Syria Divided - (Columbia Studies in Middle East Politics) by Ora Szekely (Paperback)

About the Book

Ora Szekely draws on sources including in-depth interviews, conflict data, and propaganda distributed through social media to examine how competing narratives of the civil war in Syria have shaped the course of the conflict.

Book Synopsis

The civil war in Syria--which has claimed more than 600,000 lives and displaced over half of the country's population since 2011--is an enormously complex conflict. The combatants include a wide array of state and nonstate forces, both Syrian and international. Adding to the war's complexity, its many participants understand and explain the war in a range of different ways. For some, it is a fight for dignity and democracy; for others, a sectarian or communal conflict; still others see it as a fight against terrorism or a consequence of foreign interference.

Ora Szekely draws on sources including in-depth interviews, conflict data, and propaganda distributed through social media to examine how these competing narratives have shaped the course of the conflict. Mapping out the broad patterns of violence among combatants and against civilians, Szekely argues that the competition to control the narrative in the eyes of important audiences at home and abroad has not only influenced the choices of participants, it has also--shaped in part by the use of social media--led many to treat warfare as a kind of performance.

An insightful analysis of the forces fueling a brutal civil war, Syria Divided offers new perspectives on the performative aspects of violence, the weaponization of social media, and key features of twenty-first-century warfare.

Review Quotes

Syria Divided will prove to be an enduring reference point for social scientists and ethnographers working on Syria.-- "Conflict and Society"

Fascinating...-- "Foreign Affairs"

A wonderfully nuanced and insightful account of how struggles to dominate the fractured narrative landscape of Syria's civil war have shaped the conduct of warring parties. As markers of how combatants define what they are fighting for and whom they are fighting against, conflicts to determine whose narratives prevail have played a crucial role in Syria's civil war, both in understanding how violence becomes organized and in how the broader conflict is defined. A compelling case for the importance of conflict narratives, and conflicts over narratives, Szekely's book is an important contribution to scholarship on the Syrian civil war and on civil war more broadly. It deserves to be widely read.--Steven Heydemann, Janet Wright Ketcham 1953 Professor in Middle East Studies, Smith College

Szekely's fine book combines keen analytical insight with a wealth of empirical information on the Syrian civil war. She brilliantly exposes how a war of incompatible narratives--fight for dignity, against terrorism, for an Islamic state--had material consequences for the power balance on the ground by affecting recruitment, financing, and outside intervention.--Raymond Hinnebusch, codirector, Centre for Syrian Studies, University of St. Andrews

About the Author

Ora Szekely is associate professor of political science at Clark University. She is the author of The Politics of Militant Group Survival in the Middle East: Resources, Relationships, and Resistance (2017), coauthor of Insurgent Women: Female Combatants in Civil Wars (2019), and coeditor of Stories from the Field: A Guide to Navigating Fieldwork in Political Science (Columbia, 2020).