r/neoliberal • u/gary_oldman_sachs Max Weber • 25d ago
Rebel technocrats start to disentangle Syria’s corrupt state News (Middle East)
https://www.ft.com/content/7efc20db-6da9-47d0-96e3-94b0f230134c273
u/bigbeak67 John Rawls 25d ago
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u/kaesura 25d ago
Most important part
"“It’s all going to become one. All the government bodies will be dissolved: no Salvation Government, no factions, nothing. It will all soon be dissolved into one Syrian republic.”
Jolani, hts, and ssg are all serious about state building
I think Jolani having a terrorist designation has been helpful in that it motivated him to create the ssg to interact with ngos. ssg is basically all civilians with no militant history. ssg is legally independent (fictional) of hts and jolani holds no formula role in ssg.
senior ssg members are almost all engineers and then a spattering of other professions. so the base of the government being engineers instead of fighters or preachers, is great. it counters the influence of his more religious, jihadist soldier base of support.
i wouldn't be surpised if jolani only ends up taking the minister of defence role in the new government (of course he would still be the man behind the throne).
he hasn't take a formal role in the new government and had his civilian head of ssg become prime minister for a reason. it makes it easier for foreign governments and ngos to work with his governent and even lifting his designation won't change the hesistancy.
if he takes a non pm, presidency role, it could create a scenario where in a decade, his strongman role isn't needed, so the formal government can take complete power with just his gradual retirement.
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u/TheOnlyFallenCookie European Union 25d ago
I really hope this is the start of a bright future for Syria
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u/chitowngirl12 25d ago
There are all sorts of signs that Joulani is controlling everything behind the scenes, including issuing decrees, and he plans to continue doing this. It's just that he's just a much savvier autocrat than Assad. I think that Joulani's theory is that if he provides good governance and economic opportunities, allows limited rights and political opposition (for appearances), doesn't go full theocracy, and puts up some institutions to professionalize things that few Syrians will clamor for actual democracy. As the last US election shows, he might not be wrong about that theory there.
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u/kaesura 25d ago
Of course Joulani will continue to be a strong man.
But having day to day government managed by competent civilians who are appointed semi democratically is a better model than the cronyism of the Assad regime . That Joulani has appointed competent people that he can trust not to micro manage their decisions.
Like these appointees are of course allies of his but they largely don’t come from his family or client network .
That Joulani looks like an Islamist Paul Kagame style dictator.
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u/chitowngirl12 25d ago
Yes. Nayib Bukele might be another good example (even though Bukele was elected, not a revolutionary.) Bukele is genuinely very popular despite the democratic backsliding in El Salvador under his rule because of the huge reduction in crime. If Joulani manages to improve Syrians lives and deliver decent, less corrupt governance and doesn't go full theocracy, people are going to overlook a few journalists being arrested for criticizing HTS.
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u/kaesura 25d ago
Yeah especially since he seems to direct most of his arrests and oppression on his rival fellow jihadists which shouldn’t bother the ordinary Syrian people that much .
I think he didn’t even arrest that many people when there were mass protests in April . Instead he released existing prisoners and did listening sessions ( and tear-gassed the protestors instead of shooting them) .
I think this offensive was fundamentally the response to the protests lol
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u/chitowngirl12 25d ago
"Listening sessions".. I appreciate how Joulani feels the need to do mundane politician-y things like this. Even though he does not believe in fair elections or plan to cede power he seems to understand that he needs to still be responsive to the public.
And it would be ironic if domestic protests ended up giving Joulani what he really wanted.
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u/getrektnolan Mary Wollstonecraft 25d ago
The frames that held Bashar al-Assad’s portraits on the walls of the Damascus governorate building are now bare. Instead, the photos serve as doormats for visitors and employees to trample as they walk in — a reminder that they are in a new Syria.
Shattered glass, broken furniture and a crumpled flag littered the floor, a reminder of the rebel groups’ lightning rise to power. But upstairs, administrators picked by the former insurgents were already at work untangling the mechanics and serpentine bureaucracy of the Assad regime’s Ba'athist state.
On Tuesday they gathered about 30 heads of department in an ornate room, in a meeting witnessed by the Financial Times, whose focus was an imminent cull of ineffective staffers in the local government.
