2013. Although Jabhat al-Nusra was the single most powerful military actor in Dayr al-Zur governorate in this period, it hardly exerted the authority characteristic of a centralized, sovereign state; life in the governorate was characterized by a rapidly shifting patchwork of political, economic, and security arrangements. Dynamics of alliance and conflict in this period illustrate the complex role of tribal and sub-tribal identities in Dayr alZur. While town and extended family ties formed the primary basis for recruitment into local militias and battalions, overarching tribal structures provided little guide to the patterns of alliance among local militia groups. Armed groups developed reputations for being linked to a particular town or tribe. Yet in every tribe or even town closely associated with an umbrella fighting group, one could easily find examples of battalions from the same lineage or town standing apart from the group, and sometimes engaging in open conflict with it. Nonetheless, the perception of an armed group’s linkage to a town would be weaponized—by armed groups to prevent attacks by members of the same tribe or town and by residents of rival towns to compete for status and power. The result was a process of defection and violence occurring along ever-shifting lines of tribal, town, and religious identification. Patchwork Political Control Following the expulsion of the regime, the Free Syrian Army declined as an organizing political force in Dayr al-Zur governorate because it was less able to channel funds to rebel groups than its Islamist, often Gulffunded, competitors and due to the increasing association of many of the local battalions with opportunism and corruption. Some battalions associated with the FSA became associated with monopolizing oil wells

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for personal enrichment and using checkpoints to fleece passing civilians and convoys. The FSA Staff Commission (hai at ark¯ an al-jaysh al-h.urr) based in Muhasan similarly acquired a reputation for distributing military supplies and other aid on a preferential, clientelistic basis (al-Mashhour 2017: 38, 43). Numerous armed groups with explicitly Islamist doctrines and political aims began to operate outside the Free Syrian Army banner, incorporating local battalions and eclipsing the FSA’s influence on the ground; many of these Islamist groups cultivated cooperative relations with one another, coordinating their operations against the regime and seeking to avoid confrontation between each other. Jabhat al-Nusra exemplifies this trend, both because it retained good relations with most of these groups, and because it became the most powerful among them without trying to eliminate them. Al-Nusra was founded in mid-2011, when members of the al-Qaida-affiliate Islamic State in Iraq (ISI) entered Syria to connect with local sleeper cells. Jabhat al-Nusra would formally announce its formation in January 2012, declaring the intention of building an Islamic state in Syria but remaining silent on the group’s association with alQaida.10 The group had limited territorial presence and only engaged in sporadic attacks on regime forces in 2012, but developed a positive reputation among many Syrians for its relative lack of corruption, distribution of food and supplies to civilians, and commitment to the Syrian (rather than pan-Islamic) struggle (Ain al-Madina 2015: 14). As of early 2013, al-Nusra had secured only a small territorial and economic presence in Dayr al-Zur, basing itself in the village of al-Shuhayl and controlling small shares of a few oil wells in al-Ward field (see Fig. 8.2) (Ain alMadina 2015: 14). Several different forms of control prevailed over the region’s oil fields. Some initial attempts to manage oil extraction were local and cooperative, with local residents assigning each extended family in a given area the profits of the well for one day, rotating through all families. Agreements of this sort frequently broke down into intra-tribal violence, however; such disputes killed thirty members of al-Shaitat tribe in the eastern countryside and eleven al-Baggara members in the western countryside (Ain alMadina 2015: 13; al-Mashhour 2017: 41). In other cases, militias led by young local residents monopolized one or a small number of wells within a field for their own benefit or that of their extended family or town; these small operations were often personalized to the point that they came to be named after the tribe controlling them (SOHR 2014). Many of these

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arrangements eventually would come under the control of broader fighting groups and local governing bodies, while others would continue to exist alongside the larger groupings; some major oil fields would have their center controlled by large armed groups and their peripheries controlled by local tribes. For example, in April 2014, just before the ISIS takeover of the area, the center of the major al-Umar field was controlled by the Central Sharia Commission (al-hai a al-shar iyya al-markaziyya, a judicial body closely related to Jabhat al-Nusra), which was extracting 10,000 barrels per day, while local militias extracted 22,000 barrels per day from wells on its periphery (SOHR 2014). Alongside Local Councils and armed groups, Sharia Commissions (hai at shar iyya) were formed to administer criminal justice and produce judgments on legal and moral matters, chief among them how oil profits should be shared. These commissions took a wide variety of organizational forms, and competed with one another to be the authority for a given territorial area. Some Sharia Commissions were linked, often through kin ties, to the military formations that drove the regime out of their area, while others were closely tied to Local Councils, and still others were broadly considered to be independent, with their members coming from and issuing judgments pertaining to a particular town (Ain al-Madina 2015: 10, 13). Most local Commissions rose and fell quickly, and many were quickly absorbed into the Central Sharia Commission, founded in March 2013 with the support of Jabhat al-Nusra and other major Islamist factions (e.g., Ahrar al-Sham, Jaysh al-Islam), as well as many smaller, localized battalions. The Commission’s official aim was the “facilitating of public affairs, filling the security void, and resolving the people’s outstanding legal cases” (Ain al-Madina 2015: 15). The Central Sharia Commission would, by late 2013, come to be seen by local residents and other factions as Jabhat al-Nusra’s tool to direct local military and economic life (al-Mashhour 2017: 42; Ain alMadina 2015: 10). Though al-Nusra took pains to cast the Commission as independent, the widespread perception had a firm basis in reality; one of the Commission’s rulings in November 2013 gave al-Nusra control of the Conoco gas facility near al-Shuhayl producing cooking gas canisters. In the same month, with fears of an ISIS attack growing, al-Nusra took control of al-Umar oil field and put it under management of the Central Sharia Commission (Ain al-Madina 2015: 14–19). At the same time, Jabhat al-Nusra used coercive methods to expand its control. The organization raided and took over the headquarters of al-Mayadin’s local

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security force and, when local residents asked al-Nusra to move its own headquarters to a disused warehouse to prevent shelling of a children’s hospital near its present headquarters, the group expressed its anger at the request by blowing up the warehouse (Abd al-Rahman 2016). Islamist Groups and Local Identities How did Jabhat al-Nusra gain a foothold in Dayr al-Zur? The group’s dominance is surprising in light of its stark religious vision of political and social life, which stood at odds with the social practice of most local residents, who historically embraced more flexible forms of Islam.11 The answer lies, in large part, in pre-existing social links forged between local residents and al-Nusra’s leadership. Al-Nusra’s leadership set up its Dayr al-Zur base in the town of al-Shuhayl, the residents of which are members of al-Buchamal tribe. Many residents of al-Shuhayl had traveled to Iraq to fight US forces after the 2003 invasion, and some other al-Shuhayl residents were predisposed to its ideology, having developed Salafi leanings while working in Saudi Arabia (al-Ayed 2015: 5; al-Mashhour 2017: 40). The ability of al-Nusra leaders to deal with local populations on their own cultural terms further facilitated its acceptance in al-Shuhayl. The Nusra amir for eastern Syria, who was also its main religious authority (al-shar ¯ı al- ¯ am), was Maysar bin Ali Musa Abdallah (nom de guerre Abu Maria al-Qahtani), an Iraqi of Jabur tribal origin long involved in al-Qaida in Iraq. Al-Qahtani based himself in al-Shuhayl and employed his knowledge of tribal and Islamic practice to gain the respect and confidence of many local residents (Darwish 2016: 30; al-Mashhour 2017: 40). A media representative for a smaller rebel group lamented that many Dayr al-Zur residents would have joined any rebel group if Abu Maria al-Qahtani was its leader (interview, Istanbul, January 2016). The tribal idiom would both facilitate al-Nusra’s entry into al-Shuhayl and cause it continual trouble as it tried to expand beyond the town. Jabhat al-Nusra gained fighters and influence over territory by making alliances with battalions in other areas of the governorate. By late 2013, these alliances spanned the entire governorate and encompassed battalions composed mostly of al-Burahma, al-Baggara, al-Qaraan, and al-Bukayr tribe members. Amr al-Rifdan and other residents of Jadid Agidat— who would later be at the center of the conflict between al-Nusra and ISIS—were among the prominent joiners from al-Bukayr. Yet al-Nusra’s affiliation to al-Shuhayl remained powerful in the Dayr al-Zur popular

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imagination, to the extent that local residents took to calling Jabhat alNusra “Jabhat al-Buchamal” (Ayub 2014b; al-Mashhour 2017: 40). The tendency of local residents to associate armed groups with specific localities and sub-tribes was not lost on Jabhat al-Nusra or local brigade leaders in al-Shuhayl. Al-Nusra cultivated this association, in part, to create the impression that al-Agidat confederation was with them, and make attacks on it from within al-Buchamal less likely. Similarly, for al-Shuhayl residents, the alliance constituted a way to claim greater status and influence within the tribe. This association of an Islamist group with a specific locality or tribe was hardly a Buchamal- and Nusra-specific dynamic. For example, many battalions of al-Busaraya lineage joined Ahrar al-Sham, promoting a parallel association (al-Mashhour 2017: 39–40). The Jabhat al-Nusra/ISIS Split Factionalism was not a problem limited to locally affiliated armed battalions; it would find a parallel in struggles for dominance within armed groups. The most important such struggle would occur within Jabhat alNusra and lead to the formation of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria/the Levant (ISIS). Though the senior leadership of al-Nusra came from the Islamic State in Iraq, they had declined to publicize this affiliation so as to gain a greater popular base in Syria. In the process, al-Nusra’s leadership developed a great degree of independence from the Iraqi group. The leader of ISI, Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badri (nom de guerre Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi), sought to reassert control and issued a statement in April 2013 describing al-Nusra as the Syrian wing of ISI. Al-Nusra’s leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani,12 responded to this declaration with a pledge of allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaida based in Pakistan or Afghanistan—an implicit refusal of al-Baghdadi’s claim of control over al-Nusra. A June 2013 message from al-Zawahiri accepting this pledge of loyalty, and a response from ISIS rejecting it, solidified the break. This unleashed a scramble on the part of al-Nusra leadership to prevent defections to ISIS. While many foreign fighters defected from al-Nusra to ISIS, the former was able to retain many of the local brigades that had pledged their loyalty. In addition, no other Islamist umbrella groups stood against al-Nusra, and the group received the explicit support of Ahrar al-Sham, the most powerful Islamist rebel group in Syria at the time (Lister 2015: ch. 7)

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Though many local battalions remained with Jabhat al-Nusra, there were notable exceptions to this rule, including Amr al-Rifdan and the militia under his command. Al-Rifdan was from the town of Jadid Agidat, the residents of which are members of al-Mishrif branch of al-Bukayr tribe (see Fig. 8.3). Before the uprising, al-Rifdan had been living in Dayr al-Zur city; he had no formal religious training, little formal education, and reportedly was working primarily as a smuggler. When Dayr al-Zur residents began taking up arms against the regime, he returned to Jadid Agidat and organized a battalion, gaining a reputation as a fierce, charismatic leader. His battalion would join Jabhat al-Nusra

Fig. 8.3 al-Buchamal sub-tribes (and towns referenced in text) Notes This chart provides only a partial list of towns in which members of each sub-tribe reside. In addition, it sketches potential bases of group identification and solidarity, rather than the actual group around which social life and contention are structured. Many tribal leaders made claims to represent a tribal grouping at the level of an entire sub-tribe, such as al-Bukayr or al-Buchamal. In practice, however, splits in patterns of action below the level of the town were common from the beginning of the upspring (see main text). Information on lines of descent comes from Zakariya (1945). For a more comprehensive accounting, see a map by Justice for Life Organization (2017), al-Mashhour (2017: 13–17), and Zakariya (1945: 568–579) (Source Author)

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and, later, be one of the first to switch to ISIS upon its announcement in April 2013 (Ayub 2014b). Material interests were a central factor motivating al-Rifdan’s pledge of loyalty to ISIS. When the regime withdrew from much of Dayr al-Zur region, al-Rifdan came to control major parts of the Conoco oil field and the associated gas filling station, which were among the largest and most profitable installations in the governorate. Al-Rifdan had been providing al-Nusra with a cut of the revenues earned from the field, and the terms agreed by ISIS were more favorable to al-Rifdan (interview with notable from al-Shuhayl, Istanbul, February 1, 2016; Ain al-Madina 2015: 15). Al-Rifdan was of interest to ISIS for more than just his control over oil wells; his al-Bukayr identity made him valuable as a symbol that elements of an important tribe had joined the group and as a “shield” to deter attacks by other al-Bukayr members, many of whom remained affiliated with al-Nusra. Indeed, al-Bukayr members did not follow al-Rifdan and join ISIS en masse. While some smaller armed groups from al-Mishrif would join ISIS based on al-Rifdan’s example, the major al-Bukayr battalions would not follow suit; of the three major battalions of al-Bukayr, one would join Ahrar al-Sham and the other two would remain neutral between the Islamic groups and aligned to the FSA. Though ISIS did not get these battalions on its side, there would be no way that al-Bukayr leaders could mobilize the entire tribe to fight a group containing their cousins, and rank-and-file tribe members would similarly be disinclined from such a confrontation (Ayub 2014b; al-Mashhour 2017: 48). From its very inception, ISIS exploited local rivalries and grievances. Many of the groups joining ISIS early on were from small tribes in the western countryside, which is dominated by the larger al-Busaraya tribe; these early joiners sought the protection and resources ISIS might afford them, having been left out of the alliances with extant Islamist groups like Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra (Hasan 2017). Similarly, ISIS secured the allegiance of a militia led by a member of al-Buizzaddin tribe, Ahmad Ubayd al-Daham (nom de guerre Abu Dujana al-Zir), in large part due to a long-standing land conflict between members of this tribe and al-Buchamal members. In the case of al-Buizzaddin, as in the case of al-Bukayr, ISIS obtained the allegiance of marginal families within each tribe—neither Abu Dujana al-Zir nor al-Rifdan are from the shaykhly lineages of their tribes (al-Mashhour 2017: 48).

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Sub-tribal Solidarities, Material Interests, and Islamist Armed Groups Even aside from its struggles with ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra had to manage a complex set of tribal and sub-tribal identities and networks; the group’s confrontation with one warlord, Hawaydi al-Diba, exemplifies this relationship. Al-Diba, nicknamed “Juju,” was from the town of Khasham, located roughly in between Dayr al-Zur city and al-Shuhayl. Its residents are members of al-Anabaza branch of al-Bukayr, a sub-tribe that is nominally part of al-Buchamal but sufficiently large and historically important enough that it is often considered a separate branch of alAgidat in its own right (Ain al-Madina 2015: 34; Zakariya 1945: 579).13 When government control evaporated in the area, al-Diba and a group of other Khasham residents formed a militia that would monopolize nearby gas wells in the Conoco field in early 2013; Jabhat al-Nusra also had a foothold in the Conoco field and was attempting to assert greater control of oil extraction and sale through the Central Sharia Commission. The Central Sharia Commission issued a proclamation on November 13, 2013, that residents of Khasham were unfairly monopolizing the Conoco field and that it would step into manage distribution, with Jabhat al-Nusra taking physical control of wells the following day. Residents of many neighboring villages were pleased with this arrangement, and the main al-Anabaza battalion, the Abdallah bin al-Zubayr Grouping, accepted the decision; yet al-Diba and some other Khasham residents interpreted this as an attack on them—as members of al-Bukayr— launched by members of al-Buchamal (al-Mashhour 2017: 49). Amr alRifdan took the incident as an opportunity to act as a representative of al-Bukayr, asking for more security jobs at the wells for al-Bukayr members. The Commission granted these requests and tried to reach out to other al-Bukayr members to pacify them, explicitly noting in a declaration that not all residents of Khasham were looters and that the parties guilty of monopolization were just “a few families from Khasham.” These measures did little to mollify al-Diba, however (Ain al-Madina 2015: 13– 17). In retaliation, al-Diba’s militia harassed al-Nusra members entering Khasham and repeatedly damaged gas lines from the Conoco field, cutting power to all of Dayr al-Zur city several times (Kulna Shuraka 2014). In retaliation, al-Nusra shelled Khasham with tanks, killing two Khasham residents and arresting al-Diba, who was given over to the Central Sharia Commission and eventually executed in January 2014.

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Al-Nusra attempted to “shield” itself from al-Bukayr reactions to this act by appointing Abdallah Ahmad al-Zahir (nom de guerre Abu al-Layth) the amir of the area and head of the operation. Abu al-Layth descended from al-Kabaysa branch of al-Bukayr and was later sent into several other confrontations between al-Bukayr branches and al-Nusra in an attempt to prevent escalation on tribal lines. Yet this strategy, in the case of al-Diba, did not totally succeed. Many members of al-Anabaza saw the attacks as al-Buchamal targeting them on a tribal basis, and kidnapped members of al-Nusra in an attempt to negotiate for al-Diba’s release; tribal notables had to intervene and calm the situation (al-Mashhour 2017: 49). Whereas tribal ties did not prove wholly sufficient to stem conflict in the Khasham case, they proved important in defusing other episodes of tension encountered by Jabhat al-Nusra. Youths from the town of alNamliyya, whose residents belong to al-Buchamal, began tapping wells in the vicinity of their village when their area fell out of regime control in 2012. When Jabhat al-Nusra displaced them and took control of the well, the youths burned the well in revenge, occasioning an al-Nusra attack on al-Namliyya that killed one person. Rather than escalating to further revenge killing, however, the situation was controlled when a prominent al-Nusra member and relative of the deceased stepped in, describing the deceased as “a son of Jabhat al-Nusra” (even though he had been part of the group fighting al-Nusra) and vowing that al-Nusra “will avenge him at the time it deems appropriate,” effectively delaying any confrontation indefinitely (Ain al-Madina 2015: 33). The struggle of Jabhat al-Nusra to control oil wells and subdue local populations makes clear that broader tribal identities did little of the work in mobilizing actors on the ground; the action primarily was at the level where town and sub-tribal identities overlap. Broader intermediate groupings, such as al-Buchamal and al-Bukayr, had such resonance, but typically in ephemeral ways, as when an Islamist group recruited a small battalion from a tribe to “shield” itself, or when elders of a tribe came together to resolve a dispute between armed factions of its members. Moreover, the umbrella groups forming alliances with local fighting units in 2013 were not organized according to tribal identities (e.g., al-Agidat, al-Busaraya), but Islamic groups; it is these groups that had the resources and concrete networks behind them that could underpin alliances, however fragmentary. Insofar as local communities remain “tribal,” it is at the level of extended families and ephemeral identifications based upon solving discrete problems or mutual interest.

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Enduring Regime-Society Connections Though nearly all of the governorate’s territory would fall out of regime control by early 2013, the regime maintained a foothold in Dayr al-Zur, and with it some of the networks it had cultivated before the uprising. These ties were evident in the establishment of a branch of the National Defense Forces (NDF) in the neighborhoods of Dayr al-Zur that the regime retained. The NDF is a pro-regime militia aimed at recruiting local men to defend their neighborhood or town (and keep them linked to the regime); these forces fought alongside regular army units, though they primarily stayed close to their locality. One local journalist estimated that, in early 2014, the Dayr al-Zur NDF branch had four to five hundred men in its ranks (Sulayman 2014). Regime outreach to local society in Dayr al-Zur was not limited to security networks; indeed, the regime continued to offer its administrative services and pay salaries to employees. Even once ISIS had taken control of most of the governorate’s territory, the regime continued to pay salaries to employees living in areas outside its control—provided they could find a way to access regime institutions operating in Dayr al-Zur city’s al-Jura and al-Qusur neighborhoods (Mhidi 2013). Many civil servants living outside regime control registered themselves as working at the institutions in regime-controlled areas of Dayr al-Zur, and many did little more than show up to collect their salaries; one school in al-Qusur neighborhood had over 350 teachers registered as its employees (al-Faysal 2014b). Another state employee from Dayr al-Zur, interviewed in June 2013, expressed his ambivalence about the situation, saying, “There’s nothing left for me in life—my house is destroyed and being displaced has exhausted me. When the shelling started, I fled with my family to the countryside then to al-Raqqa. But I decided, in the end, to live here [under regime control]. My family is seven people—if I cannot get my salary from the state, who will be responsible for me? Is the FSA going to guarantee me a salary?” (Mhidi 2013). State employment enabled other forms of coercion—state employees in Dayr al-Zur were compelled to vote in the 2014 Presidential referendum, and pressured to bring their family members (al-Faysal 2014a).

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2014: The Ascendance of ISIS By the end of 2013, Jabhat al-Nusra was the dominant military actor in Dayr al-Zur governorate, but it maintained this position by forming alliances with battalions based in specific localities and cooperating with a range of Islamist groups with smaller followings in the governorate. ISIS, by gaining control of neighboring al-Raqqa governorate and scoring a string of rapid military victories in Iraq, began to pose a major threat to al-Nusra and the range of other Islamist groups present in Dayr al-Zur. Through a combination of open violent conflict and clandestine outreach to secure the allegiance of battalions allied to al-Nusra, ISIS rapidly gained ground. By the end of the summer of 2014, ISIS had come to hold virtually undisputed power in Dayr al-Zur governorate, save the several neighborhoods of Dayr al-Zur city still under regime control. Military tactics and superior equipment were instrumental to this effort, but the group’s instrumentalization of tribal affiliation was no less important. ISIS maintained its strong relationship with Amr al-Rifdan and used it as an entry point to recruit members of his sub-tribe, alBukayr. The group followed a similar tack with other tribes, offering marginal members of strategically important tribes material incentives and opportunities to pursue dormant rivalries. Though effective, these techniques provoked escalating violence between local communities and ISIS and engendered a great deal of strife among members of the same tribe. Tribal Calculations in the Expansion of ISIS Though ISIS did not overtly expand its territorial control in Dayr al-Zur in 2013, its moves to assert authority in other parts of northern Syria had repercussions in the governorate. ISIS came into open confrontation with other Islamist groups in al-Raqqa governorate in late 2013, and its killing of a senior Ahrar al-Sham commander in the town of Tall Abyad in January 2014 sparked an all-out war between ISIS and Ahrar al-Sham that spilled into Dayr al-Zur. Jabhat al-Nusra joined on the side of Ahrar alSham, along with many tribal militias and the remaining battalions associated with the Free Syrian Army (Hasan 2017; Lister 2015: ch. 8). To gain ground in Dayr al-Zur, ISIS attempted to exploit its links to al-Bukayr. ISIS arranged a meeting between members of al-Bukayr’s shaykhly lineage—including its nominal leader, Shaykh Abd al-Aziz

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Dawud Sulayman al-Hamada, from al-Kabaysa branch—and several senior ISIS leaders and Amr al-Rifdan. The ISIS representatives offered to protect al-Bukayr areas from al-Nusra and al-Buchamal members controlling it, as well as a percentage of oil revenue and the use of its Islamic courts, in return for their pledge of loyalty (mub¯ aya a) to ISIS. When al-Hamada and most other al-Bukayr leaders of similar status refused, ISIS representatives sought the allegiance of leaders at lower levels, in smaller and less influential extended families; they appealed to historical land disputes between members of al-Bukayr and al-Buchamal and rivalries within alBukayr (al-Mashhour 2017: 49–50). ISIS followed a similar technique within other tribes, gaining the allegiance of factions alienated from al-Nusra by local conflicts and using extended family linkages for recruiting. For example, it secured the allegiance of Liwa’ al-Qaqa, comprised primarily of members of al-Qaraan tribe, in large part because its leader, Mahmud al-Matar, married into the family of an influential local ISIS commander, Saddam al-Jamal, who had himself joined ISIS because al-Nusra cracked down on his militia’s tendency toward personal gain by killing several members of his immediate family (al-Mashhour 2017: 51; Ayub 2014b). Alongside dynamics of personal gain and tribal revenge, security considerations played an important role in local leaders’ allegiance calculations; fearing ISIS attacks, Abdallah bin al-Zubayr Grouping, one of the largest from the town of Khasham, made a non-aggression pact with ISIS commanders. This pact would be broken when al-Nusra attacked an ISIS checkpoint on the outskirts of the town and ISIS responded by attacking the town and killing two residents; as a result, Abdallah bin al-Zubayr Grouping and most of al-Anabaza threw in with al-Nusra to fight ISIS (al-Mashhour 2017: 51). The “shielding” dynamic was also in evidence during this struggle; in early February, ISIS attacked grain silos and oil wells in the Conoco field under the control of Jabhat al-Nusra and in areas inhabited by alBukayr members. In order to repel these attacks and also prevent defections of al-Bukayr members to Amr al-Rifdan, al-Nusra sent battalions led by Abu al-Layth, the commander from al-Bukayr on whom al-Nusra had relied to resolve the dispute with Khasham residents over the sharing of Conoco gas station profits. During this fighting, ISIS detonated a car bomb in a market in a town called al-Sahba—populated by members of al-Kabaysa branch of al-Bukayr—killing eighteen. In response, al-Nusra

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sent heavy reinforcements and laid siege to ISIS forces in the area, taking back the wells and grain silos and killing several ISIS foreign fighters in the process. Al-Rifdan used tribal ties to break the siege, seeking the intervention of local notables and the commander of an influential local militia, al-Qadisiyya, who was from al-Kabaysa; the intervention allowed ISIS members to escape north to areas under its control in neighboring al-Hasaka governorate. In response, al-Nusra sent Abu al-Layth to blow up the houses of al-Rifdan family and take back control of al-Umar field and several other oil installations (al-Mashhour 2017: 49–50). Though al-Nusra had pushed ISIS almost entirely from Dayr al-Zur, the governorate was practically encircled by ISIS in late March 2014. In addition to its established presence in Iraq, ISIS had recently gained territory in al-Raqqa governorate and captured the towns of Markada and alShaddada in al-Hasaka governorate, immediately to the north of Dayr alZur governorate. Its next move was into Dayr al-Zur itself. ISIS employed a range of tactics to expand its control, including outreach to gain the allegiance of local battalions—often done in secret and announced only when a critical mass in a locality would defect—as well as guerilla operations to expel al-Nusra and FSA forces from a town, followed by withdrawal and further suicide attacks to wear down opponents. The combination of these tactics allowed the group to gain ground rapidly in the western Dayr al-Zur countryside (Ayub 2014a; Hasan 2017). In the eastern countryside, the confrontation between al-Nusra and ISIS was more prolonged and would eventually acquire a clear tribal cast, pitting al-Bukayr against al-Buchamal. As ISIS was winning the battle at Markada in late March, members of al-Nusra went to al-Busayra to arrest an ISIS member, Khalid al-Kamaz, and were met with gunfire; local residents, from al-Kabaysa branch of al-Bukayr, rallied in defense, surrounding al-Nusra forces and killing eight foreign fighters and five members of al-Buchamal tribe. In response, al-Nusra surrounded and shelled al-Busayra, causing a group led by Amr al-Rifdan to sneak across the Euphrates and attack al-Shuhayl. That confrontation killed fifteen, injured tens, and displaced hundreds of families from both al-Busayra and al-Rifdan’s hometown, Jadid Agidat (Abd al-Nur 2014; al-Nafir 2014). As a result, a large proportion of al-Bukayr’s rank-and-file members rallied around al-Rifdan and ISIS. Seeking to manage this escalation, tribal notables from al-Bukayr and al-Buchamal met. They agreed that there would be no revenge between the tribes, on the logic that the conflict was between Islamist factions not tribes, and that they would continue

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their oil revenue sharing agreements; yet al-Nusra did not accede to these terms, making the agreement fragile and the interruption of fighting temporary (al-Mashhour 2017: 52). ISIS entreaties to local factions in other parts of the governorate were increasingly successful. Several factions from al-Bulayl tribe in the area of Muhasan defected to ISIS in May 2014, causing a wave of defections among other factions in the area. A similar pattern, of factions secretly pledging allegiance to ISIS, would be found in other cities, including al-Mayadin and al-Bukamal. In June, ISIS sleeper cells using IEDs conducted suicide attacks against groups not pledging allegiance to ISIS (Allawi 2016; al-Mashhour 2017: 52). In response to the growing ISIS presence, al-Nusra and the other major Islamist groups that had supported the Central Sharia Commission, such as Ahrar al-Sham and Jaysh al-Islam, formed a military command, called the Mujahidin Consultative Council (majlis shurat almujahidin). The Council included a wide range of Islamist and localized armed groups, and had as its explicit goal the expulsion of both the regime and ISIS. An additional, implicit goal of the Council was to isolate al-Bukayr; the Council banned al-Bukayr members from selling oil they extracted outside its mandate, pushing even more of the tribe’s factions to ISIS. Al-Nusra applied similar policies internally, reducing the responsibilities of Abu al-Layth (al-Mashhour 2017: 52; al-Kurdi 2014b). The official response of ISIS to the Council’s formation also reflected tribal considerations; in addition to describing all members of the Council as “infidels (kuff¯ ar),” it described them as “s.ah.aw¯ at,” referring to the American-funded scheme to turn tribes against ISI during its insurgency against the US occupation in 2006, popularly termed the “s.ah.wa (awakening)” (Ayub 2014a). “S.ah.aw¯ at” would become an ISIS catch-all phrase for any resistance to the group organized along tribal and extended family lines (Muhammad 2013). In spite of the new military structure, ISIS continued to gain defections and territorial control. Many smaller factions remained neutral between the Council and ISIS on the grounds of “never raising weapons in the face of Muslims,” but a strategic logic also recommended this position. Bolstered by the early June capture of Mosul, which provided it significant caches of weapons and freed up manpower, ISIS held the military means to dominate the area. The local Sharia Commission for alMayadin declared its allegiance to ISIS in mid-June, and the battle for

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al-Bukamal later in the month was relatively quick because several militias affiliated with Jabhat al-Nusra pledged allegiance to ISIS when the group took al-Qaim, the town directly across the Iraqi border (al-Ahmad 2014; Muhammad 2014a; Ayub 2014a). Al-Nusra forces then retreated to alShuhayl and surrounding towns, withdrawing tactically from towns and oil fields they could not expect to successfully defend. By early July, the group had withdrawn from al-Umar oil field and the Conoco gas station (al-Kurdi and Samaysim 2014; al-Kurdi 2014a). The expansion of ISIS and the retreat of al-Nusra set up a final confrontation in al-Shuhayl. ISIS brought heavy artillery to neighboring alBusayra on July 7 and began shelling al-Shuhayl, setting off four days of heavy fighting that resulted in eighteen casualties and tens of injuries. After al-Nusra and affiliated groups ran out of ammunition, al-Nusra fighters in al-Shuhayl agreed to depart the governorate on the condition that ISIS not harm civilians. Immediately upon the departure of al-Nusra fighters, however, ISIS carried out mass expulsions and field executions of civilians, and blew up the homes of al-Nusra fighters’ families. While these events could be put down in part to the savagery of an extremist armed group, many local residents also saw sub-tribal relations and considerations of personal gain at play. As one Mujahidin Consultative Council commander told a reporter, “The villages would not have fallen were it not for the slackening of everyone around us and the lack of weapons, and the help some of the tribes gave to ISIS…those tribes, which we know and remember for their fighters and officers and military councils’ [helping ISIS], are strong today with ISIS, but battle has its ups and downs” (al-Kurdi 2014b; Ayub 2014c). By mid-July 2014, ISIS had achieved nearly total military control of Dayr al-Zur governorate. Seeing resistance as futile, many tribal leaders entered into agreements with ISIS under which they would surrender the weapons of all armed groups that had fought against ISIS and establish a judicial process, overseen by tribal shaykhs, for all of those involved in fighting. Some tribes were afforded special terms based upon their size and other political considerations, but ISIS broke these agreements almost as soon as it secured territorial control and seized the armed groups’ weapons. The arrests and expulsions that followed secured for ISIS control over most areas of the governorate, and in a way that al-Nusra and its allies had never even attempted (Hasan 2017). This also provoked popular resistance on a scale unseen during al-Nusra’s ascendancy.

