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² Lakhdar Brahimi, ‘Syria becoming warlord-run failed state’, Reuters (8 June 2014), available at: {http://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-crisis-envoy-idUSKBN0EJ0MT20140608} accessed 2 March 2020.

³ Shimon Stein, ‘Neither Assad nor the Islamic State can reunify Syria’, in Judy Demsey, ‘Can Syria be Salvaged?’, Carnegie Middle East Center (14 October 2015), available at: {http://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/?fa=61613} accessed 2 March 2020.

⁴ Jonathan Spyer, ‘Syria has effectively ceased to exist’, Foreign Policy (19 May 2017), available at: {https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/05/19/syria-has-ceased-to-exist-rebels-airstrikes-isis-russia-iran/} accessed 2 March 2020.

⁵ Robin Wright, ‘Imagining a remapped Middle East’, New York Times (28 September 2013), available at: {https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/10/22/do-iraq-and-syria-no-longer-exist-no-3-yes-the-sooner-we-realize-it-the-better/} accessed 2 March 2020.

⁶ Ibid.

⁷ Thomas E. Ricks, ‘Do Syria and Iraq no longer exist? Yes, the sooner we realize it, the better’, Foreign Affairs, Voice (22 October 2014), available at: {https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/10/22/do-iraq-and-syria-no-longer-exist-no-3-yes-the-sooner-we-realize-it-the-better/} accessed 2 March 2020.

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¹² Ibid., p. 408.

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²⁵ While both of these stereotypical concepts of the state have received their share of criticism, neither has been effectively replaced; see Walker, Inside/Outside; Bartelson, The Critique of the State.

²⁶ Giddens, Violence, p. 120.

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³² Ayubi, The Arab State, pp. 30–1.

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⁵¹ Bull, Anarchical Society, p. 16.

⁵² Adraoui, Mohamed-Ali, ‘Borders and sovereignty in Islamist and Jihadist thought: Past and present’, International Affairs, 93:4 (2017), pp. 917–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mendelsohn, Barak, ‘Sovereignty under attack: The international society meets the Al Qaeda network’, Review of International Studies, 31:1 (2005), pp. 45–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁵⁴ See Walker, ‘Double outside’, pp. 60, 68; Taylor, ‘Beyond containers’, pp. 4–6.

⁵⁵ Mitchell, ‘Limits of the state’; Campbell, Writing Security; Devetak, ‘Incomplete states’; Weber, ‘Performative states’.

⁵⁶ Mitchell, ‘Limits of the state’, pp. 94–5.

⁵⁷ Ibid., p. 95.

⁵⁸ Ibid.; Bourdieu, Bureaucratic Field; Devetak, ‘Incomplete states’; Weber, ‘Performative states’.

⁵⁹ Bull, Anarchical Society, p. 16.

⁶⁰ Zartman, ‘States, boundaries and sovereignty’; Fawcett, ‘States and sovereignty’. For a wider range of examples of internal state ‘collapse’ or ‘failure’, see Rotberg, When States Fail, and Zartman (ed.), Collapsed States.

⁶¹ Brahimi, ‘Failed state’.

⁶² Baczko et al., Civil War, pp. 84–99.

⁶³ Ibid., pp. 106–07.

⁶⁴ Ibid., p. 96; Phillips, Battle for Syria, pp. 150–1.

⁶⁵ Heydemann, Steven, ‘Tracking the “Arab Spring”: Syria and the future of authoritarianism’, Journal of Democracy, 24:4 (2013), pp. 59–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Droz-Vincent, Philippe, ‘“State of barbary” (take two): From the Arab Spring to the return of violence in Syria’, The Middle East Journal, 68:1 (2014), pp. 33–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baczko et al., Civil War, p. 85.

⁶⁶ Phillips, Battle for Syria, pp. 67–82.

⁶⁷ Ibid., pp. 59–60.

⁶⁸ Ibid., p. 75.

⁶⁹ Ibid., p. 68; Heydemann, ‘Tracking the “Arab Spring”’, p. 67.

⁷⁰ Daher, State Resilience, pp. 25, 175–6.

⁷¹ Kheder Khaddour, ‘Assad's Officer Ghetto: Why the Syrian Army Remains Loyal’, Regional Insight, Carnegie Middle East Center (4 November 2015), available at: {https://carnegie-mec.org/2015/11/04/assad-s-officer-ghetto-why-syrian-army-remains-loyal-pub-61449} accessed 18 March 2020.

⁷² Haddad, Bassam, ‘Syria's state bourgeoisie: An organic backbone for the regime’, Middle East Critique, 21:3 (2012), pp. 231–57 (p. 231)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁷⁴ Daher, State Resilience, pp. 181–7.

