Governance and Mobilized Islam in North-Syria: 2012-2016

From rebellion to the emergence of quasi-states. Alternative modes of governance among Jihadi-Salafist Groups" The proposed paper explores struggles regarding the control over the delivery of public services (such as water, electricity, food, education and including courts, police) in rebel controlled areas in Northern Syria–and does so with a focus on Islamist movement. It traces interactions between, and mobilization strategies of, actors involved in these struggles in three specific localities: Saraqeb, Aleppo and Raqqa and assesses if there is a specificity to strategic considerations among Islamists involved. The article thereby aims to further discussions on the strategic use of religion in contentious mobilization in the Arab world. For several decades Islamism has been a growing topic of interest within Middle East studies, political science, and sociology–not to mention public debates more generally. The proposed bridges recent approaches in studies on social movements regarding strategic interactions within contentious mobilization (Jasper and Duyvendak 2015) on the one side with more traditional studies on Islamist mobilization (Wiktorowicz 2004; Bayat 2007) on the other. It does so through a micro-level comparison of Islamist mobilization strategies around governance related issues in three different localities in North Syria and asks if there is a specificity to Islamist movements' strategies (versus non-Islamist ones) regarding mobilization around governance of everyday service provision. In other words: does talk of “Islamic rule” have an effect on practical strategies related to institutionalizing governance? The Syrian uprising is a perfect case to trace the development and intersection of Islamist networks and mobilization strategies. The combination of a fragmented territory–not just between regime, Kurdish, and opposition held territory, but also within opposition held territories themselves–means that trajectories of institutional development differ immensely between regions. At the same time, each case involves similar movements; a perfect setup for a comparative analysis. The articles traces how in Saraqeb, Aleppo and Raqqa initial improvised and informal attempts at governing service provision transformed into more formal institutionalized ones. We also see how in each of these settings contextual factors conditioned the ways in which this transformation took place, and the range of strategies that actors involved employed: from activists, local councils and Free Syrian Army related rebel groups to the Islamist Ahrar al-Sham, the Nusra Front and Islamic State organization. This diversity enables an assessment of the specific strategic considerations that emerged among Islamist movements in all these three cases. The analysis builds on more than a hundred primary documents from Daesh, Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham and relevant local Islamist actors in addition to (Arabic, English and French) secondary sources. This is in addition to hundreds of sources from other governance related actors and around thirty interviews with relevant players among Islamist actors and governance organizations. References Bayat, Asef. 2007. Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Jasper, James M., and Jan Willem Duyvendak, eds. 2015. Players and Arenas: The Interactive Dynamics of Protest. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.