{"id":14529,"date":"2026-05-29T16:00:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T14:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/?p=14529"},"modified":"2026-05-29T16:04:39","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T14:04:39","slug":"assadisms-self-collapse-are-we-living-under-the-authority-of-the-countrysides-of-the-countrysides","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/assadisms-self-collapse-are-we-living-under-the-authority-of-the-countrysides-of-the-countrysides\/","title":{"rendered":"Assadism\u2019s Self-Collapse: Are We Living Under the Authority of the Countrysides of the Countrysides?"},"content":{"rendered":"

An economic-sociological analysis of the Syrian civil war has spread, interpreting it as a consequence of the “neoliberal” policies of Bashar al-Assad and his government team. These policies supposedly coalesced with severe drought seasons to trigger a massive social explosion in the Syrian countryside, which gradually acquired an armed and sectarian character, ultimately leading to the fall of Assad and his state. This analysis usually relies on accurate data and figures regarding the reduction of government subsidies for agriculture<\/span>\u2014<\/span>especially diesel subsidies, which are vital for Syrian irrigated agriculture; the migration of hundreds of thousands of rural inhabitants during the first decade of the millennium as a result of the drought and the collapse of land productivity, forming a destitute belt around the largest cities; alongside the dominance of a crony capitalist class<\/span>\u2014<\/span>composed of a security-commercial complex surrounding the family of Bashar and his wife<\/span>\u2019<\/span>s family<\/span>\u2014<\/span>over the vital arteries of the Syrian economy, accumulating wealth at the expense of impoverishing the Syrian people; as well as the uncalculated economic openness, particularly toward Turkey, which led to the collapse of a number of traditional industries, especially in the rural Damascus regions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although peasants no longer constituted a central class in Syria by the turn of the millennium<\/span>\u2014<\/span>as their proportion did not exceed 17% of the labor force in 2010<\/span>\u2014<\/span>proponents of this analysis argue that subsidy cuts and drought seasons did not only affect peasants and direct agricultural workers, but rather the entire rural and semi-rural landscape in Syria. This landscape always retained a highly influential political impact in the country, given its extended families, clans, tribal solidarities (asabiyyat), and relations of loyalty and subordination. From this perspective, the countryside was marginalized in favor of unbalanced growth in the cities, or in “Useful Syria,” which generated a parasitic class loyal to the authority. Looking at the map of protests, and subsequently the war, it becomes evident that it erupted in the primary agricultural provinces: Daraa, Deir ez-Zor, Idlib, and Hama.<\/span><\/p>\n

All of this is presented in comparison with the subsidy policies of the Hafez al-Assad era, which were based on an implicit “social contract” between the state and the Syrian countryside. This contract rested on exceptional support for agriculture, purchasing strategic agricultural products at prices higher than the global market, and opening the door of employment for the sons of peasants in civil state institutions, the military, and the security forces. This was seen as an investment in demographic growth to establish new relations of loyalty and subordination tied to the state apparatus. Thus, wheat, cotton, and olive farmers prospered in particular, and a silent security quota emerged for each agricultural province. One province would find a central place for its sons within the police apparatus, another in specific divisions of the Special Forces, and a third in the security branches, within a clannish-regional hierarchy that did not ensure equality between groups but guaranteed a minimum level of benefit for most of them through the distribution of rents, a degree of authoritative capacity, and the empowerment of local clientelist networks. <\/span><\/p>\n

