Documenting life amidst the Syrian war: Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s performance of statehood through identity documents

ABSTRACT

Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham has been one of the main beneficiaries of the fragmentation of state power in Syria, developing from a transnational jihadist group affiliated to al-Qaʿida to a locally rooted actor and de facto state power. This paper considers how the group has enacted a performance of sovereignty and statehood that has developed over time, and how central legal identity has been to these efforts. It examines how Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham has attempted to perform as the legitimate governing actor using control over identity documentation and also how this performance engenders a relationship between ruler and ruled in Idlib. Each act as an authority reproduces the group as the state power. But in few other areas of governance is the act so explicit, the performance so overt, as in the use of legal identity.

KEYWORDS:

• Syria
• Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham
• legal identity
• performance
• statehood
• Idlib
• governance

‘Nobody recognizes us and our documents globally, until today’. Idlib resident. (quoted in Hamza 2022)

Introduction

As insurgencies and armed groups develop and grow during civil wars, they often take on functions vacated by central governments. Alongside the practical realities of feeding, clothing, and protecting those who live in territory controlled by the group, there are diverse political reasons for rebels to take on governance functions. This includes projecting power and enacting a performance as a government. Part of this performativity involves the function of distributing identity documentation to the populace in their areas. As Sosnowski and Klem (2024) explain in the introduction to this collection, international human rights law legally obliges states to ensure every person’s right to recognition as a person before the law. In stable political contexts around the world, the entity which provides civilians with this right and with the accompanying documentation is usually, though not always, self-evident – government bodies that make up what is considered the state. In the midst of power struggles such as Syria’s civil war, this is anything but clear. The very right to provide civilians with their own right to recognition is highly contested. The contestation over this role gives actors other than the central government the opportunity to engage in performances of statehood.

Throughout the different stages of Syria’s conflict, various armed groups have distributed identity documentation to those living in areas they control. There are many practical aspects to this. As with people across the globe, Syrians need a variety of paperwork in daily life, including for schooling, welfare benefits, and even proving their existence. There is also the uniquely important family booklets, recording the identities of a married couple and their children and serving as a basis for issuing other primary documents, such as identification cards (Lund 2020). For the groups controlling areas and attempting to administer them, ensuring populations have such documentation eases the task of everyday ruling. There are also political, promotional, and legitimacy-based motivations behind the practice of recording life events. As Sosnowski and Hamadeh (2021, 3) note Syrian armed groups have issued ‘legal identity documents to people living within the areas they control as a strategy to usurp and undermine the political power of the Syrian state’. Through this, they also hope to enhance their own power. I examine these issues through the case of one of the main beneficiaries of the fragmentation of power and control in Syria; Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel group that controls much of the north west including Idlib governorate and some surrounding areas.

In this article, I adopt a performative lens drawing on authors including Klem (2024), McConnell (2016), and Rutherford (2012). My main contention is that legal identity is central to how Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham engages in processes of sovereign performance, including mimicry of and encroachment upon the Damascus-based government. This is not something the group was able to or sought to do previously, but has emerged amid its consolidation of power in Idlib. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham is also using legal identity to bind the population to its political project, although the contours of that project and how it is received by said civilians is unclear. But even if that same population is only ‘acting’ and does not believe Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham or its governance entities have legitimacy, the recurring performances of state power (including through the use of legal identity) help reproduce the relationship whereby Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham is the ruler and the populace the ruled (Wedeen 1998).

This article is based on primary and secondary sources in both Arabic and English on how Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham has developed and how it manages legal identity. It offers a conceptual lens based on existing material – both about and by the movement – on the ways in which the armed group and related-governing entities present themselves as sovereign actors, how this has changed over time, and the contradictions and ambiguities this reveals. It is not an attempt to determine Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s overall strategy or identify an ‘end goal’ for the movement. In fact, the uncertainty over the group’s desired future makes it all the more fascinating to study; Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham is helpful in showing how armed groups experiment with ways of controlling a population, how they enact sovereign performances, and just how central legal identity is to all these efforts. These performances are something that every state, including unrecognised ones, engage in as part of asserting authority.

An examination of the reception of the performance, especially internally in Idlib, is also beyond the scope of this article, which is not in the position of being able to illustrate the theatrical dimensions of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s governance project through first-hand accounts. Indeed, there are ‘challenges related to collecting data on legitimacy and local support in conflict zones’ (Pfeifer and Schwab 2023, 7). In saying that, and while looking at the performance primarily from a state perspective, this article wants to highlight that these are very real, daily matters that impact people’s lives (Adamczyk and Doumit 2024).

The first section of this article touches on conceptions of sovereign performance, including mimicry and encroachment. It also notes important ideas in the literature of rebel governance which underline the complexity of situations of insurgencies and unrecognised states. The next section briefly traces the development of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham as it came to consolidate control in its area of Syria. The article then covers the group’s performance of statehood and projection of legitimacy through the use of legal identity. And the final section looks at how these performances generate a relationship between ruler and ruled in Idlib, fostering a form of citizenship.

