The Social Life of Syrian Diplomacy: Transnational Kinship Networks of the Asad Regime

ABSTRACT

This article uses original ethnographic data to document the kinds of informal diplomacy conducted by members of a transnational kinship group embedded in both the Syrian and the Russian regimes. As such it provides a rare ethnographic perspective on international relations of strongmen regimes in Syria and Russia. Relatively few studies have explored relationships of cooperation between modern political regimes which are mediated by transnational kinship networks. Rather than approaching transnational kinship networks as instrumental channels that states use to achieve their purposes, the article argues that this network has been able to colonise the Syrian state, by deploying violence on an urban scale and maintaining high-ranking diplomatic connections on a transregional scale. It also argues that such networks should not be understood by negation, as the absence of formal institutions, or as an alternative to the ‘real channels’ of diplomacy. From the perspective of the autocratic Asad regime, they have arguably provided a more durable infrastructure, through a period of global ideological change and regional realignment, than Baathist political institutions and diplomatic cadres.

KEYWORDS:

• Strongmen
• diplomacy
• transnationalism
• Asad regime
• Syria

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Ameem Lutfi, Nisha Mathew and Serkan Yolacan for perceptive comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 On Yiwu as a global commercial hub, see Marsden (2016, 2017). On the history of Syrian networks in Yiwu, see Anderson 2018).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 Framework Programme research and innovation programme 669 132 – TRODITIES, ‘Yiwu Trust, Global Traders and Commodities in a Chinese International City’.