Tribal justice struggle and resilience in Syria : societal justice beyond legal centralism

Abstract

The thesis focuses on studying tribal justice in Syria and its resilience, adaptation, and transformation through a complete cycle of governance, from pre-state to a failed state. Drawing on primary sources obtained through conducting in-depth, semi-structured interviews with tribal members, legal and social figures, the research focuses on two central topics: tribal judiciary’s interaction with state law from the 19th century to the present, and tribal justice’s interaction with a non-state law, i.e. Shari’a, after the 2011 Syrian Uprising, where the thesis focuses on the case of Idlib in the northwest of Syria. Using the lenses of legal pluralism theory, the research demonstrates how tribal people engaged in the legal sphere in practice and how their interaction with other legal regimes led to the modification and hybridization of their judiciary norms, rather than the desertion of their jural system. Given the state law historical stance towards monopolizing and occupying all aspects of the legal sphere, the state law in Syria either assimilated or illegalized tribal justice, depending on the central state in power. The Shari’a on the other hand, which is another nonstate and uncodified law, as it was mostly applied in Idlib, built collaboration with tribal justice, both spontaneous before the hegemony of HTS and systematic after HTS’s control. The tribes’ interaction with state law induced adequate alterations in their practices and encouraged tribal people to negotiate their legal standing with the state formally and informally. At the same time, the tribes’ interconnection with Shari’a, pushed the tribes to accept further hybridization in their judicial practices to hold onto their position in the legal sphere. The research reveals how the legal subjects within the tribes actively shape their legal reality. They exercise agency by selectively choosing and even combining elements from various legal orders. It is the legal subjects themselves who opt to preserve their tribal justice and choose resorting to it over other available legal orders. This study emphasizes that legal pluralism is not merely a passive coexistence of different legal orders, but a dynamic process where legal systems influence and reshape each other, with individuals within tribal communities playing a pivotal role in defining their legal identities.