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Confrontation with al-Sha itat The last areas to hold out against ISIS in Dayr al-Zur governorate were three towns whose residents are members of al-Shaitat tribe: al-Kishkiyya, Abu Hamam, and Gharanij. Within weeks of expelling remaining al-Nusra members from al-Shuhayl, ISIS engaged in a massacre in the Shaitat towns that killed hundreds and displace tens of thousands. The incident marked a turning point in ISIS techniques of dealing with local residents—engaging in spectacular, demonstrative violence rather than clandestine negotiations—and demonstrate the continuing importance of extended family ties, for both outside authorities and local residents. Al-Shaitat is part of al-Agidat confederation, though historically large and influential enough to be considered by local residents an independent entity, similar to al-Bukayr and al-Busaraya. Members of al-Shaitat, like all other tribes in Dayr al-Zur, fought with a wide range of rebel groups. Notably, several large battalions formed upon the basis of shared al-Shaitat town identities joined the Mujahidin Consultative Council and participate actively in the siege of the Dayr al-Zur military airport (Samaysim 2014). Owing to both intra-tribal rivalry and self-interest (as was the case with all other tribes in Dayr al-Zur), several individuals and factions from al-Shaitat joined ISIS, while most of the tribe was actively resisting it. One such figure was Muhammad Husayn al-Ghadir (nom de guerre Abu Saif al-Shaiti). Abu Saif was from al-Kishkiyya and was held in disrepute by many local residents prior to the uprising—several local print sources claim he had been living in Saudi Arabia and was expelled for moral crimes that included operating brothels. Abu Saif led an armed group, Jaysh al-Umma, that engaged in looting of regime storehouses and weapons trafficking, eventually joining Ahfad al-Rasul, an Islamist umbrella group that acquired a reputation for looting. Through Ahfad al-Rasuul, Abu Saif developed a relationship with both Saddam al-Jamal and Mahmud al-Matar, local leaders of armed factions who would join ISIS early and facilitated Abu Saif’s joining the group. Jaysh al-Umma was the lone major al-Shaitat battalion that did not join the Mujahidin Consultative Council—this passive stance of Abu Saif’s battalion is consistent with ISIS methods of clandestine recruitment of allies in a new area or tribe. However, Abu Saif was not a lone defector; several other alShaitat militia leaders joined ISIS and assisted it in its campaign against al-Shaitat villages, among them Jaafr al-Khalifa, who was widely accused

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of being an informer for the regime before the uprising and an opportunistic oil trader before the rise of ISIS (al-Mashhour 2017: 38; Deir EzZor 24 2015a; Ain al-Madina 2016: 10–13). Following agreements between al-Shaitat tribal elders and ISIS, contracted after the defeat of al-Nusra, ISIS entered al-Shaitat towns on July 1; its agents set up offices, gave speeches from the town’s mosques, and invited pledges of loyalty from local preachers and notables. July passed mostly without incident, in large part because Ramadan fell during the month. On July 30, however, an incident occurred between local residents in Abu Hamam and ISIS agents that led to massive bloodshed and escalation. ISIS fighters harassed Abu Hamam residents and killed at least one when he resisted, leading residents of all al-Shaitat towns to rise up against ISIS, killing several foreign fighters and a Shaitat militia leader who had pledged allegiance to the group (Abu Ali al-Shaiti), and burning down the main ISIS headquarters in al-Kishkiyya; ISIS members fled all al-Shaitat villages by the end of the day (Ain al-Madina 2016: 10–13). The ISIS response began days later; the group announced on Twitter that all al-Shaitat town residents not involved in the attacks had twenty-four hours to leave before it would “settle the issue (h.asm alum¯ ur)” (al-Kurdi 2014a). ISIS then began a twenty-two-day campaign against the towns, putting heavy artillery on the hills above the towns and shelling them indiscriminately before using suicide car bombs to break the towns’ defenses. Local fighters were able to resist until August 9, but ultimately left to prevent further shelling of civilians. Massacres followed; ISIS fighters began to kill its suspected enemies, using information about their personal histories and the location of their homes provided by local informants like Abu Saif and al-Khalifa. Tens of thousands were displaced from their homes and more than 700 people were killed in the massacre (Ain al-Madina 2016: 10–13; Deir EzZor 24 2015a; Ayub 2014c). The towns’ residents who survived were forced into camps in the desert or to Turkey. Al-Shaitat notables tried to negotiate their return to the villages, making appeals for amnesty and disavowing tribe members who had resisted ISIS, but ISIS refused these pleas. ISIS eventually allowed groups of women and children back into the deserted villages to see the decomposing bodies of the victims, many with arms bound and full of stab wounds (Muhammad 2014b; al-Mahmud 2017). Though the decision to carry out the massacre came from central ISIS leadership, tribal rivalries and sub-tribal feuds played a crucial enabling

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role. The massacre itself also deepened these local divisions. As one senior al-Shaitat field commander told a reporter for al- Arabi al-Jadid: We don’t have a problem with the regime because they were criminals from the beginning, and the same is true of ISIS. Our primary confrontation will be with the tribes that helped ISIS kill us… they were not content just to kill us; they stole our houses and livestock and sold them in the markets for everyone to see, and expelled women and children into the desert steppe (b¯ adiya)… ISIS will not be with them forever; today it will protect them, but tomorrow no one will be with them. (Ayub 2014c)

This spectacular incident of violence concluded the ISIS campaign of territorial expansion in Dayr al-Zur; by mid-August 2014, ISIS controlled virtually all of Dayr al-Zur governorate. Only the neighborhoods of the city held by the regime and two towns in the western countryside—in which rebels had made a truce with ISIS—remained out of its control (Samaysim 2014).

Conclusion The brutal, indiscriminate attack on al-Shaitat towns carried out by ISIS in August 2014 represents one means of creating political order; ISIS cast aside considerations of alliance with local factions and tribal shielding because it was, at least temporarily, assured that no coalition of military factions could coalesce to pose a threat to its territorial dominance. However, this technique constitutes a departure not only from the group’s earlier techniques of expansion, but the means employed by the Bath regime and outside authorities before it seeking to secure the political obedience of this region. Far from heralding the end of tribal networks’ utility for outside authorities, the ISIS move to expel al-Shaitat members also reflects the group’s fear of local networks and identities and their capacity to endure and evolve; the frequency with which ISIS leaders derided local enemies as “s.ah.aw¯ at ” indicates the group’s awareness of these networks’ utility for challenging its authority. The period examined in this chapter, during which no outside authority exercised stable authority over most of Dayr al-Zur’s territory, demonstrates how local ties can function in creating and contesting political order. Extended families and town-based networks played a central role in organizing social action, and higher levels of tribal organization had little

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influence on the flow of events. The actors who constituted the primary force mobilizing local residents and monopolizing resources were young men of tribal background from outside the shaykhly lineages; shaykhs al- ash¯ıra played, at best, a marginal role in this process, and broader tribal confederations constituted little more than obstacles behind which Islamist groups could take cover in their struggle against one another. The disappearance of the Syrian regime as the paramount outside authority made local networks the basis from which entrepreneurs and outside Islamist groups alike attempted to construct their own political order. These networks’ openness to recruitment by competing outside forces, combined with their leaders’ opportunism, made this process violent, and often in unpredictable ways.

Notes 1. This chapter refers to the group as “ISIS,” rather than “Islamic State,” because its members began referring to it as the latter only at the end of the period under study, in July 2014. 2. Recent, exact membership numbers do not exist, and any attempt would be complicated by the loose nature of these confederal affiliations. See Lewis (1987: 207–208) for the most comprehensive estimates, based upon data from the 1940s. 3. The tribe’s name reflects this heritage, coming from aqada, to knot or bind together. I render the name “al-Agidat” because it hews closer to its local pronunciation; my renderings of “al-Baggara” and “al-Buchamal,” similarly, reflect local pronunciation. 4. These institutions are alternately referred to by some tribes as shaykh almash¯ ayikh and bayt al-mashyakha, respectively. 5. The Syrian Census Bureau defines an “urban” locale as having 20,000 or more residents, see 1961 and 2010 Statistical Abstracts. 6. Given the circumscribed role of women in public life in Dayr al-Zur governorate, the gender-exclusive pronoun is appropriate. 7. Pinning down the exact relationship between security services and a given tribal leader is difficult, precisely because these relations are informal and both parties trade on their covert nature; the regime depends on the legitimacy of the shaykh in tribe members’ eyes as an independent leader, and the shaykh on the personal remuneration he receives from the regime. Khalil’s closeness to the regime is evident, however, in the fact that he kept a low profile as other prominent members of al-Hifl declared their support for the revolution; his cousin, Jamil, for example, did so on a Saudi satellite TV channel in June 2011 (TV Wesal 2011). 8. Video of the incident is at The Syria free (2011).

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9. Almohamad and Dittmann (2016) put the figure at $1–3 million. 10. Al-Nusra went public with this affiliation only upon its break with ISIS in April 2013 (Lister 2015: ch. 6). 11. While religious practice and deference to religious norms were important parts of social life in Dayr al-Zur, such practices were rooted in local “popular (sha b¯ı)” practice, handed down over generations, rather than externally generated doctrine. As al-Mashhour (2017: 33) notes, “The agricultural mode of production and rural nature of social relations played a fundamental role in this, as well as the Sufi mode of religiosity, predominant in the cities primarily, though Salafi modes were present among a small number of people, increasingly following the 2003 occupation of Iraq.” 12. Al-Jolani is a nom de guerre; this leader’s actual biographical details remain a point of debate among outside observers (Lister 2015: 57). 13. Thus, when actors refer to “al-Buchamal,” they are talking about al-Saleh al-Hamad sub-grouping within al-Buchamal, in contrast to al-Bukayr subgrouping (see Fig. 8.3). It bears emphasizing that whether actors will have solidarity on family, town, or tribal lines is an empirical question, not a mechanical result of common membership in an identity category; social actors’ choice of how to describe their tribal lineage plays a dynamic role in the process of activating or suppressing those solidarities.

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Darwish, Sabr. 2016. Cities in Revolution. Deir Ez-Zor: A Suspension Bridge: Transformations of the City, trans. Lilah Khoja. Brussels: Syria Untold. http:// cities.syriauntold.com/. Deir EzZor 24. 2015a. Silsilat ‘Hashashu al-Ams…Umara Daish al-Yawm’ (2): Abu Saif al-Shaiti. Deir EzZor 24, September 15. http://deirezzor24.net/? p=3002. Deir EzZor 24. 2015b. Silsilat Mujrimun fi Dayr al-Zur - (2) Jami Jami. Deir EzZor 24, October 16. http://deirezzor24.net/archives/3165. Faysal, Hadi al-. 2014a. Li-Madha Intakhaba Said Bashshar al-Asad? Ain AlMadina, June 16. Faysal, Hadi al-. 2014b. An Hijrat al-Hukuma ila al-Jura wa-l-Qusur. Ain AlMadina, October 1. al-Furat. 2011. Fi Liqa al-Rais al-Asad Shuyukh al-Ashair wa-Wujaha Dayr Al-Zur…Humum wa-Matalib Abna al-Muhafaza Wajadat Sadran Rahban waShafafiyyatan al-Hadith wa-Tawjih al-Hulul al-Mubashara. Al-Furat, May 8. http://furat.alwehda.gov.sy/node/160694. Hasan, Muhammad. 2017. Daish wa-l-Ashair fi Dayr al-Zur, al-Tamarrud wal-Ihtiwa. Al-Jumhuriya, April 11. https://www.aljumhuriya.net/ar/37621. Justice for Life Organization. 2017. Ashair Dayr Al-Zur. Dayr al-Zur. https:// www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1w2cjfD5FoMpzjEdKXOTA6iDh9_ o&ll=35.18101022424826%2C40.46399883339848&z=10. Kulna Shuraka fi al-Watan. 2014. Idam Hawaydi al-Diba ‘Juju’ fi al-Mayadin bi-Rif Dayr al-Zur. Kulna Shuraka  fi al-Watan, January 23. http://all4syria. info/Archive/127312. Kurdi, Anas al-. 2014a. Suriya: Taqaddum li-‘Daish’ bi-Dayr al-Zur…wa ‘alNusra’ Tubayiuhu bi-l-Bukamal. al- Arabi al-Jadid, June 14. https://www. alaraby.co.uk/politics/c4814478-52e9-40aa-8c59-2c94952bd7a8. Kurdi, Anas al-. 2014b. Suriya: ‘Daish’ Yumahhidu li-Iqtiham Qura ‘al-Shaitat’ fi Dayr al-Zur. al- Arabi al-Jadid, August 5. https://www.alaraby.co.uk/ politics/68256b07-e04f-4a87-b5e3-1bc93e4c86e8. Kurdi, Anas al-, and ’Abasi Samaysim. 2014. Suriya: ‘Daish’ Yuwassiu Saytaratahu fi Dayr al-Zur. al- Arabi al-Jadid, July 3. https://www.alaraby.co. uk/politics/d1b517e8-6576-4d60-ba49-c1c822054d67. Lange, Katharina. 2015. ‘Bedouin’ and ‘Shawaya’: The Performative Constitution of Tribal Identities in Syria During the French Mandate and Today. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 58 (1–2): 200–235. Lewis, Norman N. 1987. Nomads and Settlers in Syria and Jordan, 1800–1980. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lister, Charles R. 2015. The Syrian Jihad: Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and the Evolution of an Insurgency. London: Hurst & Company.

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Mahmud, Ahmad al-. 2017. Majzarat al-Shaitat…Absha ma Irtakabuhu Daish fi Suriya. Irfa  Sawtak, August 1. https://www.irfaasawtak.com/a/380892. html. Manawir, Kamal. 2013. Al-Majlis al-Mahalli al-Thawri fi al-Ashara. Ain AlMadina, November 16. al-Mashhour, Faisal Dahmoush. 2017. Abna al-Ashair fi Dayr al-Zur min alIstiqrar ila al-Thawra, Dinamikiyyat al-Sira wa-Awamil al-Silm al-Ahli. Dayr al-Zur: Justice for Life Organization. http://jfl.ngo/?p=4602. Mhidi, Ahmad. 2013. Thuwwar Dayr al-Zur, Nahnu Nudafiu an al-Jami. ’Ain Al-Madina, July 16. Muhammad, Nabil. 2013. Daish wa-l-Ashair….Jadaliyyat al-Mubayaa wal-Intima wa-Rasas al-Rafd. Al-Hal al-Suri al-Akhbari, December 11. . https://7al.net/2013/12/11/Muhammad, Rayyan. 2014a. Suriya: Anba Mutadariba an Saytarat ‘Daish’ ala al-Bukamal. al- Arabi al-Jadid, June 27. https://www.alaraby.co.uk/politics/ f0381db7-4c4a-41bd-8ae2-1b2bc1f96104. Muhammad, Rayyan. 2014b. ‘Daish’ Yusharridu 100 Alf min Ashirat alShaitat fi al-Sahra. al- Arabi al-Jadid, October 30. https://www.alaraby.co. uk/politics/2940e2f1-70e7-4578-ab29-af8074aec5b0. al-Nafir. 2014. Khilafat al-Nusra wa-Daish Tatahawwalu ila Iqtital Ashairi fi Dayr Al-Zur. Al-Nafir, March 28. http://www.annafir.com/syria/2014/03/ 28/1166. Rae, Jonathan. 1999. Tribe and State: Management of the Syrian Steppe. PhD dissertation, University of Oxford, Oxford. Samaysim, ’Abasi. 2014. ‘Daish’ wa-Dayr al-Zur: al-Ashair Bawwabat alTamaddud. al- Arabi al-Jadid, August 15. https://www.alaraby.co.uk/ politics/32e06ebf-9b18-4bc5-b80a-4e321fcfe0b3. Sulayman, Ayman. 2014. Jaysh al-Difa al-Watani aw Jaysh al-Shabiha bi-Dayr al-Zur. ’Ain Al-Madina, February 1. Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). 2014. Dayr al-Zur…Shuyukh al-Naft. SOHR, April 27. . 10152417858648115/  SyriaNow. 2014. Ahali Ashirat al- Aqidat Yuharrirun Shaykh Mashayikh Ashiratihim al-Shaykh Khalil al-Jidan al-Hifl bad al-Qada ala 18 Irhabiyyin min Daish. SyriaNow, August 24. http://syrianownews.com/index.php?p= 7&id=109473. The Syria Free. 2011. Hurub Anasir al-Amn wa-l-Shabiha ind Jisr Madinat al-Mayadin 3 6 2011. Al-Mayadin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz_ ua2GNg14.

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Tishreen. 2003. Nataij Intikhabat al-Dawr al-Tashrii al-Thamin li-Majlis alShab al-Jabha 167 wa-l-Mustaqillun 83 wa-l-Nisa 30. Tishreen, April 6. http://www.mafhoum.com/press4/syrelec.htm. TV Wesal. 2011. Mawqif al-Shaykh Jamil al-Hifl. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=R2cDZdI41tw. Zafir, Umar. 2013. Furas al-Amal al-Jad¯ıd? Ain Al-Madina, August 1. Zakariya, Ahmad Wasfi. 1945. Ash¯ a ir al-Sham. Damascus: Matbaat Dar alHilal.

PART III

Imagining and Manufacturing the Borders: Non-state Actors and Their Representations of Syrian Territory (2011–2017)

CHAPTER 9

The Opposition’s Three Territories Ali Hamdan

Introduction In the summer of 2017, the opposition-held enclave of Idlib witnessed a struggle that failed to make headlines in international media outlets. All the same, it was of great importance to Syria’s internationalized civil war. On August 20, a body calling itself the Civil Services Administration (alhay’ah al-madaniyyah lil-khadam¯ at or CSA) issued a court statement to a rather different body, the Idlib City Council (ICC). The CSA requested that the City Council turn over its public bakeries, waterworks, and transportation infrastructure, gesturing vaguely to “…the move toward forming centralized, unified public institutions and coordinating efforts to reach a united administration” for the opposition-held territories of Syria (Hawrani 2017). The City Council responded two days later with a statement of its own, asserting that while it generally supported steps toward a unified administration of the province, it would resist “the rapidly unfolding steps taken by the CSA to subject the departments of the Idlib City Council to its authority” and that, “the City Council will continue, God willing, to shoulder people’s concerns, defend their rights, and meet their

A. Hamdan (B) The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Cimino (ed.), Syria: Borders, Boundaries, and the State, Mobility & Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44877-6_9

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needs” (Enab Baladi 2017). Several days later, the ICC was stormed by armed militants, its assets seized, and its members threatened with violence. This quiet region in Syria’s northwest became the largest piece of opposition-held territory in Syria in March 2015. And yet despite ousting the regime, Idlib province and its surroundings—or “Greater Idlib,” as it is often known—has not witnessed the consolidation of a single political order that maps neatly onto the battle lines of Syria’s conflict. Phrased differently, it is difficult to speak of coherent strategies of “rebel rule” in territories controlled by the opposition (mu ¯ aridah). Rather, the varied actors ascribing to this label all too frequently ¯clash over contradictory practices of governance, the scope of legitimate violence, and even the symbols upon which the opposition draws to mobilize a base of popular support. This paper offers a preliminary attempt at sorting through these “contradictions” within the liberated territories by foregrounding their geographical dimensions. Specifically, it conceives of Syria’s opposition in terms of overlapping and anomalous conceptions of territoriality, which shape how political order emerges in Syria’s opposition-held territories according to distinctive geographic patterns. This paper offers a preliminary attempt at sorting through these contradictory forms of “rule” by foregrounding how their interaction produces a particular form of acting upon and conceiving of Syria’s territory. Specifically, it examines Syria’s opposition in terms of overlapping conceptions of territory, focusing on three particular such conceptions, the relations in which they are embedded, and the tensions among them: “liberated territories,” the “laboratory,” and “safe zones.” Thinking through the tensions among these three territories as politically productive helps us to shift from viewing territory and borders as simply describing the stage on which the drama of war unfolds. Rather, geography very much a part of the struggle itself.

Geographies of Syria’s Conflict Syrians have transformed politics in Syria, in large part by transforming space. Before 2011, the Baathist political order labored to “kill politics” prophylactically. This it achieved in everyday life by tightly controlling public space and embedding loyal security forces in residential neighborhoods, while at the national scale the Baath party expelled dissidents from the country and controlled the provinces through a patronage network of centrally appointed governors. Since the 2011 uprising, however, it

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has become common to point to rising rural–urban migration, and the growth of transnational labor diasporas, as examples of how Syrians navigated the landscape of Baathist Syria. However, the 2011 uprising not only exposed the precarity of such strategies, but of the Baathist order itself. At the local scale, street protests and demonstrations re-occupied public space, while mobs began storming security offices, going so far as to loot and burn them at times. Meanwhile across Syria, increasingly self-conscious networks of activists began clustering in poor suburbs (Douma, Atarib) and provincial cities (Homs, Deraa) to avoid the looming threat of ever more overt regime repression (Hamdan 2016). And at great distance from Syria’s borders, Syrians in the diaspora provided varying degrees of logistical support, linking the urban uprising to an increasingly organized transnational movement against the Assad regime in Damascus. In this evolving context, two spatial processes began unfolding that irrevocably transformed Syria from a geography of contentious politics to one of open war. First, the Assad regime shifted from its time-honored approach of selective intimidation to collective punishment by adopting open siege warfare. This tactic was designed to constrain mobility and sever the networks upon which this opposition movement so deeply relied, and for this reason, the movement was forced to respond. This strategy was marked by, at first, a conscious, tactical withdrawal from communities that offered support to demonstrators.1 Rather than confront lightly armed insurgents in built-up areas, the regime positioned itself in nearby towns with large minority populations when possible, fostering the impression that it was protecting them from hostile Salafist-jihadist militants nearby and in so doing, undergirding the regime-driven narrative of a secular state fighting religious extremists (Leenders 2016). Upon withdrawing, the regime cut many (but not all) services to these communities like electricity, water, access to subsidized bread, and education—although how this has played out over the course of the war has varied a great deal from region to region. In this, the regime drew upon its institutional memory of combatting an insurgency that flared up in the northern city of Hama several decades prior. This approach engineered a new geography of politics by fostering, first, a humanitarian crisis—material deprivation, medical emergencies, and petty crime—whose severity highlighted the crucial role played by the central state in everyday life—and second, by isolating opposition-held communities from one another.

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Having cornered the rebels and thus rendered them legible, the regime proceeded to target them from the skies. War began with air strikes and artillery strikes intended to shock and awe the rebels, destroy the built environment, and ultimately, to erode popular support for the increasingly militarized uprising. Indeed, this is a common counter-insurgency technique, designed to dramatize the failure of insurgents to fulfill the role of the state with regard to security, governance, and service provision. But as it became clear that the opposition would not be defeated outright on the battlefield, and that popular support for the insurgency would not evaporate overnight, the regime once more changed tactics. By 2013, the regime was dropping barrel bombs—crude explosives made from oil drums stuffed with shrapnel and dropped onto residential areas— at a daily rate, marking the conflict’s evolution into a long-term war of attrition, a twenty-first century form of open-air siege. The second process shaping the geographies of the conflict was the growing arrival and entanglement of external, non-Syrian actors. While important for the regime, external resources proved crucial for increasingly besieged opposition communities, who sought support and advocacy from every quarter. As refugees fled to neighboring countries, a parallel but opposite flow of journalists and politicians began arriving to the small border town of Azaz, north of Aleppo, hoping to glimpse what life was like in rebel-held areas of Syria. US Senator John McCain met with officials from the nascent Free Syrian Army, thanks to the mediation of a Syrian-American lobby group based in Washington, DC. Hoping to see for himself, New York Times Beirut bureau chief Anthony Shadid smuggled himself into Idlib province near the border with Turkey, where he died tragically from an asthma attack triggered by the horses they used to navigate the rough borderland scrub (Gladstone 2012). Foreign fighters also began arriving to Syria, congregating in Turkey’s Arabic-speaking Hatay province before entering the country’s northern countryside. Perhaps more significantly, ever more numbers of civilians in Syria relied upon external actors for everyday access to services, such that by mid-2013, over $3.5 billion had been spent on humanitarian aid to Syria (as well as neighboring countries) to provide food, shelter, and health care to a third of Syria’s pre-war population.2 As external actors, international organizations played an important, if equivocal, role in shaping the geography of the conflict. For their part, they wavered between guarded invocations of neutrality and indignation at the regime’s blatantly medieval tactics. Until as late as 2013, the United

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Nation’s humanitarian response to the conflict was crafted to fall “under the overall leadership of the Government of the Syrian Arab Republic and in full respect of [its] state sovereignty and territorial integrity,”3 yet Security Council resolutions nevertheless betrayed skepticism that the Assad regime would honor its commitments to de-escalate violence.4 By 2014, this doubt transformed into “grave alarm” at the regime’s mounting aerial attacks—in particular, the use of barrel bombs—resulting in Security Council Resolution 2165, which authorized UN agencies and their implementing partners to provide assistance to besieged areas across four border crossings with Syria without requesting permission from the Syrian central authorities.5 Yet this did not rule out the UN’s provision of aid to regime-held territories, and so the United Nations did not close its office in Damascus. But the reconfiguration of humanitarian access had the consequence of turning Syria’s borderlands into territories of high strategic value to the war, especially for the opposition, due to their capacity to manage the flow of resources across borders. Cities outside of Syria near border crossings thus came to host international organizations, diplomats, and intelligence operatives (among other actors) who established new linkages with opposition actors inside and outside of the country. This put the opposition in reach of new “allies,” and thus potential resources. Opposition-held territories were thus shaped not by militants and activists in isolation, but also by donor state governments (the United States or Qatar, for instance), host state governments (Turkey and Jordan), international organizations (UN OCHA and the European Commission) and, quietly, private logistics contractors who implement on their behalf. These two wartime processes—external entanglement and siege warfare—transformed the political context of Syria from a series of urbanbased contentious demonstrations to what would later become a grueling insurgency in the provinces. The opposition thus navigates a wartime political geography that is more complex than the maps of territorial control that we commonly encounter in media accounts of the conflict.

