Hope for the Levant
A conversation with Nadim Shehadi

Following massacres along the coast and escalating violence in Suwayda, the question of how to balance unity and diversity in Syria has renewed urgency. The nature of sectarianism in the Levant – and the viability of coexistence in fractured societies – will be critical in shaping the country’s post-war transition. Yet as Iran’s influence recedes and the prospects for regional peace and cooperation begin to grow, the political imagination required to forge a new social contract remains in short supply. To explore the ideas that could inspire consensus, Syria in Transition spoke with Nadim Shehadi, a Lebanese economist, Middle East analyst, and former Associate Fellow at Chatham House. 

The sectarian violence engulfing Suwayda has sparked a flurry of conflicting narratives from pundits and analysts. Drawing parallels with Lebanon’s civil war, where such violence was all too common, one wonders: is Syria now experiencing the kind of internecine strife that plagued Lebanon in the years leading up to the Taif Agreement - and could a new social contract eventually emerge from the chaos?
Shehadi: I am one of these people who say that I'm a ‘sectarianism denier’, in the sense that sectarianism as described in most of the literature, and in “social science” books, doesn’t exist in our area. I don't think there's such a thing as sectarianism in the Levant, a place where people have coexisted forever, albeit with periods of good and bad relations. It’s not a case of constant hatred or constant love.

It's the same within groups. The most violent exchanges during the Lebanese civil war were internal, within communities, rather than between them; and I think that distinction, what happens between the groups that you define as ‘groups’, and what happens within them, is the key factor. Assad’s Syria was a perfect example of that. The regime penetrated every single community and every single sect, and so in every town there was a pro-regime and an anti-regime faction. The regime had its own Sunnis and Druze, Christians and Bedouins. You should not ignore the internal conflicts within groups; and so the matter is not sectarian in that sense. Sectarianism is often in the eye of the beholder rather than as a reality.

Is it inevitable that conflict occurs in such societies? Yes, of course, there will always be conflict, but what’s important is how you perceive it and resolve it. In Bosnia and Ireland it was considered that the sectarian tension that existed there meant that communities could no longer live together, and so the answer was to impose a system that separates them. I went to Sarajevo with a delegation from the Syrian opposition in 2012, and we discussed the differences between the Dayton Accords and the Taif Agreement. The Dayton Accords assumed that Serbs, Croats and Muslims cannot live together, whereas the Taif Agreement assumes that the Lebanese can live together and have lived together forever. Periods of sectarian tension are the exception not the rule. Politics in Lebanon is not only governed by sectarianism, because there is internal politics within each sect, and there are cross sectarian alliances between families and leaders. The solution for Lebanon and Syria is the continuation of what we see as normality, which is people being different and coexisting at the same time.

The key is to have an agreement between the people similar to the National Pact in Lebanon. At the moment that the agreement is made, there is goodwill. The contents of the agreement are not that important because of the goodwill that brought them together to make the agreement in the first place. It's the act of agreeing to something that’s important, less so the content, even though the contents can be important if they contain mechanisms to prevent conflict in the future.

Sunnis in Syria might say that minority groups got comfortable with a certain configuration of power under the Assads, and that they should now re-adjust to the reality of Sunni power and not the other way around.
Shehadi: What you see on the ground today in Syria is not a consequence of the regime having been removed. It's a consequence of what the regime did over the past 50 years. You're seeing residual conflict. That's why I have a lot of reservations in classifying people as pro- or anti- regime. Such a regime, with its security establishment that resembles that of the Stasi in former East Germany, survives mainly by blackmailing people and making deals, like when someone is arrested and is only released after agreeing to cooperate. It’s a regime that makes itself indispensable, irreplaceable, and that convinces people that after it's gone, there will be chaos, and it creates the conditions for this to become so. You cannot blame people for wanting to survive in such a system. Some people are not strong enough to be opposition.