It can be observed that this was a “system” and not mere corruption<\/span>\u2014<\/span>even if it allowed massive opportunities for corruption<\/span>\u2014<\/span>as it was a method for managing power, constructing a broad social coalition for it, distributing rents, and ensuring the loyalty of the solidarities that constituted the striking force of the authority, which fought alongside it in its internal and external battles. That was the “Assadist peasant state,” which did not mean that the peasants, as a class, had assumed power, but rather that they entered into a complex relationship with a state apparatus led by a military-security and partisan-political elite of peasant origins. This elite reproduced rural relations on the basis of loyalty to a new master<\/span>\u2014<\/span>the Ba’athist state<\/span>\u2014<\/span>accompanied by a moderate “progressive” ideology that accommodated rural paternalism and local religiosity, particularly after the Hama massacre of 1982. At the same time, it insisted on “national causes” (the Palestinian cause, supporting “liberation movements” in the region, confronting colonialism and imperialism, etc.), and contributed to raising the level of education, public culture, and securing a minimum of social and health care. All of this began to change since the end of the elder Assad’s reign in the 1990s, as the state began to breach its “social contract” with the countryside, producing and biasing itself toward new segments<\/span>\u2014<\/span>a trend that reached its zenith in the era of the son, Assad.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the other hand, traditional segments in the cities<\/span>\u2014<\/span>composed of the merchant class, industrialists, and traditional clergymen<\/span>\u2014<\/span>entered the Assadist coalition reluctantly at first, then fully submitted to it, benefited from it, and attempted over time to develop their position within it. They allied or partnered with the newly rich class produced by the regime of the younger Assad, becoming increasingly one of the most important foundations of the Assadist regime prior to the war and during its early stages.<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite the robustness of this thesis, and its transcendence of vulgar perceptions that reduce Syrian history to simplified sectarian and ethnic conflict, or to a contradiction between “tyranny” and “freedom,” several empirical facts challenge it relatively. First, there is no evidence that the population of internally displaced persons<\/span>\u2014<\/span>resulting from the drought and the removal of subsidies<\/span>\u2014<\/span>played a primary role in the Syrian protests at the beginning of the war, nor was there any actual presence recorded for their demands, or for peasant demands in general, even in a symbolic or indirect manner. Second, international economic reports present more complex figures regarding the economic situation in Syria, which was not economically collapsed at all. In fact, the average GDP per capita based on purchasing power parity (PPP) reached its highest level ever in the country’s history in 2011, estimated at around $6,000, in parallel with economic growth rates ranging between 3% and 5% in the first decade of the younger Assad’s rule, according to the World Bank. This means that many Syrians had become capable of consuming much more than their parents’ generation. Conversely, poverty rates rose between 2004 and 2007 to reach about 35%, exceeding this percentage in the eastern and northern regions, while decreasing in Damascus and its countryside, which played a fundamental role in the Syrian protests and war. Furthermore, Daraa, where the protests erupted, was not among the poorest or most affected regions in Syria; the same applies to Homs and Baniyas, which witnessed early social explosions compared to the poorer and more affected northeastern regions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps a modification should be introduced into the conception of the “peasant war” so that it is no longer confined to the idea of striking agricultural production or impoverishing the peasants and their rural environment, becoming more comprehensive and less simplistic. The bloody conflict in Syria was not a direct protest against the exploitation or marginalization of specific regions that raised clear demands to improve their conditions; nor was it an uprising of producers<\/span>\u2014<\/span>whether peasants or workers whose options had narrowed; and it was not the result of an economic crisis, but rather a change in the model of governance itself, the collapse of its coalitions, alliances, and implicit social contract, and the decay of an entire pattern of management, rent distribution, organization of ruling cliques, and relations of loyalty and subordination. It was an uprising against Assadism itself, from within it, which did not take on a clear demand-driven character, nor did it clarify the desired alternative for it, even in broad strokes, except for vague expressions about “freedom” and endless insults directed at Assad, his family, and his regime. What was common were slogans carrying a character of symbolic revenge against the regime, religious mobilization, and the reclamation of regional identity, followed by the repetition of old Ba’athist slogans, but with an Islamic and sectarian flavor, whereby the chant “Our leader forever is our master Muhammad” became the alternative to the slogan “Our leader to eternity is the faithful Hafez al-Assad.”<\/span><\/p>\n

It is perhaps more accurate to say that it was the collapse of Assadism upon itself after it lost the capacity to reproduce its system. Consequently, its old coalition exploded chaotically, and armed opposition fighters emerged from the very same regions that had provided the largest number of conscripts and volunteers for the military and security forces, such as Daraa, Deir ez-Zor, Raqqa, and the countrysides of Hama and Aleppo. The clashes were not merely between rebels and a state; rather, they erupted within local communities inside the rebel areas, which appeared as though they were consuming themselves, witnessing a mixture of political, religious, familial, tribal, and factional conflicts. During those conflicts, the old class of rural notables<\/span>\u2014<\/span>whether they were collaborators with the authority or opposed to it<\/span>\u2014<\/span>was eliminated through physical liquidation, exile, or the shattering of their social and economic existence. New faces emerged, consisting of militia commanders, jihadists, warlords, and gangsters, most of whom came from smaller families and villages.<\/span><\/p>\n

