LUGARIT, Melbourne (2026)

24/02/2026

Political representation in Syria has long been treated as a procedural question of elections by acclamation. LUGARIT's latest paper argues instead that representation under the Assad regime functioned as a deeply engineered system—designed to manage loyalties, distribute power, and manufacture legitimacy through a mix of formal elections and informal networks. By unpacking how this system operated, the paper sheds light on why rebuilding fair representation today is as much a political and social challenge as it is a technical one.

🌐 Link: https://link.lugarit.com/sIia

🌍 Title: Political and Societal Representation in Syria: A Historical Review and Future Challenges

📅 Date: 24 February 2026

📚 Publisher: LUGARIT

✍️ Authors: Zaidoun Zoabi + Omar Abdulaziz Hallaj

EN | ع The paper is available in both English and Arabic.
الورقة متاحة باللغتين الإنجليزية والعربية

💡 Key insights:

- Representation under the Assad regime was not about reflecting societal interests, but about engineering loyalty and control.

- Electoral systems, districting, and quotas were designed to favour regime-aligned actors and weaken genuine competition.

- Unannounced quotas and non-electoral mechanisms played a central role in managing sectarian, familial, tribal, and economic balances and pitting social factions against each other to undermine the aggregation of oppositional forces.

- Business elites, religious figures, and state-controlled civil society acted as parallel channels of representation.

- Future reforms will face entrenched interests, deep mistrust, demographic gaps, and the challenge of integrating fragmented governance realities.

📖 🎧 Read or listen to the paper on our website to better understand how past representational systems shape today’s transition debates—and what it will take to build inclusive, credible representation in Syria.

📷 Photo: The assembly hall of the parliament building. Damascus, Syria. October 2025. Photo © Unknown Photographer. Photo editing by LUGARIT.

Paper

17/02/2026

Local administration is rapidly reshaping Syria’s governance landscape, yet the system is becoming increasingly difficult to interpret, monitor, and coordinate. As administrative decisions begin to influence territorial order, accountability, recovery efforts, and institutional legitimacy depend on clearer governance structures. LUGARIT’s recent paper, prepared for SALAR International, examines how improving the legibility of local administration can support coherent governance, strengthen state–society relations, and enable more credible and inclusive recovery pathways.

🌐 Link: https://link.lugarit.com/p4V1

🌍 Title: Making Syrian Local Administration Legible: Towards an Evidence-Based Approach to Reforming Local Governance

📅 Date: 17 February 2026

📚 Publishers: LUGARIT + SALAR International

✍️ Author: Jadd Hallaj

EN | ع The paper is available in both English and Arabic.
الورقة متاحة باللغتين الإنجليزية والعربية

💡 Key insights:
- Syria’s evolving local administration is increasingly difficult to track, weakening accountability and recovery coordination.

- Administrative decisions on appointments, service delivery, and fundraising are actively shaping Syria’s emerging territorial order.

- Legibility of governance—understanding who governs which territory, under what rules, and with which resources—is a critical public good.

- Parallel administrative frameworks and fragmented legal interpretations risk entrenching uneven governance realities.

- An evidence-based national framework can help clarify territorial unity, reconcile governance systems, and strengthen inclusive and accountable local institutions.

📖 🎧 Read or listen to the paper on our website to explore how strengthening governance legibility can support recovery planning, institutional coherence, and long-term peacebuilding in Syria.

📷 Photo: The Municipality Tower in Aleppo rises above a fragmented urban landscape, reflecting the complex realities of governance, recovery, and everyday life in a city navigating a layered post-conflict transition. Aleppo, Syria. January 2026. Photo © Jadd Hallaj / LUGARIT.

Policy Paper

09/02/2026

Reconstruction in Syria has often been framed as a technical and forward-looking task. LUGARIT’s expert Omar Abdulaziz Hallaj reviews a book that challenges that assumption by examining how rebuilding functioned as a continuation of violence under the Assad regime—reshaping space, legitimizing dispossession, and consolidating power under the language of recovery. The book (and the review) critically engages with how “post-conflict” narratives can obscure ongoing forms of coercion embedded in law, planning, and the built environment.

