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The chaos (fawḍà) Bashshar al-Asad warned against – Damascus University 10th November 2005 – and present-day Syria
With the fall of the al-Asad dynasty in Syria in the early hours of Sunday 8th December 2024, nearly fourteen years after the start of the Arab Spring, a question arises: Has the warning given by Bashshar al-Asad in his speech at Damascus University in the autumn of 2005 come true? Have his departure and the breakdown of al-muqāwamah wa-l-ṣumūd – identified commonly as the strategy of resistance – really brought chaos to the region? If that is not the case, why did the decisive actors keep him in power in Syria for approximatively another 20 years after he made that presentation? Imagining al-Asad bluffed while he felt the whole international community was after him in the 2005 follow-up to the murder of Rafīq al-Ḥarīrī, the Prime Minister who oversaw Lebanon’s reconstruction, why did no one at the time call his bluff out? Rather, looking at the remarkably rapid reintroduction of Bashshar al-Asad to the international scene after 2005, this presentation will try to assess critically what the chaos was that everyone was afraid of in the event of the al-Asads falling then. Why does this same chaos seem manageable now? Have Western actors together with Turkey and the Gulf countries simply studied the regional setup better, or might the incidence of Israel’s forever war strategy have been a decisive factor for others to make a shift unthinkable until recently, for the sake of the future of the region.
Date:
21 February 2025, 17:00
Venue:
St Antony's College, 62 Woodstock Road OX2 6JF
Venue Details:
Investcorp Lecture Theatre
Speaker:
Professor Johannes Waardenburg (IULM)
Organising department:
Middle East Centre
Organiser:
Middle East Centre Administrator (St Antony's College, University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address:
mec@sant.ox.ac.uk
Host:
Professor Walter Armbrust (St Antony's College, University of Oxford)
Part of:
Thursday Seminars (formerly Friday Seminars)
Booking required?:
Not required
Cost:
FREE
Audience:
Public
Editors:
Caroline Davis,
Jennie Williams
