In Syria, the government proclaims that the demarcation of subnational administrative divisions has always been an apolitical process based on purely administrative and developmental considerations. A constant drive to homogenize the Syrian identity as part of a greater pan-Arab identity has meant that local identity was hardly a subject of discourse, formal or otherwise. Beyond superficial references to folklore as a generic form of local identity, the subject was a political taboo.

Yet, the demarcation of administrative divisions was never entirely neutral. The management of the intricate procedures of delineating internal boundaries among governorates, districts, subdistricts, and municipalities, assigning nomenclature and toponymies, and determining the hierarchical status of administrative units was intertwined with manipulating local identities to build patronage networks for the central authorities and national elites at the local level. The haphazard process of creating new administrative boundaries in Syria developed divergent modes of accessing national development resources and fostered heterogeneous interplay between the national and local levels. Rather than consolidating a unified national identity, the rigid, non-transparent and highly centralised process of administrative design led to the creation of divergent identity markers and irreconcilable social solidarity models, which stand as key conflict drivers today.

This policy paper examines the impact of administrative-territorial subdivisions on the formation of local identity in Syria, the relationship between local and national identity, and, hence, the impact of administrative divisions on national identity. Based on extensive interviews with 76 key informants in all of Syria’s 71 districts, this policy paper draws on the data and results of a more comprehensive research published recently. It aims to track the construction and evolution of local identities as it relates to the process of demarcating administrative divisions from the initial moment of creating the Syrian state in the wake of the Sykes-Picot agreements to the aftermath of the conflict that erupted in 2011. It argues that the emergence of strong local identities is strongly related to the degree of connectivity the localities had to the centre. Contrary to popular belief, strong local identities were not an antithesis to the emergence of a unifying national identity. Quite the reverse, the evidence points to the fact that the stronger the local identity, the more likely it was intertwined with the national one. What affected national identity negatively was marginalization and a centralized approach to enforcing national identity formation.