 Welcome. I'm David Sturman, a senior policy analyst here at New America. And today we're here to launch a new report, the latest in New America and ASU series on proxy warfare in the greater Middle East. The report is titled social networks class and the Syrian proxy war. To discuss it, we have an unknown go Paul, author of the report, followed with New America and research professor with ASU, as well as Jeremy Hodge who is the co author of the report and Elizabeth circle, who is a non residential at the New Lions Institute who will provide remarks on the paper, and then they will have a discussion about the paper's findings and the current status of the conflict, and what the paper tells us about it. So to begin with, I'll turn it over to Anand, who will begin with the description of the paper respondents. Thank you. Thank you. It's great to be here. I have to apologize to start with because this paper is something like 70 pages long, and maybe 25,000 words. So they could seem daunting but if you think of it as like a really, really, really short book, then you can read it very quickly. You should think you should take it in. So the genesis of this paper actually probably goes back at this point 10 years or nine years. I was in Syria in 2012. This is the spring of 2012 at the height of the conflict when the Assad regime was going around, especially in northern Syria and laying waste to towns and villages and so I was in a, I was basically moving into a lot of these towns, just after the regime forces had just left these areas and so there was one town in particular that I had entered maybe four hours after the regime tanks have left and it was a pretty terrible site there was the buildings were still smoking there was bodies on the streets, the regime forces have gone into this town and had gone house to house and pulled men women and children outside and similarly executed them. And so I was trying to I was reporting at the time so I was trying my best to try to get all the details and beyond just the horror of what I had seen. I noticed that in this town there were five families, and almost all of the victims about I think the 85 victims were from one of the five families. I tried at the time to understand why that was the case, why would it be that the regime, who is employing indiscriminate violence was oddly discriminate in this case and mostly attacking a single family out of five. And I asked people I didn't really get a good explanation of it, but it kind of not at me and I kept in my mind so later, it's probably like six months or eight months later when I returned to that area in Idlib. I tried to do a little bit more digging and it turned out that this one family that had been a victim of this massacre. They had 40 years earlier 30 years earlier at that point in the in the 80s had had members who had joined the Muslim Brotherhood. And so there's clearly a sense among the regime soldiers that this was a reprisal for not just for what was happening now in 2011 but also reprisal for what had happened between 1979 and 1982. And then I tried to do more interviews over the course of the next year and it turned out that this one family who had members in the Muslim Brotherhood. And the reason they had members in the Brotherhood, as opposed to the other four families which did not was went back even further to the 40s and 50s. This was a land owning family. They had huge plantations, almost a quasi feudal system that they were, they were on top of. In 1558 when Nasser had taken over Syria effectively the he undertook nationalizations of a lot of land and he redistributed land to the poor and this family was one of the families I've actually lost a lot of land in that so and then they turned towards the Brotherhood in the 50s and 60s. In the 80s they joined the insurgency against the Syrian government and then in 2011 their sons had joined the insurgency and interestingly in 2011 and 12 none of the people I spoke to identified as Muslim Brotherhood they identified as the Free Syrian Army. They were more or less secular or you might even call liberal, but that legacy actually mattered tremendously for the sort of the way in which the conflict unfolded so it was kind of important lesson for me. If you look at the Syrian conflict as an extraordinarily chaotic conflict which it was I think at the height of the conflict there was something like 1000 or 1500 factions all around the country. There was maybe 678 regional powers and international powers that are intervening in the country. It's easy to just look at all that and try to throw your hands up and say that this is inordinately complicated and there's no logic behind it but what that incident kind of indicated to me is that this civil war like any civil war does have a logic underlying it and that's really the motivation behind what we wanted to do in this study which is try to understand some of the logic behind this very complicated war. And we had in doing that we had the aim of trying to answer three main questions the first question is that as most people know the Syrian opposition was very fragmented and was always a question from 2012. From 2012 to the end of the revolution, could the opposition unite, could they become cohesive. And, you know, as I said there's up to 1000 or 1500 factions most, and there was brief moments where they united in various formations but at the end of the day they were very fragmented. Why, why were they so fragmented. That's the first question we were interested in the second question was, even within that sort of landscape of fragmentation. There were some groups that were more cohesive, and some groups are less cohesive. For example, a fraud or sham, the Islamist group, you could argue was one of the most cohesive organizations in the Syrian conflict. You know they had a cadre that was a leadership. They were a national organization, they had members stretching from one end of Syria to the other end of Syria they all kind of believed in a common aim and a common vision. On the other hand, at the other extreme you had the various local factions that were operating under the label or the brand of the Free Syrian Army. And these are very sort of non cohesive, you know, often you know every single town had their own faction or had multiple factions, and there was little to tie these factions together except for a common flag and some common language about say democracy and freedom, but there's no command and control that was actually uniting all of these. So, the second question we want to understand is, why was there a variation in the fragmentation patterns inside the Syrian conflict. The second question and probably the ultimate question was, you know, why did the war take the trajectory that it did take, which was it started with peaceful protest mutated or morphed into an armed insurrection led to thousands of factions that to dozens of countries intervening and led to a situation in which the ultimate aims from 2011 2012 were not met by the revolution. So the paper is was done in is in the spirit of trying to not to answer these questions because these are really complicated questions and it's not like our paper has all the answers to that but rather to try to gesture towards ways and thinking about how we might be able to answer these questions. So that's the that's the sort of broad overview of the paper now you'll notice in describing this. You know, I've focused a bit on some what's happened pre 2011, which is, you know, for example, I mentioned the Muslim Brotherhood, etc. And so this is something that runs through this paper, which is the idea that the world pre 2011 actually is quite important in the world post 2011 on one level that's admittedly an obvious point right that any, any society you study you have to look at the conditions of social context button on another level I we felt that there was also a bit of an understudied subject to look at two two aspects of the pre 2011 life that we think shaped the trajectory of the conflict post 2011. One is social networks, my social networks I don't mean like Facebook and Twitter. I mean the ways in which people were connected to each other. For example, through kinship, you know, if your family members through tribal affiliation through being from the same town, maybe being from the same high school, coming, you know, participating the same football clubs soccer club, you know, all of these are ways in which people formed links with each other. And this type of social network, of course, is important anywhere at all times in around the world, but especially important in the conditions of conditions of dictatorship, which was Syria, where trust was really important. If you look at the 2011 2012 period where people had to really take extraordinary risks to go out onto the streets and demonstrate. Being able to trust the people who called you to those demonstrations was paramount right so when we talk about social networks in this paper what we mean, very specifically is networks of trust that enable collective action. So, ways in which people can work together through their trust to go out and do something collectively whether it's going to engage in a protest or take up weapons and fight the government what what have you. So social networks is one aspect that we try to really focus on in this paper to try to understand the post 2011 trajectory. And it's like that we really tried to focus on was class. And by class, I don't necessarily just mean income level, though that's important, of course, but also by class we mean your profession and the ways in which your profession, both influences your worldview and the way you see what's around you and influences the types of social networks you engage in. So an example of this would be, if you compare to two groups that are in and