Territoriality and Civil War in Syria Nearly all accounts of Syria’s war frame it as a zero-sum contest for control of territory. Conventionally, territory is treated as an analytical given— in this case, as a straightforward geometric gauge for the contest over Syria’s sovereignty. And yet, this obvious quality obscures starkly different

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interpretations of its significance as a theory for how actors interact with geography amid war. One recent interpretation holds that territory offers insights into the ideological orientation of actors in civil war. It has thus become popular among experts on terrorism to emphasize the putatively “Islamist” conception of territory that informs the strategic actions of radical armed groups in Syria. Although some specialists had remarked on this theme before, it took the explicitly “border-breaking” rhetoric of the socalled Islamic State (hereafter ISIS) for analysts to revisit the relationship between territoriality and political order in wartime. In contrast to the Westphalian order of sovereignty bounded within the jurisdiction of territorial states, this notion is rooted in the supposedly boundless sovereignty of God. This is, in turn, embodied in the classical Islamic institution of the caliphate, which distinguishes only between d¯ ar al-¯ısl¯ am (the “Abode of Islam”) and d¯ ar al-h.arb (the “Abode of War”). In this way, analysts have sought to make sense of the seemingly irrational campaigns of conquest pursued by ISIS. The strong territory-as-spatialized-ideology position is not without faults. First, it risks overstating the role of ideology by taking armed groups solely at their word. While some scholars of conflict have advocating distrusting rebel narratives or grievances outright, one must be careful to explore and acknowledge potential contradictions. For instance, ISIS claims to be universally against borders, but it has largely shied away from launching all-out assaults against Turkey—arguably the most Westphalian of states in the Middle East. This suggests that in practice their efforts to break borders are more tied up in pragmatic or strategic concerns— control of resources, smuggling routes, access to tribal social networks— than in the irreconcilability of the Westphalian nation-state model to the Islamic world. This ideological position is certainly important, but it is one of several conflicting dimensions that inform ISIS’ wartime practice. Second, a deeper danger of fetishizing ideology is that it risks seriously misunderstanding civilian-militant interaction. Whatever its claims, ISIS has been forced to adapt pragmatically in order to enroll particular, differentiated locales into its control (Hamdan 2016b: 605–627). This means that enrolling local populations in their ideological project has not gone smoothly. In nearly all territories of Syria controlled by “Islamists,” the Islamists have been drawn closer to the framing of Syria’s political field as a territorial entity with a distinct identity in an effort to cultivate support from civilians. Likewise, ISIS, attempting to maintain its strict ideology,

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has committed massacres against dissenting tribes of Sunni Muslims, while it has, paradoxically, adopted leniency toward skilled professionals whose services it requires in the territories under its control. Thus a middleclass doctor with staunchly anti-Islamist politics remained at his practice in Raqqa for two whole years because conditions were, in his words, “not quite so bad.”6 Rather, this question of how ISIS secures local support for its project of conquest is misleading: it rarely requires such support as such. What it does require, however, are uncomfortable compromises between its ideology, its relationships with civilians, and its practices of controlling territory. More conventional theories of civil war argue that territory is simply a product of strategic interaction among the war’s competing parties. Drawing on Weber’s theory of the state, scholars of political violence define territory as representing the “spatial extent” of state sovereignty, measuring whether the state in question possesses the “monopoly on legitimate use of violence” (Elden 2009). This rather fragile condition for sovereignty is easily violated by insurgent groups, and so even modest conflicts are easily glossed as challenges to state sovereignty. Territory thus simply becomes the “spatial extent” of the resulting contest. Pushed further, the territories of war emerge out of two specific patterns of strategic interaction: internally, between insurgents and the civilians they rule, and externally, between insurgents and the state they hope to supplant (Cunningham et al. 2009: 570–597; Sambanis 2004: 829). Territory simply delineates zones of rebel governance from the state, with frontlines marking the transition. But this view of territory is founded in two troubling assumptions. First, such a strategic interaction approach assumes that armed groups are unitary actors with coherent objectives when considerable evidence points to the very opposite. Indeed, this assumption has come under serious scrutiny over the last decade as scholars point to the internal heterogeneity among insurgents on one hand (Bakke et al. 2012: 265–283) while still others highlight how actors manipulate the “central cleavages” of conflict to settle local disputes (Kalyvas 2003: 475–494). This confounds the notion that rebel (and indeed, state) territory is a coherent space as such. Second, rebel-civilian interactions are likewise not so cut and dry. On the one hand, “civilians” in rebel-held territory often develop complex, overlap relationships to militants, having in many cases been militants themselves in the past. Baczko et al. highlight the significance of such

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“revolutionary capital” in elevating some civilians to key decision-making roles in rebel administrations (Baczko et al. 2018). At the same time, civilians at great distance from rebel-held territory nevertheless shape how they are governed. Evidence shows that the “liberated territories” of Syria are transected by a wide range of civilian actors: aid workers, governance officials, journalists, trainers, private contractors, logistics bureaus, religious officials, and other “external” civilian actors. The durability of rebel territory thus cannot quite be inferred solely from the interaction between insurgents and civilians within those territories. Rather, we might describe these territories as a particular effect (Painter 2010: 1190–1118) of networks of civilian (often refugee) actors based in exile, whose mobile practice is essential to their survival. It follows that if actors and ideologies in civil war are not coherent, nor then are the spaces that they produce. To grasp this analytically, I advocate drawing on the work of geographer Robert Sack. While some scholars draw on notions of territory that tie it inextricably to the process of stateformation,7 Sack describes territoriality as “a spatial strategy to effect, influence, or control resources and people, by controlling area” (Sack 1986: 4). Crucially, the space in question—the territory—is often subject to multiple strategies of territoriality at any given moment. Applying this principle in his ethnography of the Los Angeles Police Department, Steven Herbert highlights six overlapping conceptions or strategies of territoriality and how these differentially shape urban policing. These differing conceptions “may cohere…but they also frequently conflict” (Herbert 1997: 4), much in the manner to which I have here alluded. Foregrounding contradictions like these is productive not only for grasping the “internal” dynamics of the opposition in Syria, but the broader geographical processes of the war itself. Syria’s liberated territories host competing visions for its future, ranging from radical Islamist fundamentalists to those who advocate for liberal democracy and secular nationalism. The hegemony of these visions is never complete, and so the tensions among them unfold as clashes among ostensible “allies,” bureaucratic squabbles (as mentioned in the introduction), and personal feuds, all of which shape the political geography of Syria’s conflict. The coming-together of these many actors in particular places results in the unstable but routine interactions in space whose dynamics underpin what Fionna McConnell calls an “anomalous space of politics,” where sovereignty is multiple, overlapping, and at times contradictory (McConnell 2010: 762–768; see also Jeffrey et al. 2015).

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Thinking about the spaces of conflict in this way, as “anomalous” and overlapping, rather than as discrete and ordered, has important consequences for understanding the territorial conceptions of the Syrian opposition. For one, it moves beyond conceptions of territory as either Weber’s arenas of interaction or as straightforward products of ideology. It also reminds us that “war and peace must be seen as interwoven social constructs that produce spaces” (Kirsch and Flint 2011: 37) and that, consequently, we must probe beyond the front lines to investigate the underlying socio-spatial processes of the Syrian opposition and, through this, the conflict more broadly. These processes sometimes fail to register in international media headlines, but to those who follow the war, they grasp their central role in shaping the outcomes of the conflict.

Differing Territorial Conceptions In what follows, I offer an impressionistic sketch for thinking through the contradictions hinted at above. Specifically, I highlight three territorial orders whose uneasy co-existence is central to grasping the geography of Syria’s conflict. Liberated Territories Syria’s civil, political, and armed opposition largely describes the communities they administer as representing a series of carefully won “liberated territories” (al-man¯ a.tiq al-muh.arrarah).8 This description reflects the efforts of the opposition to articulate the national “master cleavages” of their struggle for sovereignty in Syria through a specific conception of territory as integrally and inviolably whole. Consequently, the language of liberation plays an important legitimizing role: It asserts that the opposition is the legitimate representative of the Syrian people, and frames the regime as little more than “forces of Russian occupation and Assadist criminal gangs” temporarily holding the country hostage.9 This emphasis is for good reason. Conventional scholarship on civil war implicitly troubles the legitimacy of revolutionary movements by dubbing them rebels, insurgents, or (at best) non-state actors, viewing their political projects as inherently suspect.10 The same analytical cynicism, however, is seldom extended to states which have been so brutal or incompetent as to invite open rebellion. For this reason, Mampilly reminds us that “rebels must always compete with the state, which has a far greater standing in the

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international community and retains the right to exercise violence within its ascribed territory without fear of condemnation” (Mampilly 2011: 8). Conceiving of the spaces they govern as “liberated territories” thus elaborates a long-term, nation-wide process of freeing the whole of Syrian territory from the tyranny of the Assad regime, while betraying a very real anxiety over such condemnation. The Syrian opposition thus labors to depict itself as a competent administrator seeking to govern an undivided Syria; the rightful sovereign speaking on behalf of an essentialized national public; and whose first priority is to replace a violent autocrat in Damascus. The political institutions of the opposition, in particular those with the most routine ties to foreign governments, are acutely aware of the stakes involved in asserting Syria’s territorial integrity. In an effort to express unity of purpose, the highly contentious Syrian National Coalition11 describes itself as a kind of “executive branch” for the opposition, whose primary goal is to “establish a transitional government after receiving international recognition.”12 But this conception of territory carries an important emotive significance as well. The term “liberated territories” evokes (funnily enough) acts or practices of liberation which have collectively stitched together a “counter-space” in which an alternative life project could be pursued by many Syrians.13 These range from supplying medical equipment to documenting regime abuses to armed confrontation with the Syrian Arab Army, and as such these territories were liberated by armed actors (those under the umbrella of the Free Syrian Army most notably), but equally by activists, aid workers, journalists, and doctors. Not only was there considerable fluidity between roles in the revolution, but each role made valuable contributions. Many advocates of peaceful revolution picked up arms out of a sense of desperation, while there are those who embraced armed struggle early only to later depart the battlefield, traumatized and disgusted by violence, turning instead to governance, to journalism, or to humanitarian work. The notion of liberation employed to constitute alman¯ a.tiq al-muh.arrarah thus encompasses a wide array of revolutionary labors that are nonetheless united in their conception of Syria, not only as a coherent whole that must be won back piece by piece, but in the necessity of using that space as a basis for an opposition politics. It is nevertheless important not to take this conception at face value as a complete or accurate description of how the opposition actually administers territory in Syria. Rather, it plays a distinctive performative role in dramatizing its agency while downplaying other factors. This is more than

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trivial detail. Most notably, the coherence conjured by this conception of Syria contrasts with the challenges of mobilizing such a counter-space when the highly localized dynamics of the war have produced a powerful divergence of fates across the country. Opposition militias remain mired in internal rivalries, the Coalition and Syrian Interim Government struggle to form unified institutions of governance, and more pressing struggles for food, shelter, and health care bury the rhetoric of liberation in layers of suffering. Alongside these internal divisions sits an uncomfortable reliance on external support. Since the start of the conflict, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) alone acknowledges spending some $7.7 billion in humanitarian aid to Syria, though this does not take into account billions of dollars of “political aid” channeled through USAID’s Office for Transitional Initiatives or the State Department’s Near Eastern Affairs bureau.14 Not only have these funds been crucial to the survival of these territories amid aerial bombardment by the regime, but they have provided an outlet for the United States to co-opt the alternative life projects pushed by the opposition in the name of counter-terrorism. Even as they pull Syria apart, these overlapping relationships and forces demonstrate the stakes of maintaining a unified vision of Syria’s liberated territories. Laboratories The opposition does not always look to territory with such idealism. The second notion—that Syria is made up of laboratories for various political experiments—represents an important but under-acknowledged conception of territory shaping politics in opposition circles. This conception conceives of territory as generated out of particular relationships cultivated with actors from the local community (al-mujtama  al-mah.all¯ı) through specific forms of intervention into civic and political life. Consequently, laboratories are tightly wound up in processes of daily governance, personal ties, and, closely related, with efforts at cultivating new forms of political subjectivity. This more calculating view of territory is widely associated with Islamist factions and is frequently used to explain their “surprising” ability to infiltrate communities and impose their strict codes of behavior onto specific local contexts. Indeed, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s experiments with local administration represent to some a “gamble with the continuation and

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development of its [political] project that is intended to bring about Islamic rule” (al-Dasouqi 2016). But conceiving of territory in such differentiated, experimental terms is equally central to a narrative of revolutionary transformation among opposition actors, one that is rooted not in the idiom of Islam but in the vocabulary of democratic governance, institution-building, and community stabilization. In many parts of opposition-held Syria, it is the Local Administrative Councils (LACs, hereafter local councils) that have become the “leading agency in service delivery and are strongly associated with it in the public perception” (Hajjar et al. 2017). As experiments in cultivating grassroots democracy, the local councils are cast as models, carefully designed to “show what good governance means in practice, and the difference it makes to normal life.”15 As an embodiment of the revolutionary ideal, local councils thus highlight the radical opportunities offered by the revolution to transform political relationships from a form of centralized clientalism to a more de-centralized, inclusive model in which governance is transparent and participatory. In this respect, well-functioning LACs like Daraya’s (prior to its conquest by the regime) were able to cultivate “a special relationship between the council and the local residents” through elections, outreach, and volunteer efforts, in the process tying the abstract ideals of the revolution to particular personalities and concerns relevant to local needs.16 The relationships of legitimacy that this form of intervention generates have driven deep wedges into the political landscape of the Syrian opposition. Despite the common strategic goal of ousting the Assad regime, Islamist groups identify local councils as troublesome “obstacles barring their ability to strengthen their projects in local rule.”17 The councils are thus central to a US State Department-led bid to stabilize war-torn Syria by drawing local social networks into its project. The laboratory model thus reveals a more pragmatic conception of territory as rich in social capital with the potential to contribute to building political order in a war zone. Indeed, the war of attrition has meant that the conflict increasingly plays out not as a contest over territory measured in square kilometers, but to build a h.ad¯ın sha’b¯ı (base of support)18 for their institutions. This plays out not only between the opposition and the regime, but within the opposition between the local councils and Islamists. Much like the liberated territories, the “laboratory” conception of Syria’s territory rests on a powerful normative commitment to the opposition’s political project. And yet unlike it, the stakes of this are not abstract

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concern for the opposition’s autonomy but, instead, the more immediate danger of social chaos should this project fall apart. For the opposition to fail in enrolling local communities to its revolutionary project is to either foster social strife and material deprivation, or to invite the arrival of alternative political projects. Territory is either undergoing the democratic transformations of the opposition’s revolutionary project—forming provisionary councils, electing committees, holding town hall meetings— or is a vacuum for instability, autocratic rule or, worst, radical Islam. And indeed, some parts of Syria have proven more strategic than others in this view. To this end, the Provincial Council of Aleppo formed a special subcommittee dedicated to the “stabilization” of the eastern reaches of the province headed by Monzer Sallal, a veteran FSA fighter with unimpeachable revolutionary credentials. The crucial role of the aptly named Stabilization Committee has thus been to draw local communities recently liberated from ISIS rule into the sphere of the opposition by forming local councils, electing representatives to the Provincial Council, and providing services under the auspices of the opposition’s institutions, such as they are. But the notion that the opposition’s democratizing experiment will eliminate those territories of violent “chaos” in wartime Syria is quietly circumscribed by external definitions of what forms of violence matter. While there is local buy-into the network of LACs established by opposition actors like Sallal, it is nevertheless true that nearly its entire political economy is underwritten by a few initiatives funded by the American and British governments. For the US State Department, this is represented by the Building Legitimacy for Local Councils in Syria (BLLC) project, while the British Department for International Development supports the Tamkeen (“Empowerment”) project, both of which underpin democratic governance in Syria, but with an important caveat. In contrast to the revolutionary rhetoric of the opposition, their funders emphasize not resistance to the autocratic Assad regime, but instead keeping at bay the diffusion of radical Islam. As such, the external support for the LACs must be situated within the context of US and British-led stabilization projects designed as part of foreign policy strategies of countering-violent extremism (CVE), and thus as a continuation of the geopolitics of the War on Terror. This has not had a neutral effect on the opposition, or on the territory it governs. A Swiss report on the LACs has, for instance, noted that

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“the availability and agenda of external funding have been a major influence on the direction of the LACs. Donor priorities, rather than community needs, have often driven the direction of LACs’ work” (Hajjar et al. 2015). While this results in the usual disconnect between locally sought outcomes for the long-term and the short-term priorities of donors, it has had other pernicious consequences. For one, it has prevented actors from providing direly needed humanitarian assistance to communities in which Islamist organizations hold sway. This blanket policy of “blacklisting” jihadi-led communities led to situations in Greater Idlib in which communities received infrastructure projects, medical support, and delivery of foodstuffs, while their neighbors lacked electricity and running water.19 Indeed, the Idlib City Council came about as a direct result of this blacklisting, as mounting pressure from civilians pushed the Islamist coalition that had ruled the city to step aside. While US officials might chalk this up as a successful rebuke of Islamism, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham later accused the ICC of pedaling outside influence and obstructing efforts at unifying ranks in the opposition, resulting in the confrontation mentioned in the introduction.20 The imperatives of funding have pushed many organizations toward embracing the logic of CVE to frame their projects as interventions aimed at “stabilizing” territories at risk of jihadi infiltration. For instance, an Aleppo-based medical organization has recently begun emphasizing psychosocial support in its funding applications in order to be seen as challenging the local roots of radicalization.21 Shaped as it is by external funding, it remains ambiguous whether this conception of territory actually produces laboratories of democracy in Syria, as the opposition asserts, or if its primary effect is to deny ground for radicalization in the country. If the latter, it is not so much the alternative life project advocated by the opposition as it is the “Friends of Syria” whose interests are best represented by this view of Syria. Safe Zones If the notion of the laboratory circumscribes the agency of opposition actors within Syria as they seek external support, then conceiving of Syria’s territory as a series of “safe zones” relegates them to secondary players in a geopolitical drama whose stakes are far greater than a mere struggle for sovereignty in Syria. While the former conception of territory frames how external actors work through local intermediaries, the “safe zone” (al-mint.aqah al-¯ am¯ınah 22 ) views territory in Syria as an

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unfortunate but necessary outcome of Syrians’ inability to resolve their differences on their own terms and redefines it in accordance with the military-strategic logic of those conducting armed intervention. Consequently, external actors must exercise unmitigated agency, intervening to reintroduce safety to Syria by force. Appearing in public statements issued by Turkish and American officials as early as 2015, the term “safe zones” marked a sea change in external entanglements in Syrian affairs, with the stated goal of protecting the depoliticized “Syrian people” (Tisdall 2015). But a May 2017 Russian initiative to impose four “de-escalation zones” onto opposition-held territories under foreign administration signaled a new turn, one with especially deleterious effects on the Syrian opposition’s ability to chart its own political course (Bendix 2017). Most tangibly, the mapping of such “safe zones” onto Syria has translated into the bifurcation of opposition-held territories among those “protected” by different foreign backers. The Turkish army imposed such a zone in northern and eastern Aleppo province, to mixed responses. While many opposition-actors indicate gratitude for the support of the Turkish state in helping the Free Syrian Army liberate territory from Daesh, they are quick to note that Turkish objectives do not always walk hand in hand with their own. Many civil society organizations that operate in Greater Idlib are barred from entering the Turkish safe zone centered on Jarablus, and the region’s LACs are dominated by actors with close ties to Turkey, and so daily governance and service provision largely takes place through Turkish channels, directly (via the LACs) or indirectly: via the Turkish humanitarian organization AFAD, which provides a number of public services (health, electricity, even mobile soup kitchens), while the Turkish military secures the outer borders of the zone. The uncomfortable projection of the Turkish military into Syrian territory has led to accusations that Turkey is seeking to annex northern Aleppo province, and is seen as indicative of a wider climate of increasing international penetration of Syria, what Stuart Elden would label a form of “contingent sovereignty” (Elden 2006: 11–24). In much the same terms, one Syrian implementing partner for humanitarian projects described the current situation as no longer pre-2011 Syria. We have 3 Russian bases in the country, Iranian bases, some bases for militias like Hezbollah, and some six bases for the Americans (2 in the south, one in the northeast). What we have is a country without sovereignty. Whatever we call Jarablus – a mandate, an

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occupied province, whatever – whatever we call it doesn’t matter as much as the de facto situation.

This de facto situation means that governance and social relations more broadly in opposition-held Syria are increasingly held hostage to squabbles among the opposition’s ostensible “allies,” most notably a mounting rivalry between the United States and Turkey. He went on to note that as a Syrian contractor implementing projects funded by the American state in Greater Idlib had required deft use of social capital to secure access to the safe zone, despite the supposedly common goal of supporting democracy and opposing the Assad regime. And indeed, Syria’s eastern steppe has witnessed open clashes between forces working with the Turkish army and various rebels backed by the United States.23 He concluded darkly that that “Turkish withdrawal will come in the long term…if they ever leave.”24 The most lasting outcome of Syria’s division into “safe zones” administered by external powers is the denial to opposition actors of any ability to alter the terms of Syria’s conflict. Indeed, safe zones by their nature depoliticize the conflict by disembedding the violence from the grievances that led to its eruption in the first place: the oppressive legacy and economic mismanagement of an autocratic regime. Indeed, the Russian plan to impose safe zones is couched as an abstract means of bringing the bloodshed in Syria to a close, charting a path to a new constitution, and putting an end to transnational jihadism, with the important lacuna of accounting for the war crimes and violations perpetrated by the Assad regime.25 It also dovetails with the pragmatic agendas of neighboring states that allegedly support the Syrian opposition. Jordan, which has coordinated heavily with opposition actors in Syria’s south with the collaboration of the United States (among other actors), claims to be working with Russian officials to bring about a de-escalation zone “in the fastest possible time” in the southwest of Syria (al-Khalidi 2017). It is likewise clear that these agendas are hardly humanitarian. Critiquing the existing example of Jarablus in Syria’s north, Médecins Sans Frontières notes that “the existence of this so-called ‘safe zone’ is used to justify the continued closure of the Turkish border for new refugees, the return into Syria of existing refugees, and the displacement of populations inside Syria. This practice should not be repeated” (Sidahmed 2017). Certainly, this practice of dividing Syria’s territory represents the gradual slide of Syria’s opposition from its self-conception as a viable claimant to the popular

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sovereignty of Syria to an appendage of external forces and the geopolitical scripts they impose onto the country.

Conclusion In the preceding pages, I have attempted to offer a modest sketch of the differing territorial conceptions shaping the opposition’s political practice in wartime Syria, focusing on three such conceptions in particular. First, I described how opposition actors respond to doubts about their unity and capacity to act by drawing on a holistic vision of Syria’s “liberated territories.” Then, I pointed to the silent presence of an experimental discourse that motivates revolutionary activities to conceive of territories as potential “laboratories” for democratic governance and subject-formation in a new Syria, while also highlighting the important role played by external funding in shaping the latent functions of these laboratories as serving the foreign policy goals of donor states. Finally, I touched on the growing reality that Syria may soon be divided among a number of “safe zones” corresponding to opposition-held territories as part of an increasing anxiety by external actors with regard to the opposition’s performance Syria’s civil war. The prevalence of these differing visions of territory has varied over time and across space, but by and large actors draw on these competing conceptions for making sense of and acting through the spatial transformations to Syria since the uprising began in 2011. Importantly, these conceptions of territory do not stem directly from frontline interactions with the Assad regime, nor are they informed by a single, coherent ideology like a radical interpretation of Islam. Rather, sketching out the opposition’s three territories illustrates how members in Syria’s opposition navigate their position in a conflict whose geographies are increasingly tugged, torn, and tangled in the agendas of distant actors. Acknowledging the anomalous spaces formed by these contradictory conceptions of territory helps us appreciate that wartime politics often take place far from the front lines of civil war, in Syria no less than elsewhere.

Notes 1. Muhammad Kattoub, Advocacy Director, Syrian-American Medical Society. Interview with author. Gaziantep, December 2016.

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2. It is important to note that this aid is divided between “cross-border assistance” to communities in Syria, and refugee assistance in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, and Egypt. For specific numbers, see “Syria— Complex Emergency” (United States Agency for International Development, 24 September 2013). Accessed at https://www.usaid.gov/sites/ default/files/documents/1866/09.24.13%20-%20Syria%20Complex% 20Emergency%20Fact%20Sheet%20%2324.pdf. 3. “Draft: Humanitarian Assistance Response Plan” (United Nations, 5 September 2012), 8. 4. “Resolution 2043” (United Nations Security Council, 21 April 2012). 5. Although, it qualified this by noting that they would still notify the relevant parties. “Resolution 2165” (United Nations Security Council, 14 July 2014). 6. Doctor-turned-humanitarian from Raqqa. Interview with author. Gaziantep, December 2016. 7. Weber, for instance, equates territory to the sovereignty of the state. Foucault, on the other hand, sees it as the spatial manifestation of the state’s changing mode of governing. See, for instance, the work of Stuart Elden or Michel Foucault himself. 8. More literally translated as the “liberated areas.” A variant closer to the English meaning does exist (al-¯ ar¯ ad.¯ı al-muh.arrarah). 9. Press Release 5 September 2017. Military Delegation of the Syrian Revolutionary Forces. 10. While this cynicism is reasonable, this literature is generally less cynical with regard to the legitimacy of autocratic states. 11. National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (the Coalition or Etilaf ). 12. Official Web site, National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces. Accessed 3 April 2018, at http://en.etilaf.org/about-us/ goals.html. 13. For more on how such “counter-spaces” are mobilized in the service of social movements and uprisings, see Ulrich Oslender (2016). Geographies of Social Movements: Afro-Colombian Mobilization and the Aquatic Space, 32. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 14. “Syria—Complex Emergency” (United States Agency for International Development, 9 March 2018). Accessed at https://www.usaid.gov/ sites/default/files/documents/1866/03.09.18_-_USG_Syria_Complex_ Emergency_Fact_Sheet_5.pdf. 15. Adam Smith International, official Web site. Due to an ongoing controversy relating to ASI’s projects in the opposition-held territories of Syria (brought about by a BBC investigation), their Web site has since been deactivated. Accessed 1 October 2017, at http://www.project-tamkeen. org/our-goals/.

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16. “What Are the Opinions of Syrians on Local Councils in the Liberated Territories?” (The Day After, 25 October 2016), 20. Accessed at http:// tda-sy.org/en/publications/opinons-of-syrians-on-local-councils.html. 17. Dasouqi, “Islamist Movements, Local Rule.” 18. Literally, an “incubator of the people.” 19. Official from AJACS, Project implemented by Adam Smith International. Interview with author (Gaziantep), February 2017. 20. Salim al-Khadr, Public Relations Officer, Idlib City Council. Interview with Author (WhatsApp), January 2017. 21. A representative from this Aleppo-based medical organization thus emphasized the constrained environment in which such organizations must secure funding in order to operate at all. 22. This is variously translated into Arabic as al-mintaqah al-hadi a (“the quiet zone”) or man¯ atiq khafd al-tas. ¯ıd (“de-escalation zones”). 23. This includes both FSA brigades, as well as the largely Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). 24. Syrian implementing partner. Interview with author. Gaziantep, February 2017. 25. “De-escalation Zones Should Mark Step Towards Syria’s Unity, Not Division, Says Putin” (TASS Russian News Agency, 31 May 2017). Accessed at http://tass.com/politics/948564.

References Baczko, Adam, Gilles Dorronsoro, and Arthur Quesnay. 2018. Civil War in Syria: Mobilization and Competing Social Orders. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Bakke, Kristin M., Kathleen G. Cunningham, and Lee J. Seymour. 2012. A Plague of Initials: Fragmentation, Cohesion, and Infighting in Civil Wars. Perspectives on Politics 10 (2): 265–283. Bendix, Aria. 2017. Safe Zones in Syria. The Atlantic, May 4. Cunningham, David E., Kristian S. Gletsch, and Idean Salehyan. 2009. It Takes Two: A Dyadic Analysis of Civil War Duration and Outcome. Journal of Conflict Resolution 53 (4): 570–597. al-Dasouqi, Ayman. 2016. Islamist Movements, Local Rule, and Their View of the Local Councils: Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham in Idlib Province as a Case. Omran Institute of Strategic Studies, June 23. Accessed at https://tinyurl. com/y9dp3oq3. Elden, Stuart. 2006. Contingent Sovereignty, Territorial Integrity, and the Sanctity of Borders. SAIS Review of International Affairs 26 (1): 11–24. Elden, Stuart. 2009. Terror and Territory: The Spatial Extent of Sovereignty. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

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Enab Baladi. 2017. Idlib City Council Accuses Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham of Attempting to Subjugate It. Enab Baladi, August 22. Accessed at https:// www.enabbaladi.net/archives/169415. Gladstone, Rick. 2012. At Work in Syria, Times Correspondent Dies. New York Times, February 16. Hajjar, Bahjet, Corinne von Burg, Leila Hilal, Martina Santschi, Mazen Gharibah, Mazhar Sharbaji. 2017. Perceptions of Governance: The Experience of Local Administrative Councils in Opposition-Held Syria. Swiss Peace, January. Accessed at http://www.swisspeace.ch/fileadmin/user_upload/ pdf/Mediation/WOTRO_Report_The_Experience_of_Local_Administrative_ Councils_in_Oppositionheld_Syria.pdf. Hamdan, Ali. 2016a. The Displaced as Actors in Syrian Politics. Middle East Institute, December 21. Accessed at http://www.mei.edu/content/map/ displaced-actors-syrian-politics. Hamdan, Ali. 2016b. Notes on the Geopolitics of the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham. Geopolitics 21 (3): 605–627. Hawrani, Noura. 2017. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham Takes Idlib City Council ‘By Force’ After It Refused Turnover of Administration. Syria Direct, August 30. Accessed at https://tinyurl.com/ydy4h5fg. Herbert, Steven. 1997. Policing Space: Territoriality and the Los Angeles Police Department. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Jeffrey, A., F. McConnell, and A. Wilson. 2015. Understanding Legitimacy: Perspectives from Anomalous Geopolitical Spaces. Geoforum 66: 177–183. Kalyvas, Stathis. 2003. Ontology of Political Violence. Perspectives on Politics 1 (3): 475–494. Kirsch, S., and C. Flint. 2011. Reconstructing Conflict: Integrating War and Post-War Geographies. Burlington, VT: Ashgate. al-Khalidi, Suleiman. 2017. Russia, Jordan Agree to Speed De-escalation Zone in South Syria. Reuters, September 11. Leenders, Reinoud. 2016. Master Frames of the Syrian Conflict: Early Violence and Sectarian Response Revisited. POMEPS, May. Accessed at https://pomeps.org/2016/06/09/master-frames-of-the-syrian-conflictearly-violence-and-sectarian-response-revisited/. Mampilly, Zachariah. 2011. Rebel Rulers: Insurgent Governance and Civilian Life during War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. McConnell, Fiona. 2010. The Fallacy and the Promise of the Territorial Trap: Sovereign Articulations of Geopolitical Anomalies. Geopolitics 15 (4): 762– 768. Oslender, Ulrich. 2016. Geographies of Social Movements: Afro-Colombian Mobilization and the Aquatic Space. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Painter, Joe. 2010. Rethinking Territory. Antipode 42 (5): 1090–1118.

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Sack, Robert. 1986. Human Territoriality: Its Theory and History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Sambanis, Nicholas. 2004. What Is Civil War? Journal of Conflict Resolution 48 (6): 829. Sidahmed, Asil. 2017. De-escalation Zones in Syria—Not an Alternative for Refugees. Médecins sans Frontières, May 29. Accessed at http://msf-analysis. org/de-escalation-zones-syria-not-alternative-refugees/. Tisdall, Simon. 2015. Syrian Safe Zones: US Relents to Turkish Demands After Border Crisis Grows. The Guardian, July 27.