Regarding Sunnis, they are not a sect. In Ottoman times, Sunnis were the establishment of the Empire. Sunnis never culturally considered themselves a sect alongside other sects. Sunnis have always had the mentality of a majority group, and what you see now in Syria is not the traditional behaviour of Sunnis. I would not classify it as Sunni behaviour. The militant Islamist worldview is a product of the 20th Century and in part an attempt to adapt to nationalism, so they ended up with a sort of ‘Sunni nationalism.’ But it doesn't make sense because historically there has been no such thing. In fact, Muslim empires everywhere were very cosmopolitan, whether it was Andalucia, Baghdad, or Mughal India. It's not Islamic to be a jihadi that wants to kill all the Christians. I think it's also a result of the suppression of religion by dictatorships. When you suppress religion, when you suppress any idea, it becomes more radical and militant.

In many of your writings, you cite Lebanon as a model for the coexistence of ethnic and religious communities – a view that remains decidedly in the minority. To most observers, Lebanon is a sectarian failed state, long overdue for a fundamental overhaul. In light of Syria’s current upheavals, what - if anything - can Lebanon still teach us?
Shehadi: Yes, I'm a believer in the Lebanese model in the sense that I think it's the way forward for Lebanon, for Syria, for Iraq, maybe for Yemen too. I think that people can go back to a formula where they can coexist together. I don't think that you have to impose a secular model, secular as in French laïcité. I mean, you can impose it like in Turkey, after you kill the Armenians, expel the Greeks, suppress the Kurds and Alevis, then you can declare that we are all equal citizens with one homogeneous national identity. But I don't think it's a recommended formula. The Kemalist model inspired other secular nationalists in the region such as the Nasserists and the Baathists and it is not the one I would embrace.

People of the Levant are the products of former Ottoman lands that are accustomed to a form of coexistence between different people. Ottoman cosmopolitanism and coexistence is a different experience from that of Europe, where after hundreds of years of fighting Europeans divided themselves into states with homogeneous populations, and the ideal became one people under one Prince’s religion. French secularism is a product of that homogenic dream with a dose of anti-clericalism. When you want to impose that European model on us, it doesn't work because we have a history of diversity. The National Pact and the Taif Agreement that we have in Lebanon is reflective of a coexistence model that has endured for hundreds of years. I'm not saying that conflict doesn’t happen, but it's a matter of considering that coexistence is the norm and conflict is the exception and not the other way round. 

US Ambassador to Turkey and Envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack, recently stirred controversy with his remarks about Lebanon ‘returning to Bilad al-Sham’ - a reference to Greater Syria - which were met with sharp criticism in Lebanon. His comments came on the heels of other statements praising the Umayyads and likening the Syrian president to George Washington. How do you interpret the US embrace of the transitional government in Damascus? And what might this signal about the future of the Levant?
Shehadi: My answer about Ambassador Barrack is very simple and very quick. I think he came with a clear message that he delivered to the governments, I don't attach too much importance to what he said in chats with some journalists. You can just imagine a businessman getting into politics and going back to the land of his ancestry, and learning about its history, and using words like ‘Bilad al-Sham’ and other expressions, sometimes in a warm, emotional and pedantic way. He was interviewed by a journalist and he said some things that I don't think were meant to deliver messages about redrawing boundaries. People in Lebanon have been going wild trying to interpret his references to Greater Syria and the revising of Sykes-Picot boundaries between Lebanon and Syria, which historically-speaking is inaccurate because Sykes-Picot had nothing to do with the borders of Lebanon and Syria – that was determined solely by the French much later. But you’re still getting conspiracy theories based on what Barrack said. I don't think he's responsible for people’s interpretation. 

Still, the US is embracing the transitional government in Damascus in a big way. How do you explain that?
Shehadi: I’m all for embracing the new regime. I'm all for the genuine will and intention to finish with the problems of the region and bring in a new order. We are in a post-Assad period and we cannot continue as before. So the good intentions and some optimism are welcome things to bring to Syria. I'm not against them.

