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Syria’s Civil War and the Reconfiguration of Regional Politics

  • Chapter
The Levant in Turmoil

Part of the book series: The Modern Muslim World ((MMUS))

Abstract

Syria’s civil war exhibited four key features during its fourth chaotic year. First, the conflict became fully sectarianized. Civil rights activists who had championed a secularist platform were eclipsed by various strains of radical Islamists, whose manifestos framed the conflict in overtly religious terms and whose objectives tended to be couched in millenarian discourse. Fighters of the Assistance Front for the People of Syria (Jabhat al-Nusrah li Ahl al-Sham) and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (al-Dawlah al-Islamiyyah fi al-’Iraq wal-Sham, or ISIL) imposed draconian restrictions and inflicted severe punishments on ethno-sectarian minorities in the districts that fell into their hands. Such actions prompted Syria’s previously quiescent Kurdish community to mobilize to defend itself. The shadowy Democratic Union Party (PYD) took charge of the effort to protect the Kurds of the northeastern provinces, and the PYD-affiliated militia—the Popular Protection Units (YPG)—battled the Assistance Front and the ISIL on two main fronts: the oil-producing areas around al-Hasakah and Deir ez-Zor and the towns that lie along the border with Turkey. The Kurdish fighters were joined in the fight against the Islamist radicals by armed formations of Turkomans, Shiis and Syriac and Chaldean Christians, as well as by the tribespeople of the northeastern marches.

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  1. Fred H. Lawson
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Martin Beck Dietrich Jung Peter Seeberg

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© 2016 Fred H. Lawson

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Lawson, F.H. (2016). Syria’s Civil War and the Reconfiguration of Regional Politics. In: Beck, M., Jung, D., Seeberg, P. (eds) The Levant in Turmoil. The Modern Muslim World. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137526021_2

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