Transcript of 'Felix Legrand on Deir ez-Zour tribal politics' (part I)
On Deiri tribal politics and the August 2023 uprising against the SDF
This is the first part of the transcript of my conversation with researcher Felix Legrand last September, covering Deir ez-Zour tribal politics and unrest against the SDF. The conversation can be listened to here. The transcript has been edited for clarify. Part two will be published later in the week.
Alexander McKeever: This is an interview that I conducted with Felix Legrand on September 16th. Felix is an independent researcher who covers Deir ez-Zour and has traveled there over the years ever since the SDF took control of the region in 2019. We were speaking within the context of the tribal uprising that kicked off in late August of this year that lasted for about a week and a half until the SDF were able to regain control of the region. I'm speaking now on September 25th and it appears that the uprising has restarted to some capacity. There's been a series of attacks and videos seeming to show tribal fighters seizing territory within some of the same towns as the original uprising. This is the first time that I've put out any audio content like this and I recorded and mixed it myself so bear with me regarding the quality.
AM: Can you tell me a little bit about yourself, your work on Deir ez-Zour, and your experience in the region?
Felix Legrand: Hi, thanks for having me here. I've been researching the region for the last past years. I've been traveling to SDF-held territories and Eastern Deir ez-Zour in particular. It’s been very intensive last month with the rebellion against the SDF in eastern Deir ez-Zour, so it's a very interesting time.
AM: I've read your piece published in May, on political tribalism in Deir ez-Zour. Can you give me a brief introduction as to how tribes function within Deir ez-Zour, currently and over the course of the war?
FL: Tribalism in Syria is a very complicated phenomenon. It's particularly strong in Eastern Syria and in Deir ez-Zour specifically. Over the course of the conflict, the different actors that tried to control or be implanted in Deir ez-Zour; the rebellion, ISIS, the Syrian regime, or now the SDF – the Kurdish-led forces – they all have been trying to enter the area through tribal intermediaries. The thing is that tribes in Deir ez-Zour are not functioning like they used to function a century ago. They're highly fragmented. They are in conflict with each other and within each tribe for the leadership of the tribe and the fact of a group allying itself to a specific tribe could be useful on the short term but it always creates further fragmentation and we’ve seen the different groups make a lot of enemies by this kind of tribal politics where instead of relying on political allies on the ground you rely on specific tribes who have specific demands and who are competing with one another. The SDF has taken this a step further where tribalism is really put forward in their governance. The SDF is led by the Kurdish PYD and there are no Kurdish minorities in Deir ez-Zour. So when they seized Deir ez-Zour from the Islamic State they had to find local allies and they were trying to portray themselves as empowering the locals through the tribal communities. And the issue is that by allying themselves with certain tribes, they've marginalized other tribes. And they've created areas where they have a specific hostility against them, not only because they are Kurds or not only because of their political agenda, but mostly because the SDF have been allied to specific tribes that are in competition to other tribes.
AM: Right. And I think the main takeaway from your piece was that the tribes are not really coherent political entities. Instead, they are sort of more a social identity and offer a network to people. But a certain tribe doesn't have one political agenda, and doesn't act in a unified way, or at least they haven't in a long time. So backing up, I just want to do an overview of the region and the various tribes, having just qualified that it's dubious to what degree these are unified actors. What are the main tribes in Deir ez-Zour and where are they located within SDF-controlled territory?
