Anas JOUDEH

Anas Joudeh (@anasjoudeh) Memory Without Vengeance: Choosing Not to Repeat the Past In Hiroshima, after everything was over, people did not ask: whom should we hate? How do we take revenge? They asked a simpler—and harder—...

Memory Without Vengeance: Choosing Not to Repeat the Past.

My new articol on substack .

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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I took part this week in the Syrian Cultural Week – “Semana de la Cultura Siria” at the University of Granada, hosted by the Faculty of Translation and Interpreting. A thoughtful space that brought together Spanish and Arab scholars to reflect on Syria beyond headlines and noise.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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In one of the long meetings an American journalist friend who lived every chapter of the Iraq war. In one of our talks about Russia’s “ready-made” Syrian constitution, he laughed: “We were full occupiers in Iraq and still couldn’t impose a constitu

A Catch-22 of Suspicion Imperils Syria’s Transition to Democracy The Century Foundation The Century Foundation The Century Foundation

There was a brief moment after Bashar al-Assad’s regime collapsed last December when the impossible felt possible in Syria. That moment, @anasjoudeh.bsky.social argues in a new commentary, has, sadly, evaporated. (1/5)

A Catch-22 of Suspicion Imperils Syria’s Transition to Democracy The Century Foundation The Century Foundation The Century Foundation

@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)