CHAPTER 10

Sunni Islamists: From Syria to the Umma, and Back Thomas Pierret

Introduction Islamists, the established wisdom has it, define political bonds in religious terms, hence are supposedly loyal to the global community of Muslims (umma) rather than to the nation, unless pragmatic adaptation forces them to undertake a nationalist turn (Roy 1994). Accordingly, it has been argued that the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood (SMB), Syria’s main Islamist group since its establishment in 1946, provided a distinctly Islamic contribution to the post-independence debate about the best way to redeem the perceived historical injustice resulting from “artificial” colonial borders: Whereas the Syrian Social National Party championed the vision of regional nationalism, basing its logic on geography as the great definer of nationhood, the Baath anchored its ideology in the principles of language and history. The Muslim Brotherhood, however, raised the issue of religion as the most logical and enduring bond among people, proclaiming the

T. Pierret (B) Aix Marseille Université, CNRS, IREMAM, Aix-en-Provence, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Cimino (ed.), Syria: Borders, Boundaries, and the State, Mobility & Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44877-6_10

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ideal of the unity of the Muslim world as the desired shape of the future. (Talhami 2001: 111)

However intuitive, this typology is inaccurate. It has already been demonstrated, for other contexts, that early Islamists approached loyalty to the nation-state, the Arab nation, and the Umma, in terms of complementarity, rather than contradiction (Gershoni and Jankowski 1995: 54–96; Zubaida 2004: 407–420). The SMB even went further than that by giving precedence to Syrian and Arab identities over Islamic unity. The organization remained remarkably faithful to this orientation into the twenty-first century despite its conflict with the Baathist regime, and despite the rise of wholly anti-nationalist views among Islamist circles from the 1960s onward. As for the 2011 revolution and the conflict that ensued, they had ambivalent consequences for the way Syrian Islamists defined the borders of the ideal polity. While the radical rejection of nationhood achieved unprecedented prominence with the rise of the Islamic State, the legitimacy of Syrianhood gradually consolidated among an increasingly broad range of Islamists including “revisionist Jihadis” from the Ahrar al-Sham Islamic Movement (Heller 2015). In this chapter, I make sense of the Syrian Islamists’ evolving relation to Syrian borders by focusing on two main variables. The first is the ideological and political context, which defines the boundaries of acceptable and relevant discourses about the territorial boundaries of the ideal polity. The second is the position of each of the Islamist groups under consideration with regard to the idea of participation in Syrian politics. So, having made a strategic choice in favor of participation, the SMB concluded that the best way to maximize political relevance was to embrace the dominant discourse among Syrian political actors, that is, Syria-centric Arab nationalism. Although the latter ideology declined in the last two decades of the twentieth century, its proponents—within the regime and the nonIslamist opposition—remained key interlocutors for the SMB, which by that time had become an exiled organization craving for returning to Syria (Lefèvre 2013). Outright rejection of nationalism, on the other hand, has been championed by Islamist actors eschewing political participation for two reasons. First, due to a lack of political ambitions inside Syria, for conservative ulama and the armed Islamists who, having failed to topple the Assad regime during the 1979–1982 uprising, migrated to foreign lands of Jihad. Second, because of an exclusive conception of politics that is

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little concerned with relevance beyond core constituencies, hence does not need nationhood as a common ground for cross-ideological alliances. The latter logics was well illustrated after 2011: the popular revolution having initially conferred a hegemonic status on Syrianhood, the latter was embraced by those Islamists who were ready to reach out to unlikeminded revolutionaries,1 whereas it was rejected by those who preferred to go it alone. In the first section of this chapter, I account for the persisting loyalty of the SMB to Syria-centric Arab nationalism from the group’s inception in 1946 to the publication of its latest detailed political platform in 2004. In the second section, I analyze the nature and drivers of traditionalist and militant rejection of nationalism from the 1960s until the eve of the 2011 revolution. The latter is the focus of the last section, in which I leave aside the Islamic State’s Pan-Islamic project, discussed elsewhere in this volume, to concentrate on the gradual enshrinement of Syrianhood among a broad segment of the Islamist spectrum throughout the conflict.

The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood’s Syria-Centric Arab Nationalism From its inception, the SMB defined nationhood in a way that was at the same time distinctly Syria-centric, and primarily shaped by the ideal of Arab—rather than Islamic—unity. In 1947, SMB leader Mustafa al-Siba‘i rejected Jordan’s project of “Greater Syria” in the name of aspirations to the reconstitution of “natural Syria,” which unlike the Hashemite unity scheme, should include Alexandretta, Lebanon, and the whole of Palestine. Al-Siba‘i also opposed King Abdallah’s ambitions because their divisive character put “Arab cooperation” at risk (Reissner 1980: 410–415). In 1949, likewise, al-Siba’i rejected another Hashemite project of Syrian– Iraqi unity by stressing both the reality of Syria’s statehood, and the ideal of Arab unity: “We support all Arab countries; we want the cancellation of the artificial borders, and it is natural that we should begin with a union with Iraq. But we don’t want such a union to constrain the free and independent state of Syria” (Teitbaum 2004: 141). The same year, the SMB-led Islamic Socialist Front ran for parliamentary elections with a distinctly Arab nationalist platform: “Strengthening ties between Arab states in all domains” topped the list of foreign-policy priorities, whereas “enhancing cooperation among Islamic states” came only fourth and was confined to matters of “culture and economy” (Reissner 1980: 416).

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The SMB’s defense of Syrian sovereignty against Hashemite ambitions derived from the Islamists’ perception of the Greater Syria project as “an obvious tool in the hands of British imperialism” (Reissner 1980: 411). Hostility to the monarchies of Jordan and Iraq also resulted from a preference for the republican system, which the SMB made a core component of Syrianhood: “Syria in its current borders has long enjoyed the benefits of a republican system,” al-Siba‘i emphasized, “and it strongly refuses to embrace another regime.” As for the SMB’s approach to supranational unity schemes, it was shaped by the hegemonic status Pan-Syrian and Arab nationalisms had acquired in Syrian politics, to the extent of rendering any alternative option irrelevant. The Islamists were not opportunistically embracing an alien ideology: in Syria, Arabism had deep roots among reformist Islamic circles (Commins 1990; Weismann 2015; Gelvin 1999), some members of which were direct forefathers of the SMB. For instance, while studying in Cairo, al-Siba‘i made his debuts as a columnist with al-Fath, the journal of his mentor Muhibb al-Din al-Khatib (1886–1969) (Zarzur 2000: 89– 93) a Syrian exile who in 1906 had founded the “first true Arab society of the twentieth century” (Tauber 1993: 43, 96), the Arab Renaissance Society (Hurvitz 1993: 118–134). During the First World War, al-Khatib joined Sherif Hussein in Mecca, then the short-lived administration of his son Faysal in Damascus, alongside Sheikh Kamil al-Qassab (1853–1954), another early Arab nationalist who, in 1937, would found the first distinctly political Islamic organization in the country, the Association of Ulama (Pierret 2013a: 166–167). Even less intuitive than the Arab nationalist orientation of the early SMB was the remarkable durability of this orientation. Despite Nasser’s persecution of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the SMB welcomed the establishment of the United Arab Republic (UAR) in 1958 (Barut 2000a: 262). Pan-Arab ideals were more hegemonic than ever at the time, as illustrated by the publication, of a book in which the SMB’s second most important figure defended the compatibility between Islam and Arab nationalism (al-Mubarak 1959). Even more important, perhaps, was the fact that Nasser was perceived as a bulwark against Communism by conservative forces in Syria (Pierret 2013a: 176). Yet, when most of such conservative forces reacted to Nasser’s socialist reforms by engineering the secession (infis.¯ al ) from the UAR three years later, the SMB refrained from endorsing their move. This was because by that time, the social base of the SMB largely overlapped with that of

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the Nasserite movement. In Syria (as in Lebanon and Iraq), the latter appealed to members of the conservative Sunni Middle class who were wary of the Baath’s radical agenda in terms of economic policies and secularism. At the apex of Arab nationalism, they saw Nasserism as a more relevant and credible response to this challenge than the Islamist movement. For a while, this made the SMB partly redundant, as illustrated by a stream of defections to the Nasserites (Pierret 2013b: 89). From the 1970s onward, conversely, many Islamists in Syria and elsewhere started to reject Arab nationalism as an ideology now largely conflated with secularist dictatorship (Sivan 1997: 207–228). The SMB was not immune to that trend, as will be explained in the next section. Yet, in the SMB’s official platforms, commitment to Pan-Arabism survived not only the advent of the Syrian Baathist regime in 1963, but also the destruction of the SMB’s domestic apparatus at the hands of the same regime in the early 1980s, and the gradual obsolescence of Arab nationalism from the 1970s onward. In 1980, that is, thirteen years after the 1967 war sparked the decline of Pan-Arabism, both Assad and the SMB were still trying to outbid each other through displays of Pan-Arab commitment. In March of that year, faced with a looming Islamist insurgency and unrest among conservative segments of society, the regime reinstated the flag of the UAR as Syria’s national symbol (Podeh 2011: 427). In following November, the SMB released a platform, the Proclamation and Programme of the Islamic Revolution in Syria, that retained the Arab nationalist tenets of the origins. “Arab unity” topped the list of foreign-policy priorities: It was an “urgent duty,” the document argued, to abolish “the artificial boundaries that separate the parts of one country and the people of one nation.” By contrast, “cooperation with the Islamic peoples” only came third, after the liberation of Palestine (Abd-Allah 1983: 260–262). The SMB initially enthused over Iran’s Islamic revolution (Abd-Allah 1983: 184–186), and had Khomeini decided to support them against Assad, they would probably have adopted a more decidedly Pan-Islamic agenda. But the new leaders in Tehran sided with the Baathist regime, and the SMB was left with predominantly Arab nationalist partners, with whom calls for Arab unity provided a convenient common ground. Syria’s non-Islamist opposition remained dominated by Arab nationalists such as the group of Akram al-Hawrani, Jasim ‘Alwan’s Nasserites, and Baathist dissidents backed by what was then the most ambitious and powerful torchbearer of Arab nationalism, namely, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. By

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1982, the SMB and the aforementioned Arab nationalist opponents were formally allied within the Baghdad-based National Alliance for the Liberation of Syria (Pierret 2013b: 92–93). Similar factors account for the fact that another quarter of century later, in 2004, the SMB’s updated platform, the Political Programme for Future Syria, still featured Arab nationalist phraseology: “the Arab regional states (al-duwal al-qut.riyyah) are parts of one same body,” the SMB asserted, and they “should form one same political entity (called) the United Arab States.” Islamic unity was given greater attention than in previous SMB platforms, but this was made inconsistently (sometimes envisioned as a state merger, sometimes as a mere “bloc”), and the concept of Caliphate was still entirely absent (Pierret 2007: 737). Emphasis on Arab unity actually still made sense in 2004. Arab popular sentiments were undergoing some revival in the context of the al-Aqsa Intifada and US invasion of Iraq, both of which had provided the Syrian regime with the opportunity to boost its Arab nationalist credentials. Arab nationalists also remained key partners for the SMB within the crossideological opposition coalitions that the Islamists joined in the following years: Nasserite Hassan ‘Abd al-‘Azim and Akram al-Hawrani’s daughter Fida’ were leading figures in the Damascus Declaration (2005), and dissident Baathist and former vice president ‘Abd al-Halim Khaddam cochaired the Syrian Salvation Front (2006) (Lund 2012). Over more than six decades, thus, the SMB’s definition of the ideal polity remained remarkably consistent in its Syria-centric and Arab nationalist approach. It proved relatively immune not only to the general decline of Arab nationalism, but also to a growing rejection of nationalism among traditionalist and militant Islamists alike.

Against Nationalism: Radicals and Traditionalists The SMB’s flexible approach to nationalism was challenged from the onset by the Islamic Liberation Party (h.izb al-tah.r¯ır al-¯ısl¯ am¯ı, hereinafter HTI), a radical (yet non-violent) organization founded in Jerusalem in 1953 by judge Taqi al-Din al-Nabhani, who settled in Damascus two years later. Nabhani’s decision to establish HTI coincided with his own intellectual divorce with Arab nationalism, which he branded as an ideology invented by colonial powers, and promoted by Christian missionary organizations, to divide Muslims. Even Pan-Islamism (al-j¯ ami‘at al-

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¯ısl¯ am¯ıyya) did not find favor with Nabhani’s eyes, because its loose cooperative form that was fashionable at the time was seen by him as another colonial invention to distract Muslims from the need to restore the Caliphate (Barut 2000b: 61). Tellingly, the first reported arrest of HTI members in Syria occurred while they were distributing leaflets disparaging as “useless” the 1956 Damascus Islamic Congress organized by the SMB in support of Palestine and Algeria.2 HTI’s maximalist position in matters of Islamic unity was function of its rejection of participation in the democratic system: Since unlike the SMB, HTI did not have to concern itself with winning elections and allying with non-Islamist forces, it could avoid paying even lip service to the dominant trend in the identity politics of the time. HTI did not pose a lasting threat to the SMB: The advent of the UAR in 1958 made the party even less ideologically relevant in a context of Arab nationalist effervescence, and a target for repression by the new authoritarian regime.3 HTI’s leadership relocated to Beirut, while retaining only a modest, albeit lasting, underground presence inside Syria. A more robust challenge to the SMB’s blend of Islamism and Arabism came from the mainstream and more specifically from traditional ulama. In late Mandate and early postcolonial Syria, the ulama had not pushed for an Islamic alternative to the dominant Syrian irredentism and Arab nationalism. By that time, the country’s religious elite had come under the domination of newcomers who had little ties to, and nostalgia for, the Ottoman era. Moreover, the close alliance between this newly established religious elite and the notables who dominated the parliamentary system gave the former little reason to challenge the latter on the issue of nationalism which, unlike the preservation of orthodoxy and public morality, was not a core concern for the ulama (Pierret 2013a). However, the rise of the aggressively secularist Baath party, then its 1963 military coup, gave Arab nationalism a bad name among the Sunni conservatives, who unlike the SMB, were not concerned with political relevance and cross-ideological alliances. Among them was Sa‘id Ramadan al-Buti, a professor at the Faculty of Sharia in Damascus. Al-Buti’s hostility toward nationalism had personal roots, since he was the son of a Kurdish scholar from Cizre (Turkey) who had sought refuge in Damascus in the early 1930s after fleeing repression by the Turkish republic of Mustafa Kemal. Al-Buti’s scathing indictment of nationalism, and rehabilitation of the Ottoman Caliphate, had much in common with HTI’s narrative, with even more conspiratorial overtones. In That is how nationalism was born,

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a public talk that was published as an article in 1963 (Ramadan al-Buti 1963: 606–620), al-Buti explained that nationalism was promoted in Ottoman lands by British imperialists, Zionists, and Freemasons to undermine the Caliphate and take Palestine. These designs were courageously, but in the end unsuccessfully, resisted by Sultan ‘Abd al-Hamid II and his Pan-Islamic policy. “Zionists attempts (at dismantling the Ottoman Empire),” al-Buti wrote, “bore their fruits in our country, unfortunately … which led to the establishment of secret societies, and the emergence of ideas that called for reviving nationalist chauvinism and for revolting against Turkish rule.” This narrative spread even more easily that in the following decades, al-Buti became Syria’s foremost Islamic scholar, and that in exchange for his support, Hafez and Bashar al-Assad granted him considerable leeway to operate (Pierret 2013a). Al-Buti’s account of the birth of nationalism eventually became standard in Syrian mosques.4 It resonated with the anti-nationalist views of two other non-Arab figures who were among the most widely read Islamist authors in 1960s–1970s Syria, because their writings were spared the ban imposed by the state on most publications by MuslimBrotherhood members (Pierret 2013a: 58). British India-born Abu alHassan Ali al-Nadwi and Abu al-A’la al-Mawdudi had both opposed the rise of Muslim and Hindu nationalism in their homeland, and the subsequent partition of the subcontinent (Zaman 2002: 163–164; Nasr 1996: 32, 84–85). Likewise, and contradicting in this the SMB’s official line, both emphasized the inherent incompatibility between Arab nationalism and Islam (al-Nadwi 1969: 39; al-Mawdudi 1967). Anti-nationalism being on the rise region-wide (Sivan 1997; Zubaida 2004), it inevitably affected the SMB. As shown above, the latter never formally broke with Arabism, but leading figures of the group did. In his 1971 book Soldiers of God, Hama-born SMB ideologue Sa‘id Hawwa skipped the step of Arab unity by calling for the restoration of the Caliphate and the establishment of the worldwide state of Islam (Weismann 1997: 150). In 1987, fellow SMB scholar Sheikh Abdallah Nasih ‘Alwan published an account of the origins of Arab nationalism that largely drew on al-Buti’s theory of a Zionist-masonic conspiracy (‘Alwan 1987). For Syria’s established scholars as well as for the exiled SMB, the rejection of nationalism had limited practical, or even potential, implications. Secular Turkey being an unappealing partner at the time, Arab countries remained their main horizon beyond Syrian borders. It was in Lebanon,

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and Iraq, that they carried out missionary activities; in Cairo’s al-Azhar university that they sought postgraduate degrees in Islamic studies; in Gulf countries, Jordan and Iraq, that they found employment, obtained political asylum, and were given support for anti-regime activities (Pierret 2013b). Only in the very last years of the pre-2011 era did the mainstream ulama’s “Ottomanostalgia” found some political use—for the Ba’athist regime. Bilateral Syrian-Turkish relations improved markedly throughout the first decade of the new century, a trend driven by Turkey’s booming economy and anti-PKK cooperation (Hinnebusch and Tür 2013). In Syria, rapprochement with Ankara entailed a partial rehabilitation of the long-reviled Ottoman era. By 2011, for instance, one of Aleppo’s ancient madrasas was being restored to host a Turkish-funded museum of the city’s Ottoman past.5 Mainstream ulama were all the more willing to encourage this endeavor that in the meantime, the AKP government had steered Turkey away from secularism. In 2009, for instance, head of the al-Fath Islamic Institute in Damascus Sheikh Husam al-Din Farfur congratulated Bashar al-Asad for his recent visit to Turkey by emphasizing that the two countries were bonded by “the doctrine of Islam, and almost half a millennium of common history” (Al-Fath Islamic Academy 2009). The following year, in a re-edition of a sermon given by Kurdish-born Islamic thinker Sa‘id Nursi in 1911 at Damascus’ Umayyad mosque, alButi described the new friendship between the two states as “the premise of the coming Islamic unity,” a project which, if it succeeded, would mean that “the only thing we lost with the disappearance of the Caliphate was its name” (Nursi 2010: 6–7). In the meantime, on the fringe of Syria’s Islamic scene, radical actors had put anti-nationalist views in the service of an actual political project, namely, the creation of the global Jihadi movement. The Syrian Islamists’ story with transnational armed struggle was an old one, but until the 1980s, it was confined to Syria’s Arab vicinity: An SMB expeditionary force participated in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war (Zarzur 2000: 179–205), and in the late 1960s, hardliners like Marwan Hadid and ‘Abd al-Sattar al-Za‘im individually joined the small Islamist component in the Fedayin movement that carried out cross-border operations against Israel from Jordan (Hegghammer 2020). Following the death of Hadid in detention in Syria in 1976, al-Za‘im and his brothers in arms formed their own organization separate from the SMB, the Fighting Vanguard, and sparked the Islamist insurgency of 1979–1982.

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Following their defeat at the hands of the Assad regime, surviving Fighting Vanguard members joined the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan at the invitation of Palestinian Islamist ‘Abdallah ‘Azzam (Lefèvre 2013). As Thomas Hegghammer has shown, ‘Azzam’s unprecedented initiative to recruit Arab Islamists for an armed conflict far from the Arab world was rooted in a broader ideological shift that occurred in the 1970s, namely, the promotion of worldwide Muslim solidarity by Saudi-based, MuslimBrotherhood operated international Islamic organizations like the Muslim World League (Hegghammer 2010: 53–94). The experience of the Afghan jihad and its aftermath further reinforced the Pan-Islamic ideals of Syrian Islamist militants: They were now part of a multi-national vanguard, which, after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, pursued transnational armed struggle in other non-Arab Muslim lands like Bosnia and Chechnya then, at Usama bin Laden’s behest, against US interests worldwide. The Jihadis’ promotion of a Pan-Islamic agenda went naturally hand in hand with a demonization of nationalism that is found, for instance, in ‘Azzam’s Arab Nationalism, a text whose lasting influence is illustrated by its partial reproduction in The Call to Global Islamic Resistance, a lengthy treaty released in 2004 by Abu Mus‘ab al-Suri (Mustafa Setmariam Nasar), a Fighting Vanguard veteran and leading Jihadi theoretician, shortly before his arrest in Quetta, Pakistan, in 2005 (Lia 2009). In substance, ‘Azzam’s account was similar to that of al-Buti, as it highlighted the Western imperialist/Christian/masonic origins of nationalism. It was better sourced, but relying extensively on George Antonius’ classical Arab Awakening, it ignored the role played by proto-Islamists like al-Khatib and al-Qassab at the onset of Syria’s Arab nationalist movement (al-Suri 2004). On the eve of the 2011 revolution, Jihadis had little reasons to revise their anti-nationalist views. When they had finally been able to bring back their struggle into the Arab heartlands thanks to the 2003 US occupation of Iraq, they had rapidly found themselves fighting a vicious sectarian war against Iraqi Shias. They were following in this the explicitly antinationalist agenda of Al-Qaeda in Iraq’s leader Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi, for whom (Sunni) religious creed was the only legitimate political bond (Kepel and Milelli 2008: 251–267). Yet, Syria’s uprising, and the ensuing conflict, sparked a deep divide among Islamist radicals regarding the question of nationhood.

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The 2011 Uprising and the Enshrinement of Syrianhood In July 2014, the Islamic State staged the physical destruction of segments of what it presented as the “Sykes-Picot border” that separated Syria from Iraq. Provinces of ISO’s newly proclaimed Caliphate stretched across the former dividing line between the two countries, while other “provinces” would later be established as far as Nigeria and Afghanistan. The Syrian war, thus, was the occasion for Jihadi militants recruited from the five continents to conceive and implement the most radical kind of anti-nationalist agenda. Yet, for other Islamists, the conflict was, on the contrary, an occasion to strengthen their belief in, or discover, the legitimacy of the national framework. The first and main driver of ideological revisions among Syrian Islamists was the revolutionary impetus of 2011, which bolstered the legitimacy of Syrianhood in the eyes a broad range of actors. The political and military forces that acknowledged the March 2011 popular uprising as the founding moment of their action, or at least as a major symbolic turning point, inevitably had to pay homage to those responsible for this sea change: The Syrian people, who took the streets, then took up arms, without direction from any political organization. Conversely, those political forces that rejected the Syrian national framework, that is, transnational Jihadis and the Kurdish (yet “post-nationalist”) PYD,6 were also those that did not frame their struggle as a continuation of the 2011 Syrian revolution. The former refrained from using the term “revolution” altogether until 2016, and preferred the expression “jihad of Sham”7 ; as for the latter, it hailed the “Rojava revolution” that started in 2012, when the partial withdrawal of regime forces allowed for the PYD’s experience with self-governance in northern Syria.8 Another consequence of the Arab Spring, for those who acknowledged its significance, was at the same time to bolster a short-lived sense of solidarity among Arab peoples, and to eliminate whatever legitimacy remained for top-down Arab unity schemes, which were inextricably associated with the execrated postcolonial authoritarian regimes. By late 2011, Syrian opponents, including the SMB, unhesitantly traded what was now known as “the regime’s flag” for the country’s pre-Baathist banner, itself renamed “flag of the revolution” (‘alam at-tawrah). That “tyranny’s bloody stan¯ ¯Assad’s Syria, but also the former flag dard” was not only the symbol of of the UAR, went almost unnoticed.

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More remarkable than the adoption of the revolutionary flag by the SMB, which as we know, had always felt comfortable with national symbols, was its defense by more doctrinaire Islamists against criticisms from Jihadi proponents of the replacement of the flag of the revolution with the black banner bearing the Islamic profession of faith (šah¯ adah). Throughout 2012, the rise of Jihadi groups such as the Nusra Front among the insurgency resulted in controversies and occasional fistfights in rebel-held areas over the flag. In this debate, proponents of the flag of the revolution received the support of Hay’at al-Sham al-Islamiyya, an activist Salafi missionary organization that provided religious guidance for the Syria Islamic Liberation Front (SILF), the largest rebel coalition in 2012–2013. Hay’at al-Sham argued that there was no such thing as a prescribed “Islamic flag,” and that national flags were lawful as long as they were raised while pursuing legitimate goals such as the Syrian rebels’ self-defense against regime aggression (Islamic Sham 2012). Further right on the Islamist spectrum, Syrianhood also found advocates, albeit more ambiguous ones, among Ahrar al-Sham, the largest insurgent faction apart from the Islamic State. Ahrar al-Sham did not officially endorse the revolutionary flag until 2017, as will be explained below, but it was careful, from the onset, to present itself as independent from any transnational organization (read, by 2012, al-Qaeda), and solely concerned with Syria in terms of military operations. In December 2012, Ahrar al-Sham assembled a coalition of like-minded factions called the Syrian Islamic Front (SIF) (Lund 2013), a name that contrasted with the Nusra Front’s preference for the pre-modern (hence pre-nation-state) term “Sham.”9 Abu Basir al-Tartusi, another revisionist Jihadi, emphatically praised the “Free Syrian Army” and defended it against the criticisms of hardline Jihadis, among which the accusation of not fighting under a properly “Islamic” banner (Wagemakers 2014: 30). Between the Syrian people in arms and the transnational Jihadi vanguard, al-Tartusi sided with the former, a choice that would also eventually lead him to embrace the flag of the revolution. For revisionist Jihadis, and even for more mainstream Islamists, the process leading to the full acceptance of Syrian national symbols was not a linear one, as it witnessed a hiatus in 2013. That year, the insurgency at large underwent a process of Islamist radicalization under the influence of several factors: first, the rise of Jihadi factions and particularly of the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham; second, intervention in the war of Iran-sponsored foreign Shia militias like the Lebanese Hezbollah;

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third, the military coup against the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, which coincided with the takeover of the Syrian National Coalition by anti-Islamist Saudi clients; fourth, US President Obama’s decision to walk back on his threat to retaliate against the Assad regime following the Ghouta chemical attack in August. In 2013, thus, a growing number of rebel factions were created that did not display the revolutionary flag, and others removed it from their logo, such as the SILF-affiliated Suqur al-Sham and the SMB-linked Sham Legion (faylaq aš-š¯ am).10 Likewise, Hay’at al-Sham al-Islamiyya removed the revolutionary flag from the cover of its magazine Nur al-Sham one year after issuing the aforementioned fatwa in defense of that flag. The decline of national symbols to the benefit of Pan-Islamic keywords was further illustrated in November 2013 by the decision of the SILF and SIF to merge into a newly formed “Islamic Front,” whose name thus made no reference to Syria, and whose charter was titled “Project of the Islamic Community” (mašru’ ¯ umma) (Zelin 2013). The rhetorical shift away from Syrianhood was partly aimed at seizing new opportunities. In the spring of 2013, Hezbollah’s intervention in the conflict sparked a wave of transnational Sunni solidarity with Syria’s beleaguered opposition against its Shia enemies. That trend reached its peak in June 2013 with a Pan-Islamic conference held in Cairo, during which such high-profile clerics as Qatar-based Muslim Brotherhood’s chief scholar Yusuf al-Qardawi and Saudi preacher Muhammad al-‘Arifi endorsed a statement calling on all Muslims to support jihad in Syria (Al Arabiya 2013). Speaking at the conference, Ahrar al-Sham’s leader Hassan ‘Abbud called for “going past the narrow borders of the nation-state.”11 This moment of Pan-Islamic enthusiasm did not last. Abroad, mainstream non-state mobilization for Syrian insurgents subsequently waned as a result of anti-Islamist repression in Egypt and Gulf monarchies, and because of fatigue in the face of an increasingly protracted and fragmented conflict—by 2014, the Islamic State and other rebels were at war with each other. Inside Syria, the theme of nationhood underwent a revival in reaction to increasingly tense relations with the Nusra Front. Throughout 2014, Ahrar al-Sham showed growing signs of pragmatism, partly as a result of combined US-Qatari pressures, partly due to internal influence such as that of Ahrar al-Sham’s chief scholar Abu Yazan al-Shami, who seized the context of all-out war with the Islamic State to criticize

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key tenets of Salafi-Jihadi ideology. In May, Ahrar al-Sham joined mainstream factions in signing the Revolutionary Honor Covenant, a softworded document that framed the struggle as a strictly Syrian one. During the summer, likewise, Ahrar al-Sham joined the Wa‘tasimu (“Hold on”) initiative, which aimed at uniting most factions under a single political umbrella while excluding the Nusra Front (Lister 2015: 225–28, 246–247). In the face of the latter’s hostile responses to these gestures, Ahrar al-Sham leaders justified their break with Jihadi purism in terms that simultaneously drew on, and enshrined, the idea of Syrianhood. “This is our country and our revolution,” Abu Yazan insisted, while making fun of his detractors’ obsession with the Sykes-Picot borders (Heller 2014). Likewise, while explaining to his fighters why their group had chosen not to be part of al-Qaeda or any other transnational project, ‘Abbud emphasized that such external models did not fit the specificities of the “Syrian reality.”12 From late 2014 onward, tensions between the Nusra Front and other rebel factions turned to recurrent military incidents. In March 2015, this context sparked a broad-based anti-Jihadi reaction that gave rise to online and street-level campaigns in support of the flag of the revolution. Rebel commanders from the Sham Legion and Ahrar al-Sham acted upon the slogan “Raise the flag of your revolution” that was propagated by civilian activists (Abazeid and Pierret 2018: 76). In addition to rivalry with the Nusra Front, another driver behind the revival of the national symbol was the rebels’ desire to improve their public image: First, while they seemed to have good chances of winning the war in mid-2015 (McClatchy 2015), then when, after the Russian intervention, they had to close ranks under international pressures to participate in the resumption of the Geneva process in a position of weakness. The spokesman of the Islam Army, a powerful Salafi faction from Damascus, first appeared on television besides the revolutionary flag in March 2016.13 As for Ahrar al-Sham, it took it another year, and a large-scale military conflict with the Nusra Front, now renamed Levant Liberation Committee (hay’a tah.r¯ır aš-š¯ am), to officially endorse the revolutionary flag, pledge allegiance to a “national” (wat.an¯ı) revolutionary project, and support the Syrian Interim Government’s initiative to reorganize rebel factions into a Turkish-backed “Syrian National Army” (Abazeid and Pierret 2018: 76). Another, parallel, dynamics that encouraged Syrian Islamists to extol Syrianhood was the expansion across northern Syria of the US-backed Kurdish PYD, which in March 2016 proclaimed the establishment of a

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federal system. “The division of Syria is a red line,” Ahrar al-Sham leader Muhannad al-Masri declared on Al Jazeera (2016). Sixty-nine other rebel factions, including the Army of Islam and the Sham Legion, issued a joint statement calling for the preservation of “the unity of Syria’s land and people” (Eldorar Alshamia 2016). Likewise, a map of Syria featured on each cover of the three issues of Hay’at al-Sham al-Islamiyya’s magazine Nur al-Sham released after March 2016. By 2018, even hardline Jihadis from the former Nusra Front were not completely spared by national dynamics. In a way, they had never been: The April 2013 divorce between the Nusra Front and the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham was a break between a predominantly Syrian-led organization, on the one hand, and an Iraqi-led one, on the other hand. In 2014– 2015, when tensions emerged within the Nusra Front between hawks willing to match the challenge from the Islamic State through displays of Jihadi purism, on one side, and doves attached to the preservation of cordial relations with mainstream rebel factions, on the other side, the latter were reportedly labeled “regionalists” (qut.riy¯ un) by their detractors, a term reminiscent of the 1960s’ rivalry among the Baath party between Pan-Arab “nationalists” (qawmiyy¯ un) and Syria-centered “regionalists” (Lund 2015). Although the Nusra Front’s “regionalists” were purged at the time, their approach was partly rehabilitated from early 2016 onward, when the group (subsequently renamed Jabha Fath al-Sham then Hay’a Tahrir alSham) started to praise the “blessed revolution” of 2011 and proclaim its independence from any foreign organization, that is, al-Qaeda. Through this shift, the Jihadis aimed to capitalize on the new context brought upon by the Russian intervention, that is, rebel defeats and a looming abandonment of the insurgency by its state sponsors. Acknowledging its failure to substitute the frame of “revolution” for that of “jihad” among the pro-opposition public, the group now sought to rally support outside its core constituency by portraying itself as the last genuine revolutionary force (Abazeid and Pierret 2018: 79). The ultimate step in this strategy was the establishment by HTS, in November 2017, of a purportedly independent, yet surrogate, civilian administration for Idlib called “Syrian Salvation Government” and whose president gave his inaugural speech standing beside the flag of the revolution.14 These moves were perceived by al-Qaeda’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri for what they were, that is, a break with Jihadi internationalism and a de

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facto embrace of national boundaries. Al-Zawahiri responded by emphasizing the need for Islamic unity, and scolding the drive to divide global jihad along national lines: “there are some who want to push us back behind the lines of division drawn by disbelieving occupiers… Pakistan for Pakistanis, Syria for Syrians, Palestine for Palestinians… in the interest of whom, may we ask?” (Jocelyn 2017). This was definitely not in the interest of al-Qaeda, which had lost his Syrian affiliate, and would subsequently have to rely on a handful of loyalists to rebuild an organizational foothold in Syria (Hamming and van Ostaeyen 2018). But many, among hardline Islamists, had obviously concluded that it was in their own interest to blend into, rather than opposing, national dynamics.

