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Between the Politics of Life and the Geopolitics of Death: Syria 1963-2024 (Part 13)

[The question about Syria is about looking for a pure revolution á la ‘Marxist-Leninist’ or the ‘liberal-democratic’ criteria or it is not a revolution. Nor is it just about the reactionary forces that have destroyed the revolutionary experiment and potentials and they have know claimed its ‘flag’. It is the character and content of the process and what the actors involved envisaged. The early content and character cannot be seen neither in the outlook of those who toppled the regime in December 2024 nor in the one of the regional and international actors that are trying to influence the current outcome and the future of Syria. ] “Syrian revolutionaries like those in Manbij did not speak the dominant academic Western language about social processes and revolutions—either because they could not or were unwilling to. As a result, many journalists and academics have effectively denied them any form of agency. Many Western descriptions present them as mindless fighters who are easily manip...

Between the Politics of Life and the Geopolitics of Death: Syria 1963-2024 (Part 12)

  The politics of bread and micropolitical resistance (2) The political economy of bread in Syria This section analyzes the political economy of bread in Syria since the Baath party rise to power in 1963. It provides a brief historical account of the political, economic, and environmental cost of providing low-priced bread to pacify the population. Agriculture was the main economic activity in Syria until the mid-1970s. By 2010, it still represented 15 percent of the GDP and 800,000 worked in this sector of the economy, representing 17 percent of the labor force.44 Prior to the uprising, the livelihood of 80 percent of the rural population, representing 8 million Syrians, depended on agriculture.45  When the Baath party took power in 1963, seven years before Hafez al-Assad’s coup d’état, one of its priorities was to alter the food economy in Syria. Wheat and cotton became the two most important crops for the government. Cotton was a cash crop that brought much-needed hard curr...