Re-enacting the international order, or: why the Syrian state did not disappear

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Janis Grzybowski

Abstract At the height of the Syrian civil war, many observers argued that the Syrian state was collapsing, fragmenting, or dissolving. Yet, it never actually vanished. Revisiting the rising challenges to the Syrian state since 2011 – from internal collapse through external fragmentation to its looming dissolution by the ‘Islamic State’ – provides a rare opportunity to investigate the re-enactment of both statehood and international order in crisis. Indeed, what distinguishes the challenges posed to Syria, and Iraq, from others in the region and beyond is that their potential dissolution was regarded as a threat not merely to a – despised – dictatorial regime, or a particular state, but to the state-based international order itself. Regimes fall and states ‘collapse’ internally or are replaced by new states, but the international order is fundamentally questioned only where the territorially delineated state form is contested by an alternative. The article argues that the Syrian state survived not simply due to its legal sovereignty or foreign regime support, but also because states that backed the rebellion, fearing the vanishing of the Syrian nation-state in a transnational jihadist ‘caliphate’, came to prefer its persistence under Assad. The re-enactment of states and of the international order are thus ultimately linked.

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 383-403
Author(s):  
Ahidul Asror

This article seeks to reveal Kiai Muchith Muzadi’s thought on the Islamic nationalism in Indonesia. It deals with a number of issues such as state form, the meaning of politics within nation-state life, and the relation of Islam and Pancasila. The article also attempts to answer problematic discourse on contemporary Islam which, within recent decades, (re)rises the principles of nationalism into public discussion. Muchith argues that Negara Kesatuan Republik Indonesia (NKRI/The Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia) has been an ultimate state form for the Indonesian people. Therefore, this is a duty for the Indonesian Muslims, as Indonesia’s majority inhabitant, to actively take a role and involve themselves in guarding Indonesia and its unity. Muchith also sees no relevant necessary to replace the state form with other systems such as khilāfah and Islamic state. To him, politics is a mere means to fight for interests carried out with Islamic principles coupled with nationalism values in order to establish national integration and achieve the shared ideals. Muchith maintains that Pancasila along with its values is compatible with Islam and this is why the Indonesian Muslims should accept it as the state ideology.


PMLA ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 123 (5) ◽  
pp. 1621-1629 ◽  
Author(s):  
Salah D. Hassan

This essay consists of three beginnings, then a deferred reading of a novel. One beginning, a theoretical beginning, reflects on the question implicit in my title: What is unstated in the state of Lebanon? Another beginning, a literary critical beginning, returns to the work of Kahlil Gibran, the most famous early-twentieth-century Arab North American writer. Gibran links modernist and postmodernist Arab North American writing and, in a historical parallel, connects the foundations of the Lebanese state under French colonial rule to its disintegration in the context of the civil war. A third beginning, a contextual beginning, evokes more recent events in Lebanon through a discussion of the July War of 2006, during which Israel bombed the country for over a month. These three points of departure, I suggest, are crucial to readings of contemporary Arab North American fiction, which is always conditioned by theories of the state, a post-Gibran literary sensibility, and the politics of the present. More specifically, I argue that Rawi Hage's representation of the civil war in Lebanon in DeNiro's Game negotiates the destruction of the Lebanese state through figures of the unstated, whose very existence questions more generally the state form as the preeminent site of political authority and contributes to unstating the state.


Global Jurist ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Parvathi Menon

AbstractThe paper argues that the opposing ideas of order/disorder, peace/war and normality/abnormality exist within each other, making a discernible boundary between them a fallacy created by the language of law. Therefore, even when a resistance to the order is carried out, it is with the aspiration of assimilation into this phantom world community. I analyze how the concept of nation-state is reinforced through territorial identities, best portrayed through liberation struggles, thus demonstrating how these transgressions, though projected by the international order to exist separate from the order (normality) as an ‘abnormality’, is in fact facilitated through (the normality of) law.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-79
Author(s):  
Uğur Ümit Üngör

Within a year, the Syrian uprising in March 2011 developed into a civil war that gradually escalated and within 9 years killed over half a million people, displaced half the country’s prewar population, devastated the economy, and destabilized the entire region, and even the world. The Syrian civil war split the country into four factions that were continuously at war with each other with intermittent, unstable ceasefires: the Assad regime, the various rebel groups, the Kurds, and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The Assad regime was responsible for the bulk of the violence against civilians, qualitatively and quantitatively. Its violent crackdown on the mass protests in Syria became more extensive and intensive throughout the first years of the conflict. A key aspect of the regime’s repression against the population was its use of paramilitary forces, the so-called “ Shabbiha,” a catch-all category for irregular, pro-government militias dressed in (semi-)civilian gear and linked organically to the regime. From 2012 onward, they gradually became formalized, first in the Popular Committees (اللجان الشعبيه), and then in the National Defense Forces (قوات الدفاع الوطني) (NDF). Their violence strongly polarized sectarian relations in Syria, and therefore the Shabbiha are vital to understanding the broader conflict. This article will look at the mobilization and violence of the Shabbiha in the city of Homs. It is based on a combination of sources including ethnographic research, interviews with Shabbiha members, social media content, video clips, leaked documents, and testimonies of victims and other eye witnesses.