Officials involved in the transition have promised to create a new, unified Syria, reconciling the rebel-held government in the northwestern province of Idlib, known as the Syrian Salvation Government, with the capital they rebelled against for 13 years.
But the roots of the leading rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, as a Sunni Islamist former affiliate of al-Qaeda have led to deep worries among some minorities about how they plan to govern this broadly secular state after toppling the Assad regime three days ago.
“It’s all going to become one. All the government bodies will be dissolved: no Salvation Government, no factions, nothing,” said Mohammad Yasser Ghazal, a 36-year-old technocrat in the rebel government seconded from his job to help reconfigure the Damascus governorate. “It will all soon be dissolved into one Syrian republic.”
Ghazal and his colleagues displayed a strong command of the state apparatus they inherited just hours earlier, and hinted that HTS’ plans to overhaul it had long been in the works. But the task they face is formidable. Syria’s dysfunctional state institutions became engorged by corruption, cronyism and centralised power over five decades of rule by the Assad dynasty.
In his lilting Aleppan accent, Ghazal asked the department chiefs to list their remits and explain their departments’ functions. The two-hour meeting showcased how Assad’s government was “stopped in time”, he later told the FT in an interview.
Employees quoted government handbooks from the 1930s and 1960s, and were unable to answer direct questions about their duties, nor explain why decisions had been made. “The problems piled up, and they let them be,” he said. “They do not see themselves as responsible.”
One man introduced himself as the head of the public relations department, which he said included “international co-operation” as well as a division for “festival and events management”. Asked what this division did exactly, the civil servant answered, “flags”.
“There’s a department for flags?” Ghazal asked incredulously.
“Yes, when foreign dignitaries come, we put up a lot of flags,” he said. “We hang them from the poles. It’s a big job.”
The same department head also had a translation division, staffed by two employees who spoke English. Ghazal asked if there were Russian or Iranian translators — states that propped up the Assad regime and frequently sent envoys — and was told there were none because representatives of these countries brought their own.
“But you didn’t have English-speaking dignitaries visit?”
“No,” the department head said.
Ghazal shook his head. “A ridiculous state,” he said.
Ghazal will eventually take on many of the duties of the governor in a newly created position of city council president. Raised in the United Arab Emirates, Ghazal, who pointed to his long beard as a reflection of his devout religious faith, left his civil engineering career in Saudi Arabia in 2014 to relocate to Idlib, which was in the throes of civil war. The urbane former engineer eventually helped set up the Syrian Salvation Government four years later.
He met the department chiefs in a room shaped like an auditorium — suitable for the previous regime’s style, in which one person had the microphone and issued directives to be unquestioningly obeyed. The gilded hall featured the names of ex-governors going back 60 years, a reminder of the compact the previous regime held with loyalists: put in the work, and we will glorify you.
Civil servants were ordered back to work this week, as the SSG’s Mohamed al-Bashir was named prime minister of Syria’s new interim government for the next four months. Its future shape is being negotiated in ministries across Damascus, after rebel-affiliated technocrats like Ghazal descended on the city.
On Tuesday evening, Bashir convened a meeting of SSG ministers with those of the deposed regime to begin the process of transferring power to the new caretaker government that will be in place until March. Draped behind him were the new Syrian flag and that of HTS.
Damascus’s provincial government has a vast remit, ranging from approval of barbers’ licenses to beautification to housing, construction, tourism and electricity. The day’s tasks included understanding the extent of the corruption embedded in this local government machinery, including weeding out phantom jobs with no purpose other than to extract state salaries.
Ghazal described “organised corruption” and rampant bribery in government circles, the result of “crumbs” meted out to government employees whose average salary had been reduced to the equivalent of $25 per month, a result of the crippling economic crisis that has gripped the country since 2019. The bloated and ineffective state was key to the regime’s undoing, after its rapacious ways spread discontent across Syria.
At the meeting, another man introduced his Reconstruction and Rehabilitation department: set up in 2012 to rebuild areas destroyed in the civil war, it — like others — waited over a decade for long-promised funds that never came. Ghazal jotted down the information, muttering “fictional” out loud, in English.