⁷⁵ Ibid., p. 184; see also Heydemann, ‘Tracking the “Arab Spring”’. Additional local and volunteer army forces were set up throughout the course of the war; see Daher, State Resilience, pp. 173–4.

⁷⁶ The bulk of the Syrian army served other purposes, including logistical support; see Kheder Khaddour, ‘Strength in Weakness: The Syrian Army's Accidental Resilience’, Middle East Carnegie Center (16 March 2016), available at: {https://carnegieendowment.org/files/ACMR_Khaddour.pdf} accessed 18 March 2020.

⁷⁷ Aaron Lund, ‘Who Are the Pro-Assad Militias?’, Carnegie Middle East Center (2 March 2015), available at: { https://carnegie-mec.org/diwan/59215?lang=en} accessed 18 March 2020.

⁷⁸ Baczko et al., Civil War, p. 90.

⁷⁹ Wedeen, Authoritarian Apprehensions, p. 4.

⁸⁰ Ibid., p. 20.

⁸¹ Ibid., pp. 19–47.

⁸² Ibid., pp. 77–104.

⁸³ Ibid., pp. 141–62.

⁸⁴ Ibid., p. 35.

⁸⁵ Kheder Khaddour, ‘The Assad Regime's Hold on the State’, Carnegie Middle East Center (2 July 2015), available at: {https://carnegie-mec.org/2015/07/08/assad-regime-s-hold-on-syrian-state/id3k} accessed 18 March 2020; Martínez and Eng, ‘Stifling stateness’; Baczko et al., Civil War.

⁸⁶ Khaddour, ‘Assad's Hold’.

⁸⁷ Heydemann, ‘Tracking the “Arab Spring”’, p. 63; Khaddour, ‘Assad's Hold’.

⁸⁸ De Juan, Alexander and Bank, André, ‘The Ba‘athist blackout? Selective goods provision and political violence in the Syrian Civil War’, Journal of Peace Research, 52:1 (2015), pp. 91–104CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁹⁰ Khaddour, ‘Assad's Hold’.

⁹¹ Ibid.; Baczko et al., Civil War, p. 131.

⁹² Joshua Landis and Steven Simon, ‘Assad has it his way: The peace talks and after’, Snapshot, Foreign Affairs (19 January 2016), available at: {https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/syria/2016-01-19/assad-has-it-his-way} accessed 18 March 2020; Khaddour, ‘Assad's Hold’; Phillips, Battle for Syria.

⁹³ Phillips, Battle for Syria, p. 127; Khaddour, ‘Assad's Hold’.

⁹⁴ Baczko et al., Civil War, pp. 103–32.

⁹⁵ Phillips, Battle for Syria, pp. 105–24; Baczko et al., Civil War, pp. 133–44; Daher, State Resilience, pp. 125–36.

⁹⁶ Khaddour, ‘Assad's Hold’; Martínez and Eng, ‘Stifling stateness’.

⁹⁷ Khaddour, ‘Assad's Hold’.

⁹⁸ Phillips, Battle for Syria, pp. 168–72.

⁹⁹ BBC interview with Assad, Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) (10 February 2015), available at: {https://www.sana.sy/en/?p=28047} accessed 18 March 2020.

¹⁰⁰ Landis and Simon, ‘Assad has it his way’. See also Aron Lund, ‘How Assad's Enemies Gave Up on the Syrian Opposition’, The Century Foundation (17 February 2017), available at: {https://tcf.org/content/report/assads-enemies-gave-syrian-opposition/} accessed 18 March 2020. See also Andrew Parasiliti, Kathleen Reedy, and Becca Wasser, ‘Preventing State Collapse in Syria’, RAND (2017), available at: {https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE219.html accessed 18 March 2020.

¹⁰¹ Baczko et al., Civil War, p. 75; Phillips, Battle for Syria, p. 359; Ismail, Salwa, ‘The Syrian uprising: Imagining and performing the nation’, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, 11:3 (2011), pp. 538–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰² Baczko et al., Civil War, p. 103.

¹⁰³ Ismail, ‘Syrian uprising’.

¹⁰⁴ Lister, Syrian Jihad, p. 115.

¹⁰⁵ Phillips, Battle for Syria, pp. 131–3; Lister, Syrian Jihad.

¹⁰⁶ The position of Ahrar al-Sham between Islamist and jihadist strands is complex and fluctuating, but it has generally taken a more modest and especially a more Syrian nationalist stance than the jihadist Jabhat al-Nusra (see Lister, Syrian Jihad, pp. 145, 107–10); Jaysh al-Islam emerged from a merger of Liwa al-Islam and more than forty other Islamist militias brokered by Saudi Arabia in 2013 (Phillips, Battle for Syria, p. 185).