🌐 Link: https://link.lugarit.com/BOEN

About the Book
🌍 Title: Reconstruction as Violence in Assad's Syria
✍️ Editors: Nasser Rabbat and Deen Sharp
📚 Publisher: The American University in Cairo Press (AUC Press)
📅 Date: 19 August 2025
🆔 ISBN: 9781649034137

About the Book Review
🌍 Title: Book Review: Reconstruction as Violence in Assad's Syria
🔍 Review by: Omar Abdulaziz Hallaj
📄 Journal: Review of Middle East Studies
📚 Publisher: Cambridge University Press & Assessment
📅 Date: 04 February 2026

EN | ع The book review is available in both English and Arabic.
مراجعة الكتاب متاحة باللغتين الإنجليزية والعربية

💡 Key insights:

- Reconstruction in Assad’s Syria operated less as recovery and more as an extension of war by spatial and legal means.

- Declaring a “post-conflict” moment is itself a political act, used to reorder social geographies and legitimize exclusion.

- Concepts such as urbicide, domicide, and civilian crisis architecture reveal space as a central arena of political struggle.

- Large cities emerge as a key laboratory for understanding how heritage, return, and displacement intersected under reconstruction policies.

- The book provides a simplified reading of the urban-rural divide and the complexity of the actors that shaped the urban environment, confounding at times formal legal and policy directives with their implementation on the ground.

- The book’s arguments remain highly relevant for Syria’s post-Assad phase, despite analytical limits rooted in external scholarship.

📖 🎧 Read or listen to the book review on our website to explore how reconstruction can reproduce violence—and why this insight matters for Syria’s future policy and investment choices.

📷 Photo: The cover of the book “Reconstruction as Violence in Assad's Syria”. Copyright © 2025 by The American University in Cairo Press.

Commentary

03/02/2026

One year after the Syrian National Dialogue Conference, critical questions remain about the fate of its economic track outputs and its relevance to ongoing policy decisions, especially after lifting the sanctions. LUGARIT’s latest paper revisits the substance of that Dialogue to bridge the widening gap between participatory debate and public economic policy, highlighting areas of convergence, unresolved trade-offs, and the conditions required for a credible, production-led economic transition grounded in governance reform and restored public trust.

🌐 Link: https://link.lugarit.com/nLXr

🌍 Title: After Sanctions: Revisiting the Economic Outputs of Syria’s National Dialogue

📅 Date: 3 February 2026

📚 Publisher: LUGARIT

✍️ Author: Omar Abdulaziz Hallaj + Editor: Hasan Masri

EN | ع The paper is available in both English and Arabic.
الورقة متاحة باللغتين الإنجليزية والعربية

💡 Key insights:

- The proceedings of the National Dialogue remain unpublished, widening the gap between public participation and economic policymaking.

- Syria’s economic crisis was diagnosed by participants in the National Dialogue as structural and governance-related, rooted in long-term policy incoherence, monopolization, and a deep crisis of trust.

- Participants converged on a gradual, regulated transition toward a competitive market economy, rejecting both shock therapy and a return to a dominant state.

- Recovery priorities were anchored in production—industry, agriculture, infrastructure, and human capital—rather than rent-based extraction.

- Unresolved disagreements on the role of the state, public assets, monetary tools, and market openness reflect the dialogue’s pluralistic strength rather than its weakness and highlight the need for continuous dialogue.

- Publishing the full minutes of the National Dialogue is essential to transform it into a transparent, accountable, and ongoing economic process.

📖 🎧 Read or listen to the paper on our website to gain a structured understanding of Syria’s economic transition debates, the logic behind competing reform paths, and why transparency and continued dialogue remain central to sustainable recovery.

📷 Photo: A snapshot from the opening of the Syrian National Dialogue Conference at the People's Palace in Damascus, Syria. 25 February 2025. Photo © SANA.

Paper

29/01/2026

In a shifting global order, connectivity, trade corridors, and alliance management are increasingly shaping geopolitics in the Middle East. LUGARIT’s recent paper, prepared for the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs (IFI), examines how U.S. – China competition plays out not through direct confrontation in Syria, but through broader strategic calculations linked to the Belt and Road Initiative, regional chokepoints, and the positioning of key regional actors. It argues that Syria functions less as a prize and more as a testing ground within a wider contest over influence, alignment, and regional stability.