Conclusion Throughout its seven decades of existence, the SMB’s approach to the question of Syria’s borders has been determined by the strategic choice to participate in the country’s political system alongside other forces. In the late 1940s, it was in defense of Syria’s parliamentary republic that the organization opposed Jordanian and Iraqi ambitions. Subsequently, the SMB remained committed to the Arab nationalist ideals of the lateOttoman proto-Islamists out of a quest for relevance in the context of Nasser’s growing popularity, particularly among Syria’s conservative opinion. Likewise, for half a century after the Baathist coup of 1963, the SMB considered that returning to Syrian politics required to remain in tune with the Arab nationalist ideas which, although increasingly vilified by conservative ulama and Islamist militants, were still upheld by both the regime and its main non-Islamist opponents. Only with the 2011 revolution, which sanctioned the primacy of Syrianhood among the mainstream opposition, did Pan-Arabism lost any relevance for the SMB. The idea of Syrian borders as a legitimate framework for action also gained acceptance among formerly hostile Islamists such as Ahrar al-Sham’s former Jihadis. Like the SMB, Islamist newcomers to nationhood acknowledged the role of the Syrian people in bringing about a new political era, and consequently envisioned politics in terms of cross-ideological alliances. On the contrary, diehard Pan-Islamists such as the Islamic State paid no heed to popular agency and sought exclusive political power through the wholesale elimination of their competitors. After it climaxed in 2014 with the proclamation of the Islamic States’ Caliphate, militant Sunni Pan-Islamism has taken a back seat in Syria with

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the recapture of the territories formerly controlled by the Islamic State, and HTS’ cautious fallback on a local agenda. History does probably not stop there, however. The Syrian population now consists of almost six million refugees, most of which are likely to become a permanent diaspora. Yet, in the case of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, it has been argued that double exclusion—physically, from the homeland, and politically, from host countries—made militant Islamic internationalism an appealing option (Rougier 2009), and other authors have highlighted the link between exile and the outsized contribution of Palestinian ideologues to the Jihadi movement (Hegghammer and Wagemakers 2013: 281–314). The same causes do not always produce the same effects, but if they eventually do among Syrian refugee communities, this should not come as a surprise.

Notes 1. Whereas acceptance of the Syrian national framework is thus closely related to acceptance of a level of political pluralism, it does not necessary imply the embrace of a cross-sectarian agenda. On the coexistence of nationalism and sectarianism on both sides of the Syrian civil war, see Pierret (2016: 181–192). 2. Office Arabe de Presse (press survey), 831, VII, 6–7 June 1956. 3. Office Arabe de Presse, 1114, VIII, 23–26 March 1959 and 1144, VII, 9 September 1959. 4. Personal observations, Damascus and Aleppo, 2005–2008. 5. Interview with director of Aleppo’s Awqaf Library, Dr. Mahmud al-Masri, Aleppo, 7 July 2010. 6. The 2015 creation of the Syrian Democratic Forces was a concession to Syrian identity forced upon the PYD by its military alliance with nonKurdish factions, itself a consequence of the group’s military expansion into Arab-majority regions thanks to US military support. 7. See, for instance, Orient News (2014). 8. See, for instance, ANF News (2018). 9. The group’s full name is jabhat an-nus.rah li-¯ ahl aš-š¯ am, “Front of Support for the People of Sham.” 10. The establishment of the Sham Legion in March 2014 was a rebranding of the Civilian Protection Committee, whose logo included the colors of the revolutionary flag. 11. Kalima qa’id haraka Ahrar al-Sham al-islamiyya – mu’tamar mawqif al‘ulama’ min Suriya [Speech by the Leader of Ahrar al-Sham Islamic Movement—Conference on the Ulama’s Position on Syria]. Youtube, 14 June 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHQRPB0I890.

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12. Ahrar al-Sham. Fikr al-Ahrar ‘ala lisan mu’assisiha al-sheykh Abu ‘Abdallah al-Hamawi rahimahu-llah [Ahrar al-Sham. Ahrar’s Thought by Its Founder Sheikh Abu ‘Abdallah al-Hamawi, God Have Mercy Upon Him]. Youtube, 3 March 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hZODGrjgKc. This speech is an internal archive that was released by the group after ‘Abbud’s assassination in September 2014. 13. Liqa’ al-naqib Islam ‘Allush al-mutahaddith al-rasmi bi-smi Jaysh al-Islam ma‘a qanat Akit al-turkiyya [Interview of Capt Islam ‘Allush, the Official Spokesman of Jaysh al-Islam, with Turkish Channel Akit]. Youtube, 11 March 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFG5ElwHWI4. 14. Al-i‘lan ‘an tashkil hukumat al-inqadh fi Idlib bi-ri’asa Muhammad alSheikh [Announcement of the Formation of the Salvation Government in Idlib Under the Presidency of Muhammad al-Sheikh]. Youtube, 2 November 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5orACzyc_G8.

References Monographies and Articles ‘Alwan, Abdallah Nasih. 1987. Al-qawmiyya fi mizan al-islam [Nationalism in the Balance of Islam]. Cairo: Dar al-Salam. Abazeid, Ahmad, and Thomas Pierret. 2018. Les rebelles syriens d’Ahrar alSham: Ressorts contextuels et organisationnels d’une déradicalisation en temps de guerre civile. Critique Internationale 78: 63–84. Abd-Allah, Umar F. 1983. The Islamic Struggle in Syria. Islamic Publications International. Barut, Jamal. 2000a. Suriyya: usul wa-ta’arrujat al-sira‘ bayn al-madrasatayn at-taqlidiyya wa al-radikaliyya [Syria: Origins and Twists and Turns of the Conflict Between the Traditional and Radical Schools]. In al-Ahzab wa-lharakat wa-l-jama‘at al-islamiyya [Islamic Parties, Movements, and Groups], ed. Jamal Barut and Faysal Darraj. Damascus: Arab Center for Strategic Studies. Barut, Jamal. 2000b. Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islami [Islamic Liberation Party]. In alAhzab wa-l-harakat wa-l-jama‘at al-islamiyya [Islamic Parties, Movements, and Groups], vol. 2, ed. Jamal Barut and Faysal Darraj. Damascus: Arab Center for Strategic Studies. (al-)Buti, Sa’id Ramadan. 1963. Hakadha nasha’at al-qawmiyya [This Is How Nationalism Was Born]. Hadarat al-Islam 3 (6): 606–620. Commins, David D. 1990. Islamic Reform: Politics and Social Change in Late Ottoman Syria. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gelvin, James. 1999. Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Gershoni, Israel, and James P. Jankowski. 1995. Redefining the Egyptian Nation, 1930–1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hamming, Tore, and Peter van Ostaeyen. 2018. The True Story of Al-Qaeda’s Demise and Resurgence in Syria. Lawfare, April 8. https://www.lawfareblog. com/true-story-al-qaedas-demise-and-resurgence-syria. Hegghammer, Thomas. 2010. The Rise of Muslim Foreign Fighters: Islam and the Globalization of Jihad. International Security 34: 53–94. Hegghammer, Thomas. 2020. The Caravan. Abdallah Azzam and the Rise of Global Jihad. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hegghammer, Thomas, and Joas Wagemakers. 2013. The Palestine Effect: The Role of Palestinians in the Transnational Jihad Movement. Die Welt Des Islams 53 (3–4): 281–314. Heller, Sam. 2015. Ahrar al-Sham’s Revisionist Jihadism. War on the Rocks, September 30. https://warontherocks.com/2015/09/ahrar-al-shamsrevisionist-jihadism/. Hinnebusch, Raymond, and Özlem Tür. 2013. Turkey-Syria Relations: Between Enmity and Amity. Farnham, Surrey: Routledge. Hurvitz, Nimrod. 1993. Muhibb ad-Din al-Khatib’s Semitic Wave Theory and Pan-Arabism. Middle Eastern Studies 29 (1): 118–134. Joscelyn, Thomas. 2017. Zawahiri Lectures on Global Jihad, Warns of National Boundaries. FDD’s Long War Journal (blog), June 10. http://www. longwarjournal.org/archives/2017/06/zawahiri-lectures-on-global-jihadwarns-of-national-boundaries.php. Kepel, Gilles, and Jean-Pierre Milelli. 2008. Al Qaeda in Its Own Words. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Lefèvre, Raphaël. 2013. Ashes of Hama: The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. London: Hurst. Lia, Brynjar. 2009. Architect of Global Jihad: The Life of Al-Qaeda Strategist Abu Mus‘ab Al-Suri. New York: Oxford University Press. Lister, Charles R. 2015. The Syrian Jihad: Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and the Evolution of an Insurgency, 2015. London: C. Hurst & Co. Lund, Aron. 2012. Divided They Stand: An Overview of Syria’s Political Opposition Factions. Foundation for European Progressive Studies. http:// www.feps-europe.eu/assets/d6630006–41a1-4549-8d03-3088edc0d6cf/ divided-they-stand.pdf. Lund, Aron. 2013. Syria’s Salafi Insurgents: The Rise of the Syrian Islamic Front. Swedish Institute of International Affairs, March. https://www.scribd. com/document/131347537/Syria-s-Salafi-Insurgents-the-Rise-of-the-SyrianIslamic-Front-by-Aron-Lund. Lund, Aron. 2015. The Nusra Front’s Internal Purges. Carnegie Middle East Center, August 7. http://carnegie-mec.org/diwan/60967?lang=en.http:// carnegie-mec.org/diwan/60967?lang=en.

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(al-)Mawdudi, Abu al-A‘la. 1967. Al-da’wat al-qawmiyya wa-l-rabitat alislamiyya [Nationalist Ideology and the Islamic Bond]. Beirut: Dar al-‘Arabi. (al-)Mubarak, Muhammad. 1959. Al-ummat al-‘arabiyya fi ma’raka tahqiq aldhat [The Arab Nation in the Battle for Self-Realisation]. Damascus: Dar al-Fikr. (al-)Nadwi, Abu al-Hassan Ali. 1969. Al-‘arab wa-l-islam [The Arabs and Islam]. Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islami. Nasr, Seyyed Vali Reza. 1996. Mawdudi and the Making of Islamic Revivalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nursi, Sa’id. 2010. Al-khutbat al-shamiyya [Damascus Sermon]. Damascus: Dar al-Farabi. Pierret, Thomas. 2007. Le ‘Projet politique pour la Syrie de l’avenir’ des Frères Musulmans. In La Syrie au présent. Reflets d’une société, ed. Baudouin Dupret, Zouhair Ghazzal, Youssef Courbage and Mohammed al-Dbiyat, 729–38. Paris: Actes Sud. Pierret, Thomas. 2013a. Religion and State in Syria: The Sunni Ulama from Coup to Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pierret, Thomas. 2013b. Islamist-Secular Cooperation: Accounting for the Syrian Exception. In The Dynamics of Opposition Cooperation in the Arab World: Contentious Politics in Times of Change, ed. Hendrik Kraetzschmar. Oxon: Routledge. Pierret, Thomas. 2016. Syrie: État sans nation ou nation sans État? In Vers un nouveau Moyen-Orient? États arabes en crise entre logiques de division et société civile, ed. Anna Bozzo and Pierre-Jean Luizard, 181–192. Rome: Roma Tre. Podeh, Elie. 2011. The Symbolism of the Arab Flag in Modern Arab States: Between Commonality and Uniqueness. Nations and Nationalism 17 (2): 419–442. Reissner, Johannes. 1980. Ideologie und Politik der MuslimbrüderSyriens. Von den Wahlen 1947 biszumVerbotunterAdibaš-Šisakli 1952. Freiburg: Klaus Shwarz. Rougier, Bernard. 2009. Everyday Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam Among Palestinians in Lebanon. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Roy, Olivier. 1994. The Failure of Political Islam. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Sivan, Emmanuel. 1997. Arab Nationalism in the Age of the Islamic Resurgence. In Rethinking Arab Nationalism in the Arab Middle East, ed. James Jankowski and Israel Gershoni, 207–228. New York: Columbia University Press. (al-)Suri, Abu Mus‘ab. 2004. Da‘wat al-muqawamat al-islamiyyat al-‘alamiyya [The Global Islamic Resistance Call]. Talhami, Ghada Hashem. 2001. Syria: Islam, Arab Nationalism and the Military. Middle East Policy 8 (4). Tauber, Eliezer. 1993. The Emergence of the Arab Movements. Oxon: Routledge.

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Teitelbaum, Joshua. 2004. The Muslim Brotherhood and the ‘Struggle for Syria’, 1947–1958 Between Accommodation and Ideology. Middle Eastern Studies 40 (3). Wagemakers, Joas. 2014. Between Purity and Pragmatism? Abu Basir al-Tartusi’s Nuanced Radicalism. In Jihadism and Terrorism. Volume 1: Jihadi Thought and Ideology, ed. Rüdiger Lohlker and Tamara Abu-Hamdeh. Berlin: Logos Verlag. Weismann, Itzchak. 1997. Sa’idHawwa and Islamic Revivalism in Ba’thist Syria. StudiaIslamica 85: 131–154. Weismann, Itzchak. 2015. Abd Al-Rahman Al-Kawakibi. London: Oneworld. Zaman, Muhammad Q. 2002. The Ulama in Contemporary Islam. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Zarzur, ’Adnan. 2000. Mustafa al-Siba’i. Al-da’iya al-mujaddid [Mustafa alSiba‘i: The Preacher and Renewer]. Beirut: Dar al-Qalam. Zelin, Aaron. 2013. Rebels Consolidating Strength in Syria: The Islamic Front. Washington Institute, December 3. http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/ policy-analysis/view/rebels-consolidating-strength-in-syria-the-islamic-front. Zubaida, Sami. 2004. Islam and Nationalism: Continuities and Contradictions. Nations and Nationalism 10 (4): 407–420.

Newspapers, Blogs and Internet Resources Al Arabiya. 2013. Min al-Qahira: ‘ulama’ al-muslimin yad‘awna ila al-jihad fi Suriya [From Cairo: The Muslim Scholars Call for Jihad in Syria], June 14.

Al-Fath Islamic Academy. 2009. Kalima fadilat al-shaykh al-duktur Husam alDin Farfur fi ijtima‘ majlis idara mujamma‘ al-Fath al-islami [Speech of His Excellence Sheikh DrHusam al-Din Farfur at the Board Meeting of the alFath Islamic Academy]. Al Fath, September 29. http://alfatihonline.com/ news/d.husam.htm. Al-Jazeera. 2016. Al-Masri: taqsim Suriya khatt ahmar wal-mufawadat lam tuhaqqiq shay’an [Al-Masri: The Division of Syria Is a Red Line; Negotiations Did Not Achieve Anything], March 16.

ANF News. 2018. The Rojava Revolution Is the Beginning of Humanity’s Revolution, January 14. https://anfenglish.com/news/the-rojava-revolution-isthe-beginning-of-humanity-s-revolution-24173. Eldorar Alshamia. 2016. 69 fasilan thawriyyan yu‘linuna rafdahum mashari‘ taqsim Suriya [69 Revolutionary Factions Proclaim Their Rejection of the Projects That Aim to Divide Syria], March 18. http://eldorar.com/node/ 95882.

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Hay’at al-Sham al-Islamiyya. 2012. Hal hunaka raya muhaddada yajib an yaltazim biha al-suriyyun? [Is There a Specific Banner by Which Syrians Have to Abide?]. Islamic Sham, May 13. http://islamicsham.org/fatawa/275. Heller, Sam. 2014. Ahrar Al-Sham’s Abu Yazan: ‘It’s Our Country and (blog), Our Revolution’. Sam Heller // Abu Al-Jamajem // September 5. https://abujamajem.wordpress.com/2014/09/05/ahrar-alshams-abu-yazan-its-our-country-and-our-revolution/. McClatchy. 2015. Islamist Rebel Leader Walks Back Rhetoric in First Interview with U.S. Media, May 20. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nationworld/world/article24784780.html. Orient-News. 2014. Al-Julani: Da‘ish waffarat li-Amrika hujjat al-hujum ‘ala aljihad al-shami [Al-Jolani: Daesh Provided America with a Pretext to Attack the Jihad of Sham], September 28. http://www.orient-news.net/ar/news_ show/81500.

CHAPTER 11

The Complex and Dynamic Relationship of Syria’s Kurds with Syrian Borders: Continuities and Changes Jordi Tejel

Introduction The establishment of the so-called Islamic Caliphate by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in 2014 over a territory that comprises significant portions of the Iraqi and Syrian states, as well as the emergence of the self-declared Kurdish ‘federal’ scheme in Northern Syria led by the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the Syrian offshoot of Turkey’s PKK insurgency, had nourished the perception that the post-World War I system in the Middle East, the so-called Sykes-Picot order, had come to an end. However, the tensions between the two de facto Kurdish autonomous territories controlled by two competing Kurdish movements since 2011 (Rojava or Western Kurdistan in Northern Syria and the Kurdistan Regional Government in Northern Iraq) suggest that, on the one hand, scholars should be cautious before pronouncing a complete

J. Tejel (B) History Department, University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Cimino (ed.), Syria: Borders, Boundaries, and the State, Mobility & Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44877-6_11

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break between the above-mentioned states and the Kurds and, on the other, that non-state actors can reshape international borders just like the states—i.e., with similar functions, albeit with different political agendas. These agendas aim to gain material and symbolic resources, to serve as a process of (b)ordering local societies, as a political asset within the international system and, finally, as a protection—‘shielding borders’—in the face of political competitors, including ‘brother’ organizations and refugees. In so doing, non-state actors and their respective militias have come to replace state authorities as institutions that offer at least in part the legitimate use of force in a territory while respecting and upholding international borders (Vignal 2017: 809–827). This paper, however, does not explore the management of Syria’s external borders and the practices implemented by Kurdish non-state actors (Tejel 2016: 77–89), but rather the discourse and spatial representations of ‘Greater Kurdistan’ as well as the Syrian borders elaborated by Kurdish committees and political parties since the emergence of modern Syria. In order to do so, I shall analyze the maps as well as school textbooks elaborated during the French Mandate and in the post-2011 context since both periods were marked by the widening of political opportunities for the Kurdish nationalist entrepreneurs, while highlighting the continuities and changes between these two moments. I shall argue that Kurdish populations and local political actors have developed a complex and dynamic relationship with the Syrian-Turkish and Syrian-Iraqi borders. Like Arab nationalists in Syria, the Kurdish movement has produced a political discourse that combines pan-Kurdist references intertwined with local patriotism and limited territorial claims. The map of Greater Kurdistan reproduced in different formats (including textbooks) definitely forges a sense of a common Kurdish identity beyond international borders and Kurdish nationalism. It offers a ‘historic territory’ which, in turn, implies a narrative of conquest, defense, liberation and loss in which certain ‘Others’ play a role. In this respect, it is difficult to separate the feelings of national identity and geopolitical visions. Nevertheless, I shall demonstrate that Greater Kurdistan does not constitute an actual political goal for Syria’s Kurds. It provides a cultural abstract that supports local political claims and strategies without questioning Syria’s borders. At this point, it might be worth explaining why the maps which have been used in textbooks since 2015 are examined here, rather than those used in other formats and contexts (books, museums, printed media, Web

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sites, partisan pamphlets). Textbooks are often thought of as a reflection of recognized and officially selected knowledge which everyone in a given society is expected to know. According to Howard D. Mehlinger, textbooks have, to some extent, taken over previous forms of socialization processes such as traditional storytelling. This is because, like these previous forms of passing the knowledge, they are responsible for ‘conveying to youth what adults believe they should know about their own culture as well as that of other societies’ (Mehlinger 1985: 287). Although in today’s modern society textbooks are conceived, designed and authored by publishing houses, bureaucrats and civil society groups, the development of both curricula and textbooks is usually the responsibility of the authorities, which lead Apple to coin the term ‘official knowledge’ to describe what textbooks signify in the modern school system (Apple 1993). The extent to which textbooks matter when compared to other processes of socialization is, nonetheless, difficult to determine. Moreover, electronic media nowadays play an increasingly important role everywhere, including in education. Yet, even if their relative standing has somewhat diminished over the last few decades, textbooks remain important in school systems throughout the world, particularly in countries such as Syria where the access to the Internet is limited. Another factor that makes textbooks such a resilient teaching tool is the authority they command as a print medium. In that sense, D. R. Olson has pointed out the similarities between religious speech in traditional oral societies and written textbooks in literate societies, in that they both aim at putting their ideas and beliefs above criticism (Luke et al. 1983: 113). In other words, textbooks matter because they continue to be regarded by pupils and, arguably, by teachers and adults as an authoritative and legitimate conveyor of knowledge, close to the standard of an encyclopedia. In that regard, history and geography textbooks heavily illustrated with different sorts of maps still constitute important pillars of school systems and thus of (national) socialization.

Nationalism, Maps and Education Early theorists of nationalism such as Hans Kohn have considered print media and modern education an important means of spreading nationalism and modernization. Social scientists assumed that an increase in the means of communication enabled the state to create a public, to control the popular behavior, and to shape the people according to its image.

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Likewise, for Karl Deutsch, ‘nationality’ consists of ‘the ability to communicate more effectively, and over a wide range of subjects, with members of one large group than with outsiders’ (Deutsch 1953: 97). In his seminal book Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson suggests that a nation is imagined because its members ‘will never know most of their fellow members.’ Additionally, the nation is perceived as ‘limited,’ because even the most expansive nations have boundaries touching other nations, and ‘sovereign,’ because this phenomenon appeared as dynasties began to fade. Finally, the nation is understood as a ‘community’ because of the ‘deep, horizontal comradeship’ embedded in it (Anderson 1991: 62–63). However, imagination alone cannot account for the endurance and widespread acceptance of nations as a cultural construct. The ‘community’ wants to see something physical, like a territory. In that sense, between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, school textbooks, maps, stamps, archaeological reliefs, printed newspapers, among other means, allowed the members of the ‘imagined’ community to access the tangible visual elements and feel a certain materiality of the nation. People saw the objects that enabled them to create their ‘national community.’ This visual experience also allowed them to imagine the invisible, such as the expanded frontiers or new historical texts and maps, while offering an occasion to reinterpret past representations. In so doing, maps and illustrated textbooks reinforced the ‘imagined community,’ and, ultimately, helped forge the nations equipped with a ‘territory’ (Maier 2006: 32–55). Although cartography appeared well before the emergence of a world made up of nation-states, technically, this discipline has advanced more since 1900 than during any other period of comparable length, due to military demands and the need to delineate international borders (Robinson and Sale 1969: 11). Cartography and nationalism forged an alliance in order to classify peoples and territories, to delineate cultural and political boundaries. However, ‘imagined communities’ do not have rigid or stable boundaries. Nations are limited not just because they have finite frontiers, but also because the land is finite and claimed by competing and varying societies. In that sense, nation-states must accommodate their claims to conflicting national projects and shifting dynamics. As Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet puts it, one must regard frontiers as ‘zones of friction and fluctuation because no country, empire, or nation has impenetrable borders, whether internal or external, cultural or geographic’(Kashani-Sabet

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1999: 9). In that regard, she argues that although land-based conceptions of countries such as Iran were linked to their historical definitions, they also took shape through cultural reinterpretations of the land resulting from political conflicts and frontier fluctuations (ibid.: 10). Cartography is a technique fundamentally concerned with reducing the spatial characteristics of large areas to a form that makes them observable. Charles S. Maier argues that, ‘to map an area is to try to control a portion of the earth’s surface’ (Maier 2006: 40). Nevertheless, its most fundamental function is to bring things into view. Likewise, every map has an objective in terms of communication. As Judith Tyner points out, ‘like writings, maps can be expository, narrative, persuasive, or descriptive’ (Tyner 2010: 37). Maps also serve to produce geopolitical visions that are defined as any ideas concerning ‘the relation between one’s own and other places, involving feelings of (in)security or (dis)advantage (and/or) invoking ideas about a collective mission or foreign policy strategy’ (Dijkink 1996: 11). Finally, the relationship between history, geography and education in general has been widely discussed during the rise of modern nationstates. Ernest Gellner argues that nationalism signifies the ‘organization of human groups into large, centrally educated, culturally homogenous units.’ The roots of nationalism can thus only be understood in the context of a state monopoly on legitimate education (Gellner 1983: 35). In that regard, geography and history textbooks are supposed to play an essential role in the nation-building project (Apple and Christian-Smith 1991; Crawford 2003: 5–12). While the latter fosters memories and allegiances to the nation, the former allows to visually locate the nation and to delineate its boundaries in a world made up of territorial nations-states.

Kurdish Visions of Kurdistan Much of the modern state system, including contemporary notions of borders, territory and sovereignty, can be traced to political developments beginning in Europe around the sixteenth century (Escolar 1997: 55– 75). This does not imply that societies outside Europe did not possess their own conceptions of political and territorial organization, but rather that the extension of European colonial and imperial control over much of the world entailed wide-ranging political and territorial reorganizations of these lands, societies and economics, according to European norms.