sort of relative terms, wealthy to their local constituents which would be merchants in cities and tribal chefs in the countryside, both of them are relatively wealthy. In some levels, they may be in some cases similar, but we would say they're probably different classes, because they engage with each other and form social networks in different ways and so we talk a bit about merchant networks in the paper because it turns out to be a very important aspect to how the subsequent conflict evolved so the point is these are two ways, and they're just not the only two ways as many other ways one can look at the conflict and many other social ways of interaction that that need to be studied further, we decided to focus on these two to try to understand what happened after 2011. Okay, so the last point on understanding what happened after 2011 is to try to really contend or to engage with this point that if you look at the 40 year dictatorship of the Assad family until 2011. There's many ways you can describe that dictatorship but one way you can describe the dictatorship is that it was an unremitting assault on civil society, or on political life and on associational life right the Assad dictatorship was an assault on this and a continuous assault on this. So, certain groups certain social networks are were better able to survive this assault than other social networks are able to do so. Okay. And so we go through in the paper various types of social networks, and in highlight those that were able to, to some extent survive this assault and others do which were completely not able to survive this assault. So I want to just very quickly run through some of these, these social these networks, these networks we call them networks of solidarity in the paper. So one of all the networks of solidarity the one that was the most able to survive the full on assault of the Assad regime on civil society was the Muslim Brotherhood. So the Muslim Brotherhood emerged in the 40s and 50s in Syria, they were closely tied to the wealthy and particularly to the land holding elite and two merchants to suit traders and others. Which I won't, I won't describe here but you can you can look and look into in the paper, the Muslim Brotherhood was always kind of a wealthy, wealthier phenomenon. In the late 70s, early 80s, they were related to a part of an insurgency against the Assad regime. And after 1982, they were more or less eradicated as a formal organization inside Syria. But they were not eradicated as an informal organization. And what I mean by that is that you know maybe the actual card carrying members were thrown in jail or they're killed or they fled the country. But you know they had relatives they had brothers they had sons their daughters they had others who in various ways either kind of kept up the social network. And at the same time many of those members of the Brotherhood who fled the country. As I said, they were already wealthier they were merchants. They opened up businesses around the Arab world, and what developed over the next 20 30 years was a network of merchants who are trading with each And this laid the groundwork for a relatively cohesive social network that could survive the onslaught on civil society that the Assad regime is able to put on to Syria. So that's at the one extreme of like the most cohesive networks in between you have Salafi groups, these Salafi groups generally emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood. They were different from the Muslim Brotherhood in their theology and their politics. And we get into distinctions between various types just very quickly. They had those there were those Salafi groups that were opposed or not if not opposed independent of the Saudi government the Saudi state and others that were aligned to or defending the Saudi state. So we call them activists of loyalist Salafis in the paper. Then you had going down the list of like, you know social networks that are able to withstand the regimes onslaught on civil society then you had tribal groups, tribal tribal networks everywhere are kind of fragmentary because they depend on patronage from states. This is also the case in Syria. And now, if you go to the least cohesive network that emerged out of the 40 year dictatorship is what we call liberals number liberals. I don't mean liberals in the narrow sense that we in America use liberals as in like socially liberal democratic party, I mean liberals in the broader enlightenment sense of the term for you know, emphasizing freedom, freedom of assembly and freedom of speech, etc. Right now liberals in Syria tended to be middle class professionals like teachers or lawyers, etc. And it's instructive to compare them to the Muslim Brotherhood, because liberals in Syria didn't really have these kinds of networks that connected one another to each other. You know, if you're a liberal lawyer from some town in Idlib, there's there's no real way you're going to be connected to some liberal lawyer and let's say do more. Okay, so liberals are fragmented already from the, by the very nature of the, their, their ideology in pre 2011 Syria, unlike the Muslim Brotherhood which had been built on networks of traders that had survived. So, with all that being said, when the form powers began to intervene and they didn't really begin to intervene until early 2012 for the most part. They decided to back various sides based on their own internal political demands and constraints so on the one hand you had a cutter, who has for reasons we describe the paper had some historic ties both to the Muslim Brotherhood and to the version of the Muslim that was independent of or sometimes opposed to the Saudi state. Now when they wanted to back a horse in the Syrian race, it was, they already had a, they had groups that were somewhat cohesive and well capitalized because they were merchants and as a result, they, when they did force ties with these groups and in some cases they had preexisting ties, you know, many ex Brotherhood members moved to Qatar in the 80s and 90s and had businesses there, etc. So this became a proxy client relationship that was quite effective. Now, on the other hand, you had the United States and Saudi Arabia and Jordan and others who, for various reasons wanted to avoid supporting the Salafis, let's say, or the types of Salafis are opposed to the Saudi state. So they were left with tribal groups and liberals were already fragmented coming into 2011 so and already they weren't from the same class background as the Muslim Brotherhood so not well capitalized and fragmented. So, already they're backing a horse that is not very cohesive and is not going to be able to exert strong command and control. So, that is our argument for why different sides, different regional powers supported different local actors and why that led to subsequent, you know, varying or divergent trajectories so maybe I'll stop there and throw it to Jeremy who's going to talk about how that played out in the city of minbej as a case study which maybe will put some meat on the bones of what I just said. Thank you. All right. Thank you and on. So yeah my name is Jeremy hodge. I'm one of the co authors or the co author to an on this paper. Before getting into details about men bench. I did want to zoom out just a little bit to address another section of all paper that talks about the 20 year period of domestic politics in both Saudi Arabia and Qatar. This is the story of the air spring 2011. As an on mentioned, and as is commonly known Saudi Arabia and Qatar were the largest and most influential though of course not the only patrons of the Syrian opposition post 2011. I had very different domestic experiences in the 20 year period before 2011 that influence how they view the region outside their borders, what they perceive to be a threat to be to be a threat to their own interests, and who they viewed in as appropriate proxies to adopt as clients in the conflict zone such as Syria. A non diluted to the differences between loyalist Salafist and after the Salafist, and that's another important important part of our paper. Because oftentimes when we think of the GCC we think of kind of a monolithic block of stable rich countries, similar to the EU or other rich parts of the world. But of course, each country is different obviously and each one is kind of be set with its own internal cleavages that influence foreign policy. In the case of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia experience comparatively much more internal turmoil than other GCC number states in the 20 years prior to the air spring. The first example of this would be what was called the software movement between 1991 and 1995, which was the first kind of grassroots mass protest movement within Saudi Arabia that called for increased democratization liberalizing institutions and even to a lesser extent, federal type of federal jobs guaranteed to recent graduates from local religious institutes who were facing a contract to drop the job market at the time due to contracting economy and low oil prices. The software protest movement was triggered in 91 by the establishment of US military bases in Saudi Arabia, however, after it was kind of crushed in 95 by the Saudi state. And on the looted they're kind of it kind of forced a wedge within Salafism between those who were many instances literally called activist Salafists in that they adopted Muslim Brotherhood style ideas regarding reform and activism as a means of performing or in some instances overthrowing governments that they oppose. And those who remain loyal to the Saudi state who have since been referred to as quiet as Salafist or loyal as Salafist. Without throughout the region. Qatar became obviously the Saudi state arrested the vast majority of the activists and a small portion of