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41. Syrians in Turkey: Groupings, Fractures and a Floundering Civil Society

Author:
Sasha Al-Alou
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Arab Reform Initiative (ARI)
Abstract:
This paper describes Syrian emigration to Turkey since 2011, and the forms of organization in which Syrian refugees have engaged. It provides figures on the number of Syrian refugees in Turkey inside and outside the camps and the places of their distribution in Turkey, by province. The paper also studies this distribution according to three factors: the nature of asylum (individual/group), the ethnic factors for the groupings, and investment associations. It examines the fissures in the relations between the Syrians in Turkey (based on the region, class, or profession within the Syrian institutions). In addition, it addresses forms of solidarity within Syrian communities in Turkey and inside Syria. These forms of solidarity are classified into three categories: economic, relief, and cultural and political. The paper concludes that the Syrian elite, with its various specializations, was not immune from the situation in Syria; rather the elite also continues to provide support within Syria, and looks forward to the post-conflict phase, in which it can participate in all aspects of reconstruction.
Topic:
Civil War, Immigration, Refugees, and Revolution
Political Geography:
Turkey, Middle East, Syria, and Damascus

42. The Syrian Diaspora, Old and New

Author:
Bassma Kodmani
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Arab Reform Initiative (ARI)
Abstract:
Eight years of a high intensity conflict in Syria resulted in the forcible displacement of over half of the population of the country, some internally, while over six million others fled outside, causing the most severe refugee crisis the world has known since World War II. Little is written however on the estimated 18 million Syrians who have been living abroad for years, often decades. These Syrians emigrated in waves and settled in some 30 different countries worldwide, including in the most remote lands of South America and the Caribbean islands. Together with the refugees who fled as a consequence of the conflict, the number of Syrians outside the country is now three times higher than those living inside. This is not specific to Syrians. The number of Palestinians, Lebanese, Armenians and, of course, Jews scattered across continents is also three to four times higher than those inside Palestinian occupied territories, Lebanon, Armenia or Israel. But the Syrian conflict and its toll on civilians has undoubtedly triggered a new awareness of the existence of a strong Syrian diaspora which had, so far, kept a rather low profile. To the stories of suffering and misery about refugees, diaspora communities oppose inspiring stories of the successful integration of individuals and families in their host societies. The Syrian diaspora is no exception. Its story contrasts with the dire situation of desperate boat people and helpless refugees. In general, the Syrian diaspora is economically self-sufficient and composed of well-integrated communities spreading across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. This report is the result of a collective effort to draw the first comprehensive picture of the de-territorialized Syrian people encompassing the old diaspora and the recent refugees. Co-authored by 13 experts, it describes the socio-economic and cultural features of the old diaspora communities (a subject largely under-researched by scholars) and captures the fast moving but very uneven process of transformation of recent refugees into a new component of the Syrian diaspora. Scholarly research and interviews with key members of the diaspora in their different living contexts reveal the considerable effort that the diaspora has mobilized to support Syrians during the conflict and its potential to be a major player in the reconstruction and development of Syria when the conflict ends.
Topic:
Civil War, Diaspora, Immigration, Refugees, and Revolution
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, Middle East, South America, Syria, and North America

43. Arabism and its Repercussions: Forms of Solidarity among Syrians in Latin America

Author:
Cecilia Baeza
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Arab Reform Initiative (ARI)
Abstract:
This paper examines the stance taken by the Syrian diaspora in Latin America vis-à-vis the war in Syria and how it envisions its aftermaths. It builds on an ethnographic field research and analysis carried out between 2011 and 2014 in Argentina and Brazil, and expands its scope by including a questionnaire prepared by ARI on the diaspora’s future role in the reconstruction Syria in a post-conflict scenario. The questionnaire has been sent to Syrian immigrants and descendants from Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. The first section examines the patterns of Syrian emigration to Latin America and its diasporization process under the influence of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party and the Ba’ath. The second section shows how those historical elements have impacted the diaspora’s attitude towards the conflict in Syria. The last section analyzes the answers to the questionnaire and identifies the main topics of shared interest.
Topic:
Civil War, Diaspora, Refugees, and Revolution
Political Geography:
Middle East, Brazil, Argentina, Latin America, Syria, Mexico, Chile, and Damascus

