“حب… وسلام العالم”، هكذا راق للنحات ابن مدينة درعا البلد، تسمية هذه الصخرة في مدينة درعا البلد جنوب سوريا. الصخرة التي تبلغ من الوزن 117 طنا، نحتها أحد أبناء مدينة درعا البلد منذ كان عمره أربعة سنوات، واستمر العمل بها 11 عاماً على فترات متقطعة، الى ان صار في عمر الثلاثين، لكنه توقف عن اكمال العمل بها. وجمعت هذه الصخرة عشرة معالم وحضارات تعود إلى مئات السنين، وكانت الكعبة المشرفة من أولى المنحوتات على الصخرة، وتضم معظم حضارات العالم، وأبرزها البابلية وحضارة سبأ اليمنية، وحضارة الفينيقيين الذين سكنوا سواحل البحر المتوسط، والفرعونية والفارسية والآشوريين والكنعانيين والهندية والصينية، ومعبد جانكور البوذي في كمبوديا، وسور الصين. نحات درعا، جمعها النحات في لوحة واحدة. كانت مقصداً للزوار والسياح.
حذر الاتحاد الاوروبي في وثيقة رسمية، من “تغيير ديموغرافي” اذا استمر النزوح والهجرة في سوريا. وقال ان عدد السوريين الذين هم بحاجة إلى مساعدات إنسانية ارتفع من 11 مليون في عام 2020 إلى 14 مليونا حالياً. واذ لفت الى وجود 5.6 مليون لاجئ سوري و6.7 مليون نازح داخل البلاد، حذر الاتحاد الأوروبي “من أي عمليات نزوح أخرى في أي جزء من سوريا، وكذلك الاستغلال المحتمل لمثل هذه النزوح لأغراض تغيير التركيبة الاجتماعية والديموغرافية للبلاد”. واضاف انه “لا يزال يتعين الوفاء بشروط العودة الآمنة والطوعية والكريمة للاجئين والمشردين إلى مواطنهم الأصلية، بما يتماشى مع المعايير التي حددتها مفوضية الأمم المتحدة لشؤون اللاجئين ووفقاً للقانون الدولي، وسيقوم الاتحاد الأوروبي بدعم هذه العودة بمجرد استيفاء الشروط”.
On 17 July 2000, Bashar Al-Asad became President, surviving his father Hafez Al-Asad who ruled Syria for thirty years. The young ophthalmologist had promised a new and modern future for Syria and Syrians. Two decades later, Syria lies in ruins. This is a conversation between several scholars on the transition, policies, institutions, uprising, and mayhem that characterized his rule, co-sponsored by Jadaliyya and Salon Syria.
Featuring
Omar Dahi
Omar S. Dahi is a co-editor of Jadaliyya and an associate professor of economics at Hampshire College and co-director of the Peacebuilding and State building program and research associate at the Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts Amherst. His research interests are in the political economy of development in the Middle East, South-South relations, comparative regionalism, peace and conflict studies, and critical security studies. He has published in academic outlets such as the Journal of Development Economics, Applied Economics, Southern Economic Journal, Political Geography, Middle East Report,Forced Migration Review, andCritical Studies on Security. His last book South-South Trade and Finance in the 21st Century: Rise of the South or a Second Great Divergence (co-authored with Firat Demir) explores the ambiguous developmental impact of the new economic linkages among countries of the global South. He has served on the editorial collective of Middle East Report and is a co-founder and co-director of the Beirut School for Critical Security Studies working group at the Arab Council for the Social Sciences (ACSS). Dahi is also the founder and director of theSecurity in Contextinitiative.
Katty Alhayek
Katty Alhayek is a scholar-activist from Syria pursuing a doctorate in communication at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Her research interests broadly center around themes of Syrian refugees, gender, media audiences, activism, and new technologies. Katty published peer-reviewed articles in journals like Gender, Technology and Development; Syria Studies; and Feminist Media Studies. Katty worked for organizations like The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women; The Online Journal of Space Communication; and Geneva Institute for Human Rights. A former Open Society Foundations fellow, Ms. Alhayek holds Master’s degrees in International Affairs and Media Studies from Ohio University and a graduate certificate in Women`s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She earned an undergraduate degree in Media Studies from Damascus University in 2008.
Ibrahim Hamidi is a Syrian journalist, who heads the Damascus bureau of the Arab daily newspaper Al-Hayat, and contributes to several other international media outlets and think tanks. Previously, he served as head of the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation (LBC) office in Damascus, in addition to his work with al-Hayat, and as a senior writer for Forward Magazine in Damascus. Hamidi’s work focuses on strategic issues in the Middle East, with special insight into Syria’s internal and regional politics. He is also a Research Fellow and co-founder of the Syrian Studies Center at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. Hamidi is also a co-founder of the Arab Investigative Journalism Program (ARIJ).
Lisa Wedeen
Lisa Wedeen is the Mary R. Morton Professor of Political Science and the College and the Co-Director of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory at the University of Chicago. She is also Associate Faculty in Anthropology and the Co-Editor of the University of Chicago Book Series, “Studies in Practices of Meaning.” Her publications include three books: Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria (1999; with a new preface, 2015); Peripheral Visions: Publics, Power and Performance in Yemen (2008); and Authoritarian Apprehensions: Ideology, Judgment, and Mourning in Syria (2019), which has won two awards from the American Political Science Association. Among her articles are the following: “Conceptualizing ‘Culture’: Possibilities for Political Science” (2002); “Concepts and Commitments in the Study of Democracy” (2004), “Ethnography as an Interpretive Enterprise” (2009), “Reflections on Ethnographic Work in Political Science” (2010), “Ideology and Humor in Dark Times: Notes from Syria” (2013), and “Scientific Knowledge, Liberalism, and Empire: American Political Science in the Modern Middle East” (2016). She is the recipient of the David Collier Mid-Career Achievement Award and an NSF fellowship, and is currently completing an edited volume with Joseph Masco, entitled Conspiracy/Theory.
Basileus Zeno
Basileus Zeno is a Syrian archaeologist pursuing a doctorate in Political Science at University of Massachusetts/Amherst. He holds a BA (2006) and MA (2011) in archaeology from the University of Damascus (Syria), where his studies focused on Hellenistic Antiquity and Islamic civilization. He was a graduate fellow at the Institut français du Proche-Orient (IFPO) from 2007 to 2012. Until summer 2012, Basileus was doing his Ph.D. in classical archaeology, researching the production of coins under the Seleucids in Northern Syria, but he couldn’t complete his research because of the outbreak of the war. In 2013, he started his M.A. in Political Science at Ohio University, which he completed in 2015. Basileus is broadly interested in the areas of Comparative Politics, Contemporary Political Theory and Identity Politics. His scholarly interests primarily focus on nationalism, civil wars, sectarian transnationalism, refugees, and social movements in the Middle East.