Abdullah al-Jabassini is currently a CIVICA Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of International Relations at the Central European University in Vienna, an Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna, and an Associate Researcher at the Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies in Bonn.
Previously, al-Jabassini was a Max Weber Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence. He was also a Research Fellow for the Wartime and Post-Conflict in Syria and the Syrian Trajectories projects at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies of the European University Institute.
His main research interests include political violence and civil war, dynamics of insurgency formation, wartime social order, third-party intervention in civil conflicts, authoritarian conflict management, peacebuilding and reconciliation processes, rebel-military integration, and local governance in areas of limited statehood.
Education Ph.D. in International Relations, University of Kent, Canterbury.
Regions of expertise
Southern Syria
Issues of expertise
Political violence and civil war, dynamics of insurgency formation, wartime social order, third-party intervention in civil conflicts, authoritarian conflict management, peacebuilding and reconciliation processes, rebel-military integration, and local governance in areas of limited statehood.
In June 2021, southern Syria once again dominated the headlines when the regime laid siege to the Daraa al-Balad area of Daraa city. A few days after the monthlong siege, an agreement to end the escalation collapsed and the Syrian army’s Fourth Division spearheaded a major military push in the area. Intense clashes broke out as groups of unreconciled rebels violently repelled the advancement of Syrian military forces. Armed confrontations spread into eastern and western Daraa amid heavy bombardment via missiles, artillery, and mortar shells, marking the deadliest and most intense fighting in Syria’s south-west since the conclusion of the 2018 “reconciliation” agreements.
Southern Syria: “Sibling feud” or engineered violence?
The significant increase in tit-for-tat kidnappings between Daraa governorate and As-Suwayda governorate has become a defining characteristic of volatile southern Syria. Contrary to the belief of many, instances of kidnappings between the “plain” (Daraa) and “mount” (As-Suwayda) of Hauran, which have been occurring since at least 2011, are not driven by Sunni-Druze sectarian hatred. Rather, the deteriorating economy, decline of agriculture, unemployment, desperate poverty, and abundance of weapons are the core factors pushing many individuals to participate in criminal groups and engage in profit kidnapping, drug dealing, and gun running.
Is Ahmad al-Oda winning the “hearts and minds” of Daraa’s people?
On June 20 a bus carrying soldiers from the Eighth Brigade of the Fifth Corps, travelling from Latakia to Busra al-Sham, hit a roadside IED near the town of Kahil in eastern Daraa, leaving nine dead and 13 injured. The following day, the funeral for the nine soldiers who died in the IED attack quickly turned into the largest protest Daraa has seen since 2018, including both Eighth Brigade fighters and hundreds of civilians from several nearby areas.