The atmosphere in the room was charged, but people felt comfortable enough to air their grievances. One woman screamed about discrimination she experienced under the previous leadership for being a Christian, accusing the state of making her pay $25,000 in bribes. Another woman accused her of lying.
Ghazal politely asked them to bring these issues to him later, but let them carry on. He addressed employees with “excuse me” and “if you please” — a respectful tone almost never struck by men in his seat.
But old habits die hard: employees referred obliquely to the “crisis” and “the events” — regime euphemisms for the war that had decimated their country for much of the past two decades. “Which crisis?” Ghazal asked, before realising they had meant the uprisings and war to which he had given his life for the past decade.
Ghazal spoke of the new government’s aversion to the old regime’s atavistic procedures. In Idlib, a long-neglected corner of the country that was fully cut off after rebels took it over early in the conflict, everything is digitised and you can get an ID in five minutes, he said. In Damascus, it could take months, and usually needs a bribe.
It took 15 minutes for Financial Times journalists to receive their media accreditation from the recently arrived government — unimaginable in the Kafkaesque old regime, which had not awarded Western journalists permits to enter the country in years.
A technocratic government is being put in place for now, Ghazal told the FT, but moving forward with its plans will “require political recognition [and addressing] the terrorist designation, which I think is soon”.
HTS, an Islamist group formerly affiliated with al-Qaeda, is branded a terrorist organisation by the UN, the US and other states. Its leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, has a $10mn US bounty on his head.
He cut ties with al-Qaeda in 2016 and has sought to rebrand the group as a more moderate government-in-waiting. But it maintained control in Idlib with an iron grip, and UN agencies have documented abuses.
On Tuesday, outgoing US secretary of state Antony Blinken said Syria’s “transition process should lead to credible, inclusive, and nonsectarian governance”.
Ghazal insisted his state would not take government workers’ sectarian affiliations into account, only the value of the work that each brings.
“You saw how the [Assad] regime raised them: they call us Sidi [‘my master,’]” he said. “You feel they are broken. [We just want them] to get out of that mindset. You’re a person with self-dignity, I’m not your master or anything. I am an employee, like you.”
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u/Master_of_Rodentia 25d ago
I really hope the US freezes that bounty until the situation is more clear.
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u/kaesura 25d ago
Jolani has been a public politician in idlib for seven years while his rivals have been periodically droned.
The bounty was always joke considering the years of cooperation between him and the USA against Assad and Isis
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u/Master_of_Rodentia 25d ago
Yeah, but someone could still collect it if they kill him, "serious" or otherwise. The incentive stands.
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u/kaesura 25d ago
he's always surrendered by armed bodyguards. it would take a suicide bomber or a drone to kill him and those won't be getting the bounty
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u/TrynnaFindaBalance Paul Krugman 25d ago
Again, yes it's unlikely to happen, but it would make the US look absolutely terrible if he was assassinated in the middle of all of this because someone wants $10m.
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u/Rich-Interaction6920 NAFTA 25d ago
The reward is ‘for information leading to the identification or location of Muhammad al-Jawlani,’ not for pistoling him in the street
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u/chitowngirl12 25d ago
Which is darkly comical because everyone knows exactly where Joulani is.
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u/TIYATA 25d ago
My inner troll wanted to submit the link to the CNN interview as a tip.
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u/chitowngirl12 25d ago
Or this one from Sky News from yesterday.. https://news.sky.com/story/west-has-nothing-to-fear-from-syria-rebel-leader-whose-group-ousted-assad-tells-sky-news-13270905
That one is even funnier than the CNN interview, which was probably done at some secure rebel hideout and the interviewer was checked for tracking devices. This is a public event that the news media knew he was attending.
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u/Master_of_Rodentia 25d ago
That, and also if someone just wanted to make the US look terrible, never mind the $10m.
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u/chitowngirl12 25d ago
Yeah, I read that as well. It makes one wonder who tipped off the 'Muricans about exactly where Joulani's rivals were and what they were up to.
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u/Watchung NATO 25d ago
I mean, it doesn't seem like a great mystery.
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u/chitowngirl12 25d ago
Yes. Going from fighting Americans in Iraq and having a bounty placed on your head courtesy of Uncle Sam to using Uncle Sam to off your potential rivals is quite the trajectory.
