Featuring: Bassam Haddad & Omar Dahi Moderated by: Mouin Rabbani & Noura Erakat
The swift collapse of the Syrian regime took everyone by surprise, after 54 years of rule and a prolonged uprising. Within ten days, a Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS)-led coalition literally marched through Aleppo, Hama, Homs, and Damascus, as other armed groups mobilized in Der`a and Sweida. On Sunday, 8 December 2024, the Presidential residence and state banks temporarily became public property, notorious prisons were broke open. The regime had collapsed. The Syrian political class, army, party echelons, and the once infamously frightening security services’ heads were nowhere to be seen. Poof! Bashar Asad and family were now in Moscow. We will discuss the context of these developments as well as the notable absence of regime allies’ support, in addition to regional and international implications, including Israel’s continuing genocide.
I am a professor of economics at Hampshire College and a research associate at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. I am also the founding director of Security in Context a research network on peace, conflict, and international affairs. Please visit http://www.securityincontext.org for more on that initiative. I have published in academic outlets such as the Journal of Development Economics and Applied Economics, Southern Economic Journal, Political Geography, Middle East Report, Forced Migration Review, and Critical Studies on Security. My last book was South-South Trade and Finance in the 21st Century: Rise of the South or a Second Great Divergence (co-authored with Firat Demir). I serve as an associate editor of the Review of Social Economy as well as the e-zine Jadaliyya and have served on the editorial committee of the Middle East Report. I am a founding member of the Beirut School of Critical Security Studies within the Arab Council for the Social Sciences (ACSS). I have previously served as a lead expert on the United Nations Economic and Social Commission of West Asia’s National Agenda for the Future of Syria program.
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