The end of the dialectical symbiosis of national and tribal identities in Syria

Abstract

Since the 1970s, the Syrian regime has been attempting to build a ‘Syrian national identity’ to promote identification with the Syrian state (al hawiyya al‐wataniyya) while concurrently following policies of survival and legitimisation, to preclude suppressing tribal identity (al hawiyya al‐asha'rya). The regime instead fostered tribal identity and relied on it when confronting internal and external challenges. The Syrian regime's policies aimed to empower tribal identity, while seeking to manipulate this perception for its own ends. As a result, tribal and national identities have been integrated in a relatively harmonious way for three decades. The economic liberalisation project that Bashar al‐Assad pursued, however, disturbed the delicate balance that Hafez al‐Assad had constructed between the national and tribal identities. In the wake of the Syrian uprising, it has become clear that tribal identity was a significant element in the conflict that engulfed the country, shaping local politics and influencing social dynamics in north eastern Syria and parts of the south. Over the past few years, tribal identity has become a powerful form of expression in Syria, which is increasingly evolving to replace its national counterpart. This paper will use a constructivist approach, which argues that tribal identity has its roots in the origins of the tribes but has been subject to external manipulation by political actors in their struggles for power. In Syria, as in other states, such actions carry the risk of civil war, precipitating degrees of state failure (Hashemi, 2015) in which the tribal and national identities clash.

The irony of sectarianism: Sectarianizing by desectarianizing in Syria

“…For example, a situation can be sectarian if we judge it by the mere existence of a “multiplicity of sects” (Haddad, 2011, p. 31), if relations among sects are marked with “negative understanding” (Phillips, 2015, p. 359) or serious sentiments of “discrimination, hate or tension” (Haddad, 2011, p. 31), or when tension turns into extreme actions of violence and bloody confrontations as evidenced in the Syrian conflict. The spectrum gets wider with the workings of several dividing lines or mobilizers such as tribalism (Dukhan, 2022), Islamism or nationalism included along with religion 8 . This means that ideologies such as nationalism can be a bulwark against sectarianism or at least ameliorate its position as “semi‐sectarian” (e.g., Phillips, 2015), but can also be situated across the sectarian spectrum.…”

“…These imaginings are always attached to identity, itself an “imagined” concept always drawn on attempts for distinction and uniqueness from others (Jaspal & Breakwell, 2014). For example, Dukhan (2022) explored how the Syrian regime utilized imagined tribal symbols such as kinship ties or tribal honor to “reproduce the tribal identity and use it for political gains” (p. 3) as part of the sectarianization process.…”

“…A considerable part of the literature on sectarianism in the Arab region and specifically in Syria almost moves in one main direction, that is by demonstrating how state leaders manipulate sectarianism for their own use (Haddad, 2011; Mabon, 2020a; Phillips, 2015). Analysts engage in exploring how those leaders use and abuse what is there of social cleavages, subethnic divisions, or religious tension rocking their societies (Aldoughli, 2020; Dukhan, 2022). From this perspective, the literature on desectarianization is conceptualized as a step in the opposite direction, that is setting “norms” on how states and societies can get rid of their polarizing attitudes and divisive practices as part of realizing a desectarianized ideal (Daoudy, 2013).…”

“…Others proved that the regime of Assad, a member of the Alawi, a distant branch of Shia Islam representing around 12% of the population, took his community as the “backbone of his classic patronage system” (Balanche, 2018, p. xvi; Van Dam, 2011, p. 97). The regime has long adopted practices such as agitating the Sunni Islamist threat to garner the loyalty of minorities, the enflaming intra‐Sunni rivalry between the Muslim Brotherhood and Sufi Islam (Aldoughli, 2020, p. 8), or reinforcing tribal identity in order “to confront internal challenges such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Kurdish attempts to gain autonomy” (Dukhan, 2022, p. 1). The debate in literature mainly evolves from the starting point of this reality.…”

The making of sects: Boundary making and the sectarianisation of the Syrian uprising, 2011–2013

“…A robust literature has explored pre‐uprising (2011) structural and institutional transformations, including the impact of uneven governance and the implementation of specific policies that have strengthened sectarian identifications (Barout, 2012; Hinnebusch, 2020; Pinto, 2017); the networks states construct across ethnic and sectarian boundaries which later caused variation in revolutionary participation among members of an excluded ethnic group (Mazur, 2019); the role of authoritarian regimes in deliberately manipulating and instrumentalising ethnic and sectarian identifications as a strategy to deflect demands for political change and perpetuating their power (Dahi & Munif, 2012; Dukhan, 2021; Heydemann & Leenders, 2011; Matthiesen, 2013; Wimmen, 2017); or the role rumours play in displacing anxiety onto a fantasy other, congealing vaguely lived sectarian feelings into hardened modes of in‐group identification, complicity and collective action (Wedeen, 2019).…”