When we turned to the besieged Damascene suburb of Darayya, we found a very different narrative emerging around the production and evolution of rebel governance from those in Raqqa and Saraqeb. Darayya, a mere 8 kilometers from the country’s capital, sat close to the regime’s military airport, the General Intelligence Service Headquarters, and the Interior Ministry.1 The accounts from this place were not of people controlled by an occupying rebel force or an emergent limited access order, but rather a community – rebels included – that had cohered as the target of a sustained, merciless siege by the regime on account of its early and enthusiastic participation in the uprising.