Civil War in Syria: the Beginning of the End?

Five years since the civil war started in the midst of the Arab Spring revolutions, Syria is still involved in a bloody armed conflict between supporters and opponents of the Assad regime, with both fronts further fragmented on a number of irreconcilable positions within them. Seemingly a situation with no way out, but the last year has seen some promising signals, according to Professor Fred H. Lawson, Lynn T. White, Jr. Professor at Mills College in Oakland, as well as former president of the Syrian Studies Association.

The professor, one of the world's leading experts on the topic of Syrian international relations, will be at Ca' Foscari on Tuesday, October 4th for the Opening Lecture of the PISE, the English-taught Bachelor's degree programme in Philosophy, International Studies and Economics, which this year received a record number of applications for admission. In his lecture entitled "Syrian Conflict: the Beginning of the End?"(as we anticipate in this email interview), Prof. Lawson will speak about the new factors that are affecting the balance of the forces in play:

Prof. Lawson, what leads you to believe that we may be witnessing the beginning of the end of the Syrian conflict?

Fighting in Syria has changed markedly over the last year.  Most obvious is the impact of Russian military intervention, which gave renewed hope and greater firepower to pro-regime forces in the northern provinces.  Equallly evident is the battlefield success of Kurdish forces, which have pushed Islamist militants out of several key towns along the border with Turkey.  Two often overlooked factors are the growing war-weariness of the Syrian population--which has put intense pressure on opposition fighters to negotiate local cease-fire arrangements in a number of districts, most notably around Damascus--and the growing prominence of pro-regime militias, some made up of foreign fighters but many drawn from territories recaptured by the Syrian armed forces.  These trends may well make it impossible for anti-regime forces to prevail, and force the opposition leadership to come to terms with the authorities.

The Syrian conflict is driven by a crucible of regional, global and local factors. What is the best (inter)disciplinary approach to make sense of it?

Despite several features that make it look exotic and difficult to understand, the Syrian civil war in fact displays several crucial dynamics that we find in other cases of large-scale internal war.  Almost all of the current scholarship on the evolution and termination of civil wars has been carried out on a broad scale using quantitative techniques, so it is important to explore the ways that the findings of influential statistical studies might shed light on individual cases like the ongoing conflict in Syria.  To a surprising extent, common patterns can be seen to be present in this particular instance.  As horrible as the Syrian civil war has proved up to this point, there is little that is unique or inexplicable about its particular trajectory.  On the contrary, careful analysis of this civil war can substantially improve our understanding of internal warfare in general.

The event is scheduled for Tuesday October 4th at 4pm in Aula Baratto. Matteo Legrenzi, Professor of International Relations at Ca’ Foscari, will be there to introduce Professor Lawson and to moderate the meeting.