scholarly journals Syria’s Sect-coded Conflict: From Hezbollah’s Top-down Instrumentalization of Sectarian Identity to Its Candid Geopolitical Confrontation

2021 ◽  
pp. 234779892199919
Author(s):  
Hadi Wahab
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Sectarian Conflict ◽  
Sectarian Identity

This article surveys Hezbollah’s sectarian mobilization to justify its early engagement in Syria’s civil war for what was an intervention in a geopolitical confrontation to implement its agenda in coordination with its regional allies. Generally speaking, sectarian relations can be driven from both above as well as below. The article first argues that Hezbollah is a sectarian party whose timing of emergence paralleled with the rise of the Shia in Lebanon and the adjoining region. It contends that Hezbollah instrumentalized its sectarian identity and adopted a sectarian mobilization policy ahead of its engagement in Syria’s conflict. However, as its fighters were expanding across the country, Hezbollah’s sectarian discourse altered to a more politics-centric discourse. Therefore, this article concluded that the falsely framed sectarian conflict in Syria is sect-coded, Hezbollah adopted a top-down politicization of sectarian identity, and its primary aim was to prevent the regime’s collapse, which would have tilted the regional balance of power in favor of its rivals rather than seeking religious truths on Syria’s soil.

The Study of Sectarian Relations

2020 ◽  
pp. 49-80
Author(s):  
Fanar Haddad
Keyword(s):  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Group Relations ◽  
Local Agency ◽  
Sectarian Conflict ◽  
Sectarian Identity

This chapter aims to demystify sectarian identity by critically examining some of the key debates and false binaries that dominate discussions of ‘sectarianism’. These include several impractical dichotomies: religion and politics; unity and division; primordialism and instrumentalism; top-down and bottom-up drivers; the role of foreign powers versus local agency. The chapter demonstrates the impossibility of these binaries and their incompatibility with the inherently multidimensional nature of sectarian dynamics. Firstly, the role of religious beliefs and doctrinal differences in sectarian dynamics will be examined. It will be argued that, like inter-group relations generally, sectarian relations are animated by a broad nexus of factors that cannot be reduced to doctrinal difference. The chapter then interrogates the dichotomization of sectarian conflict and sectarian coexistence – a binary that obscures the more common reality of sectarian irrelevance. This highlights the importance of context and of having a sufficiently broad historical scope when considering sectarian dynamics. Acontextual and ahistoric accounts routinely exaggerate the relevance/irrelevance of sectarian identity. Finally, the chapter turns to the dichotomization of top-down and bottom-up drivers and the role of foreign powers versus local agency. It will be argued that circularity not dichotomization is the better way of understanding such binaries.

England, 1485-1642

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Covington
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Mount Everest ◽  
Top Down ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Stuart Period ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Stuart England

The scholarship on Tudor and Stuart England constitutes a parallel universe in its own right, with its sometimes acrimonious debates threatening to paralyze the student (and even specialist) from coming to any clarity or conclusions at all (unless, perhaps, he or she simply submits to the latest historiographical orthodoxy). Aside from the English Civil War, which has been called the “Mount Everest” of English scholarship, debates have centered upon whether the Reformation was “top down” or “bottom up”: religion as a whole was Protestant, Catholic, or something in between; the nobility and the gentry in crisis or ascendant; the Restoration representative of continuity or change; and the events of 1688 momentous, or not. Terms such as “revisionism,” “postrevisionism,” or “neo-Whiggism” convey such confusion, but they are unavoidable when it comes to entering, on a deeper level, the notoriously vexed scholarship of the period. Such debates also testify to the extremely rich nature of the Tudor and Stuart period in England, which continues to yield new insights, interpretations, and conclusions regarding political culture, social relations, the nature of religious belief and allegiance, or causality when it comes to an event as momentous as the civil war. The following entry is limited to the most important or representative works, including studies whose claims have been long discredited or put aside but nevertheless remain important in conveying the full scope of the research and conclusions yielded by the subject at hand. Many more sources (and subjects) could have been added, just as databases such as the Royal Historical Society’s annual bibliography continue to list hundreds of new books and articles each year.

CIVIL WAR IN TAJIKISTAN : IT’S IMPACT ON TAJIK-RUSSIA RELATIONS

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (26) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jajneswar Sethi
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Industrial Development ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
State Relations ◽  
Two Sides ◽  
Second World

The relations between Tajikistan and Russia have passed through various stages of development starting from the Tsarist Colonial times to the present. Though the disintegration of the Soviet Union brought about drastic changes in the post-Second World War balance of power affecting the interests of both the countries, there is still a continuity in Tajik-Russia relations. The relation between the two sides has remained strong and cordial even after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Tajikistan witnessed a civil war in 1992 that resulted in large-scale out-migration of Russians who constituted the skilled and the elite groups key to the industrial development of Tajikistan. Realizing the seriousness of the situation, the Tajik Government adopted policies and confidence-building measures which cemented their relationship again. Now the inter-state relations between the two countries are on firm footing..

The Six-Day War and the End of the Intervention in Yemen

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse Ferris
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Financial Aid ◽  
Arabian Peninsula ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Unintended Consequence ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Six Day War ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

This chapter brings the story of the Egyptian intervention to a close. Covering the momentous year of 1967, it exposes the little appreciated link between inter-Arab tensions and the Arab–Israeli conflict and provides a revisionist interpretation of the Six-Day War as an unintended consequence of the Saudi–Egyptian struggle over Yemen. Egypt's defeat forced Nasser to confront the necessity of withdrawing his forces from the Arabian Peninsula and accepting Saudi financial aid. Both acts presaged a crucial shift in the regional balance of power in the late twentieth century as a result of the civil war in Yemen: the decline of Egypt and the rise of Saudi Arabia.