¹⁰⁷ Jabhat al-Nusra was renamed Jabhat Fatah al-Sham in July 2016 and then Tahrir al-Sham, as an umbrella incorporating other groups, in January 2017, and its relationship with Ahrar al-Sham in particular has been complex, shifting between competition and cooperation (Lister, Syrian Jihad; Baczko et al., Civil War).

¹⁰⁸ The most important include the Syrian Islamic Front, the Islamic Front, the Syrian Liberation Front, and Jaysh al-Fatah (Lister, Syrian Jihad; Baczko et al., Civil War).

¹⁰⁹ Lister, Syrian Jihad; Baczko et al., Civil War, pp. 188–91; Phillips, Battle for Syria, pp. 129–32.

¹¹⁰ For an overview of the Islamisation of the insurgency, see Lister, Syrian Jihad.

¹¹¹ Ibid.

¹¹² Phillips, Christopher and Valbjørn, Morten, ‘“What is in a name?”: The role of (different) identities in the multiple proxy wars in Syria’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 29:3 (2018), pp. 414–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹³ Phillips, Battle for Syria, pp. 129–32, 137–42.

¹¹⁴ Ibid., pp. 151–4.

¹¹⁵ Ibid.

¹¹⁶ Baczko et at., Civil War, p. 156.

¹¹⁷ Phillips, Battle for Syria, pp. 139, 178–88.

¹¹⁸ Baczko et al., Civil War, pp. 167–72.

¹¹⁹ Ibid., pp. 172–7.

¹²⁰ Rabinovich, ‘End of Sykes-Picot’, p. 2.

¹²¹ Vignal, Leïla, ‘The changing borders and borderlands of Syria in a time of conflict’, International Affairs, 93:4 (2017), pp. 809–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar (p. 809).

¹²² Stein, ‘Syria’.

¹²³ Robin Wright, ‘Imagining a re-mapped Middle East’, New York Times (28 September 2013), available at: {http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/opinion/sunday/imagining-a-remapped-middle-east.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0} accessed 18 March 2020; see also Nicholas Heras, ‘The Potential for an Assad Statelet in Syria’, The Washington Institute (December 2013), available at: {https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/the-potential-for-an-assad-statelet-in-syria } accessed 18 March 2020; John Bolton, ‘To defeat ISIS, create a Sunni state’, op-ed, New York Times (24 November 2015), available at: {http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/25/opinion/john-bolton-to-defeat-isis-create-a-sunni-state.html?_r=0} accessed 18 March 2020.

¹²⁴ Kienle, ‘New struggle for Syria’.

¹²⁵ Khoury, Philip S., Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920–1945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Sarto, Raffaella A. Del, ‘Contentious borders in the Middle East and North Africa: Context and concepts’, International Affairs, 93:4 (2017), pp. 767–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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¹²⁷ Hinnebusch, Raymond, Syria: Revolution from Above (London, UK: Routledge, 2002)Google Scholar; Nikolaos Van Dam, The Struggle for Power in Syria: Politics and Society under Asad and the Ba'th Party (4^th edn, London, UK: Tauris, 2011 [orig. pub. 1979]); Del Sarto, ‘Contentious borders’; Fawcett, ‘States and sovereignty’.

¹²⁸ Ibid.

¹²⁹ Rabinovich, ‘End of Sykes-Picot’.

¹³⁰ Fawcett recounts the ubiquity of references to ‘Sykes-Picot’ in the literature on the Syrian civil war and its regional context (‘States and sovereignty’, pp. 793–4).

¹³¹ Lister, Syrian Jihad, pp. 59, 227.

¹³² For an Islamist vision of postwar Syria, see, for instance, the covenant issued by Islamic Front, including Ahrar al-Sham, which nevertheless openly vows to ‘preserve … Syrian territorial integrity’ and restrict leadership roles to Syrians (Lister, Syrian Jihad, pp. 225–7).

¹³³ Cited in Phillips, Battle for Syria, p. 107.

¹³⁴ Phillips, Battle for Syria, p. 178.

¹³⁵ Wedeen, Authoritarian Apprehensions.

¹³⁶ Ibid., pp. 109–21.

¹³⁷ Ibid., p. 115.

¹³⁸ Cited in Wedeen, Authoritarian Apprehensions, p. 116.

¹³⁹ Cited in Menshawy, ‘Sovereignty’, p. 3.