It can be said that a coup occurred in the Syrian countryside, by virtue of which the “countrysides of the countrysides” (aryaf al-aryaf) came to the forefront of the scene. However, this was not a rebellion against the exploitation of the old notables, for instance<\/span>\u2014<\/span>as they were not exploiters in the actual sense<\/span>\u2014<\/span>but rather the emergence of new networks of loyalty and subordination. These networks managed to arm themselves, obtain external funding, and grow thanks to a war economy that included receiving funds, exploiting humanitarian aid, invasion, pillaging, looting, kidnapping (ta’feesh and tashweel in the language of Syrian militias), smuggling, trafficking in illicit goods, controlling crossings, and imposing extortions, among other activities usually categorized within the shadow economy and crime.<\/span><\/p>\n

Does this carry the characteristics of a social revolution<\/span>\u2014<\/span>that is, a radical change in social relations carried by new segments that grew within the womb of the old regime? And can the countrysides of the countrysides, after their victory, transcend the militia networks and fiefdoms of war they formed to build broader social coalitions that could serve as the foundation for a new state?<\/span><\/p>\n

The Rural Coup<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The “countrysides of the countrysides” can be defined as regions and groups that appeared on the margins of the primary socio-economic structure of Assadism, without being outside it or antithetical to it, but rather a result of its outcomes. They provided many elements to the Assadist security and military apparatuses, whether through volunteering or mandatory conscription. Over time, a pattern of a shadow economy developed within them<\/span>\u2014<\/span>meaning unorganized and often illegal work<\/span>\u2014<\/span>tolerated by security authorities or met with light friction to prevent threats to public order. They produced their own networks of loyalty and subordination, and a pattern of rigid rural religiosity spread among them, which subsequently facilitated infiltration by Salafi-jihadism. Their individuals belong to small villages and families, not necessarily poorer than the larger villages and families, and not exploited by them; they ascended after the war thanks to their resort to weapons, receiving external funding, and general social destruction. They then assumed an organized Islamic ideological character and produced their own emirs and religious jurists (shari’is) after violent internal conflicts within their circles, and managed to receive “external expertise” from foreign jihadists. These segments eliminated the class of rural notables first, and then witnessed a violent sifting within their own ranks throughout the years of war, in a long conflict over influence and control, in which the side with the strongest doctrine, the solidest external relations, and the capacity for “militia governance”<\/span>\u2014<\/span>if one may use the expression<\/span>\u2014<\/span>triumphed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Are the “countrysides of the countrysides” a class, a region, or a pattern of authority? They are all of these together, as they are closer to complex networks that merge factional interests with regional loyalties, militia structures, and Islamic ideology within a shadow and war economy. They gradually became independent of their original rural environments and relations to produce new relations of loyalty within the framework of war emirates and the new militia authority. The networks of the “countrysides of the countrysides” are not composed of producing peasants; rather, they have come to stand in a contradiction with them that is gradually increasing. Today, we see peasant protests against the decisions of the militia authority in Syria, which no longer cares even for the regions it originated from, and which was supposed to carry its protest against Assadist impoverishment and marginalization and seek to improve its conditions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Accordingly, the Syrian war was not a social revolution of oppressed or marginalized segments, but rather a process of restructuring power within the clientelist military and security margins produced by Assadism itself during the epoch of its collapse upon itself. This process of collapse continues to this day. The “countrysides of the countrysides” have overrun the primary cities and the regions of religious and ethnic minorities in the countryside, plunging the country into an unprecedented state of crisis. After the Sunni countryside in Syria was completely destroyed as a result of the bloody war, looting, and internal liquidation, the operations of ta’feesh, tashweel, and “militia and jihadist governance” will move to the regions that remained relatively safe from all of this. Since the Assad regime has fallen and its former supporters have disappeared as if they never existed, and the majority has adopted the discourse of “revolution” and “liberation”<\/span>\u2014<\/span>even if hypocritically<\/span>\u2014<\/span>there is no organized force today that can confront all of this. Most likely, militia and jihadist pressure, alongside operations of looting, impoverishment, Islamization, expropriation, the destruction of what remains of the urban character of the cities, and the systematic assault on minorities, will lead to irregular or unpredictable social explosions without a political compass or an organizational structure. These could reach extreme degrees of violence and take on an internecine character between segments and communities, one that is not directed directly toward the ruling militia authority. This allows the authority the possibility to manipulate and benefit from those explosions, achieving further looting and expropriation, as it has grown accustomed to thriving and prospering in such atmospheres.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ragged Decentralization<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