that activist community merged with other groups to form what we now know to be jihadist Salafism, which I think doesn't require much of an explanation. But in Qatar, so I was there with the Sahel movement of the early 90s later in from 2002 to 2006. This isn't often discussed but Saudi Arabia experienced its own violent al Qaeda inspired insurgency in the country for four years that killed about 200 people and injured another 500. So, the Saudi Arabia in this period experienced a lot of internal turmoil, Qatar on the other hand very small country has never experienced really any of these problems, Qatar has never in recent history had a massive protest movement for democratization and Qatar has never witnessed a violent insurgency within its borders reasons for that are somewhat obvious it's a much smaller country, very rich amongst the richest countries in the world from per capita GDP. However, what we do know obviously is that the main threat that Qatar does or has traditionally faced, as opposed to ground up grassroots threats have been top down threats, mostly in the form of cruise carried out by factions of the world family and we sometimes are failed to attempts, oftentimes with the support of Saudi Arabia and other GCC nation. That being said by 2011 both countries were in very different places. In terms of who they were willing to dole out patronage to in a conflict won't such as Syria. Obviously, Saudi Arabia was very hesitant to encourage anybody who discussed democratization in any way or might provide a safe haven for the type of the hottest movement that Saudi Arabia itself witness within its borders between 2002 2006 cover on the other hand its top priority was to antagonize Saudi Arabia to a certain extent and so sort of enemy of my enemies my friend dynamic was established and as a result we were very on very early on to promote activist Salafis provide refuge within its own borders to Sahwa activists that had been repressed in Saudi Arabia, and then in a place like Syria as a non mentioned, developed ties with groups like the Muslim brotherhood and various groups, like tableau and his with our air and others. So, I think it's important to understand those competing motivations for each country by 2011. Now I'm also talked about the difference between for example, urban rule, merchant communities, and tribal shapes as two distinct kind of cohorts within Syria. So we divide actually very neatly, not entirely clean cut but very neatly mapped out sort of onto that internal divide that already existed within Syria as well. So, Saudi Arabia, obviously because of its large landmass and you know historical ties to neighboring countries was very close with many of these tribal networks that and non had mentioned. Many tribal leaders or chefs in Syria were related to tribal leaders in Saudi Arabia or had been part of, or historically before the formation of modern nation state had had been part of the same tribal confederations in Saudi Arabia, up until 2011 maintain ties to a lot of these Syrian tribes. Qatar, obviously being farther away didn't have these tribal links to these groups but because of the dynamics that I just described, kind of bypassed the tribes and established ties via the Muslim brotherhood to Syria's merchant urban community farther north northwest in the urban centers, many of whom were close with the Muslim brotherhood. So on the one hand we have sociological distinctions between tribal communities in the countryside and places like eastern and southern Syria, and more urban communities that are deracinated and non tribal in northern northwestern Syria and, you know, in other areas, Damascus and elsewhere. This also kind of evolved into a political distinction as well. The Muslim brotherhood was not very not penetrate a lot of areas where Saudi Arabia traditionally had influence and tribal regions. And so, you know, perhaps as a result of faith or also just coincidence, by the time 2011 arrived, Saudi Arabia and Qatar had two very different motivations for sponsoring different groups, but also their pre existing ties with groups in Syria were also coincidentally divided along sociological political lines. That played out and we addressed in our paper ways in which that played out throughout the country. Our, the case study that we present in the paper is a city called members of the non mentioned members is the town of 100,000 people in eastern Aleppo province. Part of it was liberated in by the free Syrian army in July 2012 as part of a massive push by Qatari back groups, mostly affiliated with a faction called the world town heat, which literally means unity brigade brigade or monotheist brigade was the faction in mid 2012 that was back directly by Qatar and the Muslim brotherhood, members was liberated by armed groups affiliated with the world town heat at around the time that many other areas. However, on a micro scale, if you look at members itself, the same rule and urban divisions applied in that city that also one could witness zooming out throughout the rest of the country. And similarly, we had a cohort of urban urbanized provincial deracinated non tribal elites within members that were colloquially referred to as hold on which kind of means civilized that this kind of the connotation civilized or just urban. And then a kind of smattering of poor, less well educated rule tribal groups that live kind of on the periphery of society that had not been involved in the merchant class that similarly did not have pre existing ties to be well elite with the Muslim brotherhood. After liberation, these two divides very much diverge from one another and a very intense. The intro revolutionary competition took place between the Habrani provincial elite that was kind of that had merchandise to ask to Muslim brotherhood groups elsewhere that was affiliated with the hotel heat and arm free Syrian army factions that were provincial and rule. As an on the looted to the, the former, the, the Habrani elites in members city were much more cohesive and had much more capital at their disposal and were tapped into foreign donor networks abroad that enabled them to kind of really monopolize power however very quickly sees the reins as the governor, the governing authority within them. So the members revolutionary council was basically a governing project set up by leaders within the within the Habrani urbanized elite. They elected, there was obviously a member revolutionary council had an executive body that was divided between cabinet positions one could argue. The makeshift parliament, which included about 200 to 300 representatives, although accusations were often launched that the makeshift parliament body was disproportionately representative of that urban elite and kind of excluded members of the rural tribal community. There was also a military council established by the member revolutionary council that mostly comprised three armed factions that drew their, their soldiers mostly from, again that urban community and also to a lesser extent elements of the tribe known as the Al-Busul Khan tribe that also had a traditionally a lot of a large population, much of its population had also been urbanized. That being said, so the urban population was much more cohesive it was much better able to establish its authority early on. Meanwhile, the rural community was very disunited. They did not have access early on to that Qatari Muslim Brotherhood funding stream. And as a result, unfortunately, resorted mostly to banditry to to fund itself. I apologize one second I my battery may be low just give me one second. Apologies everybody. Anyways, that being said, this kind of division played out, I'd say for about a year after liberation. Until the arrival of ISIS. When ISIS basically allied itself with elements of the rural tribal community that had been somewhat marginalized in order to gradually take over infrastructure within that city before finally launching a full out military assault on the city and taking control of it and expelling the member revolutionary council in January of 2014. As I mentioned the second ago, the urban cohort had its was backed largely by a lucrative stream of money from Qatar, the rural cohort was much more forced to become self sufficient and fund itself to criminality, kidnapping, banditry and other kinds of things. However, one means of self financing that these kind of marginal rural cohorts were able to engage in was manipulation of local bread markets. One arm faction that kind of came to rival the member revolutionary council in this area was a faction called the legend will have a name, which means the brigade of the two holy mosques and reference to the two holy mosques and that can be done The legend will have a name was able to take control of key grain silos, just outside of members take over by force many private bakeries that sold bread in the area, and through typical tactics of hoarding supplies. And, you know, driving prices up was able to. Well, on the one hand finance itself but also rival the member revolutionary council in many ways, oftentimes setting up parallel court systems, parallel court systems and also service provision in some instances. So, as I mentioned earlier in the talk. There was a very clear Saudi country divide that mapped out fairly neatly onto the rural urban divide within them that the legend will remain very quickly. The unable to tap into funding from the world to hate did manage to cultivate a very lucrative relationship with a Saudi financier by the name of Hamoud El Farage, who was based in a more southern town called talk, which was a very tribal yet very pro revolutionary area of Syria around Lake Assad, the top region also witnessed a lot of three Syrian army activity against the regime. And this region because of the tribal ties that