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Although British officers produced a series of maps of Kurdistan between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Kurdish spatial perceptions pre-dated European colonial endeavors in the Middle East. In 1596, Kurdish Prince Sharaf Khan Bitlisî (1543–1604) wrote Sharafnama, an epic history of the Kurdish people between 1290 and 1596 (Bitlisî 1998). In this book, Bitlisî displays extreme expansionist tendencies, in particular to the south, for he refers to the Lurs in Iran as Kurds. For him, Kurdistan starts at the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf and then expands in a direct line to the provinces (vilayats ) of Malatya and Marash. To the north of this line are the vilayats of Fars, non-Arab Iraq and Azerbaijan, Great and Lesser Armenia. To the south, there is Arab Iraq, Mosul and Diyarbakir. Similar literary visions were provided by the Kurdish epic poem, Mem û Zîn (1692), written by Ahmad-i-Khanî (1651–1707) and the poet Haji Qadirî Koyî (1817–1897) in the late nineteenth century. According to Qadirî Koyî, Kurdistan’s boundary in the west stretches to Iskenderun and the Taurus Mountains toward the Black Sea. In the northern section, Kurdistan runs from the Black Sea to Ardahan and the River Aras. In its eastern part, it covers the Alvand peaks and the River Aras, and from Ahwaz to the Euphrates. Finally, its southern border stretches along the Hamrin Mountains, Sinjar, and the Nusaybin road. It’s only in the early twentieth century when the Kurds had the greatest chance of gaining independence, that we have the first attempts of indigenous cartography. In 1919, Sharif Pasha, (1865–1951) the representative of the Kurdish Independence Committee, submitted a memorandum at the Paris Peace Conference in which he exposed Kurdish territorial claims (Pasha 1919: 3): ‘In the north to Zinvin under the Caucasus; in the west to Erzurum, Erzinjan, Hamah, Arabkir, Diwrik, Haran, Tel Afar, Erbil, Kirkuk, Suleimania; and in the east to Sennah, Bah-Kaleh and Mt. Ararat.’ Interestingly, while Sharif Pasha’s memorandum at the Peace Conference distilled anti-Armenian rhetoric, the accompanying map acknowledged Armenian territorial claims in north-eastern Anatolia. As Martin Strohmeier points out, ‘a complete repudiation of Armenian rights meant forfeiting statehood of their own’ (Strohmeier 2003: 67). Notwithstanding internal debates and tensions around such a concession to the Armenian delegation in Paris, Kurdish nationalists in Istanbul had to accept Sharif Pasha’s move for the sake of the overall goal: the establishment of a Kurdish state.

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According to Maria T. O’Shea, the first known Kurdish map showing the distribution of Kurds appeared in the Kurdish book, The History of the Kurds and of Kurdistan, written in the 1930s by Mehmet Emin Zaki Bey (1880–1948), an Iraqi-Kurds and Transport Minister in the Iraqi government. He used several sources including Mark Sykes’ 1908 map of Kurdish tribes, a map drawn by the Commission of Inquiry of the League of Nations of Iraq, and a secret Indian Army map from 1912. The ethnographic map of Kurdistan resulting from Zaki Bey’s book is less ambitious than previous spatial representations in literature, in particular in its southern section which does not include Lurs within the Kurdish nation, nor the northern areas surrounding Baghdad. In 1945, Kamuran Bedir Khan (1895–1978)1 on behalf of the Kurdish League (formerly the Khoybun Committee established in Lebanon in 1927) elaborated a new map that by and large has been reused ever since, albeit with some minor changes (particularly in its eastern sections) by mainstream Kurdish political parties, Kurdish media outlets, and school textbooks in Iraqi Kurdistan and in Northern Syria. Interestingly, the map is presented as the outcome of ‘impartial’ academic research, according to the accompanying notes, which attempt to justify the results on a very finely spread premise. As such, Bedir Khan’s map is unique in that it attempts to support Kurdish territorial claims. It even hints at an effort of objectivity as it adopts the style of hatching the areas about which they were uncertain. For instance, the author points out the difficulty in defining the term ‘Kurd’ and claims that linguistic affinities should not necessarily be the sole guide. However, in earlier geographic representations of Kurdistan, the map remains a mental spatial conception of certain areas by Kurdish people themselves. Moreover, it represents a geopolitical vision for it attempts to provide a sea access both to the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf.2 The last attempt to present Kurdistan before the international community was made by the Rizgarî Party which submitted a map of Kurdistan to the American Legation in Baghdad, requesting it be shown to the United Nations Organization. Like previous representations, Rizgarî’s map covered a huge area but was less extensive to the northwest and did not claim Alexandretta. The map, however, lacked a text justifying its spatial projection. All in all, as O’Shea points out, Kurdish maps present an obvious disadvantage for the Kurds in that they are too irredentist to be taken as

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serious political proposals (O’Shea 2004). Yet, the question is: Do these maps and the literary projections mentioned before represent the ambitions of Kurdish nationalists at that time? If that is not the case, then what is their purpose? What is Greater Kurdistan’s aspiration?

Toward an Alternative Understanding of the Role of Maps and Textbooks At this point, some nuances seem to be necessary for an alternative understanding of the role of maps and textbooks, in particular among would-be national groups, such as the Kurds in Syria. On the one hand, it is important to underline that the relationship between textbook production and the ‘outside world’ is far from unidirectional in character. Textbooks do not appear out of a vacuum, but are influenced and shaped by the developments ‘in the field’ (authors, academia, publishing houses), or by pressure groups and changes in society that take place as a result of historical events (Podeh 2000: 65). One must be aware of who is involved in the process of mapping as well as in the elaboration of textbooks. On the other hand, representations of the ‘imagined community’ conveyed in textbooks and maps in general are not necessarily coherent. In that sense, visual tools and textbooks are designed with different types of public in mind (pupils, domestic public opinion, the outside world) with different purposes, which open the door to the discrepancies between them (Copeaux 2002: 399). Therefore, scholars must pay attention not so much to the coherence or the falseness of textbooks narratives and images, as to the social context in which they are produced and the audience they are designed for. Finally, while some visual representations remain relatively constant (Greater Kurdistan), others such as ‘Syrian Kurdistan,’ ‘Rojava’ have varied over the time due to new developments and shifting power dynamics on the ground. Consequently, one could argue that maps and visual tools in the textbooks produced by Kurdish political actors in Syria since the 1920s do not necessarily seek to produce an ‘official knowledge.’ As Maria T. O’Shea points out, there has never been a reliable census based on ethnography in Kurdistan as a whole or an acceptable cartographic representation of Kurdistan (O’Shea 1992: 1). Today, like in the early twentieth century, Greater Kurdistan remains largely a cultural abstract. The importance of Kurdistan thus lies not in its existence as a geographical region or as a geopolitical zone, but rather in its potential.

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Therefore, despite the divisions, despite its inadequacies, Kurdistan and the concept of Greater Kurdistan survive the reality as a powerful amalgam of myths, facts and ambitions (O’Shea 2004: 2). The author suggests that rather than using a negatively charged term ‘propaganda cartography,’ one should use the notion of ‘persuasive cartography’ suggested by Tyner, i.e., a cartography that seeks to change or influence the reader’s opinion, which can help us better comprehend the functions of these maps (Tyner 1982: 140–144). All in all, the map is the most visible form of discourse about Kurdistan, and must be treated as such. However, the Kurdish case in Syria suggests that the relevance of Greater Kurdistan to Kurdish nationalist discourse is not directly related to its immediate political translation. Instead, Greater Kurdistan provides legitimacy, thus a particular historical interpretation, and centrality to the Kurdish parties within Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. To put it simply, the territorial ‘grandeur’of Greater Kurdistan, despite its lack of empirical evidence, is mobilized by local Kurdish movements in order to negotiate cultural and political rights in each country. A quick overview of the social and political context in which the most significant maps and school textbooks have been produced in Syria will help us examine the intents of such discursive artifacts at the hands of Kurdish parties and intellectuals since 1920.

Between Pan-Kurdism and Syrianization, 1920--2011 If cross-border cooperation between all Kurdish regions in the Middle East is a common feature, the pervasiveness of cross-border ties between Syrian Kurds, on the one hand, and Turkish and Iraqi Kurds, on the other, is particularly noteworthy. It responds to some singularities, such as a relatively small Kurdish population in Syria compared to Turkey and Iraq; a geographical separation of the three Kurdish enclaves in Northern Syria; and, a clear connection between the emergence of a Kurdish nationalist movement in Syria and the arrival of dozens of intellectuals and activists from Turkey to the Levant between the 1920s and 1930s. These singularities have marked the Kurdish movement in Syria because since the very creation of the Syrian state, a pan-Kurdist trend has co-existed, and sometimes overlapped, with a much more locally rooted form of Kurdism. Kurdish populations placed under the French Mandate occupied three narrow zones isolated from each other along the Turkish frontier: the Upper Jazira, Jarabulus, and Kurd Dagh. These three Kurdish enclaves

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constituted nevertheless a natural extension of Kurdish territory into Turkey and Iraq. The majority of Syrian Kurds spoke Kurmanji and were Sunni Muslims, with the exception of the Yazidis who were dispersed between Jazira, the Jabal Siman region, Kurd Dagh and Alawite Kurds in northwestern areas of Aleppo (Winter 2009: 125–156). However, the Syrian Kurds, by virtue of their geographic origins, history, lifestyle (nomadic/sedentary) and their community, did not constitute a homogenous group at the beginning of the twentieth century. Some Kurdish tribes living in Bilad al-Sham in the eighteenth century preserved their close connections with Kurdistan, while others were assimilated into Arab tribal confederations. The left bank of the Euphrates around Kobane and some strips of land on the right bank had been settled by the Kurds at the beginning of the seventeenth century, following forced migrations as a result of the Sultans’ decisions. Kurdish population of Jazira increased with the arrival of Kurdish refugees from Turkey and Iraq during the 1920s–1930s. Before 1927, there were only 47 Kurdish villages in this region, whereas by 1939, the number of villages with Kurdish majority reached 700–800. According to the official census of 1939, the Upper Jazira had a population of 158,550, comprised of 81,450 Muslim Kurds and 2150 Yazidis.3 In Damascus, the Kurdish military colony first settled in the Saruja Quarter before subsequently migrating to Mount Qasiun. Indeed, it was only under the French Mandate that h.ayy al-¯ akr¯ ad, or the Kurdish Quarter with an estimated 12,000 inhabitants during the 1930s, was fully integrated into Damascene life. However, during the nineteenth century certain Kurdish notables had succeeded in gaining political and economic power in this city (Thoumin 1931: 116–135). The first Kurdish populations encountered by the French in Syria were those of Kurd Dagh toward the end of 1919, when French troops penetrated this mountainous region with relative ease. However, it was in the Upper Jazira that France faced the greatest resistance up until 1926. Although World War I formally ended in 1918, it left behind several zones of postwar violence favored by the disappearance of imperial borders— from Eastern Europe to the Caucasus and the Middle East, which created spaces without order or without a definite state authority (Gerwarth and Manela 2014). Among these remaining areas of insecurity and lowlevel warfare, the provisional Turkish-Syrian frontier—as per the Treaty of Ankara (1921)—proved to be an important one, for France and Turkey established alliances with local tribes in order to obtain territorial gains.

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Indeed, between 1919 and 1926, pro-Turkish propaganda in Jazira targeting Kurdish and Arab tribes, proved to be extremely effective in hindering the advance of French troops (Demir 2017: 237–315). Against this backdrop, an overall reassessment of French policy in Northern Syria seemed to be necessary. The Emergence of a ‘Kurdish Policy’ The establishment of a ‘Kurdish policy’ by the mandatory power in Syria was a response to economic and political constraints faced by the French administration. While France’s presence in the Levant was opposed in France, the High Commissioner saw the launching of a profitable economic program in Syria as a tool which could serve to justify its ‘civilising’ mission. The settlement of nomadic tribes and the agricultural development of Syria were seen as a part of this ‘mission.’ However, local population of Jazira, which included both Kurdish and Arab nomads, was deemed insufficiently large and ‘unprepared’ to assume a potential increase in arable lands. The High Commissioner thus envisaged settling the refugees from neighboring countries with a clear preference for Assyrian, Armenian and Syriac migrants from Turkey (Velud 1986: 85–103; Tatchjian 2004). By 1925, the High Commissioner decided to expand this policy to include Kurdish refugees fleeing repression under the Kemalist regime, a decision that brought about unintentional consequences for the Kurds in Syria, namely the ‘politicization’ of ethnicity (Tejel 2007). After crushing Shaykh Said insurrection in Turkish Kurdistan in 1925, the government in Ankara deported several Kurdish tribes toward the west of the country as a means of ridding Kurdish provinces of its more dangerous elements (Bozarslan 1988: 121–136). In exile, certain Kurdish intellectuals worked on uniting all former Ottoman Kurdish associations into one ‘national’ organization, the Khoybun League (literally translated as ‘Be yourself’). This committee was the basis for the conceptualization of modern Kurdish nationalism in Kurmanji dialect. Likewise, the Khoybun League made substantial efforts to create mostly unofficial diplomatic contacts with state players (Iran, France, Great Britain, Italy, the Soviet Union) and non-state actors in the region (Armenians and the Turkish opposition) (Tejel 2004: 41–58). In so doing, Khoybun succeeded in establishing itself as part of the network of politico-military alliances to such a degree that it became an essential

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regional actor at the time of the Ararat revolt (1927–1931) in today’s North-eastern Turkey (Olson 1989; Nouri Pasha 1986). Claims for Local Autonomy While the Khoyboun committee sought to launch a military revolt in their ‘motherland’ (Turkish Kurdistan), in several instances tribal chiefs and urban notables advocated for local autonomy within Syrian framework. First demands came in May 1924 from the deputy Nouri Kandy from Kurd Dagh, who submitted to the mandatory authorities a memorandum demanding administrative autonomy for all the regions with a Kurdish majority. Nouri Kandy had a clear idea of the role that the Kurds could play in favor of the French Mandate, such as fending off the Arab nationalists. A similar petition in favor of Kurdish autonomy came from the chiefs of the Barazi Confederation, Bozan and Muhammad Shahin.4 The political character of Kurdish demands changed after the Khoybun League was established. Former leaders of Kurdish clubs in Istanbul succeeded in winning over a large part of Kurdish tribes, notably those who had found refuge in Syria since 1920, who generally backed their political and cultural demands. Thus, in August 1928, a memorandum was submitted to the French authorities based on the Mandate Charter and on the stipulations relative to the mandatory power’s obligations to favor local autonomy.5 The French eventually rejected the petition. However, Captain Pierre Terrier launched a counterproposal. For Terrier, geographical disposition of Kurdish territories rendered untenable the constitution of an autonomous province across these regions. He proposed therefore that Kurdish leaders and notables concentrate all their attention on Jazira, where ‘one could hope to see the evolution of an autonomous Kurdish center. As for the Kurd Dagh and Kobane districts, one must be content with certain prerogatives’.6 The principal demands of the autonomist movement from Jazira can be summarized as follows: (1) a special statute with guarantees from the League of Nations comparable to that of the Alawites and the Druzes; (2) support from French troops to guarantee the security of the minorities; and (3) the nomination of a French governor under the control of the League of Nations.7 In sum, the first Kurdish nationalist committee in Syria followed two different albeit not exclusive trajectories. To some Kurdish refugees, Turkey was the target of their political activities since it was the country

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of origin for the majority of its members. Concomitantly, the committee favored political participation of Kurdish representatives in the Syrian political life. Thus the notorious members of the nationalist committee eventually became deputies in the Syrian Parliament and some, including the sons of both Ibrahim Pasha (Milli tribe) and Hajo Agha (Heverkan tribe), kept their seats throughout the 1950s. The ambivalent relationship of Kurdish refugees and settlers both with the cultural abstract of Greater Kurdistan and Syria’s borders during the French Mandate is best illustrated with an anecdote reported by a French officer in 1942: Recently, in a meeting in Maktale, home of the Shahin brothers [Syrian deputies], the latter along with a group of local notables could not refrain from performing before us their Kurdish national dances; in their own words, “the dances that they will perform when Diyarbakir [Turkey] will become the capital of their Nation”.8

Kurdish Textbooks and Maps During the French Mandate The Khoybun’s propaganda was principally aimed at Kurdish refugees in Syria to dissuade them from listening to the Turkish promise of amnesty; it varied, however, as the themes put forward and the language used changed depending on the audience. In parallel, the Khoybun made strides in the cultural domain by petitioning the mandatory authorities in favor of teaching Kurdish in schools and creating boarding schools to train the Kurdish elite. However, neither the military campaigns nor the petitioning for Kurdish schools in the late 1920s were successful. The failure of the Ararat revolt in 1930 demonstrated how pointless sporadic uprisings against Turkey were without the support of a great power. In addition, punitive French measures against the Khoybun led its leadership to shift the focus of their efforts toward the cultural field alone. It is within this context that a small circle of intellectuals who gathered around Kamuran and Jaladat Bedir Khan took their inspiration from the Armenian model to launch a cultural Kurdish renaissance. Backed by the now dormant Khoybun, Kamuran and Jaladat succeeded in creating a network of philanthropic societies serving as economic and social support for the publication of journals and school textbooks. Since, unlike Christians, the Kurds were not allowed to establish their own schools, Kurdish textbooks were used at Quran schools as well as

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at Kurdish cultural centers in Damascus and Beirut by the 1930s. However, Kurdish textbooks did not deal with geographic issues. Their main goal was to spread the Kurdish alphabet (in Latin characters) and the instruction of the Kurds in the Kurdish language. Yet, as mentioned earlier, Kamuran Bedir Khan was the producer of a powerful propaganda means: a map of Greater Kurdistan submitted to the Great Powers at the San Francisco Conference in 1945. Beside its function as a key element in the Kurdish political discourse which we discussed earlier, it’s important to understand the social and political context in which the map was produced. Firstly, during World War II, the Kurdish leaders in Syria and Lebanon established contacts with all the powers involved in the conflict, including Germany. However, after the first significant defeats of Hitler’s armies, Kurdish diplomatic efforts targeted Britain and the USSR since the latter, in particular, seemed to be open to the old idea of re-awakening the Kurdish ‘independent state’ imprinted in the Treaty of Sèvres of 1920.9 Nonetheless, this support was subject to certain conditions, notably, the military engagement of the Kurds in Turkey. Yet the Kurdish representatives at the Soviet legation in the Levant, conscious of the lack of a clandestine organization in Turkey, failed to provide a clear response to the Soviet delegates. Despite this failure, the very idea of recovering the spirit of the Treaty of Sèvres opened the door to updated geopolitical visions of Kurdistan, namely the updated dream of a Greater Kurdistan, running from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. Secondly, Kurdish propaganda cannot be analyzed in a vacuum. On the one hand, we have Kamuran Bedir Khan who drew his spatial visions from previous sources. Although Sharafname and Mem û Zîn had a limited direct impact on Kurdish intellectuals, their content was relayed (and reinterpreted) by some key figures such as Haji Qadirî Koyî. Born in present Iraqi Kurdistan, Koyî was arguably the first Kurdish intellectual to read Mem û Zîn through nationalistic lenses. Like many other Ottoman poets won over to the modernist cause, he encouraged his ‘people’ to turn to science and to use modern tools such as magazines and newspapers to build the Kurdish nation. More importantly, in his last years, Koyî moved to Istanbul and lived with the Bedir Khans, ‘where he tutored and made family members familiar with Mem û Zîn’ (Strohmeier 2003: 25). While Koyî’s influence on the Bedir Khans needs further inquiry, two facts remain indisputable. Firstly, in 1898, only a year after Koyî passed away, a member of the Bedir Khan family published in Cairo the first Kurdish

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newspaper, Kürdistan, which echoed Koyî’s insistence on the role of the press in the process of nation-building. Secondly and more tellingly, this journal published diverse extracts from Mem û Zîn which from then on was presented by the Bedir Khans as a Kurdish national epic poem. On the other hand, since the late 1920s, Kurdish discourse was at least partly a direct response to Turkish nationalism. After the Shaykh Said revolt, the Turkish regime’s reaction had been brutal. They launched a state-led campaign of destruction of hundreds of villages along with a project of ‘Turkification’ of Kurdish majority provinces. The use of the terms ‘Kurd’ and ‘Kurdistan’ in scientific discourse was prohibited and the Kurdish names of villages, mountains and towns were also ‘Turkified.’ Moreover, the Kemalist government promulgated a new law (No. 2237, 5 May 1932), which provided for a massive deportation of Kurdish population from the eastern vilayets to the western provinces of Turkey (Üngör 2011). One can argue that the exaggerated territorial claims over central and eastern Anatolia in Kamuran Bedir Khan’s map are proportional to Turkish aggressive policies in Kurdish areas. Finally, the marginal position of Kurdish enclaves in Northern Syria in Bedir Khan’s maps is very telling about his geopolitical visions. As argued before, Kurdish activists in Syria considered that their homeland was Turkey and that although Kurdish communities existed in Kurd Dagh before their arrival in the 1920s, those territories could be ‘sacrificed’ for the sake of the core of the Kurdish nation, namely, Eastern Anatolia and the Mosul vilayet. In that sense, Khoybun never showed irredentism over Syrian territories inhabited by Kurds in order to avoid antagonizing the authorities in Damascus, be they the French or the National Bloc. At the dawn of World War II, Kamuran Bedir Khan showed a high degree of coherence in that respect. The text that accompanies his map only mentions Kurd Dagh in a single paragraph but, tellingly, Syrian Kurdish enclaves in the Upper Jazira and Kobane are not even discussed. However, lacking any political sponsors among the members of the United Nations and without the power to influence the agenda created by international bodies, the Kurdish issue was excluded from the United Nation’s debates for four decades. In Syria, the collapse of the Khoybun and the Kurdish Leagues paved the way for the emergence of a new political party, the Kurdish Democratic Party of Syria (KDPS) in 1957. As in previous organizations, the KDPS’ members were divided regarding the Kurds in Syria and the very idea of Kurdistan. In 1960, at the insistence of Jalal Talabani, member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iraq, the

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KDPS changed its name to Democratic Party of Kurdistan in Syria. Apparently, some of the founding members of the KDPS were opposed to this change because it could have put them in danger since it implied that the Kurdish enclaves of Northern Syria were also a part of Greater Kurdistan. Therefore, the name change could have led Syrian authorities to think that Kurdish aspirations included the potential annexation of these Syrian territories to form an autonomous or independent Kurdistan (Jemo 1990: 33–34). On August 5, 1960, the leaders of the executive committee of Aleppo were arrested. The party organization was uncovered and within few days more than 5000 people were taken into custody, while the leaders of the KDPS were accused of separatism and jailed. Eventually, the new party leadership decided to use the original name of the organization. From that moment on, all Kurdish parties limited their political agenda to the Kurdish enclaves in Northern Syria and avoided using the term Kurdistan in their official names. However, Kurdistan as a cultural abstract continued to nourish Kurdish identity in Syria. The ambivalent relationship between the Kurds in Syria and the concept of Greater Kurdistan became even more complex after the arrival of dozens of members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Syria in 1979. Thanks to the cooperation of the Assad regime, Northern Syria became a breeding ground for PKK militants during the 1980s and 1990s. According to David McDowall, by 1987, the PKK had offices in Damascus, Qamishli, Darbasiya, Derik, Ras al-Ayn, Afrin, Aleppo and Hasaka (McDowall 1998: 65). In addition, the Syrian Baathist regime maintained good relations with two main Kurdish political parties of Iraq, the KDP and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). As a consequence, with the complicity of the Kurdish ‘clients’ (KDP, PUK and PKK), the Syrian regime steered Kurdish activists toward the ‘true Kurdistans,’ that is, Kurdish regions of Turkey and Iraq. Furthermore, Abdullah Öcalan, leader of the PKK, even declared that there was no ‘Kurdish problem’ in Syria; he denied the legitimacy of a Syrian Kurdish movement or dismissed it as a small-scale movement that distracted from the ‘real struggle’ for (Turkish) Kurdistan (McDowall 1998: 69– 70). Although this type of statement can be easily understood in light of the pressure from the Syrian ‘boss,’ it nevertheless created discomfort in Syria resulting in the alienation of some PKK sympathizers after Öcalan’s speech.

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The Syrian Revolution and Its Aftermath: Continuities and Changes The Syrian uprising of March 2011 provided unprecedented political opportunities for the Kurdish parties. Yet former divisions and conflicts undermined all attempts to unite Kurdish forces behind a single goal: either overthrowing the Syrian regime, and/or establishing an autonomous entity led by a united Kurdish front. In 2012, the Baath regime gradually pulled out the army and the secret services out of the predominantly Kurdish regions of Afrin, Kobane and Jazira10 and transferred control to the PYD. The fact that all these regions were taken over by the PYD without major armed conflicts points to the existence of agreements, whether official or unofficial, between the PYD and the Syrian regime (Savelsberg 2014: 98). Thanks to its traditional popularity among the Syrian Kurds and its strict internal discipline, the PYD rapidly overcame other challengers, including non-PYD affiliated youth committees and members of the Kurdish National Council. Freed from any significant opposition, the PYD alone promoted the declaration of a local administration followed by the appointment of three governments in the ‘cantons’ of Jazira, Kobane and Afrin on January 21, 27 and 29 of 2014. Moreover, on March 17, 2016, the PYD decided to establish a federal administrative system throughout the areas under PYD control, in which its principles of ‘democratic autonomy’ and ‘democratic confederalism’ were to prevail. In the proposed system of ‘democratic autonomy’ and ‘democratic confederalism,’ the former refers to a re-grounding of the political status of people on the basis of self-government, rather than on peoples’ relations with the state. ‘Democratic confederalism’ aims at strengthening local administrative capacities organized in the form of councils at the very local level, from streets and then neighborhoods, through districts/villages and towns/cities to regions. More importantly, following Abdullah Öcalan’s prison writings, the PYD wants a decisive break from centralized and representative systems; the Kurds, and all peoples in the Middle East should abandon the nation-state system to embrace a kind of communal self-organization (Jongerden and Hamdi Akkaya 2013: 163– 185). In theory, ‘democratic confederalism’ should bring to the fore local concerns and lead to a much more locally rooted agenda. Reality, however, is different. On the one hand, ‘democratic autonomy’ has turned into something else in Rojava— a system that is reminiscent of

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the older and well-known model of ‘people’s democracy,’ a political concept common to former socialist countries. There is one ruling party and all the other groups must be subordinate to the party. Competing parties are not allowed to participate in the political process. The consequence of this ideological position is severely felt in the PYD-ruled regions, in particular between 2012 and 2014: the number of unlawful arrests or kidnappings in order to intimidate representatives of other political parties significantly rose as the PYD was gaining control (ICG 2014). On the other hand, as Michiel Leezenberg points out, PKK considered Rojava a social and political laboratory in which Öcalan’s principles could be implemented and tested. More importantly, and contrary to the ‘grassroots’ aspirations, the effective control appears to have remained solidly in the hands of PKK military leadership (Leezenberg 2016: 683), which incidentally has prompted frictions with some local YPG commanders such as Mazloum Kobane in terms of alliances and priorities on the ground.11 Kurdish Textbooks in the Jazira Canton, 2015–2016 The contradictions of ‘democratic autonomy’ as it has been implemented in Rojava also affected school curricula. Unlike local security institutions, the Kurdish language education system was progressively introduced in Northern Syria. Actually, Syrian state education continued to be provided until 2015 and teachers received state salaries. It was then that the PYD-led administration introduced its own Kurdish language curriculum, which it implemented in the areas under its control. Ever since, textbooks introduced at schools in Northern Syria have become an issue not only between non-Kurdish populations with regard to the PYD-led authorities, but also among Syrian Kurds.12 Kurdish opposition parties consider that the new Kurdish primary school curricula, in particular regarding language textbooks, are too ideological and prioritizes a single view, i.e., ‘democratic confederalism’ over all others.13 The ideological bias—‘democratic confederalism’ principles—is also present, albeit to a lesser extent, in the social sciences textbooks used by primary pupils (4th, 5th and 6th grades), which are under scrutiny in this chapter.14 However, there are some differences between these books. While the 4th grade book is overtly partisan and colored by PYD’s ideology—with a particular focus on the role of women in Kurdish society

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(jineolojî or women’s studies) and the martyrs of the ‘revolution,’ regardless of their ethnic and religious background—the latter is less explicit in 5th and 6th grade textbooks. Notwithstanding and although the PYD claims that the Kurds should abandon the nation-state system to embrace a kind of communal selforganization, Greater Kurdistan, as represented in the first half of the twentieth century, continues to be a key cultural abstract in school textbooks. PYD-sponsored textbooks portray Kurdistan as an ancient country and nation. According to these books, several groups lived in the ‘ancient Kurdistan,’ a region that became the cradle of different civilizations and powerful empires over the centuries. Interestingly, the terms Kurdistan and Mesopotamia are used interchangeably both in the text and in the maps that illustrate the historical evolution of the region. In geography sections, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey are described as Kurdistan’s ‘neighbors’; the ‘strategic’ position of Kurdistan within the larger Middle East is highlighted. Terms with pan-Kurdist connotations are used, such as Northern or Bakur (Eastern Turkey), Southern or Bashur (Northern Iraq), Eastern or Rojhilat (North-Eastern Iran) and Western Kurdistan or Rojava (Northern Syria). Although the names of mountains, rivers and towns serve to demarcate Kurdistan’s geography and territory, Kurdistan’s borders are never detailed or justified in the textual part. The visual representation of Kurdistan’s borderlines, largely based on earlier ones, thus remains the main self-explanatory argument (see Fig. 11.1). Unsurprisingly, Kurdistan’s boundaries in Syria are more generous and suggest a territorial (and ethnic) continuity between the three traditional Kurdish enclaves in Northern Syria (Kurd Dagh, Kobane and the Upper Jazira), as opposed to the maps produced in the 1930s and 1940s. Likewise, while in KRG textbooks produced in Northern Iraq pictures of Kurdish places in Syria are absent, in Rojava’s textbooks towns such as Afrin and Qamishli deserve as much attention as larger cities (Erbil, Urfa, Diyarbakir) in Iraq and Turkey. Interestingly, while Western and Kurdish media outlets refer to Rojava as a precise de facto autonomous region, in Rojava’s textbooks there is no map representing this region in detail. Arguably, the reasons for that are twofold. Firstly, Rojava’s boundaries are shifting, for the areas controlled by the YPG and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), in which the YPG is a central actor, change over time, as a result, of combats. Secondly, and according to PYD’s principles, Rojava, unlike KRG in Northern Iraq, is

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Fig. 11.1 ‘Cîranên me (Our neighbours)’ Zanistên Civakî, 6th grade, 2015, p. 117

not a political project with a bordered territory along ethnic lines. Therefore, Rojava or ‘Northern Syria,’ as it is sometimes referred to—a political project encompassing not only the traditional Kurdish enclaves but also Arab areas wishing to adopt ‘democratic confederalism’ as guiding principles—and its boundaries are illusory. Rojava is a space to be shaped by PYD’s political project, not a place. Moreover, as PYD and its militia got increasingly involved in military and political maneuvers beyond Kurdish areas, the ‘Syrianization’ of its agenda and constituencies became inevitable.