Conflict Avoidance in the Equatorial Atlantic

2008 ◽  
pp. 197-226
Author(s):  
Mark C. Hunter
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
American Civil War ◽  
Conflict Avoidance ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Equatorial Atlantic ◽  
Sea Power ◽  
Anglo American

This chapter examines how sea power was utilised and adjusted by America and Britain in order to diffuse political tensions and keep the balance of power and their individual commercial endeavours protected. In particular, it examines Anglo-American co-operation and conflict during the 1840s and 1850s; Spanish-American filibusters; naval policing; and the American Civil War. It concludes that by 1860, Britain and America were intent on avoiding conflict with one another, and that as civil war broke out in America, Britain avoided becoming embroiled in the conflict.

Iraq, 2003–2018

2020 ◽  
pp. 265-318
Author(s):  
Fanar Haddad
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Multidimensional Model ◽  
Threat Perceptions ◽  
Enabling Environment ◽  
Incentive Structures ◽  
Sectarian Conflict ◽  
Electoral Behaviour ◽  
Sectarian Identity

This chapter takes Iraq as a case study with which to demonstrate many of the themes of the book and the layered and contextual nature of sectarian dynamics. The multidimensional model introduced in chapters 3-4 is used to explain not just the drivers of sectarian entrenchment but also of its retreat: the de-escalation of sectarian conflict, how sectarian identities lose relevance and how banal coexistence is recaptured. The chapter begins by outlining the pre-2003 roots of post-2003 sectarianization. The political changes of 2003 are then explored as is the evolution of the politics of sect between 2003 and 2018. Charting these transformations reveals the constantly evolving meaning, utility, social salience and political relevance of sectarian identity over the course of 15 years. What emerges is a gradually altered enabling environment with a changing set of incentive structures that have diminished the political salience of sectarian identity both in Iraq and regionally. This is evidenced in the normalization of the post-2003 order and in the transformations that have marked the evolution of threat perceptions, electoral behaviour, Iraq’s muhasasa system, and the parameters of populist discourse. All of which suggests the possibility that the ‘sectarian wave’ of chapter 6 may have crested.

2003 and the ‘Sectarian Wave’

2020 ◽  
pp. 217-264
Author(s):  
Fanar Haddad
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
State Collapse ◽  
Identity Processes ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sectarian Conflict ◽  
Key Drivers ◽  
Transformative Impact ◽  
Relations Of Power ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
Sectarian Identity

This chapter examines the transformative impact of 2003 on sectarian identity and sectarian relations in the Middle East. The invasion of Iraq triggered what has been called a ‘sectarian wave’ that saw sectarian categories attaining unprecedented political relevance. This chapter sheds light on the processes unleashed by 2003 and the way they altered sectarian relations. Key drivers in the regional transformation of sectarian dynamics include the manner in which 2003 disturbed power relations between sect-centric actors; state collapse, firstly in Iraq and later on in several other countries after 2011; and the sense of regional crisis that followed the ‘Arab Spring’. 2003 was a transformative historical disruption that allowed for the contestation of the relations of power between sect-centric actors and that inflamed the salience of sectarian identity – processes that were accelerated by the simultaneous spread of social media. What emerged was a narrative of regionalized sectarian conflict and competing sectarian victimhoods in which the line between the national and transnational dimensions became increasingly blurred. Using the multidimensional framework introduced in chapters 3-4, this chapter explains the dynamics of these processes and how to contextualize them in the broader history of sectarian identity formation and sectarian relations.

Ethiopia’s civil war may unravel regional geopolitics

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
South Sudan ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
The Government

Significance It has also seriously damaged Ethiopia’s international and regional political standing, weakening Addis Ababa’s position in the trilateral talks with Egypt and Sudan over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) and creating new flashpoints along the Ethiopia-Sudan border, while triggering shifts in alliances that have effectively tilted the regional balance of power against Ethiopia. Impacts The government may consider dialogue with domestic political forces (other than the TPLF) to ease international and domestic pressure. Continued geopolitical jockeying between Sudan and Egypt, and Ethiopia and Eritrea, could ease regional pressure on South Sudan. Concern over the fallout from the Tigray conflict may also complicate Ethiopian relations with Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda.

1645

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret J. M. Ezell
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
The Political ◽  
Autobiographical Writing ◽  
Literary Responses ◽  
Charles I

This section describes context of the political and military events of the changing balance of power in the Civil War as Charles I lost control to Cromwell, Parliament, and the Puritans. It explores the royalist literary responses, the effects the war on booksellers and the theatres, the Puritan models of polemical and autobiographical writing, and the proliferation of newsbooks. Although the London theatres were officially closed, dramatic performances continued, some clandestine others in alternative venues, with the publication of play texts and volumes of verse by royalist poets ensuring they remained visible.

The Plassey Revolution in Bengal and the Company’s Civil War in Britain

2019 ◽  
pp. 88-128
Author(s):  
James M. Vaughn
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Northeastern India ◽  
Military Dependent

This chapter first discusses the events leading up to and following the “Plassey Revolution” of 1757, which shifted the balance of power in Bengal heavily in favor of the East India Company (EIC). In the aftermath of Plassey, the Calcutta council and Robert Clive, the leader of EIC troops, sought to transform the EIC's newly won political and military advantages in Bengal into a durable supremacy. Acting as the de facto governor of the British settlement, Clive oversaw the fortification and militarization of Calcutta as well as the Company's upcountry trading stations. Clive governed the EIC's Bengal presidency for two years after Plassey. During that period, he not only transformed the Nawab into a financial and military dependent of the Company but also curbed French and Dutch power in northeastern India.

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