🌐 Link: https://link.lugarit.com/u15p

🌍 Title: Syria at the Margins of the Belt-and-Road Rivalry

📅 Date: 29 January 2026

📚 Publishers: LUGARIT+ Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs (IFI)

✍️ Authors: Nihad Alamiri + Zaidoun Zoabi

EN | ع The paper is available in both English and Arabic.
الورقة متاحة باللغتين الإنجليزية والعربية

💡 Key insights:

- In U.S. – China rivalry, Syria serves as a revealing test case within broader Belt and Road dynamics.

- Saudi Arabia and Turkey emerge as pivotal anchors of maritime and overland trade corridors linking Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.

- China’s engagement signals long-term strategic intent, yet remains constrained by risks and ex*****on gaps.

- U.S. re-engagement is driven primarily by alliance management and containment of rival influence rather than Syria-first reconstruction.

- Regional spoilers and unresolved security dynamics continue to threaten fragile convergence around stabilization.

📖 🎧 Read or listen to the paper to gain a better understanding of how global power competition is reshaping regional connectivity, alliances, and the strategic future of Syria.

📷 Photo: A transregional satellite view showing Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Syria, with part of Asia and Europe. Elements of this image furnished by NASA. Photo © GizemG - via ShutterStock.

Paper

20/01/2026

Reforming public employment in post-regime Syria is not merely an administrative exercise. It is a political, economic, social choice that reflects how the state understands its role, responsibilities, and relationship with society. LUGARIT’s paper examines Syria’s Draft Civil Service Law announced by the Ministry of Administrative Development in late 2025 and argues that without a shared social contract defining the nature of the state, civil service reform risks deepening fragmentation rather than enabling recovery.

🌐 Link: https://link.lugarit.com/C2mR

🌍 Title: A Review of the Draft Syrian Civil Service Law of 2025

📅 Date: 20 January 2026

📚 Publisher: LUGARIT

✍️ Authors: Bashar Moubarak + Omar Abdulaziz Hallaj

EN | ع The paper is available in both English and Arabic.
الورقة متاحة باللغتين الإنجليزية والعربية

💡 Key insights:

- Civil service reform cannot precede agreement on the political, economic, social, and service roles of the state.

- The draft law addresses symptoms of public sector dysfunction while overlooking structural causes rooted in decades of politicized governance.

- A rapid shift toward fully contractual public employment is premature in the absence of a functioning labor market and social protection systems that can absorb surplus labor.

- Excluding public employees’ representatives and social insurance institutions undermines the law’s legitimacy and implementability.

- Reducing public service to a technical function neglects its critical social role in labor market stabilization and post-conflict recovery.

📖 🎧 Read or listen to the paper on our website to gain a deeper understanding of why civil service reform in Syria must follow inclusive consensus-building, rather than attempt to substitute for it.

📷 Photo: Crowds at the customer service windows of the Civil Affairs Directorate in Damascus, reflecting the central role of public institutions in citizens’ everyday interactions with the state. Damascus, Syria. 16 March 2021. Photo © Q Media. Photo editing by LUGARIT.

Paper

13/01/2026

In Syria’s recovery, every investment is a trade-off: what the state grants to one project - as incentives - comes at the expense of another. Without prioritization, scarce resources risk fueling elite capture and low-impact projects. LUGARIT’s paper, the latest in a series on the subject, explores how opportunity-cost thinking, discounting, and ethical valuation can guide fairer, more effective investment choices.

🌐 Link: https://link.lugarit.com/NezX

🌍 Title: Managing Investments Wisely: Opportunity Cost, Discounting, and Ethical Valuation in Syria’s Recovery Framework

📅 Date: 13 January 2026

📚 Publisher: LUGARIT

✍️ Author: Omar Abdulaziz Hallaj

🎓 Acknowledgement: With special gratitude to Mr. Abdullattif Ilhamy Alamiry

EN | ع The paper is available in both English and Arabic.
المقالة متاحة باللغتين الإنجليزية والعربية

💡 Key insights:

- Every investment decision carries an opportunity cost—unfunded alternatives may offer greater public value.