Conclusion Kurdistan’s boundaries are particularly difficult to locate, both on the ground and on a map. Nevertheless, the region has a very real ‘national’ existence (to many Kurds), and geopolitical existence (to regional and international powers). Arguably, a stylized map of Greater Kurdistan,

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reproduced in all formats from textbooks to pamphlets and online outlets, has become the single, most important device for Kurds in disseminating the concept of Kurdistan, both among the Kurds and abroad. Nevertheless, Kurdish political parties have never set out to challenge Syrian national borders. In the 1920s, Kurdish activists turned their eyes toward Turkish Kurdistan, their region of origin. As a result, Kurdish intellectuals did not even attempt to represent the boundaries of the Kurdish regions in Syria in the textbooks printed during the French Mandate. Between the 1970s and 1990s, Syrian Kurds took part in a proxy Kurdish struggle as guerrilla fighters or simply by supporting the PKK, KDP or PUK in Turkey and Iraq, respectively. Turkish and Iraqi Kurdish parties, on their side, helped make Kurdish enclaves in Syria even more marginal within the Kurdish nationalist discourse. First the Qamishli uprising of 2004, and then the post-2011 revolt have certainly altered the position of Syria’s Kurds both within the Syrian political arena and in the Kurdish imaginary. In spite of this, although Syrian Kurds are deemed to play a relevant political and military role in present-day Syria, Kurdish textbooks introduced in Northern Syria seem to hint at significant continuities. On the one hand, Greater Kurdistan remains a powerful cultural abstract that conveys the idea of a great nation beyond the international borders and the centrality of the Kurdish issue in the Middle East. On the other hand, while Rojava as a political project seems to be taken for granted by a wide range of political actors as well as observers, its territoriality remains elusive.

Notes 1. Kamuran Bedir Khanwas one of the sons of Emin Ali Bedir Khan, a leader of the Kurdish nationalist movement in Istanbul, and descendent of the emir of Botan (roughly, present South-eastern Anatolian territory), the last Kurdish autonomous emirate dismantled by the Ottoman army in 1838. 2. Centre des Archives Diplomatiques de Nantes [Thereafter CADN], Fonds Beyrouth, No. 802, ‘Remarques au sujet de la carte du Kurdistan.’ Beirut, June 18, 1946. 3. CADN, Fonds Beyrouth, Cabinet Politique, No. 1367, ‘Répartition de la population de la Haute Jézireh.’ Beirut, April 1939. 4. Respectively, CADN, Fonds Beyrouth, Cabinet Politique, No. 1054. Petition addressed to General Billotte. Aleppo, May 9, 1924; CADN, Fonds Beyrouth, Cabinet Politique, No. 1054. Petition addressed to General Billotte. Aleppo, April 1, 1924.

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5. Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Quai d’Orsay, série Levant 1918–40, No. 181. Memo presented by Sureya Bedir Khan to Philippe Berthelot, general secretary to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Paris, August 7, 1928. 6. Service Historique de l’Armée de Terre, 4H 319, No. 3, ‘The Kurds,’ No. 465/C.E/R. Beirut, January 19, 1943. 7. Archives Dominicaines, SAULCHOIR, Haute Jazira, No. 45, Vol. II, ‘The Manifesto from Jazira,’ April, 1938. 8. CADN, Fonds Beyrouth, Cabinet Politique, No. 1097, Ayn al Arab, January 31, 1942. 9. CADN, Fonds Beyrouth, Cabinet Politique, No. 802. Délégation générale de France au Levant. Beirut, September 5, 1945. 10. An exception is Qamishli, where the Syrian army and its security service still have a base. 11. ‘Is the PKK worried by the YPG’s growing popularity?’; https://www. al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2019/11/turkey-syria-pkk-worried-bygrowing-popularity-of-ypg-kurds.html. 12. According to some sources, the PYD has carried out a policy of ‘Kurdification’ in the areas under its control. After imposing Kurdish in most public schools, the authorities would have imposed it on private Christian schools starting in September 2017. These accounts have been denied by PYD’s authorities. See Fabrice Balanche’s report: ‘From Qamishli to Qamishlo: A Trip to Rojava’s New Capital’; http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/ fikraforum/view/from-qamishli-to-qamishlo-a-trip-to-rojavas-new-capital. 13. Actually, pictures of YPG’s (People’s Defence Units) martyrs as well as PYD-revisited feminism fill some of the pages of textbooks. 14. Zanistên civakî. Dibistana seretayî (Social Sciences: Primary School, grade 4, 10–11 years old; grade 5, 11–12 years old; grade 6, 12–13 years old) have been elaborated on the basis of school texts already used in Makhmur (Northern Iraq), a refugee camp hosting Kurds from Turkey and mentored by the PKK between 1998 and 2014. The books, however, have been adapted to the local context and recent developments, namely the struggle against the Islamic State. For instance, the 6th grade textbook, while dealing with the importance of civil society in a given country, displays PYD’s flags as well as a YPG’s picture (p. 18). These books were introduced in the Jazira canton at the start of the 2015–2016 academic year.

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Velud, Christian. 1986. L’émergence et l’organisation sociales des petites villes de Jézireh, en Syrie, sous le mandat français. URBAMA 16–17: 85–103. Vignal, Leila. 2017. The Changing Borders and Borderlands of Syria in a Time of Conflict. International Affairs 93 (4): 809–827. Winter, Stefan. 2009. Les Kurdes de Syrie dans les archives ottomanes. Études Kurdes 10: 125–156.

CHAPTER 12

The Map and Territory in Political Islam: Spatial Ideology and the Teaching of Geography by the Islamic State Matthieu Cimino

Introduction Since the emergence of the Islamic State1 (IS) organization, very few academic works have focused on the spatial ideology surrounding the collective imagination of the jihadist movement. Echoing the wave of attacks perpetrated in Europe since 2015, researchers, journalists, and political actors have focused on the phenomena of “radicalization” or “radicalism,” neglecting many aspects of the ideological system of D¯a’ish, especially its strategies of spatial mobilization and the “geographical frameworks” of its identity. Barely a handful of articles question the mechanisms of the historical narrativity of the movement, i.e., “the collective logics of construction, definition and rearrangement of the past” (Halbwachs 2013) and the processes by which the jihadist group disseminates an identity and an ideal collective memory.

M. Cimino (B) Oxford, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 M. Cimino (ed.), Syria: Borders, Boundaries, and the State, Mobility & Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44877-6_12

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However, the spatial factor plays a considerable role in the elaboration of this political ideal because it was by a territorial blitzkrieg and then by the immediate elaboration of a unifying mythology that the entity inserted itself into the world order. In June 2014, the Islamic State took effective control of a large portion of Iraqi territory (about 91,000 km2 , including the city of Mosul) and then simultaneously proclaimed the restoration of a caliphate (hil¯ afah), the political structure that governed most of the Islamic empires¯ from the death of Mohammed (632) to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and its abolition by Mustafa Kemal2 in 1924. Thus, beyond a logic of systemic export of violence, D¯a’ish also proposes to arrange a new geographical order in the Middle East and to break from the past. It is imperative to explore IS’s schemes for conquest and administration of space and the mechanisms by which the movement justifies and integrates those schemes into its identity narrative in order to understand the project IS carried out. Since the early stages of its conquering enterprise, the jihadist group has worked to shape a nationalist narrative and disseminate it massively, using digital propaganda tools that are widely recognized for their technicality and their vectorial diversity (Atwan 2015). In 2014, the first video titled “Destroying the Borders” went viral. In this production, several masked fighters grouped around Abu Omar al-Chichani (presented as the “minister of war” of the organization) and Abu Mohamed al-Adnani (spokesperson) claim the “end of the borders from Sykes-Picot, […] [to] erase the map, and [remove] hearts” (Internet Archive 2014) and call to continue the fight to “reach Jerusalem [al-quds ].” Subsequently, the group broadcast dozens of similar videos based on the spatial dimension of its project and, therefore, focused on the Middle East and Sykes-Picot heritage. In June 2017, a video from the “Euphrates province” (wil¯ ayat al-fur¯ at 3 ) entitled Sykes-Picot, Chichani-Adnani, reaffirmed the imperative of abolishing the territorial order of the First World War while drawing a parallel between two pairs of men. Mark Sykes and Georges Picot, “those who created borders,” were on one side; on the other were Omar al-Chichani and Mohamed al-Adnani, “those who destroyed them (borders)” and thus erased the original sin of division while revitalizing the spatialized imaginary of Islamic unity. In fact, a process of state-building and nationalist sedimentation accompanied this broad-spectrum storytelling moment, especially for the youth. In the territories it controlled, D¯a’ish maintained schools, trained teachers, and developed a school curriculum. The administrative

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machinery of the IS has engaged in a considerable documentary production: Between 2014 and 2017, several hundred educational documents were published, mixing curriculum and official schoolbooks. This corpus, aimed at students of primary and secondary schools, focused on the study of Islam, history, and geography, contains propaganda leaflets as well as documents edited by the so-called Ministry of Education (diw¯ an at-ta’l¯ım) detailing the logic and educational objectives theorized by the group. Through multiple fieldworks conducted in and around areas formerly administered by the IS, I obtained a fragment of these primary materials and resources that provided information on the strategies and tactics deployed by the IS to teach and to spread its nationalist ideology. This chapter, based on the systematic analysis of these documents, intends to explore the strategies and mechanisms by which the group created, materialized, and disseminated its territorial ideology. How does D¯a’ish project its conception of the world into a spatial reality? What do the notions of space, territory, and border mean for this transnational movement whose transcendent ideology calls for the unity of a community (umma) based on the rejection of belonging to traditional ethnic, racial, and national groups? A desire to revitalize the caliphate and regenerate a collective membership in Sunni Islam4 lies at the heart of the project carried by the Islamic State organization and by other non-state actors stemming from the revolution and then from the Syrian civil war. Even if this political project is part of a symbolic approach with sometimes vague or contradictory outlines, including the concepts of caliphate and umma, it is nonetheless based on historical imaginary and on specific spatial repositories. The purpose of this text is twofold: first, to retrace the historicity of these concepts. Within the IS, the “producers of meaning” of the movement inscribed their reflections in very long-term sociohistorical trajectories, built by common references that nurture and maintain the territorial representations of this idealized Islamic world. The objective is to extract this intellectual foundation, through a reflection on the meaning of territory and borders in Islamic lands, since the emergence of the Abbasid Empire (750) to the present day. Second, once this substrate has been identified, this chapter proposes a reflection on the contemporary perceptions of the Islamic and extra-Islamic spaces as experienced by D¯a’ish or its followers. By exploring the cartography produced and disseminated by the group through its schoolbooks, this chapter will propose an explanatory diagram of its territorial ideology.

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Between Fixity and Flexibility: A Brief Theory of Empires Boundaries In history, geography, and political science, borders are primarily considered to be tangible realities. Sometimes invisible or hidden, often traced directly on the ground, they constitute the envelope of the states and define the scope of their territoriality, i.e., the space on which states are able to exert a form of sovereignty. Acting as exclusive separators (Newman and Paasi 1998), boundaries are organic and act as regulators of the Westphalian order of international relations.5 Boundaries separate as much as they connect the states and ensure the normative balance of the world. Beyond this materialization, borders also constitute powerful markers of identity as well as major dimensions of the collective imagination of social groups. Boundaries are now perceived as a permanence of history: In the words of Billig (1995), the idea of nation and the concept of dividing lines would be largely “trivialized,” inscribed in the collective consciousness as an acquired, even immutable, reality. Internalized, the Westphalian system and its dividing lines play a preponderant role in the construction of collective imaginations. In the 1990s, some researchers theorized the advent of a world “without borders” (Ohmae 1990) and the “end of territories” (Badie 1995). Even though the fall of the Berlin Wall has undeniably altered the grids of reading of the contemporary world, the fact remains that boundaries persist as a fundamental reference in collective representations. This representation of the inviolability of borders and nations is a recent construct. In the “era of Empires,” as Eric J. Hobsbawm said, the territory, if one accepts the concept’s anachronism, was thought of as fluid and constantly evolving. Borders were experienced as oscillations, progressing and retracting in parallel to the fate of conquests and battles. While the study of medieval cartographies today makes it possible to evaluate the logic of spatial representation by early geographers, it is difficult to identify precisely how decision-makers and political actors perceived the world and its peripheral spaces, i.e., the margins they were supposed to rule, under the Roman Empire or the Abbasid Caliphate. According to Grosby (1997), if borders were thought of as elastic, the decision to conquer new territories and to collect additional taxes was generally made “being often a consequence of the calculation as to whether or not the increased revenues gained from any further territorial expansion beyond

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the momentarily established frontier would be greater than the military and administrative expenses required for the effort” (Grosby 1997: 2). The territories of empires extended and sometimes retracted according to the decisions of the central power or by local initiative, as was the case during the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula by the troops of Tareq Ibn Ziyad in 711, a decision taken far away from Baghdad without reporting to the capital. A frontier, therefore, exists by its antecedents and its historical precedents made of advances and retreats, which give the empire or the state its contemporary form. The borders of empires also know phases of immobility due to military stalemates or political reasons; for instance, the Arab-Byzantine border between the seventh and twelfth centuries. During these intervals, sovereigns generally seek to maintain their power and to ensure the stability of the social order, leading to the establishment of so-called civilizational policies within the consolidated territory or in the newly conquered margins. In fact, alongside a desire for cultural homogenization, the development of a centralized and coercive administrative order made it possible to strengthen a sovereign’s legitimacy and political authority. On both sides of the borderlands, antagonistic cultural spaces developed because of those policies of homogenization, often thought of in reaction to the neighboring otherness. For example, Abd al-Malik, the fifth Umayyad ruler (685–805), allegedly elaborated his monetary and Arabization policies in reaction to his Byzantine neighbor, Emperor Justinian II (685–695 and then 705–711), conferring on the caliphate an institutional Islamic coloration as a mirror of the Christian identity of Constantinople. Thus, beyond a territorial logic, borders are embodied in a symbolic dimension and define otherness. In this sense, the observation of borders and the territories they encompass helps to inform us about the mechanisms by which states or empires think about national identity, and how this is lived, thought, and received by different social groups. As military lines of contact (the “isobars” described by French geographer Jacques Ancel 1938), boundaries are a tool of geographical socialization embodied in narrative logic and strategies of legitimation. Over the long term, boundaries shape then solidify the collective symbolism and the meaning attributed to the territory. If the boundary initially materialized a confrontation between tribes or social groups that were not particularly aware of the sociocultural realities of their neighbors, it progressively turned into a revelator of those antagonisms. On both sides of this separation emerged distinct

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identities and mental spaces perceived as different by those who produce their meaning. Borders, as lines of sociocultural fracture, produce hybrid regions called borderlands, inhabited by borderlanders, where contradictory identities intermingle and entangle. In fact, while borders are tools that produce differences, they are nonetheless intercultural mediators. Borders are not only social constructs, which can be made and unmade according to the political imperatives of the moment. Borders embody a certain durability as well as a software of representation of the space while contributing to the consolidation of the symbolic identity of the social groups. In addition, leaders and politicians know how to seize and use these identities for their own benefit: an identity presented as unique and immutable sediments and become an immemorial object that must be protected from all forms of singularity. Boundaries define the separation between the pure and the impure and, consequently, between two “semic systems” (Ferguson and Raffestin 1986): Where one civilization stops, another one begins, defining the areas of cleanliness and barbarism. As dividing lines, boundaries thus embody a moral, religious, or social system and implicit or explicit norms. According to Barth (1998), it is only through the construction of material or symbolic boundaries that these identities emerge, but they remain nonetheless elastic and permanently reconfigured (Bhabha 1990), in parallel with territorial evolutions. However, boundaries also maintain a permanent identity foundation or, at least, are perceived as such. In fact, the history of civilizations, their mechanisms of sedimentation, and the ideologies and spatial representations that shape their collective imaginations can be read by observing the compartmentalization of territories. These sanctuaries, defined by a history of armed confrontations, are organized, theorized, reconfigured, and then disseminated in order to be engraved in the collective consciousness of the people. Collective identities cannot be comprehended and analyzed without evaluating the narrative processes used upstream, i.e., the way in which the actors themselves represent this identity, and how, in response, symbolic and physical boundaries are redrawn. This mechanism of “narrativity,” the process by which borders are filled with symbols, gives birth to a true “territorial socialization” (Duchacek 1986): Over time, the territory becomes part of a collective logic and turns into something banal, acquired, internalized and, eventually, a civilizational legacy.

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Shaping the World: The Founding Role of Medieval Geographical Thought (Ninth--Eleventh Centuries) The study of this process of socialization first requires exploring the primitive texts and cartographies published by the producers of meaning who sought to conceptualize this geography and to give it some visibility. The understanding of this spatial pedagogy is based on the piecemeal and aggregative work of the first geographers who helped to create the core of territorial imagination, through the creation of geography books and treatises, during the Abbasid Golden Age (ninth–eleventh centuries). For millenarist groups like D¯a’ish, some of these works are invested with a heavy mythological burden. Because the maps were produced in the time of the origins, they contain a representation of space; however elementary, that representation sanctions a collective identity perceived as unique. In addition, during the medieval period, iconography, cultural, and cartographic productions were abundant and, through the images and the representation of territories and borders, contributed to shape and especially to progressively peg a spatial imaginary. It is thus essentially the historical legacy and the sticky realities dotting the collective imageries that must be examined. In Islamic lands, the first representations of space were produced at the end of the Umayyad Empire (661–750) and at the beginning of the Abbasid Empire (750–1258). While European cartographies emerged at the beginning of the thirteenth century (John I spent most of his life traveling his kingdom on horseback, from 1205), it was in 820 that the Caliph al-Ma’m¯un (813–833) commissioned the edition of the first large Arab map of the world. Although lost, the document constituted one of the pillars of the Abbasid geography (Brauer 1995) that experienced a notable boom in the ninth century, following the rediscovery of the Greek planispheres of Ptolemy and thanks to the creation of the houses of wisdom (buy¯ ut al-h.ikmah), which energized and institutionalized cartographic research. At the end of the ninth century, Arabic, Persian, and Greek translators gave life to numerous geography treatises collected in the margins of the empire. However, the first cartographic productions did not refer to any bordering of the world at that time. Separation spaces do not seem to exist, or at least had not yet materialized.

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Essentially descriptive, the .surat al-‘¯ ard. (configuration of the world), the Arab ancestor of geography, offers the image of a circular world centered on Baghdad: As a nodal point, the kisw¯ ar materializes the centrality of Iraq (Tixier du Mesnil 2010) and Iran, recalling the considerable influence of Persian geographers in Abbasid geography. Different areas or cultural spaces coexist around this median place, revealing a “truly geopolitical division of great civilizations” (ibid. 2010). Although distinct from maps, these territories were not necessarily separated by identifiable physical boundaries. Despite the absence of political lines of division, Abbasid thinkers and geographers were acutely aware of the cultural heterogeneity of the world. The cartographic productions of the ninth century define a representation of the world on a macro scale—described by the geographer Michel Foucher (2013) as “meta-borders”—while presenting the lands under the political authority of the caliphate as a unitary and perfectly homogeneous reality. With the appearance of the mas¯ al¯ık wal-mam¯ al¯ık (“the roads and the states”), the Abbasid geographers, by focusing on the communications channels and margins of the Empire, identified for the first time forms of political and spatial fragmentation within the caliphate itself. Until the end of the tenth century, reading the caliphal space by the prism of cultural or political divisions does not seem relevant. For the pioneers of Islamic geography, the notion of umma postulates both the unity and indivisibility of the Muslim world and the inevitability of the endemic diffusion of Islam in which civilization and education were expected to govern the course of the world. This perspective of a boundless extension of the new revealed religion was the consequence of the dazzling initial conquests or “victories” (fut¯ uh.¯ at ), perceived by the first Muslim communities as a divine sign. In fact, in the period following the death of Muhammad (632) and the advent of the “rightly-guided” caliphs (al-hulaf¯ a’ ur¯ as a pior¯ ashid¯ un 6 ), the early conquerors considered the bounding space neering front or a frontier, that is to say, an infinitely expandable territory. For example, in 843, the Persian philosopher Muhammad al-Khuw¯arizm¯ı published a Treatise on Geography, dividing the world not by climates or civilizational spaces, but between Muslims and infidels, calling for the retraction of the territory held by the latter. However, beyond this pioneering logic and this symbol of separation, the first line of territorial rupture between them and us appeared, although this interior and exterior were still unclear. Their definition emerged later, at the beginning of the tenth century.

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At that time, the spectacular victories of early Islam had slowed down considerably. In the west, the Byzantine Empire resisted while Constantinople was conquered only in 1453; to the east, the Abbasid army stopped at the foothills of the Himalayas. While the expansion of the Empire was slowed down or even interrupted, geographers, theologians, and by capillarity, the Abbasid central power, sought to provide a grid to understand the phenomenon that was contradicting the vision of an Islam expandable to infinity. The answer took the form of a spatial concept separating the world into three geographically distinct territories. The d¯ ar al-isl¯ am, territory “where the law of Islam prevails”; the d¯ ar al-h.arb or d¯ ar al-kufr, territory “where the law of war prevails” or “impiety” and where it is, therefore, legitimate to engage in conquests; and finally, the dar al-s.ulh., territory of the “truce,” a gray area of interactions and confrontations.7 These concepts also meant, above all, the recognition of “external” boundaries to Islam, that is to say, the material existence of a precisely defined Islamic territory, in opposition to the domain of impiety. However, internal borders emerged alongside the external borders. Originally hyper-centralized and exercising a form of sovereignty over its entire territory, the Abbassid Empire started a dynamic of fragmentation in the ninth century. Drawing power from the central power and caliphate authority of Baghdad, several political regions formed and developed basic sovereign functions, including the levying of taxes. For example, in 820, the Samanids exercised the first form of local authority by taking control of Transoxiana and part of Khorasan (now Iran), as well as the Hamdanids in northern Syria (now the territory held by Kurds). Similarly, the Saffarids stopped at the gates of Baghdad in 876. At the beginning of the tenth century, the Abbasid authority of Baghdad lost control of most of Iraq. This process of fragmentation is reflected in the work of the first cartographers; for example, in the Book of Configurations of Provinces (kit¯ ab .suwar al-¯ aq¯ al¯ım) or the Book of the Disposition of Countries (kit¯ ab taqw¯ım al-buld¯ an), published by Ab¯u Zayd al-Balkh¯ı8 in 920 or in Better Knowledge in the Distribution of Regions (al-taq¯ as¯ım f¯ı ma’arifat al-‘¯ aq¯ al¯ım), published in the tenth century by Muh.ammad al-Maqdis¯ı. In Maqdis¯ı’s book, the author postulates that the Islamic world (‘al¯ am al-isl¯ am¯ı), if not unitary, is actually composed of 51 “countries” (buld¯ an) with heterogeneous political, social, and cultural practices, recognizing the existence of cultural particularities within the caliphate. According to Parvin and Sommer (1980), who studied the cartography produced in

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The Distribution of Regions, it would not be “unfair to conclude that [the tenth-century Arab geographers] recognized the existence of political boundaries.” Indeed, as the Abbasid Empire became fragmented while competing authorities and heterogeneous practices of governance and taxation emerged, local identities appeared as well—or at least were identified or qualified as such by geographers. By moving away from the sovereignty of a city, Arab travelers and geographers discovered cultural and religious dissonant habitus, which they categorize and define in their treatises. This cultural separation between different countries then appeared on the maps, in the form of a line or a limit (h.add): These separations, which failed to constitute a true political border, were used to qualify transitional zones, identifying the political influence of the surrounding cities. The cartographic productions of the time also show dividing lines often straight, illustrating that these borders revealed different political practices, even under the symbolic administration of a single center, in this case, Baghdad. Gradually, the lexicological field describing the external and inner borders of Islam became denser, and with it, the view of otherness.

Building and Disseminating a Collective ¯ Memory: The Question of the Da’ish Schoolbooks Among the non-state organizations that have built an apparatus of political mobilization and encouraged the diffusion of spatial imaginary, the Islamic State remains one of the most active and structured. Since 2014, D¯a’ish has embarked on a considerable propaganda undertaking, disseminating, a complex and particularly furnished ideological arsenal on the Internet and in the territories it occupied. One of the major obstacles posed by the evaluation of this device remains the density of accessible sources and the difficulty of determining the origin or confirming the authenticity of the material. At the peak of its activity, IS and its affiliated proxies could publish dozens or even hundreds of various elements of propaganda (sound, audio-visual documents, texts, etc.) daily, generally intended for a public not living in the territories held by the group, in many languages. Accessing the material designed and published on site, especially material intended for local broadcast, is a useful way to explore the ideological system of the group. This approach makes it possible to assess the origin, level, and objective of the speeches made in the territories held by

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the group. For example, in parallel with videos intended for the Internet created with a broad spectrum, the group used to broadcast in parallel a second category of content, to a more restricted audience, for internal use only or for recruitment and management of the new members. The choice to rely on a specific and traceable primary source, namely schoolbooks published by D¯a’ish, during a limited period (2015–2016), and in an identified region (Manbij, Syria), avoids the pitfall of dispersion and ensures an academic rigor too often absent from many works. From a practical point of view, these propaganda documents produced and disseminated locally were relatively convenient to obtain and aggregate, in relative security, and their study is part of a sociological and historical approach considered relevant here. Although the first Arab cartographic works emerged in the middle ages, it is really only at the beginning of the nineteenth century that their knowledge was diffused, following the development of mass printing in the Middle East. Under the declining Ottoman Empire, the territorial ideology of the nationalist movements gradually developed to materialize in 1919 at the Paris Conference, where the border ambitions of each were presented. During the mandate period9 and after the independence, this cartographical imaginary carried by Arab intellectuals was very quickly confiscated by the central powers, which appropriated the normative legitimacy and, therefore, the monopoly of enacting the outlines of the nation. In fact, throughout the twentieth century, centralized poles of influence created, normalized, institutionalized, and then disseminated spatial thought and the accepted definition of us and them and thus symbolic boundaries. However, during the Arab revolutions, this privilege was vigorously contested: beyond a re-appropriation of the public space, each of the Tunisian, Egyptian, Libyan, and Syrian mobilizations called to reformulate the nationalist narratives, confiscated for decades by authoritarian regimes, and redefine national history according to alternative prisms. Among the manifestations of this transition, the emergence of non-state actors in Syria and Iraq (and in particular Kurdish political actors, such as the Democratic Union Party (PYD), or Salafi-jihadist groups, such as D¯a’ish) was accompanied by the production of schoolbooks and curricula on history and geography, demonstrating a desire to set a geographical standard and a standardized cartographic imaginary. Be they the work of the first geographers of Islam, of Arab authoritarian systems, or of sympathizers of the IS, these productions of knowledge are operating on two levels. On the one hand, they operate by shaping

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and cementing spatial representations and the territorial ideology of the world around us; on the other hand, they function by serving as legitimating devices for the political powers or actors who use them, thus justifying their territorial claims. More generally, any cartographic or geographical element produced by a social group is valuable because it provides information on the logic of the physical and discursive construction of the boundaries and on the evolution of their meaning. Thus, territorial socialization takes place at the atomized level of the individual and, more broadly, at the level of the collective. Consciously and unconsciously, at both levels, spatial representations are then gradually internalized. The study of textbooks, which lies at the intersection of the sociology of education and political science, is a particularly powerful tool for understanding these mechanisms. Although underemployed, this academic field intends to explore the history, architecture, and articulation of nationalist imageries from educational content for children. As vectors of this socialization, schoolbooks play a considerable role in the definition of memory and collective identity by describing the position of the self with respect to the other (Alayan et al. 2012). If all the subjects taught, from biology to arithmetic, through physical education and sports, play a major role in the development of the personal and collective representation of the younger generations, the observation of the teaching of history, geography, and civic education is a privileged tool of the “archeology of knowledge,” according to Michel Foucault’s consecrated expression. In fact, through the prism of the social sciences, policy-makers can freely create, shape, organize, and disseminate a story perceived as legitimate to individuals across generations. Thus, by identifying the excluded or included elements of the national narrative, it is possible to extract the doctrinal structure of the group studied and to establish a sociological photograph. The reflection proposed in this chapter is based on the systematic study of twenty schoolbooks and a curriculum, dated 1437 of the Hegira calendar,10 intended for classes ranging from the 4th to the 8th grade, according to the pre-2011 standards of the Syrian educational system. These manuals, collected in 2016 in several places, were accompanied by several hundred others, marked with the heading “Aleppo province, Manbij region” (wil¯ ayat h.alab, mint.aqat manbij ) and stamped with the seal of the Islamic State. Our first hypothesis is that these textbooks were used as pedagogical support in Daesh-controlled areas of northern Syria (Cimino 2017). Since the writing of this work, semi-structured interviews conducted at the Iraqi-Syrian border have confirmed that these books were

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used for educational purposes, albeit in a relatively limited and often noninstitutionalized way.11 An article by Foreign Affairs confirmed this reality, namely that the education system set up by D¯a’ish was piecemeal or even failing because it was essentially oriented toward military learning and dedicated to the formation of “lion cubs of the caliphate” (shab¯ al al-hil¯ afah), child soldiers dedicated to fighting and serving the group’s ¯ propaganda (Qaddour 2017). These books deal with a variety of subjects, namely Koranic study (alqur’¯ an al-kar¯ım), Arabic writing, English (English for the Islamic State), life sciences, doctrine (aq¯ıdat ul-musl¯ım), hadith of the Prophet (al-h.ad¯ıt ¯ ul-nabaw¯ı), history, reading, mathematics, science, and biography of the Prophet (s¯ırat ul-nabaw¯ı). Only the history and geography books were analyzed. In Confluences Méditerranée, we deplored the fact that unlike the mass of administrative files abandoned by the fighters who left the premises and taken back by the local forces, the recovered and surveyed school books do not contain any element likely to provide information on the production itself, and do not display any specific date, author, geographical origin, or any reference to any office that contributed to the writing or conceptualization of the documents. (Cimino 2017)

The only figure in the introduction to several works is a reference to the Ministry of Education (diw¯ an at-ta’l¯ım) of D¯a’ish, with no other element. In fact, these documents would have been produced locally by a team of teachers and graphic designers sympathetic to the IS, copying the form of pre-existing schoolbooks12 using information extracted from the Saudi school curriculum; the two are very similar in their presentation of the first moments of Islam. It is, above all, the content of the works that provide access to the jihadist group’s imaginary space, rather than the identity of the people who created this teaching material.

