Exploring the Primordial Foundation of the
Syrian Civil War: Incentives for EthnoReligious Group Mobilization in Conflict
By Gabriel White
Journal Article | Feb 22 2017 - 4:59am
Exploring the Primordial Foundation of the Syrian Civil War: Incentives for Ethno-Religious
Group Mobilization in Conflict
Gabriel White
Between 1976 and 1982, a string of Islamist revolts rocked northwestern Syria. During those years, the
Syrian Muslim Brotherhood waged an insurgency against the regime of Hafez al-Assad, culminating in
the deaths of some 30,000 people in the Hama Massacre.[i] The uprising's leaders were executed or exiled
and the Syrian Muslim brotherhood found itself in ruins, yet three decades later many of the same areas
that took part in that Islamic uprising would revolt again.
Primordialist approaches traditionally hold identity as a natural occurrence, a product of language and
culture that is largely immutable. These identities primarily bear sub-national characteristics, components
of group membership are grounded in shared practice and attributes, such as language, race, ethnicity,
religion, or regional associations.[ii] Though most scholarly work on identity has shifted away from this
framework towards theories of social construction the paradoxical question remains, why do durable
primordial-like identities persist?
An answer can likely be found in contemporary constructivist scholarship. This school sees ethnic and
national identities as social constructions, reinforced by categories of memberships by both in-group and
outgroup associations, whether they be national, racial, ethnic, religious, or political. Fearon and Laitin
argue in Violence and the Social Construction of Ethnic Identity, the content of these categories is prone to
change over time, as are boundaries between social categories. This flexibility does explain why conflict
between groups and even group identification is subject to temporal change, but in the absence of national
loyalties primordial like identities persist with remarkable durability.[iii] The sum of these conditions in
the Syrian example is a plethora of identities bound at varying degrees to shared conceptions of kinship,
some supplanted by national loyalties others defined by its absence.
The origins of the Syrian Civil War are difficult to determine, although commentators mostly argue that
the war began in response to a violent crackdown on protests that took place across much of the country in
2011. Syria, like many of its neighbors, experienced a wave of civil disobedience beginning, in March
2011. Following the torture, imprisonment and murder of a group of teenagers in the southern city of
Dara’a, protests emerged in many of Syria’s most populous cities.[iv] In response, government security
forces were deployed across much of the country in a campaign of violent suppression. Over the course of
weeks hundreds had been killed, members of the Syrian military had begun to defect, and the
northwestern city of Jisr al-Shughur fallen into open insurrection for the second time in thirty years.[v]
The turn to violence, undoubtedly capitalized on a number of existing trends, latent tensions, and most
importantly identities. The answer for why the conflict devolved so quickly into sectarian war is a result of
a cocktail of contingency; its ingredients are numerous ranging from the historical socialization of Sunnis
in the country’s north, and their subsequent disenfranchisement from the regime to an inherently weak
national identity project.
Throughout the first year of the war, and the transition from protest to conflict the majority of key events
in 2011 occurred along preexisting geographical and ethno-religious divides within the country. The
brutality of the state’s response and the use of co-ethnic and religious elements of the military to quell
their own ethno-religious groups ensured early defections, and an avenue for Sunni military mobilization
under the umbrella of the Free Syrian Army (FSA).[vi]Another popular argument claims that the very
structure of state institutions contributed to and perpetuated the sectarian nature of the conflict in Syria.
Because most of Syria’s national governmental institutions, the military, secret police, and the ruling
Ba’ath party were, and remain, firmly controlled by Bashar al-Assad’s own Alawite minority, an
opposition would principally emerge from outside rather than from within.[vii] Though there is significant
truth to this line of reasoning, the approach fails to appropriately explain why Sunni participation in the
regime remains significant. However, that does not mean that the sectarian war narrative is not appropriate.
[viii]
The association of particular ethno-religious groups with government institutions amalgamates minority
group interests, in the case of Syria, with the interests of the state. The system produces an environment in
which ethno-religious distinction is a highly salient component of society. The perception of Alawite
dominance of the Syrian security forces ensured a partial Sunni response to manifest along ethno-religious
lines in retribution to atrocities committed against protestors in the first months of the uprising. This
contingency effectively incentivized the emergence of political-military (armed organizations with distinct
political objectives) rooted in apparent primordial identities, yet this cleavage did not manifest universally
across Syrian society. The principal question then is why did armed resistance against the regime emerge
in some places, namely the northwestern provinces and parts of the south while in other Sunni majority
areas it did not? An answer to this question warrants considering both instrumentalist approaches to
identity as well as Syria’s history.
