Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SYRIANBORDERS (The Fall of a Colonial Legacy: A Modern History of Syrian Borders (1920-2015))

Teaser

The « SYRIANBORDERS – Fall of a Colonial Legacy » project aimed to propose a contemporary history of Syrian borders from their origins (1920) to the present day (2018).Although this application to the MCF was sent in 2015, the project dates back to 2011. Since this...

Summary

The « SYRIANBORDERS – Fall of a Colonial Legacy » project aimed to propose a contemporary history of Syrian borders from their origins (1920) to the present day (2018).

Although this application to the MCF was sent in 2015, the project dates back to 2011. Since this moment, the Arab world, including Syria – a state barely one century old – has been engaged in a major revolutionary process. In March 2011, a large segment of Syrian society demonstrated against Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Despite the initial peaceful character of the uprising, the opposition to the regime had no choice but to arm itself in response to the terrible repression led by Damascus. A year later, the country was engaged in a wide-ranging civil war, largely depicted by the regime as a “sectarian plot” encouraged “from abroad” to “destabilize the country”. Then, a process of “jihadisation” followed this militarization with both sides of the conflict attracting foreign fighters, mercenaries and militia coming to act as proxies of Damascus.

Furthermore, since 2013, the Syrian revolution has faced a new challenge: the Islamic State and the Kurdish movement, both of which took control of several territories and immediately engaged in contradictory state-building processes while working on the creation of new states, i.e. a Sunni caliphate and an autonomous Kurdistan, respectively. Although the Syrian state itself could have collapsed, both projects revealed that a rigorous contestation of Syrian territory and its colonial boundaries was underway. For a growing portion of the Syrian opposition, their refusal of the former colonial border order, defined in 1920 through the Sykes-Picot Agreement, is a major political undertaking that could affect not only Syria, Iraq and the entire Middle East, but also Europe. From 2015 onwards, several EU countries were hit by a series of terrorist attacks directly connected to the post-2011 political, social and economic reconfigurations in Syria and its neighbouring countries.

In 2015, this research project on Syrian Borders was originally proposed and designed as a response to the fact that major research programs on contemporary Syria were lacking. The literature, mainly monodisciplinary, was even more scant when it came to the study of borders, a field that suffers globally from theoretical weakness and the use of outdated research methods and techniques. At the time, there were no major studies on Syrian borders. Hence, this project is important for European and Mediterranean societies, as it could help researchers, political actors, civil servants and the public to understand the post-2011 reconfigurations of the Middle East as well as the potential implications for Europe.

This project had two main objectives:
(1) contribute to the history of contemporary Syria by analysing the country through the prism of its borders;
(2) produce a monograph that would include post-2011 dynamics.

Work performed

The fellowship was divided into several milestones:

(1) “Collecting data and fieldwork”: in order to collect the material needed for the proper writing of the articles and the collective book, several research trips were conducted in various national archives (Kew and the French diplomatic archives) as well as Oxford libraries (e.g. the Boedlian). The research also included travel to Israel, Lebanon, as well as Germany (Braunschweig) to collect several geography and history textbooks. It took approximately six months to collect field data and to exhaustively check the different libraries and archives.
Main result: collection of a considerable amount of material.

(2) “Writing process and outreach activities”: on each return from various periods of fieldwork, the ongoing work was presented at different seminars to discuss and brainstorm with different researchers about this project’s progress. At each seminar, the ground-breaking reflections provided new ideas and new directions, which were particularly useful for the writing phase. During these two years, the researcher wrote several academic articles published in major peer-reviewed journals (see “publications”). And, these articles were presented at international and high-level conferences or workshops (for example, MESA in Boston 2016 and Washington 2017).

Another aspect of this sequence was the importance of outreach activities. The transfer of knowledge to the public took various forms, for example, the researcher participated in multiple public conferences, ran a Twitter account, was invited to participate in different podcasts, developed ties with various public institutions in France and in the United Kingdom. The researcher also taught a seminar at Oxford’s Saint Antony’s College (“Borders & Boundaries”).
Main result: publication of four (4) academic articles and participation in a dozen workshops and seminars.

(3) “Training”: one of the MCF objectives was to prepare for a “reintegration” process in France. In that perspective, part of the researcher’s objectives was to develop extra-curricular skills. Over the past two years, the grantee attended several training sessions, such as « Interview and Presentation Skills », « Media Training », « Podcasting » and « Publishing a Scholarly Monograph ». A technical capacity for manipulating cartography software (GIS) was also developed.
Main result: improvement of the researcher’s curriculum.

(4) “Organizing an international Seminar”. This sequence was probably the most important. On November 15 and 16, 2017, a conference (entitled “Exploring Syria’s Borders and Boundaries”) was organized at the University of Oxford in cooperation with the Maison Française d’Oxford (MFO). During the two days, fifteen high-level researchers from the EU and beyond (e.g. United States, Turkey) worked together and discussed recent academic developments on the Syrian issue and, more specifically, on its borders. Based on the presentations and discussions held at this workshop, an academic book entitled “Syria: Borders, Boundaries, and the State” will be published in 2019 with a major international publisher.
Main result: publication of a collective monograph on Syria’s borders and boundaries.

Final results

Beyond the contribution to the state-of-the-art, the results of this fellowship are twofold:

(1) The concepts, and theories, mobilized on Syria could well be applied to wider geographical areas. Reflecting on Syria’s borders also makes it possible to question the situation in Europe given this time of protests, revolts and emerging political movements spread throughout the continent (Brexit, M5S, yellow jackets, and so forth). More broadly, an understanding of the political and social phenomena driving the external borders of Europe (Turkey and the whole of the Middle East) remains a considerable point of interest for the future of the European Union.

(2) This project also deals with the issue of radicalization. Among the socio-political objects analysed under this fellowship, several works have been conducted on the representation by the Salafi-jihadist movement of the boundaries of what should be an “Islamic state”. Studying those issues in a European context marked by terrorist attacks allowed (and will allow in the future) for a better grasp the jihadist threat. More broadly, a better understanding of the Middle East and a more intelligible vision of this region can only lead to positive societal and socio-economic impacts on both sides of the Mediterranean sea.