¹⁴⁰ Ibid.; Phillips, Battle for Syria; BBC interview Bashar al-Assad, SANA.

¹⁴¹ Phillips, Battle for Syria, pp. 178–84.

¹⁴² Ibid., p. 183.

¹⁴³ Ibid., pp. 172–3; Del Sarto, ‘Contentious borders’, p. 784.

¹⁴⁴ Cited in Reuters (27 June 2015), available at: {https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-turkey-kurds/turkeys-erdogan-says-will-never-allow-kurdish-state-media-idUSKBN0P70QB20150627} accessed 18 March 2020.

¹⁴⁵ Baczko et al., Civil War, pp. 155, 177.

¹⁴⁶ Phillips, Battle for Syria.

¹⁴⁷ Cited in Lister, Syrian Jihad, p. 214.

¹⁴⁸ Ibid., pp. 221–60; Phillips, Battle for Syria, pp. 196–206; Cockburn, Patrick, The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution (London, UK: Verso, 2015)Google Scholar; Weiss, Michael and Hassan, Hassan, ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror (2^nd edn, New York, NY: Regan Arts, 2016)Google Scholar; Matin, Kamran, ‘Lineages of the Islamic State: An international historical sociology of state (de-)formation in Iraq’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 31:1 (2018), pp. 6–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁴⁹ Phillips, Battle for Syria, pp. 199–202.

¹⁵⁰ Lister, Syrian Jihad, p. 122.

¹⁵¹ Ibid., pp. 261–78; Matin, ‘Lineages’, pp. 18–20.

¹⁵² Lister, Syrian Jihad, pp. 261–9.

¹⁵³ Ibid., pp. 119–49.

¹⁵⁴ Ibid., pp. 119–260.

¹⁵⁵ Although criticising the IS declaration of a Caliphate, Jabhat al-Nusra also pursued a global agenda (Lister, Syrian Jihad, p. 59), seeking to establish local emirates in Idlib, Aleppo, Deraa, and Ghouta 2014 (ibid., p. 243). Indeed, Jabhat al-Nusra criticised in turn a statement issued by the Islamic-Front that vowed to limit the insurgency to the territory of Syria and favour Syrian citizens in its leadership (ibid., pp. 225–7).

¹⁵⁶ Al-Adnani, cited in Lister, Syrian Jihad, pp. 236–7.

¹⁵⁷ Cited in Cockburn, Islamic State, p. xi.

¹⁵⁸ Lister, Syrian Jihad, pp. 261–78.

¹⁵⁹ Phillips, Battle for Syria, pp. 213–17.

¹⁶⁰ Ibid., pp. 217–23, 238–42; Seliktar and Rezaei, Proxy Wars, pp. 167–201; Landis and Simon, ‘Assad has it his way’.

¹⁶¹ Phillips, Battle for Syria, pp. 219–23.

¹⁶² Washington Post, available at: {https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/09/28/read-putins-u-n-general-assembly-speech/} accessed 18 March 2020.

¹⁶³ Ibid.

¹⁶⁴ Phillips, Battle for Syria, pp. 223, 231.

¹⁶⁵ Barack Obama speech, 11 September 2014, CNN, available at: {https://edition.cnn.com/2014/09/10/politics/transcript-obama-syria-isis-speech/index.html} accessed 18 March 2020.

¹⁶⁶ Ibid.

¹⁶⁷ Phillips, Battle for Syria, p. 209.

¹⁶⁸ Global Coalition, available at: {https://theglobalcoalition.org/en/partners/} accessed 24 April 2020.

¹⁶⁹ Phillips, Battle for Syria, pp. 208–09, 225.

¹⁷⁰ Ibid., p. 208.

¹⁷¹ Phillips, Battle for Syria, pp. 208–09, 225.

¹⁷² Ibid., pp. 184–8.

¹⁷³ Ibid., pp. 240–2; Lund, ‘Assad's enemies’.

¹⁷⁴ Ibid., p. 206.

¹⁷⁵ Phillips, Battle for Syria, pp. 206, 256; Baczko et al., Civil War, p. 157.

¹⁷⁶ Ibid., pp. 238–41, 246; Lund, ‘Assad's enemies’.

¹⁷⁷ Phillips, Battle for Syria, pp. 235–8; ‘Syria's Kurds forge “costly deal” with Al-Assad as US pulls out’, Al-Jazeera (15 October 2019), available at: {https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/10/pullout-syria-kurds-costly-deal-assad-191015122222288.html} accessed 18 March 2020.

¹⁷⁸ Ibid., p. 224.

¹⁷⁹ Grzybowski, ‘Paradox of state identification’.