Throughout Syria’s colonial and independent history, no singular identity has been able to transform itself
successfully into a national identity, but there have been attempts made to achieve one. Pan-Arab
nationalists under King Faisal attempted to secure an independent nation-state in Syria after it was clear
British promises made during the First World War were second to those of the 1916 Sykes-Picot
Agreement which promised Syria, Lebanon, and parts of Eastern Turkey to the French. The project ended
in failure following the Franco-Syrian War and the collapse of the short-lived Arab Kingdom of Syria
(March 8th - July 24th 1920). That same year the French Mandate in Syria officially began, dividing
Syrian and Lebanese territories into six separate administrative areas.
The French, believing that Pan-Arab nationalists were the greatest threat to colonial rule produced a
system of minority promotion and favoritism. The partition of Syria granted semi-autonomous
configurations to both the Druze and Alawites, with borders being drawn to favor their ethno-religious
supremacy in Jabal Druze and the conglomeration of contemporary Tartus and Latakia governorates that
was the Alawite state. The remainder of the Syrian territory, most of it being majority Sunni Arab was
divided between Damascus, Aleppo, and the Sanjak of Alexandretta.[ix] Throughout the early history of
the mandate there were several revolts including the Alawite Revolt of 1919, the Aleppo Hananu Revolt
of 1920, and most significantly the series of uprisings known as the Great Syrian Revolt (1925-27), a
collection anti-colonial movements across the mandate instigated by the Druze downing of a French
aircraft.[x] What is remarkable about both the frequency and scope of the revolts is that they suggest that
the salience of ethno-religious identities was already notable at the offset of the French Mandate.
During the 1930s, Syria enjoyed a brief period of increased national autonomy as the Syrian Arab
Republic, ending with temporary suspension following the Turkish annexation of Alexandretta, and the
beginning of World War II. The republic gained full independence in 1945, however, after a decade of
political instability the country voted overwhelming to support short lived United Arab Republic union
with Nasser’s Egypt in 1958. Three years later a group of Syrian military officers led a coup against
Nasser’s forces in Syria, heralding in a return of the independent state as it is known today, the Syrian
Arab Republic.
In the following years, the country would descend into a period of renewed political instability, with a
coup in 1963 installing a Ba’athist government, and follow-up coups altering ruling party structure in
1966, finally in 1970, bringing Hafez al-Assad to power. The Ba'athist regimes of Hafez al Assad and his
son Bashar attempted to build a broadly appealing national identity project on top of many preexisting
durable ethno-religious identities. The regime of Hafez al-Assad actively cultivated a Ba’athist state
ideology, however unlike its predecessors it even attempted to extend national membership to Syria’s
most significant non-Arab ethnic group, the Kurds.[xi]
While Ba’athism is, at its forefront, pan-Arab and secular, the Assad regime further dichotomized the
state’s identity project by incorporating Islamist elements into institutional practices. Perhaps recognizing
the threat of the Muslim Brotherhood, both of the Assads carefully navigated Sunni political demands by
introducing religious denominational requirements for office, including that of the president, but they did
so while seeking to legitimize their own minority rule. While the results are questionable, as is evident
both in 1980s uprisings example as well the ongoing catastrophic civil war, there is little doubt that the
Assads’ identity projects have failed to penetrate the same niche which had been previously occupied by
the state narrative and identity of Baathism’s chief competitor, the Muslim Brotherhood.
The reasons for this failure are twofold, building national loyalties through ideological bonds are never
easy, and building them on top of existing primordial group loyalties are even more difficult. The success
of the state project in winning over some Sunnis of the upper and middle classes, along with the
Damascene poor can be attributed both to actual successes in incorporating them into the state - and thus
expanding their complacency in the identity project of the regime.
Returning to 2011, the introduction of violence into the question of ethnic identity begins to explain how a
series of protests and their suppression could yield an increasingly intractable sectarian war, as it takes
only one group’s mobilization along ethnic grounds to spur many others. The historical examples of this
phenomena numerous but the most telling is that of Yugoslavia – which clearly demonstrated the rising
opportunity costs for failure to mobilize coupled with the dynamic of a state entity associated primarily
with one primordial group. The use of excessive force against protesters incentivized group mobilization
primarily in the same societal niche that had participated in the earlier Islamic uprising. Yet therein lies a
dichotomy, if the threat a forceful suppression is intended to de-incentivize civil disobedience, then why
did groups form not only along a basis of protest, but also to fight back?
Existing literature on the violent suppression of peaceful movements suggests that ironically that the act of
suppression itself produces armed resistance.[xii] This apparent dichotomy, the incentive to fight (and
possibly die) as a response to existing violence is however equally symptomatic the preexistence of a
belief system and highly durable shared conceptions of group membership. Furthermore, within a system
in which ethno-religious group associations are highly salient when violence does occur one might expect
it to fall along boundaries between groups, whether latent or newly created. Once more, the association of
security forces with a particular group — the Alawites — reinforced both outgroup stereotypes, along
with in-group membership criteria. Defining difference becomes an integral aspect of defining in-group
conceptions of membership. In Syria, it should be unsurprising that shared religious practice has become,
perhaps the most significant component political-military organizational identities.
