When Bashar al-Asad smoothly assumed power in July 2000, just seven days after the death of his father, observers were divided on what this would mean for the country’s foreign and domestic politics. On the one hand, it seemed everything would stay the same: an Asad on top of a political system controlled by secret services and Baathist one-party rule. On the other hand, it looked like everything would be different: a young president with exposure to Western education who, in his inaugural speech, emphasized his determination to modernize Syria. This volume explores the ways in which Asad’s domestic and foreign policy strategies during his first decade in power safeguarded his rule and adapted Syria to the age of globalization. The volume’s contributors examine multiple aspects of Asad’s rule in the 2000s, from power consolidation within the party and control of the opposition to economic reform, co-opting new private charities, and coping with Iraqi refugees. The Syrian regime temporarily succeeded in reproducing its power and legitimacy, in reconstructing its social base, and in managing regional and international challenges. At the same time, contributors clearly detail the shortcomings, inconsistencies, and risks these policies entailed, illustrating why Syria’s tenuous stability came to an abrupt end during the Arab Spring of 2011. This volume presents the work of an international group of scholars from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. Based on extensive fieldwork and on intimate knowledge of a country whose dynamics often seem complicated and obscure to outside observers, these scholars’ insightful snapshots of Bashar al-Asad’s decade of authoritarian upgrading provide an indispensable resource for understanding the current crisis and its disastrous consequences.

As Syria’s anti-authoritarian uprising and subsequent civil war have left the country in ruins, the need for understanding the nation’s complex political and cultural realities remains urgent. The second of a two-volume series, Syria from Reform to Revolt: Culture, Society, and Religion draws together closely observed, critical and historicized analyses, giving vital insights into Syrian society today. With a broad range of disciplinary perspectives, contributors reveal how Bashar al-Asad’s pivotal first decade of rule engendered changes in power relations and public discourse—dynamics that would feed the 2011 protest movement and civil war. Essays focus on key arenas of Syrian social life, including television drama, political fiction, Islamic foundations, and Christian choirs and charities, demonstrating the ways in which Syrians worked with and through the state in attempts to reform, undermine, or sidestep the regime. The contributors explore the paradoxical cultural politics of hope, anticipation, and betrayal that have animated life in Syria under Asad, revealing the fractures that obstruct peaceful transformation. Syria from Reform to Revolt provides a powerful assessment of the conditions that turned Syria’s hopeful Arab spring revolution into a catastrophic civil war that has cost over 200,000 lives and generated the worst humanitarian crisis of the twenty-first century.

"When Bashar al-Asad smoothly assumed power in July 2000, just seven days after the death of his father, observers were divided on what this would mean for the country's foreign and domestic politics. On the one hand, it seemed everything would stay the same: an Asad on top of a political system controlled by secret services and Baathist one-party rule. On the other hand, it looked like everything would be different: a young president with exposure to Western education who, in his inaugural speech, emphasized his determination to modernize Syria. This volume explores the ways in which Asad's domestic and foreign policy strategies during his first decade in power safeguarded his rule and adapted Syria to the age of globalization. The volume's contributors examine multiple aspects of Asad's rule in the 2000s, from power consolidation within the party and control of the opposition to economic reform, co-opting new private charities, and coping with Iraqi refugees. The Syrian regime temporarily succeeded in reproducing its power and legitimacy, in reconstructing its social base, and in managing regional and international challenges. At the same time, contributors clearly detail the shortcomings, inconsistencies, and risks these policies entailed, illustrating why Syria's tenuous stability came to an abrupt end during the Arab Spring of 2011. This volume presents the work of an international group of scholars from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. Based on extensive fieldwork and on intimate knowledge of a country whose dynamics often seem complicated and obscure to outside observers, these scholars' insightful snapshots of Bashar al-Asad's decade of authoritarian upgrading provide an indispensable resource for understanding the current crisis and its disastrous consequences."--Back cover.

This study examines the development of the Syrian state as it has emerged under thirty-five years of military-Ba'thist rule and, particularly, under President Hafiz al-Asad. It analyzes the way in which the fragility of the post-independence state, unable to contain rising nationalist struggle and class conflict, opened the way to the Ba'th party's rise to power and examines how the Ba'th's 'revolution from above' transformed Syria's socio-political terrain.