I mentioned between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and traditional tribal leaders in this area. They had their own competing funding stream from Saudi Arabia that came in. We were gentle how to mean because it was unable to access cut the refunds very quickly started branching out and looking elsewhere and was able to perhaps through tribal solidarity or mutual networks established ties to the, the Saudi funding stream that was coming into the city of Papa via a leading tribal she named Hamoud El Farage that I mentioned. And so, by the time that this happened which was in kind of mid 2012. The kind of cutlery Saudi divide that existed throughout the country, whereby Qatar had its own sort of not geographical sphere of influence but sociological sphere of influence amongst the urban provincial merchant elite basically and Saudi Arabia had, on the other hand, it's spirit influence sociologically amongst the kind of rule tribal cohorts, this kind of was solidified on a granular level within membed by late 2012. Division I mean in the paper we also discuss furthermore, you know, the historical roots of this urban rule divide within member city itself. As I mentioned, you know, with the example that he gave the history that separates these two cohorts goes back, you know, many, many decades. During the French mandate period before the city of members itself was really built up tribal shakes, particularly from the album and the host tribes were kind of the, the main if not only real power in the area. The member city was still very small and tribal shakes owned most of the land in the area. And they were very close with the French authorities who enabled them to amass large land holdings. And, you know, a phase of urbanization that took place, members city itself grew, and you saw this merchant class emerge, and the matriculation of families into the city, who kind of began to shed their tribal identity and become known as this Haldrani cohort that was that it was not really that didn't derive its wealth from land holdings as much as it did commerce, and, particularly the real estate sector was very lucrative for a lot of these families. From in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, this Haldrani cohort, in addition to a section of the, like I mentioned, the Albu Soltan tribe that was in the city. They stripped the traditional tribal leadership, and they were able to kind of monopolize political positions within membered city. In addition to a lot of commerce and commerce that occurred and in addition to state patronage. So, you know, through political positions and holding onto these positions state patronage also flowed to this urban merchant cohort with the rise of leftist parties throughout in the 1950s and 60s, but then especially with the rise of Hafez al-Assad in 1970, the situation flipped once again, so that the regime began to number one, it stripped the Albu Soltan tribe of its monopoly on political, political positions and gave them exclusively to members of the Albu Benda and host tribes. You know, very, one very noteworthy example is the parliamentarian Muhammad V. Meshih who literally holds the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest serving parliamentarian in the history of all parliaments throughout the entire world. Muhammad V. Meshih was leader of the Albu Benda tribe. Again, this is a rural traditional landowning tribe, not the merchant cohort. So, Muhammad V. Meshih, I think was appointed a MP from Membej in 1955, I believe, and he held that position until his death in 2009. So for 54 years, Muhammad V. Meshih from the Albu Benda tribe but not that he was the only parliamentarian from Membej and of course when he died his son simply inherited the position. So that's the parliamentary position, however, there were other positions such as the position of mayor, local back party secretariat, and others that were similarly monopolized by individual families from the traditional rural tribal cohort. So turn a bit to Elizabeth and we can return to the deep dive on, but make sure we also get some questions. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so thank you for for this opportunity to respond to this to the support. Which is really a significant contribution to the study of the Syrian Civil War. I think that there is a great need for such research, particularly since Syria at the same time is the most well documented civil war in history. And yet at the same time, so much information remains unknown remains uncovered. So this is really an excellent piece of work and I highly recommend those are, you know, listening to us watching us to to take the time to read it. So, there are several points that I wanted to mention in response to the paper and the comments made earlier by the authors. You know, you know, early on in the, in the history of the Civil War, as on and mentioned, there was a great deal of division between between different factions. And the, despite a great deal of frustration from the population. These divisions did not, did not meant multiple efforts to merge factions into kind of united bodies such as the Syrian Islamic front, Syrian liberation front, proved unsuccessful. And I think this, this paper really shows well the role of foreign actors in in ensuring that these divisions remain essentially. And of course there's also the important effect of the legacy of living under a bath regime that destroyed civil society prevented the existence of kind of a public space and worked very hard to crush pre existing networks in society, or co op them. And therefore it was hard to co here into a united force whether military or a political one, because of great deal of distrust between people. Because of that legacy of living under a regime that deployed, you know, tens of thousands of agents to spy and write reports about other people. I think that the, that this focus on social networks also provides us with an understanding as to why the officers who defected from the Syrian army were really kind of unable to gain a significant foothold and influence over the armed opposition. They, in most cases, became kind of figureheads and constantly express deep frustration about, you know, not being listened to not being included not being put in high positions that they thought that they deserved. They blame much of the failure of the opposition to them not being included. And this was actually quite a common perception and this paper really explains why, because they were not part of these networks. They were outside of those networks. For the most part, some were inside tribal networks. But for sure they were outside of the Muslim Brotherhood network outside of the Salafi networks. And therefore were really not relevant. In most cases in the armed, armed rebellion and even now, for example, Turkish efforts to place these defected officers into the National Army the proxy force that is in control of northern Aleppo, those efforts have been largely unsuccessful and basically these officers are not able to override preexisting networks and loyalty that was created to commanders of specific factions, who are people with no, in most cases with no prior military presence or they're not defected officers basically they were traitors they were thieves. They were not these high ranking defected officers. I think the issue that Anna pointed to of social networks of trust is incredibly important. And I think this is why, in addition to the regime's policy of releasing Salafis out of prison. We see this very strong cohesion over Harasham, but also other factions, whose members, like Jason Islam, and also Jabhat al-Nusra to some extent bonded in prison. When you create that connection with people, I mean, even the regime is not cruel enough to put people inside prison and torture them for years just for them to be informers. So basically when you create that network in prison, you have that trust. And, you know, Harasham was able to withstand, you know, losing so much territory, the assassination of all of its leadership and persist, because of these very very strong networks of trust that existed. And this is why I think we also see the significant role of tribes in the rebellions in rural areas, in Daraa, in Derezor, in Hasake, where really the division was along tribal lines. And this is something that we also see, by the way, with pro-regime militias of major families or clans and tribes, kind of being linked into populating specific militias. I think that what's really interesting in kind of the ranking that Anand offered with regards to the success of various networks in posing a threat to the regime and their level of cohesion, it is actually very much in line with the regime's threat perception. So the regime actually had a very good assessment of who poses a danger to it. So if we look at the kind of least threatening group, liberals, right, they were sideline, you know, very very quickly, never able to cohere into any kind of military networks and arguably not even civilian networks. You know, and this is not to blame them, but it just, they did not have any space to operate. Many of the Tansikiyat, of the local coordination committees, which these liberals populated, really, you know, kind of relied on networks that a lot of them were created online with people who did not even know each other's real names. There was constant fear of hacking, of surveillance, of people just not knowing with whom you're speaking. So these groups were actually some of them were allowed to operate. You know, the regime knew who some of these people are, but did not perceive them, you know, threatening enough to even arrest them. Yes, some of them were occasionally arrested but some were allowed to operate. There was a campaign for women's issues, some of them did