An Injunction to Conquer: Definition and Symbolism of the Islamic ¯ World According to Da’ish Reading the geography and history textbooks produced by D¯a’ish reveals the interpretative framework of the group’s producers of meaning, which is situated at the crossroads between the intellectual heritage of the first Arab geographers and the ideological prism of militant Islam.

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At first, it is interesting to observe that the educational manuals and related propaganda tools are full of concepts of medieval geography, most of which are absent from current sources. The use of certain terms, such as tug¯ ˙ ur (advanced places), ‘aw¯ a.sim (fortified border zone), and rib¯ a.t ¯ (fortresses) (Morabia 2013), denotes an ability to revitalize and manipulate concepts that are often out of date or out of contemporary vocabulary, as well as a re-appropriation of the lexicographical subtleties of medieval geography. As a major source of inspiration, the period of the Abbasid Golden Age (ninth–eleventh centuries) is very much emphasized by activists producing meaning both for the density of its practical teachings and for its political context, described as “an ideal (hadaf ) to reach.” Beyond this editorial aspect, the cartographic production of D¯a’ish seems to be in continuity with a territorial thought built in the Abbasid houses of wisdom and consolidated throughout the twentieth century by most Islamist movements, starting with the Muslim Brotherhood. In fact, the world perceived by the jihadist group revolves around two relatively common geographical places: the domain of Islam (d¯ ar al-isl¯ am), “where the law of God prevails” (fasat.¯ at al-h.aqq f¯ıh¯ a šar‘u’ll¯ ahi yuq¯ am), and the domain of impiety (d¯ ar al-kufr), “where lies prevail” (fasat.¯ at f¯ıh¯ a alb¯ a.til ). As explained in a book for 14- and 15-year-old students, “[the first] refers to the territories13 held by the Islamic State which exercized legitimate (šar’¯ı) state power [while the latter] characterizes the rest of the world, including most of the states in which Islamic authority is exercised” (Cimino 2017). However, these two concepts, which are relatively shared in Islamist militant thought, are accompanied by another level of reading, that of the “Islamic world (al-‘alam al-¯ısl¯ am¯ı) inscribed in an intermediary culturalist representation between the two essentialized spaces that are d¯ ar al-isl¯ am and d¯ ar al-kufr” (ibid. 2017). According to a geography book produced by the IS, within the area of disbelief is a gray, hybrid area composed of “countries where there [is] a al-musl¯ım¯ un). In the cara majority14 of Muslims” (duwal yakt¯ıru f¯ıh¯ ¯ unites the majority of countries tographic imaginary of D¯a’ish, this space with a Sunni majority that had lived under the authority or the administration of a caliphal pole of medieval Islam. However, the producers of this document present here a very refined conception of what is or should be this “Islamic world.” Precisely defined according to geodesic coordinates,15 it testifies as much to an acute sensitivity to the territorial heritage of the caliphal periods as to an injunction to conquer. Even if this spatiality is part of a set of medieval precedents, it nonetheless gives

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a powerful echo to contemporary Islamist literature. At the beginning of the twentieth century, in reaction to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the abolition of the caliphate, a number of thinkers from the Muslim Brotherhood ventured to rethink the relationship between states, nations, territories, and religions and to question territoriality and its meanings. Ideologist and founder of the Muslim Brotherhood,16 Hassan alBanna laid the groundwork in his Epistles (1927), theorizing the idea that any territory or any space that had ever been under the influence or the direct control of an Islamic power should ultimately be reinstated to the caliphate (Adraoui 2016). In short, any political actor claiming Islam as his ideology can thus draw from the history of Islamic conquests a historical legitimation for the reintegration of this or that territory, from the Safavid Empire (1531–1706), once Sunni, to the peripheries from Umayyad Andalusia (711–1492). In this case, while this project of revitalization is part of a symbolic logic of the return to the mythological times of the origins, it remains nonetheless theorized around precise borders. In other words, the outer envelope of the caliphate of the Islamic world is conceived in very Westphalian terms, from which the IS has difficulty extricating itself. Between the formally territorialized interior and exterior, there would indeed be political boundaries. In reality, if D¯a’ish seems to be quite accommodating to external borders, and therefore to the logic of empire, it is essentially the idea of fragmentation that is heavily opposed in militant Islam. Beyond a doctrinal tension with the notion of umma, the idea of segmenting the Muslim world is marked by a heavy symbolic burden. Indeed, in the early twentieth century, the territorial division of the Middle East after the war and Sykes-Picot agreements (1916) is perceived as the fruit of a Western plot to destroy the Islamic community. In the minds of reactionary Islamist thinkers and in popular representations, the importation of “arbitrary” borders would have been favored for the sole purpose of undoing the supposed unity of the Islamic world. According to a schoolbook of D¯a’ish, after the First World War, the “d¯ ar al-isl¯ am” and, by extension, the caliphate would have been targeted by an exogenous plot carried by the “Crusaders, Jews and Rafidites,” destined to obliterate Islam as a revealed religion and also to “get their hands on the wealth of Muslims.” This conspiracy, which failed because it did not align with the will of God, would have relied on “the importation of the nation-states” and, therefore, would have fragmented an ideal Islamic space, perceived as geographically unitary. In this sense, according

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to Islamist literature that is relatively uniform on this point, the renewal of the caliphate is part of a logic of rejection and of an alternative to these exterior constructions dedicated to breaking the spatial and symbolic unity of “d¯ar al-isl¯am” (Cimino 2017). More broadly, as evoked by Mohamed-Ali Adraoui (2016), these “imported” lines are in reality the result of the politicization by the West of internal cultural boundaries: Pre-existing and tolerated, the “admissible” (i.e., internal) separations would have metamorphosed into “bad” (i.e., external, but within the realm of Islam) boundaries by the conspiratorial hand of the West. In fact, in parallel with the virtual recognition of the external borders of the Islamic world and the difficulty Islamist thinkers face when approaching international relations outside the contemporary legal field, the Islamic State organization does not stand in the way of the existence of internal specificities. Thus, within the [Islamic world] there would exist singular cultural zones or blocs, separated by symbolic or memorial boundaries. In apparent rupture with the contemporary division of the world, these metaphorical lines testify to the recognition by D¯a’ish of a certain plasticity of these spaces, subject to a history and an evolution of their own. (ibid. 2017)

Within the IS system of governance, the existence of different governorates (wil¯ ay¯ at ), such as those of Al-Anbar, Nineveh, or Damascus, certainly demonstrates a desire to create a coherent administrative apparatus and to foster the recognition of cultural boundaries and, therefore, identity specificities within the umma. This grid of reading is part of a logic shared by contemporary Islamist movements for whom “local histories, customs, and other non-denominational identities” must be respected (Adraoui 2016). Islam, in this sense, should be understood only as state and organizational support to ensure the proper functioning and development of the community of believers. In addition, the caliphate is thought of as a nation and Islam as a vector of collective mobilization, symbolizing a continuation of the medieval management of space. For D¯a’ish, internal boundaries are permissible, while external borders embody the justification of its difficulties with progressing territorially and ensure the sociopolitical control of large spaces.

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Conclusion Thus, the spatial thinking of the Islamic State organization is part of a complex and heterogeneous set of references derived from the work of the first geographers of Islam and fed with political representations of militant Islam of the twentieth century. In appearance, the jihadist group thinks of borders as an objective of foreign policy, that of an “Islamic world” to be revitalized, while framing them in a precise and highly symbolic historical heritage, that of the first caliphate conquests. In this sense, D¯a’ish is struggling to get away from the organizational logic of the Westphalian world, while at the same time appropriating and reusing its codes: a state, a territory, a population. This territorial ideology remains anchored in a symbolic reality, aiming to reconstruct and reinvigorate the unity of a historical construct, that of d¯ ar al-isl¯ am, whose existence had never really disappeared but, instead, had been “secularized” by Pan-Arab nationalism (Parvin and Sommer 1980). In this sense, the IS uses the symbols of collective mobilization of peoples and what it probably identifies as the “need for empire” and shared greatness. In prospective terms, if the unprecedented violence displayed by the group in the territories it controlled contributed to the development of a strong popular antagonism, it would be interesting to continue to explore and question the reception of the political project carried by the group.

Notes 1. To refer to the organization “Islamic State,” this article uses the acronym “IS” (or ISIS), “D¯a’ish,” “Dawlah” (State) or “hil¯afah” (caliphate) ¯ according to the narrative logic of its supporters. 2. Mustafa Kemal aka “Atatürk” was the first president of the Republic of Turkey, from 1923 to 1938. 3. The regions of Deir ez-Zor (Syria) and Al-Anbar (Iraq). 4. Of which ISIS claims to be the sole legitimate representative. 5. On October 24, 1648, the Treaties of Westphalia (or Peace of Westphalia) concluded the European wars of “Thirty Years” and established an international order based on the sovereignty and the theoretical equality of the states. 6. The “Rightly-Guided” caliphs designate the four successors of Muhammad: Abu Bakr (632–634), Omar (634–644), Othman (644–656), and Ali (656–661).

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7. However, this notion emerges later, as an explanatory reinforcement to the incapacity or lack of political will of the new Islamic empires to conquer the borderlands. 8. Founder of the “Balkh¯ı” school Zayd, al-Balkh¯ı lived between 850 and 934. 9. That is to say, from 1920 (treaties of Sèvres and San Remo) to the late 1940s, when most of the Middle East states were under the administration of France and Great Britain. 10. The year 1437 of the Hegira calendar dates from October 1, 2015 to October 1, 2016 of the Gregorian calendar. 11. Interviews conducted at the Iraqi–Syrian border, 2017. 12. Ibid. 13. In this case, several centers of radiation (Syria, Iraq, northern Egyptian Sinai, a Caucasian band, the Libyan coast, and part of Nigeria) from which radiate white arrows, pointing in all directions of the globe, but especially to Jerusalem (al-aqs¯ a ), Mecca (al-ka’ba), and Medina (al-masjid an-nabaw¯ı), reinforced with a symbol on the map. 14. It is interesting to note here that the map presenting this idealized world refers to a dichotomy between “majority” and “minority,” a dichotomy yet largely absent in Islamic thought and especially in militant Islam. 15. In this case, the latter would be located “between the latitudes 11.50 degrees south of the equator, that is to say the most extensive south of the Tanzanian border on the African continent, and 51.45 degrees north of the Equator, with the northern border of Kazakhstan, in the heart of Asia. In this way, the Islamic world spans more than 63 degrees across all latitudes, essentially in the northern half of the earth’s surface, [representing] five times more [land] than for the hemisphere South. Regarding its height, its surface extends from 16.4 degrees west (Greenwich), [extending] in the western desert of the African continent to the country of the Maghreb (Morocco), Mauritania and Senegal, and 140 degree east (Greenwich) with the Indonesian border, which is the longest distance to the East” (Cimino 2017). 16. Founded in 1927, the Muslim Brotherhood is an Egyptian Islamist movement.

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Alayan, Samira, Sarhan Dhouib, and Achim Rohde (dir.). 2012. The Politics of Education Reform in the Middle East: Self and Other in Textbooks and Curricula. New York: Berghahn Books. Ancel, Jacques. 1938. Géographie des frontières. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Atwan, Abdel B. 2015. Islamic State—The Digital Caliphate. Berkeley: University of California Press. Badie, Bertrand. 1995. La fin des territoires. Essai sur le désordre international et l’utilité sociale du respect. Paris: Fayard. Barth, Fredrik. 1998. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference. Long Grove: Waveland Press. Bhabha, Homi K. 1990. Nation and Narration. New York: Routledge. Billig, Michael. 1995. Banal Nationalism. London: Thousand Oaks. Brauer, Ralph W. 1995. Boundaries and Frontiers in Medieval Muslim Geography. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 85 (6): 1–73. Cimino, Matthieu. 2017. Penser la spatialité en Islam militant: le cas des manuels scolaires de géographie de l’État islamique (2015–2016). Confluences Méditerranée 101 (2): 81–95. Duchacek, Ivo D. 1986. The Territorial Dimension of Politics: Within, Among, and Across Nations. Boulder: Westview Press. Ferguson, Jeanne, and Claude Raffestin. 1986. Elements for a Theory of the Frontier. Diogènes 34 (134): 1–18. Foucher, Michel. 2013. La méta-frontière chez Samuel Huntington ou l’avenir d’une représentation. Anatoli. De l’Adriatique à la Caspienne. Territoires, Politique, Sociétés 4: 111–116. Grobsy, Steven. 1997. Borders, Territory and Nationality in the Ancient Near East and Armenia. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 40 (1): 1–29. Halbwachs, Maurice. 2013. Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire. Paris: Albin Michel (first published in 1925). Internet Archive. 2014. Kasr al-h.ud¯ ud s¯ayks-b¯ık¯ u. https://archive.org/details/ aboasd30_hotmail_201407. Accessed November 23, 2019. ˘ Morabia, Alfred. 2013. Le Gihâd dans l’Islam médiéval. Paris: Albin Michel. Newman, David, and Anssi Paasi. 1998. Fences and Neighbours in the Postmodern World: Boundary Narratives in Political Geography. Progress in Human Geography 22 (2): 186–207. Ohmae, Kenichi. 1990. The Borderless World: Power and Strategy in the Interlinked Economy. New York: Harper Business. Parvin, Manoucher, and Maurie Sommer. 1980. Dar al-Islam: The Evolution of Muslim Territoriality and Its Implications for Conflict Resolution in the Middle East. International Journal of Middle East Studies 11 (1): 1–21.

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Qaddour, Kinana. 2017. Inside ISIS’ Dysfunctional Schools—The Failure of the Group’s Educational System. Foreign Affairs, October 13. Tixier du Mesnil, Emmanuelle. 2010. Panorama de la géographie arabe médiévale. In Géographes et voyageurs au Moyen Âge, ed. Emmanuelle Tixier du Mesnil. Nanterre: Presses universitaires de Paris.

Location Index

A Adana, 61, 64, 66 Afrin, 146, 258, 259, 261 Ahwaz, 248 Aintab, 36, 37, 40, 59 Alawite (State), 10, 14, 78, 79, 82, 84, 86–89, 96, 101, 103, 127–130, 132, 133, 135, 136, 138, 140, 145 Aleppo, 10, 11, 35–43, 49, 50, 59–62, 64–66, 69, 76–90, 155, 159, 202, 211, 213, 229, 237, 252, 258, 263 Alexandretta, 49, 61, 66, 70, 77, 79, 80, 86, 87, 89, 223, 249 Alexandretta (Sandjak), 56, 58, 60, 61, 79, 81, 82, 85, 88, 129, 145 Algiers, 30 Alvand (Peaks), 248 Amouda, 68 Ana, 156 Anatolia (Province), 38, 39, 80, 127, 248, 257

Anbar (Province), 156 Ankara (Protocol), 49, 50, 60, 69 Ankara (Treaty), 8, 41, 55, 252 Antakya, 14, 66, 127–146 Anti-Lebanon (Mountains), 110, 120 Antioch, 56, 59, 70, 82, 85 Arabkir, 248 Ararat’ (Mount), 248 Aras (River), 248 Ardahan, 248 Armutlu (District), 139, 140 Arsal, 120 Arsuz, 14, 136, 146 (al-)Ashara, 156, 165 Atarib, 201 Azaz, 202

B Baghdad, 38, 49, 50, 69, 249, 273, 276–278 Bah-Kaleh, 248 Bakur (Territory), 261

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Cimino (ed.), Syria: Borders, Boundaries, and the State, Mobility & Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44877-6

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LOCATION INDEX

Baniyas, 162 Bashur (Territory), 261 Basra, 38 Beirut, 40, 53, 61, 67, 70, 78, 80, 81, 90, 103, 109, 113, 115, 117–119, 140, 202, 227, 256, 263, 264 Bekaa (Valley), 120, 122 Bilad al-Sham (Territory), 252 Bint Jbeil, 114 Black (Sea), 248 (al-)Bukamal, 165, 167, 169, 170, 185, 186 (al-)Busayra, 165, 184, 186 C Cilicia, 40, 41, 69, 77 Çobanbey, 49 Conoco (Oil field), 174, 178, 179, 183, 186 Constantinople, 38, 39, 43, 273, 277 D Damascus, 10, 21, 36, 38, 40, 42, 76–79, 81–90, 104, 109, 113, 115, 118, 156, 159, 162, 163, 171, 201, 203, 208, 224, 226, 227, 229, 234, 237, 252, 256–258, 284 Damascus (Declaration), 160, 226 Daraa, 1 Daraya, 210 Darbasiya (Derbessié), 68, 258 Dayr az-Zur, 11, 15, 16, 121 Defne, 14, 136, 139, 140, 142, 146 Derik (Diwrik), 248, 258 Dhiban, 157, 164 Diyarbakir, 248, 255, 261 Doha, 111 Doha (Agreement), 117, 118, 123 Douma, 201

E Erbil, 248, 261 Erzinjan, 248 Erzurum, 30, 43, 248 Euphrates (River), 35–39, 156, 248

F Fars (Province), 248

G Gaziantep, 43, 44, 131, 215–217 Gharanij, 169, 187 Ghuta (Forest), 233 Golan (Heights), 2, 21, 102

H Hama, 38, 88, 201 Hamrin (Mountains), 248 Haran, 248 Harbiye (District), 132–134 Hasdê Fowqani, 65 Hassatche, 68 (al-)Hassake (Hasaka), 184, 258 Hatay, 102, 136, 146, 202 h.ayy al-¯ akr¯ ad (Kurdish Quarter), 252 Homs, 38, 162, 164, 201 Hormuz (Straits), 248

I Idlib, 17, 137, 199, 200, 202, 212, 213, 235, 238 Iskenderun, 248 Istanbul, 77, 154, 155, 175, 178, 248, 254, 256, 263

J Jabal Mohsen (District), 137 Jabal Tour, 52

LOCATION INDEX

Jadid Agidat (neighborhood), 175, 177, 184 Jarabulus, 7, 29, 34, 36, 39, 42, 251 (al-)Jaz¯ıra, 33 Jerusalem, 155, 226, 286 (al-)Jura (neighborhood), 166, 167, 181

K Karamanié, 68 Karkamish, 36, 38, 39 Khabur (Valley), 156 Khasham, 179, 180, 183 Khorasan (Province), 277 (al-)Kilaiin, 156 Kilis, 41, 50, 59, 61, 62, 131 Kirkuk, 248 (al-)Kishkiyya, 169, 187, 188 Kobane, 34, 39, 42, 43, 252, 254, 257, 259, 261 Kurd Dagh, 251, 252, 254, 257, 261

L Lausanne (Treaty), 50, 56

M Maktale, 255 Malatya (Province), 248 Manbij, 20, 279 Marash (Province), 40, 248 Mardin, 37, 131 Marjeyoun, 114 Markada, 184 (al-)Mayadin, 156, 157, 159, 162–165, 167, 174, 185 Maysalun, 78 Mecca, 38, 134, 224, 286 Mediterranean (Sea), 38, 249, 256 Meskene, 36, 37 Mesopotamia, 51, 69, 261

291

Meydan Ekbaz, 49 Mosul, 57, 156, 248, 257, 270

N (al-)Namliyya, 180 Narlica (District), 140 New Antioch (District), 140 Nusaybin, 49, 50, 65, 68, 248

P Paris, 9, 19, 53, 61, 66, 81, 248, 264 Payas, 49, 50, 67 Pozanti (al-Badandum), 50

Q Qalamoun (mountains), 13, 110, 120, 121 Qamishli, 33, 53, 258, 261, 263, 264 Qasiun (Mount), 252 Quetta, 230 (al-)Quria, 165, 168 Qusayr, 119 (al-)Qusur (neighborhood), 166, 167, 181

R (al-)Ra‘i, 49 (al-)Raqqa, 181, 182, 184 (al-)Rasafa (neighborhood), 166, 167 Ras al-Ayn, 39, 258 (al-)Rastan, 164 Rawah, 156 Reyhanli, 130, 131 Rojava (Territory), 19, 243, 250, 259–264 Rojhilat (Territory), 261

292

LOCATION INDEX

S (al-)Shuhayl, 15, 173–176, 178, 179, 184, 186, 187 San Francisco (Conference), 256 Sanliurfa (Urfa), 131 Saruja (Quarter), 252 Sennah, 248 Sèvres (Treaty), 256, 286 Shebaa (Farms), 13, 115 (al-)Sheddada, 184 Siman (Mountains), 252 Sinjar, 248 Suez (Canal), 38 Suleimania, 248 Suwaida (Samanda˘g), 66

T Ta’if, 113 Talbisa, 164

Tall Abyad, 182 (al-)Tanak (Oil field), 169 Taurus (Mountains), 248 Taurus (River), 36 Tel Afar, 248 Tell Abyad, 29, 34, 39, 42, 43, 68 Tigris (River), 49, 156 Transoxiana (Province), 277 Tripoli, 137 U (al-)Umar (Oil field), 174, 184, 186 W (al-)Ward field, 173 Z Zor, 36

Name Index

A ‘Abbud, Hassan, 233, 234, 238 Abdallah (King), 18, 223 Abdallah, Maysar bin Ali Musa (Abu Maria al-Qahtani), 175 ‘Abd al-‘Azim, Hassan, 226 Abd al-Malik (Caliph), 273 Abdulhamid II (Sultan), 37, 38, 228 (al-)Adnani, Abu Mohamed, 270 Aflaq, Michel, 95, 96 Agha, Hadjo, 50, 68 Agha, Said, 68 (al-)Agidat (confederation), 156, 167, 169, 176, 187 Agop, Vahram, 66 Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud, 119 Ali (Imam), 14, 134 Ali, Mohammad, 36 ‘Ali, Muhammad Kurd, 84 ‘Alwan, Abdallah Nasih (Sheikh), 228 ‘Alwan, Jasim (Sheikh), 225 Aoun, Michel, 121, 123 (al-)‘Arifi, Muhammad, 233

(al-)Asad, Basil, 164 (al-)Assad, Bashar, 11, 14, 94, 97, 98, 102–104, 228, 229 (al-)Assad, Hafez, 11, 62, 93, 94, 96–103, 133, 141, 164, 228 (al-)Atrash, Mansur, 96 ‘Azzam, ‘Abdallah, 230 (al-)‘Azm, Haqqi, 84, 87

B (al-)Badri, Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim (Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi), 176 (al-)Baggara (tribe), 155, 156, 160, 162, 163, 173, 175, 190 (Al-)Baqri, Sami, 83 Barazi, Rashid, 85 (al-)Bashir, Hajem, 163 (al-)Bashir, Nawaf, 160, 162, 163 Bedir Khan, Jaladat, 255 Bedir Khan, Kamuran, 19, 249, 255–257, 263 Billotte (Gaston), 53, 263

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Cimino (ed.), Syria: Borders, Boundaries, and the State, Mobility & Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44877-6

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NAME INDEX

Bin Laden, Usama, 230 (al-)Bitar, Salahedin, 96 Bitlisî, Sharaf Khan, 248 (al-)Buchamal (tribe), 160, 163, 171, 175, 176, 178–180, 183, 184, 190, 191 (al-)Buizzaddin (tribe), 178 (al-)Bukayr (tribe), 175, 177–180, 182–185, 187, 191 (al-)Bukhabur (tribe), 167 (al-)Burahma (tribe), 175 (al-)Busaid (tribe), 167

C (de) Caix, Robert, 61, 70, 78 (al-)Chichani, Abu Omar, 270 Chitan (tribe), 53

D (al-)Daham, Ahmad Ubayd (Abu Dujana al-Zir), 178 (al-)Diba, Hawaydi, 179, 180 (al-)Din, Husam Farfur (Sheikh), 229 Daqquri (tribe), 68

F (al-)Fayyad, Muhanna, 163, 171 Ferid Bey, Ahmet, 66 Franklin-Bouillon (agreement), 41, 49, 50

G Georges-Picot, François, 21, 27, 270 (al-)Ghadir, Muhammad Husayn (Abu Saif al-Shaiti), 187 Gouraud, Henri, 78, 79, 82 Guevara, Che, 133

H Hadid, Marwan, 229 Haji Qadirî, Koyî, 248, 256 Hakkı, Ismail, 68 (al-)Hamada, Abd al-Aziz Dawud Sulayman (Shaykh), 183 (al-)Hanbal, Shakib, 84 (al-)Hariri, Rafic, 115, 119 (al-)Hawrani, Akram, 225, 226 (al-)Hawrani, Fida’, 226 Hawwa, Sa‘id, 228 Heverkan (tribe), 50, 255 (al-)Hifl (tribe), 160 (al-)Hifl, Khalil, 156, 160, 163, 164, 171 Hitler, Adolf, 256 Hussein, Saddam, 98, 225 Hussein (Sherif), 224 I Ibn al-Qaym (Battalion), 169 Ibn Ziyad, Tareq, 273 J (al-)Jabiri, Ihsan, 10, 80 (al-)Jabri, Fakhri, 87 (al-)Jamal, Saddam, 183, 187 Jami, Jami, 15, 160, 161, 163, 164, 167 Jayss (tribe), 36 Jabur (tribe), 175 (al-)Jazairi, Said (Emir), 84 Jdid, Salah, 96 John I (King), 275 (al-)Jolani, Abu Mohammad, 176, 191 Jumblatt, Kamal, 100 Justinian II (Emperor), 273 K (al-)Kaim, Shakir, 87

NAME INDEX

(al-)Kamaz, Khalid, 184 Kanan, Ghazi, 161 Kandy, Nouri, 254 Kemal Bey, Yusuf, 41 Kemal, Mustafa (Ataturk), 40, 133, 134, 142, 227, 270, 285 Khaddam, ‘Abd al-Halim, 226 (al-)Khalidi, Subhi Barakat, 79, 84 (al-)Khalifa, Jafr, 187, 188 Khomeini, Rouhollah, 225 (al-)Khuw¯arizm¯ı, Muhammad, 276 (al-)Kobanih, Rabih, 89 L Lawrence, Thomas Edward, 39 M Mahmud II, 36 (al-)Malleh, Nuri, 83 (al-)Ma’m¯ un (Caliph), 275 (al-)Maqdis¯ı, Muh.ammad, 277 (al-)Masri, Muhannad, 235, 237 (al-)Matar, Mahmud, 183, 187 (al-)Mawdudi, Abu al-A’la, 18, 228 Mersinié (tribe), 65, 66 Milli (tribe), 255 Miqati, Najib, 116, 119 (al-)Mu’ayyad, Badi, 84, 87 N (al-)Nabhani, Taqi al-Din, 226 (al-)Nadwi, Abu al-Hassan Ali, 18, 228 Nasrallah, Hassan, 112, 114, 116, 118–121, 123 Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 10, 96 Nursi, Sa‘id, 229 O Obama, Barack, 233

295

Öcalan, Abdullah, 258, 259

P Pacha, Ibrahim, 36, 37, 255 Pacha, Jamal, 39 Pacha, Muhiddin, 67 Pasha, Sharif, 248 Poidebard, Antoine, 51 Poincaré, Raymond, 66 Ptolemy, 275

Q (al-)Qaraan (tribe), 175, 183 (al-)Qardawi, Yusuf, 233 (al-)Qassab, Kamil (Sheikh), 224, 230

R Ramadan al-Buti, Sa‘id, 18, 227, 228 (al-)Razzaz, Munif, 96 (al-)Rifdan, Amr, 175, 177–179, 182–184 (al-)Rikabi, Ali Rida, 84

S Said (Sheikh), 56, 253, 257 Sallal, Monzer, 211 (al-)Saud, Faisal bin Abdulaziz (King), 40, 78, 99 (al-)Saud, Khalid bin Abdulaziz, 99 Shahin, Bozan, 254 Shahin, Muhammad, 254 (al-)Shaiti, Abu Ali, 188 (al-)Shami, Abu Yazan, 233 (al-)Siba‘i, Mustafa, 223, 224 Siniora, Fouad, 115 Sleimane, Michel, 118 (al-)Suri, Abu Mus‘ab (Mustafa Setmariam Nasar), 230 Sykes, Mark, 21, 27, 249, 270

296

NAME INDEX

Sykes-Picot (agreement), 6, 21, 27, 40, 42, 76, 93, 95, 102, 231, 234, 243, 270, 283

W Wahhabi (tribe), 35, 155 Weygand, Maxime, 62, 78

T Talabani, Jalal, 257 (al-)Tartusi, Abu Basir, 232 Tchoban, Bey, 38 Terrier, Pierre, 53, 254

Y (al-)Yunis (tribe), 167

U Uthman bin Afan (Battalion), 167 V (de) Vaud, Gros, 79

Z (al-)Zahir, Abdallah Ahmad (Abu al-Layth), 180 (al-)Za‘im, ‘Abd al-Sattar, 229 Zaki Bey, Mehmet Emin, 19, 249 (al-)Zawahiri, Ayman, 176, 235, 236 (al-)Zazu, Homam, 170 (al-)Zo’bi, Muhamad, 96