7️⃣
Grateful for the conversations with students and researchers in a city like Granada, where cultural history never stops reminding us how identities evolve, survive, and reinvent themselves.

6️⃣
These exchanges matter. They expand academic dialogue on Syria and push for sharper, more honest analytical tools—beyond reductionism, nostalgia, or ready-made narratives.

5️⃣
Each cycle carries its own grammar of meaning, its own fractures, and its own attempts to negotiate belonging. Looking at Syria through these long arcs helps us escape narrow binaries and see a more layered national story.

4️⃣
On 26 November, I delivered a lecture titled “Cycles of Meaning: Syrian Identity Between Plurality and Assimilation.”
The talk explored five civilizational cycles—from the Arameans to the present day—to understand how identity is formed, reshaped, and contested over time.

3️⃣
The discussion focused on the new political realities in Syria, the shifting regional landscape, and the responsibility of research institutions to rebuild knowledge frameworks that reflect the complexity of today’s Syrian society.

2️⃣
On 25 November, I joined a roundtable on “The Current Situation in Syria.”
Participants included political thinker Mohammed Bensalah and Professor José Miguel Puerta Vílchez, with moderation by Antonio Gil de Carrasco, former Director of the Cervantes Institute in Damascus.

8️⃣
Iraq’s lesson is clear: rejecting illusions of foreign legitimacy or one-sided victory is the only way forward. Stability isn’t imported; it’s negotiated. Syria’s future depends on partnership, not protected enclaves.

7️⃣
A realistic path starts with minimum internal consensus: a broad negotiating framework, shared principles, and security reform under civilian control. External actors can support and guarantee — but only Syrians can decide peace.

6️⃣
If the U.S. couldn’t stabilize Iraq with massive force, it can’t do so in Syria with a symbolic presence. And no authority lacking social acceptance can build legitimacy alone. Bases shift deterrence; they don’t build nations.

5️⃣
The danger is seeing Damascus turn into a new green zone — funded, shielded, but detached from society and producing corruption, not stability. A fortified capital is not a political settlement and never substitutes for consensus.

4️⃣
Even in Iraq, fortified “green zones” created control only inside their walls. Outside them, militias, shadow economies, and insecurity ruled. Protected pockets are not states, and foreign-backed islands don’t unify divided countries.

3️⃣
Yet some now believe new U.S. bases or eased sanctions can “stabilize” Syria without political restructuring. That’s the old illusion: external tools can shift force, but they can’t create legitimacy in a fragmented society.

2️⃣
Iraq proved a hard truth: even with troops, money, and control of ministries, the U.S. couldn’t engineer a state from above. Every article of Iraq’s constitution emerged from painful internal bargaining — not from foreign power.

@anasjoudeh.bsky.social writes that, until Syria addresses its trust deficit with steps like measured decentralization, its transition to democracy will remain stalled before it begins. tcf.org/content/comm... (5/5)