- Early post-conflict investments yield the highest returns; delayed or speculative projects heighten fragility.

- Discounting is not about fixing interest rates but due diligence—ensuring time and risk are factored into fair, efficient, and sustainable choices.

- Syria’s current laws lack safeguards, exposing public assets to elite capture and fiscal risk.

- Lessons from the Marshall Plan and Malaysia’s Sukuk model show the importance of transparency, risk-sharing, and inclusive benefit distribution, in both classical economic and Muslim inspired economic theories.

📖 🎧 Read or listen to the paper on our website to explore how Syria can transform capital inflows into genuine public value, anchoring recovery in efficiency, fairness, and legitimacy.

📷 Photo: Skyline of Damascus, with the unfinished Massar Rose and the Four Seasons Hotel. Visible symbols of investment choices that reflect trade-offs shaping Syria. May 2022. Photo © hanohikirf - via Alamy.

Paper

05/01/2026

Reconstruction after prolonged crises is often framed as a question of relief or sanctions removal. LUGARIT’s latest case study argues that such measures are insufficient on their own in the case of Syria. Drawing on Türkiye’s experience, it examines how export capacity—anchored in coherent governance, smart incentives, and institutional coordination—can become a central pillar of economic recovery and long-term resilience.

🌐 Link: https://link.lugarit.com/IiQc

🌍 Title: Protecting National Products and Promoting Exports: Governance Arrangements, Incentive Tools, and Lessons in Competitiveness Building – A Case Study from Türkiye

📅 Date: 05 January 2026

📚 Publisher: LUGARIT

✍️ Authors: Hasan Masri + Omar Abdulaziz Hallaj

EN | ع The case study is available in both English and Arabic.
المقالة متاحة باللغتين الإنجليزية والعربية

💡 Key insights:

- Sustainable reconstruction depends on building export capacity, not on sanctions relief alone.

- Export policy is a core component of economic governance, requiring legal certainty, institutional coordination, and economic diplomacy.

- Targeted incentives that reduce market-entry costs and manage risk outperform production subsidies.

- Small and medium-sized enterprises are central to recovery, job creation, and regional stabilization.

- Smart protectionism can safeguard strategic sectors while remaining compliant with global trade rules.

📖 🎧 Read or listen to the article on our website to explore how export-oriented governance frameworks can support recovery, competitiveness, and economic resilience in post-sanctions and post-crisis contexts.

📷 Photo: Aerial view of a container terminal, illustrating the infrastructure, coordination, and logistics systems that underpin national export capacity and integration into global markets. 3 October 2024. Photo © Sven Hansche - via ShutterStock.

Case Study

26/12/2025

Economic recovery in Syria is often framed as a question of funding shortfalls. LUGARIT’s latest paper argues instead that recovery financing is fundamentally a governance challenge—shaped by fragmented authority, weak accountability, and unresolved tensions between central control and local initiative. Drawing on emerging financing practices since December 2024, the paper examines how these dynamics are reshaping Syria’s political economy and the risks and opportunities they create for sustainable recovery.

🌐 Link: https://link.lugarit.com/uCAB

🌍 Title: Financing Economic Recovery and Reconstruction in Syria: Between Central and Local Authorities

📅 Date: 26 December 2025

📚 Publisher: LUGARIT

✍️ Authors: Omar Abdulaziz Hallaj, Hasan Masri

EN | ع The paper is available in both English and Arabic.
المقالة متاحة باللغتين الإنجليزية والعربية

💡 Key insights:

- Recovery financing in Syria is a governance problem as much as a resource gap, where unclear rules risk inefficiency, inequity, and elite capture.

- New national funds may diversify financing, but without transparency and clear mandates they risk symbolic recentralization rather than effective recovery.

- Local and governorate-level fundraising has demonstrated speed, trust, and proximity to needs, yet remains uneven and unsustainable without accountability frameworks.

- Current dynamics present a critical choice between meaningful fiscal decentralization and the reproduction of patronage through updated financial instruments.

