Thomas Pierret

Just recorded a really interesting conversation for the first episode of PRISM Podcast on Syria’s economic recovery, reconstruction, energy politics, refugee returns, and evolving EU–Syria relations. 🎧 The Future of Syria: Economic Recovery and EU–Syria Relations Listen: open.spotify.com/episode/7HShty… We discussed everything from electricity shortages and banking constraints to reconstruction risks, Gulf investment, the northeast’s political economy, refugee returns, and the challenge of turning political normalization into actual economic recovery people can feel in their daily lives. A big thank you to Umutcan Yüksel of the European University Institute (EUI) for the invitation and discussion. We also touched on some themes I’ve been working on recently regarding the gap between macro-level stabilization and the lived economic reality of ordinary Syrians, the risks of uneven recovery, and why implementation (not announcements) will ultimately determine whether Syria’s recovery is real.

Islam en France. La politique du soupçon permanent @OrientXXI orientxxi.info/Islam-en-Franc…

@BenjaminFeve @muftahmag Thanks Benjamin!

Worth listening to carefully. A @muftahmag podcast interview with @ThomasPierret on Syria and the Left. youtube.com/watch?v=S8tiLG… A wealth of knowledge, as always.

Following our last discussion on Syria and the future of Islamism, @ThomasPierret joins us for another episode of @ProteanView––this time to discuss the Left's fractured response to the Syrian revolution. muftah.org/p/syria-and-th…

Latest SiT Syria poll syriaintransition.com/en/home/syriap…

Syria has seen a growing number of protests across the country, mostly on socio-economic issues. Here our mapping of protests in the month of April alone. @TheSyriaReport

We've always known that refugees' intentions to return don't always translate to actual return over time. But get this: A whopping two-thirds of refugees who returned to Syria had responded to recent surveys that they don't intend to return. It makes me question the usefulness of the entire exercise of attitudinal surveys for policy design! reliefweb.int/report/syrian-…

@JihadGillon Ça dépend des époques...

Hassan Abdelazim passed away at 94. A Nasserite, he was a leading figure in Syria’s pre-war opposition and its internal feuds, from the Hafez-era Tajammou to the Damascus Spring and Damascus Declaration. Played a minor role after 2011 via the Hayat Tansiq internal opposition body

🇱🇧 🇦🇲 “As an Armenian, watching the systematic erasure of South Lebanon feels like a recurring nightmare that the world refuses to wake up from… It’s living again the hollow silence that met our own ancestors in 1915.” open.substack.com/pub/arazbedros… by @Arazbedros via @BeirutCalling

@LizHurra @AhmadFPR I couldn't care less about what they actually say in the video. The context in which these people are having "fun" is what I find utterly shocking. Puzzling you don't get it.

@ThomasPierret @AhmadFPR If I see a video of them murdering children, I'd have no problem calling them murderers. If I see them destroying home to prevent return, I'll call them the implementors of ethnic cleansing. This is not what's in the video.

I've been trying to understand how the Israeli army behaves in Lebanon. Do they take videos of themselves looking mentally deranged on purpose?

@LizHurra @AhmadFPR The children who used to play there were murdered, at worst, or won't ever see their homes again, at best. "Disobedient idiots" is a disturbingly mild way to call such people.

I didn't detect that in the video. They mock official slogans repeated by IDF and political commanders "our mission is important" and laugh and then "together we will win" - a slogan often repeated by Netanyahu. The overall mindset of Israeli soldiers is dehumanizing of Arabs and vengeful, but I don't see any of this in the video. They're just being disobedient idiots, recording themselves playing around and mocking official slogans, and then uploading it online - all against regulations.

@LizHurra @AhmadFPR And a colonial mindset

@AhmadFPR no, they're just 18-year-old kids given weapons and way too much power.

I can't believe my ears. My MFA @jnbarrot is using a racist quote from Golda Meir where she says that "Israelis forgive Arabs for killing their children but cannot forgive them for forcing them to kill their own children". Epitomy of orwellian rhetoric after 2.5 years of genocide

@TheActualAmmar None (especially among HTS radicals) cares about Jibril's fanboys. They're very vulnerable to state repression. Difficult for me to imagine they acted without some form of green light.

@ThomasPierret Monitoring closely and controlling are not the same thing, especially when you have to appease radical elements within your own ranks.

My latest: "What is playing out in Syria’s streets is not a spontaneous popular uprising against normalization or foreign influence. It is a performance—staged by a coalition of actors with distinct agendas, united less by shared conviction than by shared opportunity. Understanding who they are, what they want, and why this moment suits them is more important than the footage itself." @M_E_uncovered The Return of the “Resistance” Playbook in Syria open.substack.com/pub/middleeast…

@LizHurra @SaladinAlDronni What's the evidence it really comes from "Iranian hackers"?

Iranian hackers got into the phone of the former IDF Chief of Staff exposing visits to Qatar and Jordan

We stand in full solidarity with the journalist @shellykittleson who was abducted in Baghdad, and we express our deep concern over what has happened. We hope she is safe and will soon return to her family and loved ones, and that security prevails and press freedom receives the protection it deserves.

@silviacarenzi @abazeid89 @jeromedrev Thanks Silvia!

On Ahrar al-Sham, see the works of @abazeid89 @ThomasPierret @jeromedrev Nagwan Soliman & others • shs.cairn.info/revue-critique… • omrandirasat.org/%D8%A7%D9%84%D… • academia.edu/53540362/Ahrar… • op.europa.eu/o/opportal-ser…

📌𝗠𝘆 𝗴𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝗼𝘂𝘁: 𝗡𝗲𝗼-𝗢𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁 𝗡𝗮𝗿𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀 𝗦𝘁𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗢𝗯𝘀𝗰𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗦𝘆𝗿𝗶𝗮'𝘀 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 At the beginning of December 2024, as the Assad regime was collapsing, I was watching the news at home. The factions from "al-muharrar" — northwest Syria, barely on most people's radar until then — had seized Aleppo. Yet commentators outside Syria were already drawing explicit parallels with IS. The 'jihadi savage' trope, invoked not so subtly, still persists today in media coverage. After Assad fell, neo-Orientalist narratives kept cyclically resurfacing, often with Islamophobic undertones. Rather than unpacking many a layer beneath Syria's transition — legacy of authoritarian rule, trauma, a torn social fabric — they conflate multiple challenges into the 'jihadi label'. But this obfuscates more than it illuminates Syria’s most pressing social and political issues, from justice to expansion of political participation and the country’s broader vision for the future. You can find the article below. Thank you to the @Levant_24_ editorial team for their assistance and for the space to share my thoughts.

Can Syria’s private banks actually shoulder the burden of financing economic development? We look at a surprising fact: the total capital of all private banks in Syria combined is no more than that of a single regional bank in Jordan or Tunisia. Is this capital base enough to support the economy, or is it too small for the challenges ahead? Read the full analysis: karamshaar.com/syria-in-figur…