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u/kaesura 25d ago
As Al nursa , his group worked with the USA to the extent there is a leaked Jake Sullivan email mentioning them
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u/chitowngirl12 25d ago
That's probably going to be dropped soon (as in before Biden leaves office) along with the terror designation for the HTS. The US wants to see if HTS behaves for a few weeks first.
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u/willstr1 25d ago
Which to be honest is fair, it would look really bad if the US immediately took the designation off and HTS was actually terrible
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u/chitowngirl12 25d ago
TBH, it was dumb for them to not have taken the designations off a few years ago. It's an open secret that the HTS has been working with certain US government agencies and it is darkly comical that Joulani was walking around Idlib fairly openly for years now while his rivals were getting droned. He was doing fairly mundane politician-y things like inaugurating roads and opening book fairs and the US never touched him.
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u/wettestsalamander76 Austan Goolsbee 25d ago
Neoliberal islamists were definitely not on my 2024 bingo card.
I do hope that Syria can build a flourishing republic and be a shining beacon of hope in MENA. So far it seems like the rebels are holding true to their word and are making good progress towards a functioning state.
I think this sub needs to know if al-Julani has read Why Nations Fail and the Narrow Corridor. If he has and Syria becomes a functioning state my priors shall be confirmed forever.
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u/kaesura 25d ago edited 25d ago
except : Ghazal described “organised corruption” and rampant bribery in government circles, the result of “crumbs” meted out to government employees whose average salary had been reduced to the equivalent of $25 per month, a result of the crippling economic crisis that has gripped the country since 2019. The bloated and ineffective state was key to the regime’s undoing, after its rapacious ways spread discontent across Syria.
Corruption is actually a big thing that drives muslims into supporting islamists . Taking bribes isn't righteous for muslims. in general, the more hardcore muslims in the middle east are less corrupt. it just destroys their repuation if they aren't. it was one of the reason that the taliban appealed to afghans as the government was taking so much bribes for so little service.
So that's part of the success of idlib is much less corruption than the assad regime making government and businesses much more functional . (jolani and his supporters of course take a cut of some stuff. they aren't saints)
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u/blitznB 25d ago
The Kabul government may have been one of the most corrupt in human history. Usually when a government steals the pay and food from its own soldiers they revolt/coup the government. The US prevented that for better or worse.
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u/kaesura 25d ago
yeah that's the issue of US /Foreign governments funding governments/factions
It's allows the government to ignore the economy and public good will since they are getting propped up by outside powers. They can just focus on maintaing their power and sucking up to their backers
same thing allowed the Syria state under Assad to get so bad.
in contrast, idlib recieved inconsistent foreign funding with alot of it coming from conditional ngo help. so hts needed to focus on delivery services to its population to grow the economy to increase their own funding and popularity.
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u/TEmpTom NATO 25d ago
The US' way of preventing corruption was to replace local Afghan civil servants with American military or contractors who incrementally replaced critical government and security functions. When the US left, the entire state was completely hollowed out, making a collapse basically inevitable.
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u/0m4ll3y International Relations 25d ago
I could post other interesting or hilarious excerpts like others, but at some point we will have the whole thing copy pasted. Just read the whole article, it is great.
It's early days, but it does look like there will be some good attempts at state building which are sorely needed.
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u/No1PaulKeatingfan Paul Keating 25d ago
Syria is already doing a better job than DOGE ever will 💀
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u/Neronoah can't stop, won't stop argentinaposting 25d ago
I trust an ex jihadist over an internet poisoned US rightwinger. At least one has preserved their brain matter.
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u/Master_of_Rodentia 25d ago
I inherently trust ex-anythings more because it adds a little bit of evidence that they can learn and change their minds.
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u/HotTakesBeyond YIMBY 25d ago
Thing is
Elon used to believe in a lot of things before his right-wing turn.