As an upbeat and peaceful uprising quickly and brutally descended into a zero-sum civil war, Syria has crumbled from a regional player into an arena in which a multitude of local and foreign actors compete. The volatile regional fault lines that run through Syria have ruptured during this conflict, and the course of events in this fragile yet strategically significant country will profoundly shape the future of the Levant.

Fouad Ajami offers a detailed historical perspective on the current rebellion in Syria. Focusing on the similarities and differences in skills between former dictator Hafez al-Assad and his successor son, Bashar, Ajami explains how an irresistible force clashed with an immovable object: the regime versus people who conquered fear to challenge a despot of unspeakable cruelty.

Examines the Syrian state during 35 years of military-Ba'thist rule and, particularly, under President Hafiz al-Asad. It analyzes how the fragility of the post-independence state opened the way to the Ba'th party's rise to power and the transformation of Syria's socio-political terrain.

The aim of this book is to provide missing details of the Syrian revolution in 2011, and to clear up the prevailing misconception about the war in Syria. I offer in this book a different approach to observing the Syrian revolution by dividing it into phases, and using more precise terms. Thus I have divided the Syrian revolution into three phases:1) Revolution from below, where popular and peaceful uprising was the mainstream character of the Syrian revolution; 2) Internal war, where mutual violence was spread formally and nationally after the formation of the Free Syrian Army (FSA); 3) Holy war (Jihad), where most revolutionaries have turned into national Jihadists accompanied with the arrival of global Jihadists to Syria to fight the Assad regime, and to establish the Islamic State (Caliphate). Furthermore, the rising and elapse of ISIS is investigated comprehensively in this book. I use the term internal war rather than civil war in order to be more specific in analyzing the war in Syria. Also, the international relations of the Syrian revolution occupies considerable part of this book. The behavior of states and sub-state actors regionally and internationally, and the stance of the international organizations towards the Syrian revolution are critically examined. In addition, the massacres and war crimes which have been committed by Bashar Assad, Iran, and their militias against the people in Syria are well documented in this book.

In January 2011 President Bashar al-Assad told the Wall Street Journal that Syria was stable and immune from revolt. In the months that followed, and as regimes fell in Egypt and Tunisia, thousands of Syrians took to the streets calling for freedom, with many dying at the hands of the regime. Stephen Starr delves deep into the lives of Syrians whose destiny has been shaped by the state for almost fifty years. In conversations with people from all strata of Syrian society, Starr draws together and makes sense of perspectives illustrating why Syria, with its numerous sects and religions, was so prone to violence and civil strife. Through his unique access to a country largely cut off from the international media during the unrest, Starr delivers compelling first hand testimony from both those who suffered and benefited most at the hands of the regime. Revolt in Syria details why many Syrians wanted Assad s government to stay as the threat of civil war loomed large, the long-standing gap between the state apparatus and its people and why the country s youth stood up decisively for freedom. Starr also sets out the positions adhered to by the country s minorities and explains why many Syrians believe that enforced regime change might precipitate a region-wide conflict. This revised and updated edition contains a chapter bringing it up to the end of 2013, and examines the experiences of those who have fled the fighting to Turkey and elsewhere.

The Arab Spring did not arise out of nowhere. It was the physical manifestation of more than a decade of new media diffusion, use, and experimentation that empowered ordinary people during their everyday lives. In this book, Billie Jeanne Brownlee offers a refreshing insight into the way new media can facilitate a culture of resistance and dissent in authoritarian states. Investigating the root causes of the Syrian uprising of 2011, New Media and Revolution shows how acts of online resistance prepared the ground for better-organised street mobilisation. The book interprets the uprising not as the start of Syria's social mobilisation but as a shift from online to offline contestation, and from localised and hidden practices of digital dissent to tangible mass street protests. Brownlee goes beyond the common dichotomy that frames new media as either a deus ex machina or a means of expression to demonstrate that, in Syria, media was a nontraditional institution that enabled resistance to digitally manifest and gestate below, within, and parallel to formal institutions of power. To refute the idea that the population of Syria was largely apathetic and apolitical prior to the uprising, Brownlee explains that social media and technology created camouflaged geographies and spaces where individuals could protest without being detected. Challenging the myth of authoritarian stability, New Media and Revolution uncovers the dynamics of grassroots resistance blossoming under the radar of ordinary politics.