Author(s):  
Annabel S. Brett

This introductory chapter provides a background of the conflicted relationship between nature and the city—the fraught intersection of the political and the natural world—in the natural law discourse of the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In the course of this extraordinary century, marked by the outward expansion of European states across the globe and simultaneously by their internal implosion into civil war, the boundaries of political space were fundamentally contested not only at a practical but at a theoretical level, and the dominant idiom of that contestation was the universalizing juridical language of natural law. What was forged in the process, culminating iconically in the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 and Thomas Hobbes' masterpiece Leviathan of 1651, is commonly taken to have been nothing other than the modern, territorial nation-state.


Author(s):  
Jeffrey S Lantis

Abstract Insights from the public policy advocacy coalition framework (ACF) may offer richer explanations of the scope and timing of US foreign policy changes toward the Syrian civil war (2011–present) than traditional approaches in foreign policy analysis (FPA). This article surveys the existing FPA literature and then probes the plausibility of a new ACF model of change through case studies of the reluctant engagement of the United States in Syria. Cases shed light on how, despite pronouncements of restraint by Presidents Obama and Trump, the government has armed and trained rebel fighters, deployed thousands of troops to the country, conducted airstrikes against the Islamic State, and moved to counterbalance Iranian influence in the region. This study helps draw connections between competition among rival advocacy coalitions and strategic drift in US foreign policy, including patterns of change and “purposive non-change.” The article concludes with a discussion of the added value of the ACF model and details its promise for application in other comparative cross-national contexts.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 94-107
Author(s):  
Rupi'i Amri

Abstract: The tendency to apply sharia to the state or government by some Muslims is a very interesting new phenomenon in many Muslim countries. Several Muslim countries, such as Indonesia, Pakistan, Jordan, Sudan, Egypt, Morocco, Kuwait and Iran are examples of countries where "Islamist" groups want to implement sharia into government. Of course this desire raises different views from Islamic figures, some support and some oppose it. This paper seeks to find answers to the problems that arise from the views of supporters and opponents of the Islamic state, with the core of the problem are:  (1) seeking and knowing the concept of Islam and Caliphate in the Islamic political system; (2) explaining the government system according to historical perspective; namely in the era of the Prophet Muhammad and Khulafa ar-Rasyidin; and (3) explaining the relationship between religion and state in the concept of siyasa fiqh. The conceptual framework used in this paper is that there are two important things to be achieved in politics, namely (1) politics as anything related to state administration; and (2) politics as all activities directed to seek and maintain power in society. In relation to this, there is often a "tension" between groups that want to implement the Shari'ah into the rules of government with groups that oppose it. If the desires of the two groups cannot be met, then there is no possibility of various acts of violence in a country, and can even lead to a coup against the current government. Some findings from this study are that (1) System of government in an Islamic perspective is not clearly stated in the Quran and Sunnah so that Islamic political thinkers disagree over what government system must be applied in a nation state; (2) In a historical perspective, the system of government in the time of the Prophet Muhammad was more concerned with the substance of Islamic values into the system of state government. This can be seen rules of the Madina Constitution, while the government of the Khulafa ar-Rasyidin used a system of power of autocracy and monarchic dynasty; (3) Islamic political thinkers differ in their views on the relation between religion and state in the concept of siyasa fiqh into three groups, namely (1) religion and state must be integrated and cannot be separated because the state is a political and religious institution; (2) religion and state are not related at all because the Prophet Muhammad was only an ordinary prophet like the previous prophet with the single task of inviting people back to noble life; (3) religions and state relate reciprocally and need each other. Abstrak: Kecenderungan untuk menerapkan syariah Islam ke dalam negara atau pemerintahan oleh sebagian orang Islam merupakan gejala baru yang sangat menarik di banyak negara Muslim. Beberapa negara muslim, seperti Indonesia, Pakistan, Yordania, Sudan, Mesir, Maroko, Kuwait dan Iran merupakan contoh negara-negara di mana kelompok-kelompok “Islamis”-nya ingin menerapkan syariah ke dalam pemerintahan. Tentu saja keinginan tersebut menimbulkan pandangan yang berbeda-beda dari tokoh-tokoh Islam, sebagian ada yang mendukung dan sebagian lagi menentangnya. Tulisan ini berusaha untuk mencari jawaban terhadap permasalahan-permasalahan yang muncul dari pandangan para pendukung dan penentang  negara  syariah, dengan inti permasalahannya adalah : (1) mencari dan mengetahui konsep Islam dan Kekhalifahan dalam sistem politik Islam; (2) menjelaskan sistem pemerintahan dalam perspektif historis, terutama pada masa Nabi Muhammad dan Khulafa ar-Rasyidin, dan (3) menjelaskan hubungan agama dan negara dalam konsep fiqh siyasah. Kerangka konseptual yang dipergunakan dalam tulisan ini adalah bahwa terdapat dua hal penting yang hendak dicapai dalam politik, yaitu       (1) politik sebagai segala yang berkaitan dengan penyelenggaraan negara; dan (2) politik sebagai segala kegiatan yang diarahkan untuk mencari dan mempertahankan kekuasaan dalam masyarakat. Dalam kaitannya dengan hal tersebut, seringkali terjadi “ketegangan” antara kelompok yang ingin menerapkan syari’ah ke dalam aturan-aturan pemerintahan dengan kelompok yang menentangnya. Apabila keinginan dari kedua kelompok tersebut tidak dapat dipertemukan, maka tidak menutup kemungkinan akan terjadi berbagai tindak kekerasan dalam suatu negara, dan bahkan dapat menimbulkan kudeta terhadap pemerintahan yang sedang berjalan. Beberapa temuan dari peneletian ini adalah (1) Sistem pemerintahan dalam perspektif Islam tidak disebutkan secara jelas dalam al-Quran dan Sunnah sehingga para pemikir politik Islam berbeda pendapat tentang sistem pemerintahan apa yang harus diterapkan ke dalam sebuah negara-bangsa (nation-state); (2) Dalam perspektif historis, sistem pemerintahan pada masa Nabi Muhammad lebih mementingkan substansi nilai-nilai Islam ke dalam sistem pemerintahan negara. Hal ini dapat dilihat pada aturan-aturan yang tertuang dalam Piagam Madinah, sedangkan pemerintahan pada masa Khulafa’ ar-Rasyidin menggunakan sistem “autocratic power” (kekuatan autokrasi) dan a dynastic monarchy” (dinasti monarkhi); (3) Para pemikir politik Islam berbeda pandangan dalam menyikapi relasi agama dan negara dalam konsep fiqh siyasah menjadi tiga kelompok, yaitu pertama, agama dan negara harus terintegrasi dan tidak dapat dipisahkan sebab negara merupakan lembaga politik dan sekaligus keagamaan, kedua, antara agama dan negara tidak berhubungan sama sekali (terpisah) karena Nabi Muhammad hanyalah seorang Rasul biasa seperti halnya rasul-rasul sebelumnya, dengan tugas tunggal mengajak manusia kembali kepada kehidupan yang mulia, ketiga, agama dan negara berhubungan secara timbal balik dan saling membutuhkan.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 44-95
Author(s):  
Hannah Klapprodt