44. The Syrian Diaspora in Lebanon: Between a Lack of Policy and a Policy of Alienation

Author:
Rayan Majed
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Arab Reform Initiative (ARI)
Abstract:
This paper is an attempt to monitor the situation of the Syrian diaspora in Lebanon from 2011 until today, without claiming full coverage of all aspects of the subject. It focuses on four diaspora categories as well as the reflection of the Lebanese-Syrian historical relationship and the internal political situation in Lebanon on the Syrian diaspora there. The paper relies on reports from international and human rights organizations and articles on Syrian asylum in Lebanon, and on interviews with Syrian residents living in Lebanon from a variety of backgrounds.
Topic:
Civil War, Regional Cooperation, Diaspora, and Immigration
Political Geography:
Middle East, Lebanon, Syria, Beirut, and Damascus

45. Syrians in the USA: Solidarity Despite Political Rifts

Author:
Basma Alloush
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Arab Reform Initiative (ARI)
Abstract:
The Syrian American diaspora has been actively engaged in the Syrian uprising through the provision of humanitarian assistance and the entry into political advocacy work. Yet, the Syrian diaspora in the U.S. does not represent a homogenous population group nor a unified political position. On the contrary, assessing the dynamics of the diaspora since 2011 reveals important transformations within diasporic groupings, with the 2011 uprising acting as a catalyst for the emergence of new fractures. Through a mixture of desk research and interviews with key members of the Syrian American diaspora, this paper investigates the evolution of the community and discusses the potential role of the diaspora in a post-conflict Syria. By assessing current and evolving trends within the diaspora from 2011, it is possible to shape future reconstruction plans to effectively include the Syrian American diaspora.
Topic:
Civil War, Diaspora, and Immigration
Political Geography:
United States, Middle East, Syria, North America, and Damascus

46. Yemen's Path Forward

Author:
Gerald Feierstein, Sama'a al-Hamdani, Timothy Lenderking, Bruce Abrams, Abdulrahman al-Eryani, and Latifa Jamel
Publication Date:
10-2018
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Middle East Institute (MEI)
Abstract:
Three years into Yemen’s civil war, the country continues to see severe humanitarian devastation, widespread food insecurity, and lack of economic access, against the backdrop of an increasingly complex geopolitical environment. An intensification of fighting in Hodeidah and elsewhere in the country has added to the human costs of the conflict and threatens to become catastrophic. Increasingly, Yemenis are war-weary and anxious to see progress on the UN-led negotiating process intended to end the fighting and restore the peaceful transition interrupted three years ago. The Middle East Institute (MEI) hosted a half-day conference to assess the priorities for ending the conflict and scenarios to move forward. This conference convened two panels and a keynote address to assess urgent priorities and potential pathways forward for Yemen.
Topic:
Security, Civil War, Reconstruction, Political stability, Conflict, and Negotiation
Political Geography:
Middle East and Yemen

47. Endgame in Syria

Author:
Janko Bekić
Publication Date:
07-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Development and International Relations (IRMO)
Abstract:
After seven years the war in Syria is nearing its completion, even though the result will almost certainly not be a decisive victory by either side, but rather a frozen con�lict and unstable peace dictated by the regional and global powers embroiled in the con�lict. From a political scientist’s point of view, the most interesting feature of the war in Syria has been its gradual transformation from a failed revolution to oust president Bashar al-Assad and introduce democratic rule to a civil war between regime loyalists and a myriad of local as well as foreign islamist factions, and from there to a war on terrorism concentrated on eradicating Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s murderous and enslaving Islamic State. In its last phase, starting in late 2017, the war in Syria has mutated into a textbook example of proxy warfare in which the exhausted belligerents are fully dependent on their external sponsors and �ight mainly to accomplish geopolitical interests and goals of outside actors.
Topic:
Civil War, Terrorism, Conflict, and Repression
Political Geography:
Middle East and Syria

48. “The War As I See It:” Youth Perceptions and Knowledge of the Lebanese Civil War