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u/ale_93113 United Nations 25d ago
I honestly hope that Syria can become a democracy, even if it is an illiberal democracy like Iraq
Iraq also provides a good way to deal with kurdistan, no need for them to gain independence, just make them a confederated state (or states as in iraq the Kurdistan autonomous region is composed of 3 provinces) where on top of the federal and state elections there are also Kurd elections for a Kurdistan parliament that acts as a "super-province"
A similar situation could happen with the Alawite provinces in the coast, but I dont think it is necessary
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u/kaesura 25d ago
i think there is a high chance of a competent bureacrucy being created with it's leadership being determined semi democratically.
i bet the militias leaders such as Jolani will maintain unelected,powerful positions.
But if you have the structure down, the strongman can gradually be phased out in favor of the institutional bodies.
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u/TaxGuy_021 25d ago
People forget that what you described is essentially how democracy evolved in many places.
Warlords didn't want to do non-warlordy things so they delegated more and more of administrative stuff to a group of competent ministers until the job of being a warlord itself became too much so it got broken down into many pieces which resulted in ministers actually holding more power than any single warlord.
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u/Hk37 Olympe de Gouges 25d ago
Where did that happen? I don’t doubt it did, it just sounds like something I’d be interested in reading about.
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u/SheHerDeepState Baruch Spinoza 24d ago
France, England, Spain. Monarch centralizes power by winning power struggle against the aristocracy. Created a bureaucracy to exercise the power taken away from regional nobility. Civil society is slowly built up as essentially the monarch and commoners aligning against aristocrats. Nobles gradually lose power as their land rents fall while the urban centers industrialize empowering the bourgeoisie. Traditional regionalized legal structures that empower the nobility are replaced by centralized legal structures empowering the monarch and bureaucrats. The Spanish inquisition is an example of this as it was essentially a power grab by the crown that upset traditional jurisdictional boundaries that had empowered local power brokers.
Most of this was in the Renaissance through the Early Modern Period in Western Europe. Japan had a kind of similar dynamic but enacted rapidly in the Meiji Restoration.
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u/ale_93113 United Nations 25d ago
its ok, Jolani being the leader of the armed forces is a good compromise, the armed forces having an unelected succession structure is not a problem
Also, democracy should never be a goal but a means to a goal, and if the resulting goverment is a technocracy with democratic elements, it would be great
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u/FlightlessGriffin 25d ago
afaik, Jolani didn't take any role yet. He's essentially the shadow president, the guy behind the scenes building a state. He'll probably run for election soon enough when they're organized.
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u/kaesura 25d ago
i think it's fifty-fifty.
his power really comes from his control over the soldiers in the hts and a civilian position might jeoparidize that.
he can maintain his shadow president role without it being a formal position. like right now he's putting out edicts about how they will punish torturers without any formal authority . same thing with idlib. he knew he has authority regardless of whether it has the formula title.
in idlib, he had ssg's pm selected in a semi democratic fashion. it gave him a way to respond to public discontent without jeoparidizing his position. if his government was having a crisis of popularity, they would replace the pm and other ministers. it made him untouchable but his government still able to respond to pressure.
also as a designated terrorist, foreign government don't like working with him directly and even with the designation lifted, people won't forget the bounty posters.
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u/chitowngirl12 25d ago
I'm interested to see if he takes any formal role or just de-facto runs everything behind the scenes using these guys as his front men. It seems like it might be the latter, which is interesting and suggests that he understands that you can have power without a fancy title.
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u/FlightlessGriffin 25d ago
It'll be smart, too. Till Syria has elections, the country's a dictatorship, benevolent or otherwise, so might as well have someone running things behind the scenes at least till then.
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u/chitowngirl12 25d ago
Oh. I don't think Al-Shara'a plans on riding off into the sunset and quietly retiring on the countryside - like ever. I'm just interested in how he plans to do this - controlling everything behind the scenes or formally being "president" or whatever title.
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u/FlightlessGriffin 24d ago
We'll see soon enough. The first thing to watch for is the new constitution. How much power does it give a single man? Are there term limits? Are they consecutive/permanent term limits like the US or loophole term limits like Russia?
After that, if he runs for the "powerful" position and there's no opposition, we'll see problems. Of course, it's not outside the realm of possibility that the guy simply rules as a dictator and Democratizes near the end like Chiang kai Shek.