riskier work on behalf of dissidents and political detainees, but largely these people were allowed to, to operate. And this, by the way, also includes kind of the intellectual elite, poets and people like that who were allowed to meet who were allowed to read poetry, because they were not perceived to be a real threat to the regime. Then we have the tribes who some of whom were, I mean, largely before the uprising, they were co-opted by the regime, or at least the leadership, the leadership that was installed was leadership that was co-opted by the regime was cooperating with the regime. Kind of more traditional leaders that may have enjoyed greater legitimacy were sidelined, and people put in place who could facilitate, you know, patronage from the regime in the form of jobs, and particularly the issue of getting people out of prison, just any kind of handling with the muhabrat and with the police, even on criminal matters. So those networks were allowed to operate, tribes were, you know, there was no effort to like crush the existence of these tribes, that they were co-opted and allowed to continue to exist. And then we have the Salafis, with whom the regime treated in a very kind of instrumental way. So, occasionally it would deploy them, you know, it would assist them in going to Iraq after the American invasion in 2003, and implanted quite prominent members of the muhabrat or, you know, kind of people in those spaces switched sides to the regime and provided with information about those people going to Iraq and people meeting inside the country and, you know, learning al-Qaeda literature, etc. So these people were occasionally used by the regime, they were used sent to Iraq, and then after the start of the uprising, they were used again by being released out of prison to basically facilitate the process of turning the revolution into what the regime claimed that it is, which is a Salafist armed insurrection. And the greatest threat that this paper shows was the Muslim Brotherhood. And the regime, you know, completely outlawed the existence of the group, membership in the Muslim Brotherhood was punishable by death. It was not, you know, you don't go to prison, you just get executed. And indeed, the Muslim Brotherhood did not exist as a political force in Syria on the eve of the revolution and arguably not even now, but those family networks remained in place. So it actually shows us, I think this paper that the regime has quite a good understanding of who poses a threat and who doesn't pose a threat. And then, you know, I think the case study of Manbij is very interesting and I think that it would be, you know, I hope that this work is, I know that there's more work coming out about Manbij, but I also hope that this theory about pre-war networks and the connections to the Gulf, I think it's also something that is very fruitful to apply it, for example, to the area of Derazor, where there's a significant difference between the history of the armed factions in the eastern countryside of Derazor whereas in western countryside of Derazor, many young men in that area would travel to Lebanon to work in agriculture, while eastern Derazor would travel to the Gulf and then sometimes return with new ideas. And we really see eastern Derazor emerging as a hotbed of protests initially at the start of the uprising and then of the armed revolt against the regime. The fighters who entered Syria first came to the town in the eastern countryside of Derazor, from which they near the town of Shaheim, from which they really took over much of Derazor until they were kicked out by ISIS who also relied very heavily on basically the subsection of the Al-Qaeda tribe, Al-Qaeda, who are also from the eastern countryside of Derazor, while the area of the western countryside was much more quietest, they didn't have those pre-revolutionary Salafi networks embedded in this area. So, again, I urge all the people who are tuning in to read this paper, it's truly fantastic and worth your time. Thanks. So, we'll now turn to your questions. Please submit them via the Q&A box at the bottom of your Zoom window. So, one question that we have here is, what does this mean today now that we're a decade into this conflict that's been shaped by these various social networks? Can you talk a bit about what this theory would project forward for the next couple of years, if not decade? That's probably a bit too much. And as your ranking of which of these social networks is most capable of challenging the regime or even being successful where the regime is not exerting its highest level of power changed after a decade of war? Sure, I think I can comment briefly with regards to Membej. One interesting development that I think has taken place since 2016, since the US-backed majority Kurdish Syrian Democratic forces took Membej from ISIS, has kind of been a recreation of the old regime networks that used to exist before 2011. That won't come as a huge shock to many people because it is kind of well known that the YPG or the PYD, which is the main Kurdish group operating in Syria, has historically maintained ties to the regime. However, this kind of happened by accident, I guess one could say. After 2016, the urban cohort that we had discussed that kind of led the revolutionary movement to Turkey mostly in mass after ISIS's takeover and was kind of absent from the scene. After the forced removal of ISIS from Membej, elements of the rural tribal cohort that had been marginalized that hadn't joined ISIS were kind of the only group that was still left in the area and were kind of right for recruitment by the majority Kurdish SDF and were very eagerly embraced by the SDF. The legend of Harming, the main faction from Membej that opposed the revolutionary council that I mentioned, actually still exists 10 years later or nine years later. It's one of the few factions that has yet to be dissolved. And it still draws from the same rural tribal cohort and I would argue that it's maintained the faction itself, most of its power in Membej and the Membej countryside. And that is, so in many instances and I would say, in a lot of areas where the YPG exists and you know they now control about a third of the country thereabouts. Many of the old networks have kind of been revived and in some ways they're stronger or at least in Membej there, because the urban merchant cohort that we mentioned is mostly no longer around they're mostly living in exile in Turkey, or in the Turkish occupied zones in northwestern Syria. So I think that's an interesting development in Membej. But with regards to other regions of Syria, I think Elizabeth has done a lot of interesting research on regime areas, or, and I don't know if I want to add anything to that. Well maybe I'll just quickly just add. On that point, Jeremy. It's very interesting if you look at Membej. There was a divide as Jeremy had mentioned in his talk. It was a historic divide between on the one hand, the deracinated urban elite, Hadran, and particular tribal Sultan on the one hand, and the countryside so it was the former that had been basically the ruling class of Membej in the 40s and 50s. And then when the, the bath is came to power, they essentially and I'm simplifying a little bit but they basically overthrew that old ruling class and put in a new ruling class that came from the countryside from the Wanda and a hush. So this was the central divide that basically demarcated Membej politics from 1958 or 1963 until 2011, which is you had most of the important positions of the government, occupied by Alba Banna and a hush tribes people from the countryside. And you had the Hadran, the deracinated urban elite, as well as Albu Sultan being kind of marginalized. Okay. And what's interesting is 2011 kind of inverted that dynamic so that now the revolutionary forces, especially the Revolutionary Council which was the most important body in the revolution was predominantly comprised of Albu Sultan tribes people and the Hadran. Okay, and the Hadran as Jeremy mentioned were gravitating towards the Muslim Brotherhood. Now, 2016, the SDF, the US backed SDF comes in and liberates members from ISIS, and they just inverted again, back to the status quo anti in some ways, in some ways, because now you have the Albu Sultan and the, the, the Hadran expelled from now in the Euphrates shield and territories and they're the ones who are being backed by Turkey as the anti SDF forces and inside and members you have people drawn from the hush of Albu Banna, for example, Junta Hormayn which is a faction that had many of its members from the Albu Banna tribe. So in another way of looking at all this is that is that there was a central divide in Mimbej for 50, 60 years between certain elites and another group of elites were from the countryside and they've just switched places. You know, over the last 40 years and that explains the SDF's ruling strategy a little bit is trying to stabilize our rule by reaching out to those elements that have been marginalized under the 2012 to 2015 period. But I think there's a much more interesting story to say about the regime areas Elizabeth's really expert there I would love to hear what you have to say about that. So I think it's a bit difficult to cover all regime areas, you know, since the start of the uprising until now. I would say that a trend that is, I would say is very clear throughout the process of the of the war on both sides of the opposition and the regime is the growing dominance of rural areas and people from rural backgrounds at the expense of urbanites and and and this is very, very clear in the case of, you know, the places from which people are being recruited. So, you know, the Syrian army basically a way that many men used to avoid service is going to to university. And this is something that is acceptable