This chapter moves backward in time to the “mandate period,” when, in the aftermath of the first World War and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the territory of Syria was placed under French colonial rule. The chapter begins with the Syrian Revolt of 1925-27. Launched by the “Patriotic Club,” a group made up of tribal leaders from the Druze religious sect in the mountainous Jabal Hawran region of South-Western Syria, this revolt shares many similarities with the early stages of Nepal’s Maoist uprising in that it was initiated amongst a relatively isolated ethnic community with few ties connecting them to the broader national population. The chapter then turns to an often overlooked case of mass civil resistance: the Syrian General Strike of 1936. The strike was led by an opposition political group called the “National Bloc,” whose leaders, while almost entirely older Sunnis from prominent families, stood at the top of extensive clientelistic networks that they were able to leverage to generate mass participation. The strike compelled the French administration to negotiate a treaty with the opposition leadership that set the groundwork for eventual independence.

Immediately after the partial withdrawal of the Syrian army from several towns in the north and north-east of the country in July 2012, Kurds seemed to emerge ‘out of nowhere’. More significantly, after more than forty years of dictatorship and political marginalization, Syrian Kurds appeared to become masters of their own destiny. For one, both the Democratic Union Party (PYD) - a Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which has been fighting the Turkish state since the 1980s – and its military force, the People’s Defense Units (YPG), have been exercising state-like power in the Kurdish regions of Syria. However, in parallel, reports from the region have revealed a murkier picture: Syrian Kurdish parties appeared highly divided, and the PYD ascent brought about significant consequences in the Kurdish enclaves among growing Turkish intervention in northern Syria. This chapter argues that both continuities between 1946 and 2019 (e.g. division of the Kurdish political field, its openness to external influences and ambiguities with regard to the Syrian regime) and changes (e.g. Syrian war context, adoption of armed struggle strategies by Kurdish political parties and ideological transformations) may help us to better grasp current dynamics in northern Syria.

This chapter reviews the Lebanese constitution of 1926 and examines how the confessional provisions were inserted during the French mandate (1920-1943). It shows that confessional articles were drafted by the Lebanese drafters of the constitution to preserve communal identities and to stave off communal strife. The chapter further investigates the implications of this constitution with it quotas and confessional formula insofar as it was ill-equipped to adjust to demographic changes over time.