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u/chitowngirl12 24d ago
He can just de-facto rule behind the scenes through other people. That is pretty much what is happening now where there is a government but Al-Shara is just issuing edicts over the government. Color me skeptical that someone with his past just wants to usher in multi-party democracy. He just concluded that being the "President for Life," either formally or de-facto, is a more intriguing proposition than waging global jihad.
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u/Terrariola Henry George 25d ago
Also, democracy should never be a goal but a means to a goal
Have we found Erdogan's Reddit account?
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u/Zulfikar04 25d ago
The main differentiating factor however is Turkey. The Kurds and Turks in Iraq are allied and they host loads of Turkish military bases.
In Syria they are in conflict so someone would have to concede to result in a peaceful solution
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u/FlightlessGriffin 25d ago
The Turkish/Kurd issue is not as simple as Turkey vs Kurds. Some Kurdish groups in Turkey actually support Erdogan, the Iraqi Kurds are pretty okay with the Turks, but the Syrian Kurds are seen by Turkey as terrorists (the US too, we just ignore that part.)
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u/MAGA_Trudeau 25d ago
I think even international monitors have even said that election conduct and results are mostly “fair” in Iraq
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u/ale_93113 United Nations 25d ago
Iraq is the perfect example of a illiberal democracy, because that's just how the electorate is
I'd like them to be more technocratic and less democratic but it's ok how they work
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u/alex2003super Mario Draghi 25d ago
And the opposite, liberal authoritarian state would look like what, Singapore?
¯_(ツ)_/¯
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u/Watchung NATO 25d ago
I think the problem has less to do with voter fraud and more that paramilitaries hold as much power as formal government entities.
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u/MAGA_Trudeau 25d ago
The paramilitaries haven’t been doing much lately. A lot of them are demobilized or they just patrol some areas.
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u/cusimanomd 25d ago
This feels like one of the signs that the US Govt should be looking at when designating the new Syrian govt as a terrorist state or not.
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u/dangerbird2 Franz Boas 25d ago
Syria could really be doing the Somalia to Singapore speedrun. This could possibly the best possible outcome for the war imaginable
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u/kaesura 25d ago
Uncontroversial opinion- I endorse staffing governments with engineers over lawyers and the hts's civilan governemnt being almost all engineers is a great sign.
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u/ArcFault NATO 25d ago
You know as an engineer after looking at the dogshit opinions of other engineers on non-engineering topics... I'm gonna suggest you reconsider.
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u/BritishBedouin David Ricardo 25d ago
In MENA, engineer is just a shibboleth for educated. The legal profession in Syria is more or less redundant because of corruption. If you’re intelligent enough to go to university you study engineering or medicine.
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u/WillHasStyles European Union 25d ago
An interesting anecdote I found in a book about the Syrian regime is that the children of the elite, including the Assads, almost all studied engineering or medicine. Even those who were groomed for positions of power. Like I don't really understand what Bassel al-Assad was supposed to do with a degree in mechanical engineering.
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u/BritishBedouin David Ricardo 25d ago
It ultimately became a cultural thing too. Almost every person I know from non-GCC MENA with a degree born between 1950 and 1990 did engineering or medicine, even if they didn’t go into either field. These degrees were both seen as “useful” by the regime (akin to how they are viewed in the Soviet model) but also were one of the only ways to be sponsored to study abroad (thus a path of escape). They also had great employment rates.
I know about three dozen business magnates from the region, residing either in the U.K. or GCC (inc. a couple with businesses worth >$0.5bn) and they’re all engineering graduates from Damascus or Baghdad unis.
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u/FlightlessGriffin 25d ago
It's here in Lebanon too. Most regular people study business or engineering. The big ones studied medicine. They see it (irrationally) as a way to help the economy, doing business and entering banks and stuff.
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u/willstr1 25d ago
Engineers easily fall into the expertise trap. They are good at something hard so they assume they are right about everything even outside of their field. Doctors and lawyers are often guilty of it too.
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u/Neronoah can't stop, won't stop argentinaposting 25d ago
It depends on how related to lawmaking is whatever there is to do. But engineers are not special, there are many professions out there that can do the job.
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u/AccessTheMainframe C. D. Howe 25d ago
The Soviet Union was disproportionately engineers at the top levels and look what happened in that country.
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u/JesusSinfulHands 25d ago
Sitcom level article
Also this