This country is at the heart of the Near East, and yet we know it so badly. Syria in the present Comes fill this gap by drawing a striking and meticulous portrait of a complex society, which does not allow itself to be summed up with the autocratic regime of Bashar al-Assad.
Syria is the poor parent of French works devoted to the Middle East-a surprising thing, given its complexity and the central place it occupies in regional balances, which prohibit reducing it to the status of “ Rogue state “(Rogue State) or to judge him through the prism of his political regime alone. From the collective work published by the Cnrs in 1990 (Syria todayunder the direction of André Bourgey), French readers indeed only have very specialized scientific articles to understand the political and social realities of this country.
The publication of Syria in the presentthe book directed by four researchers from the French Institute of the Near East, is therefore, from the outset, a remarkable event. Bringing together a team of academics and practitioners from all horizons, this work paints a portrait if not exhaustive (the subtitle humbly indicates that it is ‘reflections’), at least faithful to the complexity of contemporary Syria. This ambition is reflected in the plan of the work, composed around eight themes – the territory, the population, the religion, the culture, the economy, the law, the politics, the place of Syria in the region -, each being the subject of an introductory chapter followed by a series of shorter papers. There are in -depth studies on very specific subjects (for example, dairy production, or a Palestinian refugee camp….), But also transversal questions (Sufism, current linguistic questions, water policy, the Muslim Brotherhood, Syrian theater, etc.), testimonies (on concrete blocks, on a concert by Sabakh Farhi, Syria…), and zooms more or less close (ranging from the gardens of the cities of the Oronte to the badialand of the Bedouins) which anchor the analyzes in realities located on different scales.
Based on solid expertise but accessible to the non -specialist public, Syria in the present also performs a way of assessment: that of forty years of “ Socialist interlude », That of forty years of authoritarian regime. Thanks to the multiple “ reflections »That it offers, thanks to the constant round trips of the texts in a long time and instantaneous of everyday life, the work describes a paradoxical society: hampered, certainly, but nevertheless extremely alive and plural. Whatever the judgment that is carried out on the balance sheet – it is however severe – it is clear that, in Syria, nothing is so motionless as it looks, despite the rigidity of the state frame, the iron hand of the police regime, the long closure of the country, the impoverishment of the population. The red thread connecting these chapters could therefore be, in a way, the tensions and recompositions which take place, at all scales and in all areas, between terroirs, networks and sociability, know-how, creativity and on the other hand planning, national development objectives, Directism. These tensions are revived by the recent context of relative economic liberalization and greater opening of the country while the political lead, corruption and clientelism which, in the final analysis, are maintained the country from closing “ the interlude ».
An example of these tensions, adaptations and mixing is given in the first chapter, devoted to the transformations of the Syrian territory since the 1960s. This chapter thus describes the recompositions of the Syrian territory-and in particular the integration of previously abandoned peripheries, in particular that of Jazira, a territory of the North-East with a large Kurdish population, and that of the Alawite region, mountain by the Mediterranean. The fate of Jazira has been transformed by the development of an intensive irrigation program (thanks to the construction of two dams on the Euphrates), by the establishment of state agricultural farms and public sector industries, and finally by the discovery and exploitation of oil from the 1980s – the modalities of this insertion also make intellectuals from the region cited by the authors that Jazira has become “ internal colony To Syria due to the one -way exploitation of its resources. Construction Ex nihilo from the “ Alawite region It owes it all to the taking of Damascene power by the members of this community, which so far was confined to a landlocked and poor terroir. These transformations also participate in increasing centralization of the territory for the benefit of Damascus. This centralization reformulates the urban hierarchy and the report of cities with each other, and in particular the role of the second city in the country, Aleppo. This one, an eternal rival of the capital and essential industrial and commercial pole, is indeed destabilized by the Damascene metropolization process-which now captures most of international investment-as by the partial break in its domination over its hinterland, a powerfully transformed jazira. The acceleration of the disconnection of the city/country relationships, a couple whose relations have structured the development of Syria in XXe century, is indeed accelerated by the economic opening of the beginning of XXIe century, and contributed to the anchoring of cities in longer -range, regional and international networks to the detriment of local solidarity. At the start of XXIe A century, Syrian territory is therefore both more integrated, but also more fragmented, in transition between the heritage of planning and the recomposition of human resources and local networks with new conditions of opening.
Adaptation, adjustment, bypass, interbreeding, resistance and normalization also characterize the other aspects of the Syrian society discussed by the work. The second chapter offers an in -depth analysis of the Syrian population, and underlines the persistent halt in the demographic transition process – which makes Syria an almost unique case in the world. He also gives useful spotlight on minority populations and that power seeks to control, with more or less success – Kurds, Bedouins, Palestinians for example. The third chapter endeavors to show the diversity of the Syrian religious landscape: diversity of the different confessional groups and the internal composition of these, dynamism of the religious debate between the different traditions, a variety of the practices and spaces of the sacred, complexity of the relationships that the different communities between them as with a Baasist power anxious to supervise them, to control them, to repress them. This portrait usefully puts in perspective the question of political Islam-the favorite subject of Western media-and indicates that it is far from exhausting the religious question in Syria. It is the lighting devoted to various aspects of the Syrian cultural scene that make all the richness of the chapter devoted to culture: they account for the vitality of creation in many fields (theater, cinema, television works, book, music) despite internal constraints – lack of means and control policy – but also by taking an interest in less studied cultural forms – it is so polyglossia of Arabic or music nawarfestive music with two instruments played by Gypsies – which reveal tensions between expanding mass culture and the future of more localized cultures and practices. The fifth chapter on the Syrian economy delivers a severe assessment of the forty years of the “ Socialist interlude “(Including so -called opening policies of the 1990s), Interlède which officially ended in 2005, when the Baas party congress announced the entrance to Syria in a” Social market economy »Which still remains to be defined ; The insights proposed describe the proximity relationships that exist between economic spheres and political spheres. Quite similarly, the sixth chapter, which examines the relationships between law and society, accounts for the different degrees and the different forms of state intervention in the legal field. He takes an example from the development of a real “ economic legalism Which allows the state, through the economy, to overflow in areas that affect the right of the person and, more broadly, to politics.
The seven and eight chapters are more directly devoted to the political sphere. Chapter Sept, devoted to internal transformations, precisely analyzes the institutional mechanisms and balances which allowed accession (in 2000) and the maintenance of Bashar al-Assad in power ; This analysis allows its authors to go beyond the usual opposition between “ rupture or continuity “Demonstrating that Bashar is more a phase of” adaptation From regime to new external and internal constraints. Additional articles are doing a useful work by proposing, for example, analyzes of Muslim political oppositions, the political weakness of the different Syrian bourgeoisies, or the abandonment in 2000 of one of the pillars of Baasist economic policy, the dismantling of state farms. The last chapter places the regional insertion of Syria under the paradigm of a progressive weakening of the position of Damascus since the early 2000s (growing isolation linked to American engagement in the region and to the poor mastery of the evolution of relations with Lebanon, which Syrian troops are forced to leave in 2005), in strong contrast with the central role that it kept there until then thanks to the control of some essential cards.
We can certainly regret the absence of certain themes-so we would like to learn more about the Syrian youth that make up the majority of the population, on the living conditions of the urban and rural population, on the world of work or on the economic and cultural aspects of the links that bind Syria to other countries of the region. Nevertheless: Syria in the present constitutes a rich contribution to Syrian studies. This first synthesis work on Syria in XXIe century will therefore be a date for those interested in this country.