There have been growing calls for federalism in Lebanon—calls that you’ve consistently resisted in your writings and podcast appearances. Similar demands have emerged in Syria, particularly with regard to Suwayda, the northeast, and the coastal provinces. You’ve argued that federalism is an escape from a solution, rather than a solution in itself. Could you elaborate on why you see it that way?
Shehadi: I've been critical of federalism, but there is a spectrum of ideas. Not all people who recommend federalism mean the same thing by it. Some people like the Kurds mean it to be complete autonomy, almost separation. Separation assumes that regions can only be viable if they are homogeneous, and that is what I'm against. Regions do not have to be homogeneous to function, and there's no area in our region that is homogeneous. There are majorities and minorities in every region. In the Kurdish areas of Syria, there are Arab tribes, there are Christians, there are Assyrians, Chaldeans and Armenians, there are all sorts of people living there. And while the Kurds form a majority, the PYD, which is a minority group within the Kurds, has almost dictatorial control and persecutes its Kurdish opponents and rivals more than it does Arab tribes or Christians. The danger in this separatist form of federalism is that the extremist factions within each region rule using the threat of an external enemy to maintain power. This form of federalism does not solve anything, and may actually make things worse, because you're condemning Kurdish areas to live under the PYD forever. 

Zooming out a little, it appears that the Iranian project in the Middle East is in decline - perhaps even terminally so. If political Shi’ism has run its course, what forces are poised to fill the vacuum? Could political Sunnism backed by Turkey and Saudi Arabia offer a viable alternative, or is it doomed to repeat the same patterns and mistakes? 
Shehadi: It's not political Shi’ism. It's a combination of Shi’ism, Iranian nationalism, revolutionary zeal and imperialism rolled into one. It is also partly the phenomenon of Shia revival. We've seen Iranian influence expand and use different instruments to collapse states and replace them with parallel institutions modelled on the Revolutionary Guards, exactly as it is in Iran. We've had that in Lebanon too with Hizballah, and it’s the same in Iraq and Yemen. So fundamentally it’s not about Shia vs. Sunni, because you have Sunnis who are with Iran. It is actually about two different outlooks or visions for the region.

One vision is that of domination of the region by one force and using the Arab-Israeli conflict as an instrument of control. The other vision is for peace with Israel, and for sovereign states to collaborate rather than to dominate each other under a single ideology. The Arab League as it was originally envisioned in the Alexandria Protocol of 1944 was meant to be that. In the 1950s and 1960s, Ba’thist and Nasserite regimes started doing the opposite: competing to control each other. So if we go back to the original idea of the Arab League, it is not about Arab nationalism at all, and now it’s about states that have elements in common working together and having a vision of peace with Israel.

Wasn’t the point of 7th October to torpedo any prospect of peace with Israel?
Shehadi: It was. But if you want to evaluate the Iranian project post-7th October, you can evaluate it in two ways. Militarily, the war in Lebanon, the destruction of Hizballah infrastructure, the war in Gaza, regime change in Syria and the attacks by and on the Houthis in Yemen, all these have seriously dented the military power of the Iranian project. At the level of ideas, however, the jury is still out. We are still not sure whether the ideas have been defeated. It is probably more important that you defeat the ideology by freeing people from its grip. You do that, you do that forever, whereas destroyed military capabilities can be rebuilt.

In a previous interview you mentioned that “the barbarians always win.” Was this in reference to any particular actor in the region?
Shehadi: What I actually meant was the model that historians have used of the barbarians surrounding the city and the city being too rich and comfortable and corrupt to fight, while the barbarians are willing to fight and die to get in. But I think what happened on 7th October was that the barbarians attacked the rich city, but the city turned out to be as barbaric as they were. We have a problem with both Hamas’s behavior and with that of Israel.