- Sustainable recovery requires an integrated, multi-level financial architecture that aligns national coordination with empowered local authorities.

📖 🎧 Read or listen to the paper on our website to gain a deeper understanding of how financing choices today will shape governance, accountability, and development outcomes in Syria’s recovery phase.

📷 Photo: Launch event of the Syrian Development Fund for reconstruction at the Damascus Citadel, bringing together state leadership, senior officials, and foreign diplomats. Damascus, Syria. 5 September 2025. Photo © Mohammad Bashir Aldaher/ZUMA Press - via Alamy.

Commentary

01/10/2025

Recalibrating the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda is critical to bridging the gap between global commitments and the realities women face in conflict zones. LUGARIT’s article examines why tokenistic inclusion, compliance-driven aid, and siloed programming fall short - and how locally grounded, cross-cutting strategies can transform women’s empowerment into lasting change.

🌐 Link: https://link.lugarit.com/sEl7

🌍 Title: When Norms Fall Short: The WPS Agenda and the Realities of Conflict

📅 Date: 8 July 2025

📚 Publisher: LUGARIT

✍️ Authors: Dima Shehadeh + Omar Abdulaziz Hallaj

EN | ع The article is available in both English and Arabic languages.
المقالة متاحة باللغتين الإنجليزية والعربية

💡 Key insights:

- Symbolic inclusion of women in political processes rarely translates into real power without grassroots networks and constituency-based legitimacy.

- Gender norms in conflict evolve in contradictory and hyper-local ways, requiring context-sensitive analysis.

- Protection must go beyond physical safety to address economic insecurity, unpaid care, and psychosocial vulnerabilities.

- Compliance-driven aid risks producing short-term visibility over meaningful structural change; flexible, locally responsive funding is essential.

- Women are de facto crisis managers, yet their informal leadership remains unsupported and unlinked to formal peace and recovery processes.

- WPS must become a cross-cutting issue, mainstreamed into all humanitarian and recovery programming, with community-wide engagement and male allyship.

📖 🎧 Read or listen to the article on our website to explore how WPS strategies can evolve into community-driven, transformative pathways for justice, power, and peace.

📷 Photo: A defiant woman carrying a young girl in a Syrian refugee camp near the Syrian-Turkish border; an everyday symbole of resilience and agency amid displacement. Idlib, Syria. 19 January 2023. Photo © Mohammad Bash - via ShutterStock.

Commentary

23/09/2025

As Syria moves from humanitarian relief toward reconstruction, investments must serve the public good, not just deliver short-term returns. This article, the second in a series by LUGARIT on economic recovery, challenges donor-driven, output-focused models and urges a national recovery strategy that redefines public utility to prioritize inclusive, long-term impact.

🌐 Link: https://link.lugarit.com/GF0A

🌍 Title: Reclaiming Public Utility: A National Framework for Inclusive Investment in Syria’s Recovery

📅 Date: 1 July 2025

📚 Publisher: LUGARIT

✍️ Author: Omar Abdulaziz Hallaj

EN | ع The article is available in both English and Arabic languages.
المقالة متاحة باللغتين الإنجليزية والعربية

💡 Key insights:

- Overextending incentives to attract investment risks undermining long-term public returns.

- Public utility must be assessed through multiple lenses: welfare, economic multipliers, fiscal sustainability, asset stewardship, and social cohesion.

- A laissez-faire model may fragment recovery; overly rigid regulation may deter participation—Syria needs a balanced, adaptive strategy.

- A phased national framework should guide investments while allowing room for correction, learning, and institutional alignment.

- Recovery must build institutional capacity and public trust, not just physical infrastructure.

📖 🎧 Read or listen to the article on our website to explore how Syria can recalibrate its investment policies to deliver meaningful, equitable recovery outcomes.

📷 Photo: Crowds fill the historic Al-Hamidiyah Souq in Damascus, a living symbol of Syria’s economic and cultural resilience. As recovery efforts advance, such spaces must remain embedded in the social fabric—not repurposed solely for foreign capital or elite interests. Damascus, Syria. 8 May 2022. Photo © hanohiki – via Alamy.

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