that is accessible, much more to people who live in urban areas who had a better educational infrastructure in their areas and just their families are able to afford them, you know, going to university and spending time, spending time studying. And while people in the countryside, much larger share of them than end up joining the Syrian army. But then with regards to the, to the, to the militias that the regime very heavily heavily relies on those militias really are also created through a lot of them through pre existing networks of patronage that existed in these areas. So this includes for example, tribal patronage networks. This includes criminal networks essentially the Shabeeha a lot of them emerge straight up out of groups that would would be involved for example in in cross border smuggling into Lebanon. The better family in Aleppo city which is one of the prominent Sunni pro regime militias. The family engaged in criminality basically that was their, their source of income. So you really see the role of networks also particularly at the start of the mobilization by the regime. And therefore, with the continuation of the war and I think this is something that applies also to the opposition. We see basically all networks undergoing significant changes. For example, the Air Force intelligence used to be just a branch of them, where that would arrest and torture people. And torture was exactly there. And continues to be exactly there. But then it developed basically kind of paramilitary and armed wing that would go out into and conduct battle now just go out and suppress protesters, but take military action. With support from the Air Force with artillery support, the so called Tiger forces were originally militia of the of the Air Force intelligence and very heavily drawn from particular areas, specifically in the Hamak countryside from towns that are overwhelmingly but not exclusively some the town of kubhane for example is a Sunni town, a loyalist town, many of whose sons joined joined that militia. So it's, it's, it's very interesting how the, these networks changed themselves over time. You know, now many of the fighters that operate in the ranks of all sides are very young. There are people who are drawn in into networks that were created during the war on the backs, oftentimes of networks that existed prior to prior to the war. Thanks. We have a question about. You discussed in the paper that the liberal faction was among the weakest, if not the weakest of the various social networks that were being mobilized. Looking forward, what might liberals in Syria, learn from those as to what they might do differently. So, in the, you know, what might they learn differently from how they approach the conflict for if and when there's another upsurge of revolutionary or anti regime activity. I can, I can take a stab at this. I think there's two important lessons, which weren't explicit in the paper but perhaps implicit in the paper. And other work that we're doing that I'm doing, which is the first the first issue. I mean Jeremy mentioned the issue of bread. One of the major mistakes of liberals in the war was I think not was putting extraordinary emphasis on certain types of freedoms such as civic freedoms of freedom of assembly and freedom of speech. And not focusing enough on economic security so members is in a perfect example of this where you had essentially between July 2012 and December 2013 18 months of really a liberal regime, a kind of a local city state that wasn't in power there, because it was the Syrian regime and were in a kind of participatory democratic experiment. And it was on the one hand a time of remarkable freedoms there was whereas before 2011 there was one or two state newspapers in this period there was 11 or 12. There were dozens of organizations to jump out to who are like incipient political parties as far as I'm concerned. And so on, looking at from that perspective there was extraordinary freedoms that were there but at the same time, the issue of bread loom large over everything that was happening and there were. There was a section of the member population, perhaps maybe even the majority that had been alienated from the Revolutionary Council which was a ruling or putative ruling body that was comprised mostly people who are liberals either in word or indeed, and the question of bread the price of bread and social services really took a backseat to it and you can see that I think generally if you look at the slogans of the Syrian Revolution of dignity and freedom, compared to those in Egypt, which is a dignity and freedom of bread for, for instance. I think this is a tragic mistake of liberals and not paying attention to this sort of key aspect and I think it reflects to an extent the class background of those people who were the liberals who are from the middle class and professionals, as opposed to more poor middle class people who also wanted freedom of assembly and expression but wanted also to be able to have freedom from want freedom from, you know, hunger and other sorts of things so that I think is an important lesson to be learned and that I think should be learned I'm not sure if it has is that a lot of the liberals that at least that I know and that I've studied in members in other areas were very oriented towards a model of politics in which she was connected to NGOs, and that meant getting aid from without getting aid from outside. And on the one hand that's sensible because then you're able to have an organization that can function but on the other hand it means that you ultimately be holding to your donors, not to your political constituency. It's an accident that a client in Iraq or ISIS understood very clearly that to build a political constituency they cannot be beholden to outside outside forces, this is someone of Zarkawi's epiphanies probably as early as 2004 in Iraq. And is one of the reasons among others that I think ISIS was successful in and winning over ordinary people away from a liberal program between 2013 2014. There's a couple of questions here about what's the various interests or objectives of the foreign patrons or sponsors entering the conflict are, including what was the US objective, particularly in the early portion of the Obama administration. There were heavy armor, this question asked. I'd add to that also, what is the objective of the US now and how has that changed. And we have another question here about do any of the outside powers intervening have an interest or seeking a unified Syrian Arab state, or are they all seeking to intervene on behalf of particular networks but without a vision for control of the state as a whole. So the last point first, I think the vast majority of states that have or still do intervene in Syria, definitely pay lip service of the notion of unified Syrian state. And of course, you know, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United States and other countries, including those that one may argue have contributed towards the fractalization of Syria, do in theory, want to maintain Syrian, border integrity, and are invested very heavily in the process to redraft the Constitution, in order to achieve a political solution that brings all powers to the table. In practice, I think every patron has their, their network and their, their group that they have that they have historical ties to, and they're probably going to keep the line on that I think in. So our efforts, for example, now to kind of reach reconciliation between the Syrian opposition side and the American backed majority Kurdish as the upside in order to not not in a way that would unify these areas geographically or create some sort of joint administration more so just to agree to a unified interpretation of a potential constitution that could enable both sides to. There's a lot of talk of federalism and all that. But as of now, I think, I mean in my personal opinion, I think what will probably be the de facto status will be a protracted Balkanization of the conflict. It's been very hard to reach out across these sides across these divides these network divides. And, you know, even though there has been there have been echoes of some progress between the opposition and the Kurdish side which is very, which is a good omen considering that the opposition is backed by Turkey which is dead set on reducing to the extent possible, the influence of Kurds. I don't think there's been any progress really reaching out between the regime side and the opposition or the Kurdish side. Well, I mean just that was the last question that was addressed in terms of. I think most countries pay lip service to the notion of a unified Syria but I think everybody's kind of solidified in their sense and I doubt that it would be possible to reach across those divides in the near future. I'll just add quickly to that that Syria is probably in the worst possible situation because it's a Dijour state but a de facto tripartite state and this creates all sorts of problems, because you have, for example, the United Nations and its aid regime has to go to the United States. You have the, if you look at COVID right now, you can't get vaccinated vaccines to northeastern Syria, I'll accept it through the regime distribution networks. And this is a real tragedy. And to me, it speaks to a broader problem, not just of Syria but the way but about the way the international state system is set up, where you have all sorts of transnational institutions that are set up to deal with states, Dijour states, and then you have all these autonomous zones and de facto areas such as Northwest Syria and Northeast Syria, which end up suffering because of that and so even if there were states that wanted a vision of a united Syria, let's say, the the judicial aspects of what that would mean are so great that