Emergence, Development, and Impact of Population Displacement in Damascus During Syria’s Civil War

Abstract

Although displacement has been an important feature of many contemporary conflicts, this has not been accompanied by a sustained recognition or acknowledgement that it is an active or ongoing dimension of conflict, with the result that it, more often than not, has been viewed and discussed as a consequence of conflict; that is, as something that occurs as a result of armed conflict. Although the manipulation of civilian populations for political purposes has been discussed and recognized by counter-insurgency theorists, this has not yet informed nor produced a full and complete understanding of displacement, or more precisely its strategic dimensions, in the contemporary context. In other instances, the specificity of displacement more generally has been ignored, with the result that it has been equated with ethnic cleansing. This article seeks to contribute to an enhanced understanding of displacement by showing how it became part of the Syrian regime’s attempts to re-establish control of suburban areas of Damascus. In doing so, I break the practice into its specific components, which include siege operations, extensive use of aerial bombardment and the use of weapons likely to produce massive civilian casualties, including chemical weapons, ‘earthquake’ and ‘vacuum’ bombs and unguided munitions with wide-area effects. I conclude that in these areas of the capital, Regime actions most closely approximated to the depopulation model of strategic displacement.