Author:
Nour El Bejjani Noureddine
Publication Date:
10-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ)
Abstract:
Since the negotiated political settlement that ended the war in 1990, no serious attempt has been made to deal with the war’s legacy. Accountability for human rights violations committed during the conflict has been absent. There has been no effective truth-seeking process, formal acknowledgement of victims’ suffering, or the establishment of an accurate and objective war narrative. This has allowed political and social factions to compete for control of the historical record, with the different sides blaming each other, resulting in multiple politicized and fragmented narratives. Because school curricula do not cover Lebanon’s war or recent history, today most accounts of the conflict are based on personal memories transmitted from generation to generation by family members and neighbors who survived the war. This has left young people without an official source of information about the war to help them to understand it and its legacy, although it often forms part of their personal history and identity. As a result, the post-war generation, and the larger public, does not know what really happened during the conflict. With waves of instability and political violence that risk spiraling out of control, recalling the prewar era for many who lived through the war, young people are left vulnerable to political manipulation.
Topic:
Civil War, Transitional Justice, Youth, and Humanitarian Crisis
Political Geography:
Middle East and Lebanon

49. Insight on Syria: Documenting the "Burden of War" on Syrians

Author:
Michelle Nicholasen
Publication Date:
07-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
The war in Syria is remarkable in its cumulative destruction of a society in a short six years. The toll on human life has been heavy; the involvement of multiple states, factions, and terrorist groups undermines resolution; the instigation of forced migration unprecedented; and the unfettered aerial bombardments against civilians—and perhaps most viciously, the deliberate destruction and targeting of health care facilities, health care workers, and patients—have defied all norms of war. Achieving an accurate picture of the human cost of this conflict has been an extraordinary challenge for aid agencies and health officials. In an effort to understand the impact of the war thus far, last winter the British medical journal the Lancet convened a commission of medical professionals to investigate and report on this conflict through the lens of public health. In Lancet parlance, a commission is always anchored at an elite university; in this case the American University of Beirut (AUB). In an early publication to set the stage, The Lancet-AUB Commission on Syria (the Commission) has called Syria “the most dangerous place on earth for health care providers,” and notes that the many reported atrocities “undermine the principles and practice of medical neutrality in armed conflict.” One of the three co-chairs leading the Commission is Weatherhead Center Faculty Associate Jennifer Leaning, François-Xavier Bagnoud Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who has studied war and its long-term effects on societies in many parts of the world, including in the Middle East. Her fellow Commission co-chairs are Professor Iman Nuwayhid, Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at AUB, and Dr. Samer Jabbour, a cardiologist on the AUB faculty. The Weatherhead Center sat down with Jennifer Leaning to discuss the Commission’s work, its goals, and the scope of the devastation in Syria.
Topic:
Civil War, Displacement, Civilians, Public Health, and Armed Conflict
Political Geography:
Middle East and Syria

50. Insight on Syria: A Quagmire of Warring Religious Groups? Why the Western View is Misguided

Author:
Melani Cammett
Publication Date:
09-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
opular discourse, especially in the West, presents the current conflict in Syria as part of an age-old struggle between the Sunni and Shi’a communities within Islam. Despite the sectarian trappings of the conflict, these divisions are not the root cause of the war in Syria. Rather, the hyperpoliticization of sectarian identities is one of the outcomes—and an increasingly salient one as conflict progresses. The origins of the Syrian war lie in much more mundane political and economic grievances. Despite steady economic growth and an extensive public welfare infrastructure, the vast majority of the population was excluded from the fruits of development and faced thwarted aspirations for social mobility and political expression. Rising poverty rates, endemic corruption, the poor quality of social services and government repression—factors present to varying degrees elsewhere in the Middle East—constituted a critical background to the Syrian uprising, even if they do not predict precisely why and when individual protestors took to the streets. More proximately, the evolution of a peaceful uprising into a full-blown civil war was sparked by the regime’s response to the initial waves of demonstrations. On March 13, 2011, several teenagers in rural Dara’a in southern Syria spray-painted the slogan of the uprisings, al-sha’ab yurid isqat al-nizam, or “the people want the fall of the regime,” on walls in their town. Government security forces arrested the young men and tortured them, inciting peaceful demonstrations by family members calling for the boys’ release. Syrian forces then cracked down violently, spurring other protests across the country.
Topic:
Civil War, Religion, Sectarianism, and Violence
Political Geography:
Middle East and Syria