This project investigates the rise of the Yemeni insurgent group, AnsarAllah (commonly known as the Huthis), from its conception in the summer camps of the Zaidi Believing Youth movement to its successful rebellion against the internationally-backed Yemeni government in September 2014. The Huthi movement gained a large following by protesting government corruption, injustice, and Saudi and American activity in Yemen. A constructivist analysis of these grievances reveals flaws in the Yemeni nation-state building process as nationalist narratives were created in opposition to Zaidism—the second most practiced branch of Islam in Yemen and a defining element of Huthi identity. Under the guise of “transitional democracy,” the Yemeni state developed as a pluralist authoritarian regime that marginalized Zaidi communities. Anti-Zaidi discourse created exclusionary categories of Yemeni identity, which were intensified by a series of hostile interactions between the state and Huthi leaders. In 2004, the state rationalized violence against the Huthis by framing them as a “national security threat” and an Iranian proxy. These discourses mobilized additional domestic and international actors against the Huthis and catalyzed a series of complex conflicts that eventually culminated in the current civil war. Overall, the Huthis’ journey from summer camps to militancy was driven by marginalization in the new Yemeni nation-state, perceived threats from Saudi Arabia and the United States, and the explosion of state violence against their dissidence.


2021 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 502-506
Author(s):  
Haian Dukhan

International media outlets have covered the news of Syrian tribes since the beginning of the protest movement that erupted in the country in 2011. This started with the “Friday of Tribes,” when Syrian tribes participating in protests against the Syrian regime in the Syrian city of Dar‘a began chanting “faz‘a” (chanting for support), which meant that they were seeking solidarity from other tribes for defense against the regime's aggression. As the Syrian uprising turned into a civil war that involved many players, some media outlets focused on the scenes of tribal leaders pledging allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), or of others being summoned to Geneva, Switzerland, to hold talks with Western powers about the possibility of mobilizing against ISIS militants. One could only wonder exactly why tribal loyalties continued to play such a significant role in the everyday events of the Syrian civil war when many civil society advocates had argued that tribal affiliation in Syria had diminished.


Desertion ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 163-188
Author(s):  
Théodore McLauchlin

This chapter talks about the Syrian Civil War that has been ongoing since 2011, comparing the regime's Syrian Arab Army, the Free Syrian Army umbrella, Jabhat al-Nusra, Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), and the Kurdish People's and Women's Protection Units. It discusses how the forces of the Syrian Civil War was able to maintain their cohesion like their counterparts in Spain's militias that grew out of long-standing armed networks and maintained tight standards for recruitment. It also uses the Syrian case to demonstrate the ambiguous effects of threats of punishment to keep soldiers fighting. The chapter argues that problems of fighting desertion while fighting a civil war are neither particularly new nor particularly old. It reframes an important debate about why soldiers keep on fighting against the odds.


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