To speak of a “state” or a “government” under such conditions, and from within these structures, is closer to nonsense that does not deserve much attention. We are not facing a project of formalized institutional structures and political and social frameworks to build broad coalitions, but rather a collection of militias, war emirates, sheikhs, and religious jurists, alongside kinship relations, acting through mechanisms entirely foreign to any concept of the state. They rely on verbal orders, armed balances, and informal, undocumented communication via applications like Telegram and WhatsApp. They evade any coherent legal logic, even if it were in their interest, because the existence of reference texts and normative frameworks means restricting their flexibility and their customary methods of imposing hegemony.<\/span><\/p>\n

Within the world of the “countrysides of the countrysides,” there is no possibility for authoritarian centralization, the monopoly of violence, the unification of legislation, institutional framing, social policies, or service functions. The highest objective sought is militia governance<\/span>\u2014<\/span>meaning the establishment of military and security organizations for the ruling militias that enable them to organize their internal ranks, ensure their cohesion, and communicate and coordinate with a minimum level of reliability with external political and military entities. This convinces those external entities that they are dealing with something more than a mere gang. That is to say, this “governance” grants functional legitimacy to the militias in their dealings with the outside world, enabling them to acquire the status of a strong de facto administration enjoying “legibility”<\/span>\u2014<\/span>meaning it transforms into an entity understood by the outside world, capable of being classified, dealt with, and negotiated with, rather than remaining mere unsortable chaos.<\/span><\/p>\n

All of this leads to a state of de facto decentralization. Sovereignty is divided among a large number of warlords whose relationship with the strongest ruling militia is limited to displaying loyalty and contributing to the war effort during an announcement of mobilization (nafeer or faz’aa). As for legislation, it is distributed among the interpretations of sheikhs and the desires of emirs; meanwhile, social functions are delegated to “non-governmental organizations” and “humanitarian initiatives,” while ensuring control over the flows of funds from abroad to guarantee the primary share of the ruling militias within them. Concurrently, the sovereign assets of the state are sold to companies representing the influence of regional and foreign countries under the name of “privatization” or “liquidation of assets.” This decentralization is not constitutionalized or politically recognized, but is rather a structural consequence of the rule of the networks of the “countrysides of the countrysides.” It does not merit the designation of a state, or even a political system (which is based on a set of interconnected and integrated elements and procedures enjoying relative operational and functional stability, and capable of reproducing itself), and it certainly cannot be described as a “dictatorship” or compared even to the authoritarianism of the Assad regime. We are facing a different reality here, even if it resulted from the collapse of Assadism upon itself. The previous regime had its institutions, frameworks, laws, broad coalitions, social policies and functions, its organized mass culture, and its robust foundational narrative<\/span>\u2014<\/span>despite all the corruption, raggedness, bloody repression, failure, and structural crises that marred it, and its reliance on a system of cliques and informal clientelist networks of loyalty and subordination.<\/span><\/p>\n

From a practical standpoint, it is impossible to submit demands to this type of rule, or to hope for a kind of political participation within it, as it possesses no political frameworks to begin with; nor can one wait for it to end a “transitional phase” and reach the status of a state, because it is fundamentally based on eternalizing its exceptional status, liberated from legalization, as pure and fragmented sovereignty devoid of functions or responsibilities. Perhaps there is no means to deal with it except by attempting self-protection from it, and wrenching social spaces of solidarity capable of managing themselves autonomously in the face of networks that exist solely on the destruction of everything that is social.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An economic-sociological analysis of the Syrian civil war has spread, interpreting it as a consequence of the “neoliberal” policies of Bashar al-Assad and his government team. These policies supposedly coalesced with severe drought seasons to trigger a massive social explosion in the Syrian countryside, which gradually acquired an armed and sectarian character, ultimately leading to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1648,"featured_media":14530,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"jnews_post_split":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,61],"tags":[1007,1032,246,40],"ppma_author":[1080],"class_list":["post-14529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","category-slider","tag-bashar-al-assad","tag-hafez-al-assad","tag-raqqa","tag-syria"],"authors":[{"term_id":1080,"user_id":1648,"is_guest":0,"slug":"mohammad-sami-al-kayal","display_name":"Mohammad Sami Al-Kayal","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/WhatsApp-Image-2025-04-01-at-23.38.58.jpeg","url2x":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/WhatsApp-Image-2025-04-01-at-23.38.58.jpeg"},"0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1648"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14529"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14533,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14529\/revisions\/14533"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14529"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlka.net\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=14529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}