LF: So we have to understand that the province of Deir ez-Zour is divided between areas under the control of the SDF and areas under the control of the regime. Pretty broadly the Euphrates River makes the border so south of the river you have the regime and northeast of river you have the SDF. The tribes are split and are spread across these two territories. You have on the western part of Deir ez-Zour the Baggarah tribe which is mostly located in SDF held territories and the Bu Saraya tribe which is mostly located south of the river on the regime side. The eastern part of Deir ez-Zour on both sides it's a majority of ‘Agidat tribe with other smaller tribes. Now what's important to understand is that these big tribes that we tend to classify [tribes] as, they don't matter that much anymore. What matters more is the sub-tribes at a localized level. For example, I mentioned the ‘Agidat tribe. The ‘Agidat tribe is a very big tribe, but what's most politically relevant is the sub-tribes, because like, most of the tribal conflict that we've known in Deir ez-Zour since the beginning of the Syrian civil war, were within the ‘Agidat tribe or within each [sub-tribe] themselves because there are competitions for resources there’s competition for access to power. Something that we haven’t mentioned about the tribes and tribalism is tribal hierarchy and tribal leadership. The tribal leaders – we call them sheikh – and the thing that's important to understand is that it's not one leader who leads the whole tribe and everyone is behind him. The leadership of the tribe is fragmented within the tribal leadership family. There are new tribal leaders that can emerge within the tribe and there is a constant competition to lead the tribe and to have access to the different resources and to have access to the political powers that the tribe will make an alliance with.
AM: And so, who are the most prominent figures within the Baggarah and the ‘Agidat?
LF: The traditional tribal leadership within these tribes are - for the Baggarah, it's Nawaf al-Bashir. He is traditionally the leader, but since he's made an alliance with the regime and is now living in a regime-held area and is leading a pro-regime militia, he has lost most of his influence on people of his tribe because most of people of his tribe live under SDF area. An influential tribal leader of the Baggarah tribe is Hajim al-Bashir who still lives in SDF areas and he's the main person with which the SDF is going to negotiate with or the coalition. And for the ‘Agidat , as I said, it's very fragmented. So you have the Hifl family, who is theoretically the leader of the whole ‘Agidat tribe but then you have sub-tribes with each its own leadership and they are obviously competing with one another. Now what's interesting is that the SDF - when they kicked out ISIS of Deir ez-Zour - so when they took the northern part of the province, they made an alliance with the Bukayir tribe. The Bukayir tribe is a sub-tribe within the ‘Agidat, which was the same tribe that ISIS had made an alliance with. So this doesn't mean that all the Bukayir were ISIS supporters or ISIS members, but ISIS largely recruited among the Bukayir and the SDF [has] as well. This was probably a strategy by the SDF to encourage demobilization among ISIS supporters of this tribe, and it was a way for them to enter the area without having the Bukayir feel that there will be collective vengeance upon them and feel that other tribes might take advantage. So the SDF had appointed a person who became very famous during the recent rebelled [named] Abu Khawlah, who was really someone not important at all before he joined the SDF.
Abu Khawlah became the military leader of the SDF for Deir ez-Zour and he tried to turn his military power into tribal legitimacy. He's not from a tribal leadership family. There is a tribal leader of the Bukayir and even above that there is a tribal leader of the ‘Agidat , which the Bukayir is part of. And so in order to impose himself and try to expand his power beyond his position as a military leader, but also beyond Deir ez-Zour he tried to create a sort of counter power within the military structure of the SDF. He proclaimed himself first Sheikh, so leader of the Bukayir, which he was not, and then leader of the Zubayd. So the Zubayd is a sort of a tribal umbrella of many, many other tribes across the Middle East. It's largely irrelevant today - nobody really refers to it anymore like there is no like feeling of identity of being Zubayd or any prominent hierarchical structure of the Zubayd, but it includes lots of tribes in Syria and in the Middle East. The interesting thing is that he received pledges of allegiance of tribal communities, probably not very important ones, but pretty much everywhere in the Middle East. In Libya, in Yemen, in Sudan, in Iraq, in Palestine. So it was pretty surprising because he was pretty much a nobody before and he tried to gather - I don't know how he managed to convince them that he was the new Zubayd leader - but he tried to gather tribal legitimacy in order to create some kind of counter-power within the SDF. And he tried increasingly to have not directly anti-Kurdish speech, but he was trying to portray himself as the voice of the Arabs and of the Sunnis. He was directly targeting the Iranians in his speech and directly the Kurds, even though he was still part of the SDF. And so he was growing power within the SDF. He was also seen locally as a warlord and was corrupted and a lot of other tribes, local tribes were complaining about his violations. And also some say that he was trying to make connection with the regime to plot against the SDF. This launched, in several steps that we can go back in details later, but this launched the rebellion and the repression and then the rebellion against him and then the rebellion that was this summer.
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