it impedes any practical sort of practical effects and being able to make that happen. At one point that we didn't really, or that we hadn't yet addressed was how the US position has evolved from the beginning of the war until now. I think, I think the broad consensus around this is that the US position was mostly one of attempting to facilitate a peaceful stepping down of Bashar al-Assad as president and his inner circle, similar to what occurred in Yemen with Ali Abdullah Saleh. I don't think the US was ever committed. I mean, I think the in the beginning of the war, especially I think the US position was to try not to get involved, to the fullest extent possible. You know, the year that the Arab Spring broke out also coincidentally happened to be the same year that the US withdrew from Iraq and I think for those of us in the United States. We all know what that, what kind of a headache that was and you know the role that the Iraq war played in Barack Obama's candidacy, not just during the general election, but during the primaries as well. You know, drawing from Middle East quagmires was very much part of what drove him to the White House. So I think that was partially I think in the beginning there was just definitely neglect on that part of the Obama administration but as it became clear that this was not going to be a Arab Spring revolution and quickly I think the goal was a facilitated transition that would see Assad removed and you know some sort of political solution that would rain in acceptable elements of the opposition. I think that kind of what maintained that state remained US position up until ISIS emerged, and then once ISIS emerged that completely just changed the entire calculus. Whereas before the United States was giving on aid and arms to rebel factions offensively to fight the Syrian regime by the time ISIS emerged, pretty much all aid was contingent upon the fact that you had to fight ISIS and some of this couldn't fight the Syrian regime. This dynamic of ISIS particularly, I mean this could potentially take us on a lot of hold but in late 2013 in particular, the issue of aid being tied to fighting ISIS was really in some ways what drove the rise of ISIS because as ISIS began to emerge little by little, the United States basically clamped down on aid from the Gulf, in order to prevent that aid from seeping out and falling into the hands of extremists like ISIS. But at the same time, what happened inadvertently was that aid to what we call the moderate groups also was cut off which then made it made it much easier for ISIS to present itself as not only the most powerful body but the body was the most powerful party of the conflict but the party of the conflict this capable of doling out aid to local communities. And so, in 2013 mid 2013 United States, it's kind of a chicken and the egg type scenario you know the United States reduce reducing aid lead to ISIS's emergence or facilitate its emergence or did ISIS's aid I think will probably be held endlessly. But then once ISIS took over Mosul and all that I don't I think we pretty much gave up on all attempts to remove Assad I don't think I think that pretty much ended in terms of, I think one of the most interesting dynamics that has occurred with regards to bringing priorities for nation states is the shift in the Turkish position. So Turkey I think was very legitimately committed to the violent overthrow of the Assad regime, not necessarily a negotiated political solution that saw Assad is in a down I think Turkey, along with Qatar, in those two countries in particular were very committed to violently overthrowing Assad by any means and, if we're being honest, directing aid to a lot of sort of radical groups towards achieving that end but in response to the rise of ISIS and the US in terms of supporting the Kurds and then the establishment of a large Kurdish area in northeast Syria, Turkey's position has also shifted away from removing Assad. Towards I think the only thing they care about now is combating the Kurds the same way that the US combated ISIS and so the Syrian opposition. Basically since mid 2013 and 2014 has received aid from patrons that was conditional on fighting groups other than the regime. And I think that's something that we talk a lot about in our paper which is the dislocation or the disassociation between patrons and their goals versus clients and their goals. I think since 2014 and the rise of ISIS and then subsequently the rise of the Kurds. The interest of foreign patrons has exponentially diverged from that of the Syrian opposition to the point where I don't even think they have the same goals anymore. I mean, of course they would like to overthrow Assad but I don't think there's any patron that's serious about doing that. One thing is a paper I want to ask you about before we turn to sort of concluding remarks is there's an interesting point in the paper that often when a foreign patron is looking into a conflict like Syria, there's an the most sort of influence or control over a situation with by sponsoring or supporting a faction or network that is not already dominant or powerful in the conflict. One of the lessons I drew from your paper is that often choosing the more the sort of factions that may be able to negotiate or challenge the sponsor. What can backfire. If they're not sufficiently well capitalized and the conflict itself. Can you talk a bit about how that played out in the conflict and what lessons that has for understanding various international strategies of intervention. Yeah, sure. Yeah, it's almost a counterintuitive finding right because you expect that groups that are less well capitalized will be easier to control by those who are outside and try you know it's actually in some cases the opposite and I think that's because you need to disaggregate the idea of proxy client relationships into two dimensions one is interest to do the interest of the, of the client and sort of the patron. Do they overlap or do they diverge and that's one dimension the second dimension is how cohesive is the client. You can have with those two, you can have a possible for different combinations of those two. Right. But for example, if the interest of the patron and the client are the same or overlap. Then it is conducive to that relationship if the client is more cohesive. Right. So if they have the overlapping interests like Qatar did with elements of the that emerge out of the brotherhood or with a hard or sham. Then the fact that our sham and the brotherhood were more cohesive and could exert more command and control actually a benefit what you know enabled or facilitated the patron client relationship. And just out of that where with the US and Saudi when they're backing tribal forces and liberal forces, even if the interest were to overlap which I'm not even sure that was true but even if they were to overlap the fact is that the lack of cohesion a lack of control meant that they were that the clients are very hard to control. So, I think that is sort of an explanation for what would seem to be a counterintuitive type of thing I don't know Jeremy or Elizabeth if you had anything to add to that. I think with regards to the cutlery and provincial merchant network and their relationship. I mean a lot of it is just simply, you know, trust built over time. That was a relationship that had been built over 30 years, in many instances. These were much more organic relationships. And so the command and control structure as a non described was much more seamless and cohesive, the proxy, or the client force itself was also cohesive. And I think it's kind of just one thing leads to another you know the fact that the provincial merchant network was itself cohesive. And it's swift accumulation of capital inside Syria, which facilitated its ability to cultivate ties abroad to cover and then if you just let that simmer for about 30 years. You know, the networks are going to be much stronger than if you do what United States did in many cases which was kind of just parachute in and meet a month meet random people and attempt to direct them towards certain goals. And, and as an onset the forces that Saudi Arabian United States did support for reasons that we touched on the paper themselves weren't really cohesive amongst themselves and so if United States would attempt to direct in terms of certain role I mean you know the center in opposition is notorious for the free. It looks like we may have lost it with which it unites and then you know this unites and then the commander feels that he can do better. I believe my, maybe my internet's cutting out I'll let somebody else. To the end of the talk. So, let me give you all an opportunity to make any sort of concluding remarks, and I'll also throw you a question to broaden out or and on, which is one network we didn't discuss or a change in a network that has occurred over the past 10 years of war, or another dynamic in the conflict that you think will shape the next phase of the Syrian conflict that people should be paying attention to. So, maybe I'll go first. So I think that a trend that is very briefly, I think if I can one sentence mentioned in the report is kind of the proxies of the of the Syrian opposition. We are essentially now looking at an opposition. You know the areas that are under its control. Northern Aleppo is basically controlled by factions that are straight up proxies of Turkey. They serve Turkish interest, not the interests of Syrians or the same opposition, they have not fought against the Assad regime. Since, you know, 2015, before they were basically established and coherent into a force that Turkey is using. They went to fight in Libya and in Azerbaijan is a straight up mercenaries to advance Turkish goals fighting forces that have nothing to do with the Syrian