Two visions of the state

Syria has become a conceptual battleground

While violent confrontation continues in Syria (reported in my substack here), a non-violent battle is beginning, one of extraordinary and seminal importance, and not only for Syria. It is a battle for the very nature of the state. What kind of state should Syria be?

This battle is playing out in political meetings inside Syria, on social media and in international contacts and, I’m sure, private discussions. It might hopefully be played out in a formal and democratically-endorsed constitutional process. It may be played out by force. Who wins that battle will have profound ramifications for Syria of course, but also the region and beyond.

There are two sides to this battle. On the one side is the vision of the HTS¹, the Islamist militia which overthrew the Assad regime, led by Ahmed al-Sharaa. This vision is of a centralised state, controlled by Damascus, with a unified finanical and security system: one police, one military, one currency - and one set of taxes. Al-Sharaa has been telling foreign visitors and the world, through the media, that such a centralised state is what ‘Syria needs’. It is an appealing vision of control. It offers order. Perhaps above all, it is familiar - other states recognise it, because it is what they themselves are. It slots into the world’s organising system of a group of states, all ruled from the top downwards.

Less loudly declared is that HTS wants an Islamist state. Quite what they mean by that is not clear. But its signs are evident in the bullying of women on the streets to cover their hair, al-Sharaa’s refusal to shake the hand of the visiting German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, and the absence of women in leading positions within the HTS and in the government of the places they have occupied. Groups like the HTS, founded as an affiliate of Al-Qaeda, do not give up their ideologies. They are ideological; that is what they are. The question is whether they are willing to compromise on that ideology in sharing power with other groups and what space they will grant other communities, including non-Arab ones. So far, al-Sharaa has said that they are willing to allow a more pluralist settlement but there are many who do not trust him or the HTS at all. The current cliché among diplomats and analysts is to judge the HTS by their actions, not words. Unfortunately, those actions reportedly already include arbitrary executions and kidnappings.

This vision of the state echoes that of Turkey, which has backed the HTS and whose officials - its foreign minister, its head of intelligence - are now regular visitors to Damascus. Minority rights - above all Kurdish rights - are suppressed, often violently, in Turkey. Opposition members and leaders and journalists are jailed. The press is not free and neither are the courts. It is an autocratic state, whose repression is given a free pass by its NATO allies because Turkey serves their purpose in other ways, for instance by stopping refugees cross the Mediterranean to Europe or hosting US military bases. The ruling AK party, led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is Islamist. Today’s Turkey is clearly a model for the HTS, but it should be noted that the HTS is significantly more radical than the AK party. Turkey has armed and funded Islamist fighters in Syria, but partly because it wants to control them.

On the other side is a very different vision. It is of bottom-up government based on the commune - the village, the neighbourhood. It gives equal footing to all communities, regardless of ethnicity or religion (its over-arching character is secular not religious). It puts women at the centre: they are automatically given leadership positions; there is a women-only militia. The abolition of patriarchy is a central objective. It is also ecological: an explicit part of its philosophy is to end human domination of nature and replace it with notions of mutual dependence and co-existence. This vision is that of Rojava, the majority-Kurdish region of north east Syria, about which I have written before (and a video here).

A major disadvantage for this vision is that it is not shared by other nation states. They do not recognise it as a legitimate form of government. Their officials are ignorant of its ideas and practice, often resorting to gross distortions by calling it Marxism or such like (a more accurate term would be ‘communalism’). The ‘mainstream’ press know little about it too. It’s harder to visit the north east than it is Damascus, where international flights are now landing and which is only a short drive from Beirut. To visit the north east, you need to cross from northern Iraq, whose authorities are slow to grant exit visas (though this will hopefully change). It’s a river crossing by boat and a long drive. Understanding the innovative and unusual political and indeed social system there requires a bit of effort and research - it’s easier to label but dismiss the region as ‘the Kurds’

The representatives of the north east will fight to maintain this vision of society in their region. They do not want a separate state contrary to their Orientalist depiction as a kind of ethno-nationalist separatist movement. They also - rightly - believe this model is relevant for the whole of Syria, a country divided by religion and ethnicity, where centralised rule may exacerbate those fissures - or even rely upon them on the principle of ‘divide and rule’. Proponents of this more electic vision believe that Syria can be governed federally, with most powers in the hands of the regions, not the centre. There might be one national army, but it would have separate, free-standing components, including the Syrian Democratic Forces, the army of the north east. There might be one currency, but each region would be able to raise and spend revenues according to its own decisions.

I understand from representatives of the autonomous region that this discussion has already begun between them and the HTS. I hope that the discussion continues peacefully and with a result that works for everyone, though it is hard to see how these two visions - one singular, the other pluralist - can mesh. The future shape of Syria should of course be for Syrians to decide. Ideally, this discussion should be democratically mandated, perhaps by a newly elected parliament (though Al-Sharaa has worryingly said that elections may be four years away) and any proposed constitution democratically endorsed for instance by a referendum. This has worked elsewhere.

The worse case scenario is violent confrontation with the country divided between areas of HTS control and others’, including the SDF (but not only the SDF, for various other militias, including Turkish-backed, are dominant in the north west for instance). In any case, it’s likely that the ‘international community’ will get involved too. The UN may be picked as the convenor of this discussion. Its special envoy for Syria, whom I have known for many years, is a very decent and able Norwegian, Geir Pedersen. But he may not be able to resist pressure from the dominant external powers in the new Syria, above all Turkey but also the US (Russian and Iranian influence has of course receded) and perhaps Israel. Israel and, less noticed, Turkey are already asserting their ‘interests’ by occupying significant chunks of Syrian territory. Neo-imperialists that they all are, they are sure to come to their own conclusions about what kind of state they wish Syria to be, of course without consultation of actual Syrians. Others, like the Europeans, are likely to drift along with woolly references to ‘inclusion’ and ‘democracy’ but without clear vision. A constitutional and political mess is one possible result. So is renewed civil war.

How this battle plays out will obviously shape Syria for many years, if not generations, to come, just as the post-Ottoman creation of Syria itself by the French and British (whose officers actually drew its borders), set the scene for almost a century of misrule, dictatorship and repression, including of minorities. Thus, it will also shape regional politics. If Syria becomes an autocratic Islamist-dominated state it will have obvious ramifications for its neighbours and beyond. But if it becomes a genuinely pluralist, multi-ethnic, decentralised polity then that too would have profound implications, not only for the region, but also for the broader more global understanding, today very crude and simplistic, of what a state could be. As one young woman told me during my visit to Rojava, we’re trying to show the world a better way.

1. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham