Name: How the former jihadis who took over Damascus embraced politics and toppled the Assad regime
Start: 2025-03-14T09:00:00+01:00
End: 2025-03-14T10:30:00+01:00
Location: Rosenkrantz gate 22, 0160 Oslo, Norway

How the former jihadis who took over Damascus embraced politics and toppled the Assad regime

The Assad-family has ruled over Syria for more than 50 years. In December, it took opposition groups less than two weeks to overthrow the regime.
Jerome Drevon recently published the gripping monograph From Jihad to Politics: How Syrian Jihadis Embraced Politics, offering a rare, in-depth look into contemporary Syrian developments. Based on extensive fieldwork in Idlib and beyond, Drevon gained rare access to key rebel groups that were instrumental in overthrowing the Assad regime in December 2024 and are now shaping Syria’s future. Through this research, he conducted in-depth studies and interviews with these groups, while also investigating jihadist factions that rejected their political ambitions. In this seminar, Drevon will share insights from his research and discuss opportunities and challenges facing Syria’s new rulers.
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Jerome Drevon works for the International Crisis Group as a senior analyst on Jihad in Modern Conflict. He obtained his PhD at Durham University in the UK before completing two research fellowships at the universities of Manchester and Oxford. He is also the author of Institutionalizing Violence: Strategies of Jihad in Egypt (Oxford University Press 2022).
Drevon will be joined by discussants Tine Gade (Norwegian Institute for International Affairs, NUPI), Brynjar Lia (University of Oslo, UiO), and Erling L. Sogge (UiO). Morten Bøås (NUPI) will moderate the conversation.
This event is co-hosted by the Jihadist Governance in the Sahel research project at NUPI, the Centre for Islamic and Middle East Studies (CIMS) at the University of Oslo and the Consortium for Terrorism Research.
The event will take place at NUPI (New address: Rosenkrantz’ gate 22, 4th floor) and lasts from 09:00 to 10:30. A light breakfast will be served from 08:30.
The event will be streamed to NUPI's YouTube channel: