Worrall, J orcid.org/0000-0001-5229-5152 and Penziner Hightower, V (2022) Methods in the Madness? Exploring the Logics of Torture in Syrian Counterinsurgency Practices. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 49 (3). pp. 418-432. ISSN 1469-3542
Abstract
While the administrations of Hafez and Bashar al-Assad employed torture regularly as a tool of authoritarian governance, this usage changed dramatically in nature as the revolution moved from protests to insurgency, which posed an increasingly significant threat to the regime’s survival. In the counterinsurgency literature, torture’s function is generally tied to intelligence gathering. In the context of Syria’s post-2011 Counterinsurgency (COIN) campaign, torture functioned more as a way to intimidate the population, forcing them to explicitly choose a side—especially in contested zones. The threat posed by the uprising amplified the scale, form, targeting, and purpose of torture, expanding it significantly. This article traces these dynamics, not only to explain the changing logics and practices of torture in Syria, but also to identify key actors, structures, and sites of analysis. It attempts to avoid falling into the normative trap of simply condemning torture, by moving its examination into a more analytical space, thereby demonstrating how torture can perform a critical function beyond intelligence gathering within an authoritarian COIN campaign.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Education, Social Sciences and Law (Leeds) > School of Politics & International Studies (POLIS) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 21 Apr 2021 16:30 |
Last Modified: | 16 Oct 2022 00:16 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/13530194.2021.1916154 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:173231 |
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