A sub-set of social constructivists theories, namely instrumentalism, suggest that formations of group
associations may be attributed to social or economic incentives. While both aspects certainly feed into the
cocktail, the striking disparity in resource wealth between the opposition groups of Idlib to the Kurds of
Cizire is worth noting. One might expect social association costs to be similarly linked to economic
opportunity — in the Kurdish example the incentive to revolt was certainly amplified as it promised
control over significant oil fields in the country’s northeast. In Idlib, no such resource such as oil exists,
and such no clear economic incentive for revolt can be found other than in general autonomy, but the
social incentives particularly among the mostly homogenous Sunni areas are numerous — particularly
after the war had begun and the opportunity cost for active association (and insurrection) were diminished.
A secondary component to instrumentalist approach should consider both the proximity of Sunni majority
population centers to the regime’s coercive capabilities as well as those populations’ overall participation
in regime institutions. This line of thought would indicate that those who had the most to lose in terms of
social status or economic position, as well as those who were most likely to be killed early would
naturally not revolt. The instrumentalist arguments offer critical insights into incentive based decision
making and affiliations, but they must also be coupled with latent durable identities that predated the
conflict. In a sense, the formation of political-military organizations rooted in primordial like ethnoreligious identities was possible because both the shared conception of these identities existed and the
social incentives were in place for them to be fully realized.
Mobilization can therefore be explained as a result of a cocktail of contingency. Latent primordial
identification had pre-imposed understandings of kin and kinship, a lack of national loyalty while
governmental disenfranchisement made and maintained conceptions of that group. The use of violence
threatened that group and incentivized mobilization, and finally the association of the regime with other
primordial groups hardened in-group and outgroup associations. The formation of Sunni political military
organizations against the state in the northwest sent reverberations across the country, increasing the
salience of boundaries between some ethno-religious groups, and diminishing others.
Group mobilization incentivizes further mobilization by other groups, both in response to potential
competition but also from the increasing costs for the failure to mobilize. In the instance of Syria, the
mobilization of a Sunni group against the state incentivized the counter mobilization of the Kurds as a
means of securing their own interests.[xiii] In the Kurdish majority parts of the country this mobilization
in turn yielded further counter mobilization, with the formation of National Defense Forces, not unlike the
isolated pockets of Shia in Syria’s northwestern cities of Nubl, Kafarya, al-Zahra and al-Fauh.[xiv]
End Notes
[i] Brynjar Lia, “The Islamist Uprising in Syria, 1976-82: The History and Legacy of a Failed Revolt,”
British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 43, Issue 4, 2016
[ii] Murat Bayar, “Reconsidering primordialism: an alternative approach to the study of ethnicity,” Ethnic
and Racial Studies Vol. 32, Issue 9, 2009
[iii] Keith Darden and Harris Mylonas, “The Promethean Dilemma: Third-party State-building in
Occupied Territories,” Ethnopolitics Vol. 11, Issue 1, 2012
[iv] Kareem Fahim and Hwaida Saad, “A Faceless Teenage Refugee Who Helped Ignite Syria’s War,”
The New York Times, February 2013
[v] Joseph Holliday, “Middle East Security Report 2: The Struggle for Syria in 2011,” The Institute for the
Study of War, December 2011
[vi] Rashad Al Kattan, “Decisive Military Defections in Syria: A Case of Wishful Thinking,” War on the
Rocks, September 2016
[vii] Heiko Wimmen, “Syria’s Path from Civic Uprising to Civil War,” Carnegie, Middle East Center,
November 22, 2016
[viii] Cyrus Malik, “Washington’s Sunni Myth and the Middle East Undone,” War on the Rocks, August
23, 2016
[ix] Philip Shukry Khoury, “In Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 19201945,” Princeton University Press, 1987, page 515
[x] Michael Provence, “The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism,” University of Texas
Press, 2005
[xi] Ola Rifai, “The Identity balance during the Syrian uprising: a vehement reconstruction?” Center for
Syrian Studies, University of St. Andrews, January 2014
[xii] Adria Lawrence. 2010. “Triggering Nationalist Violence: Competition and Conflict in Uprisings
against Colonial Rule,” International Security, Vol. 35, No. 2
[xiii] Mark R. Beissinger, “Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State,” Cambridge
University Press, 2002
[xiv] Robert Fisk, “Syria civil war: The untold story of the siege of two small Shia villages - and how the
world turned a blind eye,” Independent, February, 2016
About the Author
Gabriel White
Gabriel White, an independent defense analyst focused on Europe and Post-Soviet
Space, is a Masters Candidate at American University's School of International
Service in Washington D.C. He tweets at@Gabriel___White
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