conflict. Also, in, in Idlib, what we're witnessing is the area is under the dominance of Haider Sham, which is, I would never call them a Turkish proxy the relationship with Ankara is very complex. But it is a force that is increasingly adhering to Turkish demands essentially. And we saw it very clearly, for example, in the now, you know, regular conducting of patrols by Russia and Turkey in southern Idlib. Those patrols along the Empire Highway are protected by Haider Sham. Despite widespread public opposition to this, you know, Russia is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people living in Idlib. It is deeply unpopular to let these forces to come into this territory. Previously, the leadership of HDS stated clearly that they will never accept the presence of any regime or Russian forces in Idlib. And that if they want to be present in a certain territory, they need to take it militarily. And now they're, you know, they're letting in these forces. We are also seeing essentially, you know, the, of course, the Turkish proxies but also HDS, abiding essentially by ceasefires with the regime. And not conducting, you know, cross-line operations, not launching any offensives. And also not carrying out attacks, you know, deep in the regime territory, even though they have the capacity to do so particularly with the utter disintegration of the Syrian state and incredible poverty. It's incredibly easy to recruit people now in regime areas to carry out attacks. There is widespread hatred towards the regime. HDS still has supporters, still has members in place who could carry out attacks and it chooses not to do so. And this is out of commitment basically to the ceasefire to avoid provoking the regime. So therefore, we're really kind of seeing a situation in which Syrian actors are increasingly marginalized and are basically used as tools by outside forces. And this is really not the case. And I think the paper presents it really well where, yes, there were joint interests and, you know, the support was significant without it. Factions in one vision elsewhere would not have been able to operate in the civil war would have ended in 2012 probably. But there was still a sense of independence, still Syrians were pursuing the goals that they set out for themselves, which is toppling the regime. Whereas now this is really not a goal that any opposition force is striving for, except really kind of extremely tiny groups, like Harassedin and like straight up jihadist groups that are being actively hunted down by HDS across just today they carried out a major arrest of senior Harassedin leader. So really we're seeing kind of a very, very dynamic that really kind of the Syrian opposition, the political and the armed representation of it is increasingly not a force that gets to make its own decisions. Jeremy any concluding remarks. Sure. Yeah, I'll make this brief I think one interesting development to follow in Syria and that is tied to more recent dynamics or network dynamics in the country can actually be found in the place where the Revolution began which is in southern Syria in the province of Darau. You know there's been ever since Darau was retaken by regime forces in 2018 and ever since then there has been an underground insurgent movement against regime forces that has been sustained and at times quite violent and at times quite successful at temporarily even taking control of entire towns or streams of towns in the area. That itself is rooted in network dynamics, you know meant when the regime took over the southern or southern Syria in 2018, they offered the opportunity for many armed FSA factions to avoid battle and switch sides and basically peacefully hand over and unfold their territory to the regime and many factions took them up on this offer and they've frankly realized how done they were and they didn't want to. They didn't they didn't want to fight within that group of factions that willingly switch sides and handed over territory to the regime there have been some that have been privileged over others. One of the most privileged is the eighth legion, which operates mostly around both of the sham and Eastern data countryside, which is who have been the recipient of major amounts of Russian patronage. About a month ago or may have been a little bit more. There was a major armed uprising in one area in Western data string of towns. And that was that held out against regime against pro regime forces for, you know, upwards of a week, maybe even more. Many people at the time we're saying oh this is a reignition of the Syrian Revolution in this area, you know, these are people who are finally, you know, liberating territory from the regime the same way they did 10 years prior, however, upon further. If you look at it closely, what you find is that the people who rose up in this way took control of this these towns for a period of upwards of week were simply the kind of losers or the have nots within this larger group of people who voluntarily surrender to the regime, and for whatever reason, didn't receive Russian patronage. And so in a lot of ways, what these people were attempting to secure for themselves by rising up was much more narrow than what many even in Syrian media portrayed it as you know a lot of people in Syria need to say oh, the Revolution is starting again. And these were people who in Western data province who were perhaps resentful of those in Eastern data province who were receiving Russian patronage and they were not. And in data it's also very tribal and this can be looked at in terms of certain tribes getting benefits and other tribes or plans not. And so that's the place where these dynamics are still at play and I think it's very interesting to continue to see how they develop on for the next I thought I would just very quickly try to answer one of the questions that wasn't answered in the Q&A which was about water somebody asked about the issue of water versus bread. Of course, what is very important we just did a study in the city of mimbish and found that something like 39 or 40% of the city doesn't have access to regular drinking water, because the water supply is intermittent. Obviously very important issue, but however, it hasn't been until now politicizing the same way the issue of bread has historically been politicized in Syria and in the Middle East, more broadly. And this is in part because the bread subsidy that the Syrian regime had in place was a very important way in which the regime tried to ensure its stability, and it tried to remove the bread subsidy in 2007-2008 but wasn't really able to. And this is not the case just in Syria and other countries Egypt tried to remove in 1977 and saw riots and so they had to sort of retreat. And the bread, you know, bread is not just a staple of the Syrian meal is kind of an indicator of the stability of political order and so we talk about a little bit in the paper how the vicissitudes of bread prices was in the proxy for other issues of political stability inside the city of mimbish and that's why we focus on bread more so than water and the SDF does subsidize bread or the ruling councils in this territory does subsidize bread now. Unlike the bread crisis that's ongoing ongoing in the regime territories. I was really glad that Elizabeth mentioned, because, you know, she's absolutely right that there is a really important area to really understand I think for the reasons that she mentioned also because of the rise of ISIS, and there's a few towns and other areas and that is or that were pretty instrumental in the early periods of ISIS in 2012 2013. Fortunately, we have a number of studies that will be coming out kind of along the same veins and looks at parts of that is or Jeremy is leading part of that this is for the Zomia Center for the study of non state spaces which is a representation that we have with a bunch of Syrian and Iraqi researchers and tries to do this sort of granular field work to try to to understand what has happened and what may happen in the next few years so definitely look out for that. And then I just, I guess I'd wrap up by saying if there was one takeaway to impart upon you about the studies is on the question of fragmentation. It was discussed in the media and elsewhere, over the years in which the revolution was actually ongoing that this question of fragmentation was a strategic question like, if the rebel factions had just gotten their act together and had decided to organize and unite then things would be different. But you know what's interesting is when I was on the ground in those years in 2012 2014 every single person I met who is of the armed opposition talked about the need to organize until you unite and there was many efforts to try to do so. So, there was certainly a will to try to have unification of the rebel groups but they weren't able to do it. And why was that and I think one of the arguments we put forth in the paper is that it's not purely just a question of strategy. So, a strategy is a necessary but not sufficient condition for cohesion, and to understand what else is needed for cohesion. You have to look at the social structure of the society and the way in which their dictatorship of 40 years, change transformed or fragmented the social structure so that even if those people wanted to unify the structural preconditions didn't exist to do so and if there's anything else in this long paper that's a takeaway I would argue that's the most important think Thank you. Well, thank you all. There's as announced discussed a lot more in the paper, which is available on new America's website. And there's a link in the chat if you can grab it before we end. Thank you to all of our speakers, and shared a ton of the results of their own research with us and other products that are coming later. Thank you.