Chapter One: The decay of the Syrian state

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Notes

Quoted in: Marwan Al Kabalan, ‘Bashar's reform project: Real or cosmetic?’, Gulf News, 12 December 2003, http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/uae/general/dr-marwan-al-kabalanbashar-s-reform-project-real-orcosmetic-1.373004.

For an account of the Syrian opposition's travails prior to the uprising, see: Joshua Landis and Joe Pace, ‘The Syrian Opposition’, The Washington Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 1, Winter 2006–07, pp. 45–68.

‘The demographic profile of Syria’, UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, 2010, http://www.escwa.un.org/popin/members/syria.pdf.

‘Dardari insists economic reform will lead to political change’, The Daily Star, 11 November 2004.

See date from the US Energy Information Administration: http://www.eia.gov/countries/cab.cfm?fips=SY.

‘Syria industry: Rethinking tourism marketing strategy’, Economist Intelligence Unit, November 2001.

For the full text of Bashar al-Assad's inaugural address, see: http://www.al-bab.com/arab/countries/syria/bashar00a.htm.

‘Dardari insists economic reform will lead to political change’, The Daily Star.

For an excellent overview of Syria's economic challenge on the eve of the uprising, see: Bassam Haddad, ‘The Political Economy of Syria: Realities and Challenges’, Middle East Policy Journal, June 2011.

During the first days of the détente with Washington, Assad asked visiting American officials about the ways in which the complex set of US sanctions could be loosened.

Caroline Donati, ‘The economics of authoritarian upgrading in Syria: Liberalization and the reconfiguration of economic networks’, in Steven Heydemann and Reinoud Leenders (eds.), Middle East Authoritarianisms: Governance, Contestation and Regime Resilience in Syria and Iran (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013).

‘Relations between Turkey–Syria’, Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, http://www.mfa.gov.tr/relationsbetween-turkey%E2%80%93syria.en.mfa.

Volker Perthes, Syria under Bashar al-Asad: Modernisation and the limits of change, (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the IISS, 2004); Steven Heydemann, ‘Upgrading authoritarianism in the Arab world’, Brookings Analysis Paper, 2007; Raymond Hinnebusch, ‘Syria: from “authoritarian upgrading” to revolution?’ International Affairs, vol. 88, no. 1, January 2012, pp. 95–113.

Heydemann, ‘Upgrading authoritarianism in the Arab world’.

Phil Sands, ‘Population surge in Syria hampers country's progress’, The National, 6 March 2011, http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/middle-east/populationsurge-in-syria-hampers-countrysprogress#full. The research of demographer Richard Cincotta on Syria's ‘youth bulge’ is also interesting and relevant here, as he predicted that it ‘places Syria, where young adults comprise 52% of all working-age adults, at a higher level of risk of political violence than Tunisia, where that figure is 43%’. Cincotta, quoted in: Elena McGovern, ‘Demography and Democracy in the Middle East’, Stimson, http://www.stimson.org/summaries/demography-anddemocracy-in-the-middle-east/. Population Action International also classified Syria in 2005 as a ‘Very Young’ country: http://populationaction.org/Publications2/Data_and_Maps/Shape_of_Things_to_Come/Summary.php.

For a sense of Syria's fiscal challenges, see: ‘Syrian Arab Republic: 2009 Article IV Consultation—Staff Report; and Public Information Notice’, International Monetary Fund, 2010,http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/scr/2010/cr1086.pdf; and Figure 1.2 in Haddad, ‘The Political Economy of Syria: Realities and Challenges’.

‘Syria: Drought response faces funding shortfall’, IRIN, 24 December 2009, http://www.irinnews.org/Report/87165/SYRIADrought-response-faces-fundingshortfall.

Thomas Pierret and Kjetil Selvik, ‘Limits of authoritarian upgrading in Syria: private welfare, Islamic charities and the rise of the Zayd movement’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 41, no. 4, November 2009, pp.595–614.

Syria steadily slipped in all rankings about corruption. See figures from Transparency International: http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2012/results/.

Haddad, Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012).

‘Hay'at takhtit al-dawla tafdah al-Dardari’, Syrian News Station, 30 November 2009, http://sns.sy/sns/?path=news/read/6197.

The ultimate study of Syrian society and its political development in the twentieth century remains: Hanna Batatu, Syria's Peasantry, the Descendants of Its Lesser Rural Notables, and Their Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999).

French political sociologist Michel Seurat expands Ibn Khaldoun's concept of asabiyya, applying it to the Assad regime to explain its power structure and the webs of loyalties that sustained it. Michel Seurat, Syrie: L'Etat de barbarie (Editions du Seuil, 1988).

Although the body of research on Syria's Alawite community is limited, there is the exception of the outstanding work of French political geographer Fabrice Balanche, who has charted the improvement of the Alawites' condition due to state-backed development, as well as its relative deterioration as the state lost resources from the 1990s onwards. For more on Syria's Alawite community and its relationship with the Assad regime, the Syrian state and the Sunni majority, see: Fabrice Balanche, La region alaouite et le pouvoir syrien (Kathala, 2006).

For an insider account of the workings of the security services, see: ‘Syrie: un officier superieur parle’, Le Monde Diplomatique, 7 September 2011, http://www.mondediplomatique.fr/carnet/2011-09-07Syrie-un-officier-superieur-parle.

For a sympathetic account of Hafez al-Assad's presidency in the 1970s and 1980s, see: Patrick Seale, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989).