Conceptions of sovereign performance and rebel governance

As Kyris has shown, sovereignty can be dynamic, including state recognition changing and fluctuating rather than being static (2022). In situations such as civil wars where dynamics can be fluid, some insurgents seize opportunities to perform as the state-like power. Significant scholarship exists on the performances of statehood by non-recognised states including McConnell’s (2016) work on the Tibetan government in exile and Bobick (2017) assessing referenda as performance in Transnistria. Literature has also covered these performances when carried out by armed groups, for example Klem’s study of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (2024). As Mampilly (2015, 83) notes ‘rebel rulers and their civilian subjects engage in a set of performative acts – cued by symbolic markers borrowed from the nation-state – that reinforces a specific form of authority relationship between the government and the governed’. Many of these reproduce practices developed by nation states, therefore referencing ‘a mode of governance with which most civilians are already familiar’ (Ibid, 83).

Scholarship has noted the ways sovereign aspirants perform, mimic, and encroach upon the state. Mimicry (Klem and Maunaguru 2017) is where rebel movements duplicate and imitate the actions of the state, but with specific differences to set the insurgent group apart. Sovereign encroachment takes the form of the aspirant seizing part of the state but using certain existing structures, rather than simply imposing an entire new system. Through this, actors not usually considered as state powers are trying to make the extraordinary seem ordinary (Klem 2024). Managing legal identity can be central in this respect, through marking the various stages of life of people under their control with documents and crucially through also engendering a relationship between ruled and ruler. Sosnowski argues ‘the creation of citizenship through life-cycle document registration’ is part of the ‘dress rehearsal for statehood’ (2020, 68).

On performance itself, scholars such as Rutherford have shown how it is central to legitimacy and that these acts create expectations among their audiences (Rutherford 2012). Meanwhile Wedeen (1998, 2003), in her work on acting ‘as if’, has highlighted that these performances do not need to be genuinely believed to be effective in creating relationships and setting boundaries. Having to partake in or be the audience to a performance, even if citizens do not believe in what is being shown, is a both a demonstration of power and something that reinforces social control (Wedeen 2003). Wedeen’s work on the Syrian government is also vital in demonstrating how all states, including recognised ones, engage in these performances of statehood; it is these practices that unrecognised ones seek to ape, copy, and mimic.

This article will also build on rebel governance scholarship on how armed groups administer territory, covering interactions between civilians and insurgents (Mampilly 2011; Arjona, Kasfir, and Mampilly 2015; Barter 2015) and institutional structures (Mampilly and Stewart 2021; Provost 2021), by examining how legal identity fits into this picture. Important work has also been conducted that pushes back on the idea that civil wars destroy the state (Péclard and Mechoulan 2015; Worrall 2017). In particular, here I note Péclard and Mechoulan’s (2015, 6) contention that civil wars ‘do not simply destroy political orders; they contribute to shaping and producing them’. The resulting structures are not static but shift and change; as Arjona (2014, 1364) noted insurgent forms of government and institutions ‘vary greatly across time and space, across and within armed actors, and across and within localities’, an idea that has relevance when examining the various phases of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s development. The following article will progress from Mampilly’s idea that examples of rebel governance such as the endeavours currently underway in Idlib should not be seen solely through the lens of their threat to internationally recognised states, nor as simply a step to reach this zenith. Instead, they should be assessed ‘on [their] own merits, for its actual forms and functions during a conflict’ (2011, 49). The fact that Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham does not fit neatly into a categorisation is central to the appeal to study it – depending on who you ask it is a jihadist group, armed non-state actor, sovereign state, or all or none of the above.

This piece owes a debt to other works on Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham. Scholarship has detailed its moves to supremacy in Idlib (Heller 2017; Lister 2021; Carenzi 2020) and its relationship with former affiliates or nominal allies (Zelin 2023b; Schwab 2023). In terms of the group’s transition and assumption of governance roles, the work of Jerome Drevon and Patrick (2020, 2021) is both fundamental and illuminating. I will combine this with work on the use of legal identity by armed groups.

A growing body of work suggests both that documentation (or at least the information they present) issued by de-facto but not de-jure powers should be recognised and also that armed groups may have responsibilities in the territory they control to meet legal identity needs if the central government is unable or unwilling (see e.g. International Court of Justice (ICJ) 1970, also UN-commissioned legal guidance Akande and Gillard 2016, 13; and; Hampton and Petkova 2024). Many armed groups, including Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, are already exercising this responsibility. Although the documents are usually not recognised outside rebel-held areas, armed groups register births, deaths, marriages, and any other aspect that form the basis of citizens’ legal identity. In a study on birth certificates, Hampton (2019, 536) notes ‘ultimately, insurgent groups are already registering births whether or not States choose to engage with such registration’. Thus these processes and dynamics deserve attention and examination, especially in light of what they can tell us about how rebels attempt to assert their authority.

Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s development

Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham is now vastly different from its roots in late 2011 when several dozen jihadists crossed from Iraq into eastern Syria to establish Jabhat al-Nusra (meaning Front of the Supporters of the People of the Levant) (Tsurkov 2020). They were led by Syrian-born Abu Mohammad al-Golani, who remains the group’s central figure, and were at that point affiliated to al-Qaʿida. From mid-2012, Jabhat al-Nusra drove the formation of alliances with both mainstream and jihadist opposition units, with the group noted for its military primacy (Lister 2019). In this period of intense conflict, the movement began transitioning from a transnational terrorist group to insurgent actor focused on Syria.

Elements of the group’s civil administration and its moves to assume state-like responsibilities started early, including the establishment of a Department of Relief (Qism al-Ighatha) during intense conflict in Aleppo in 2012 (Lister 2016). Jabhat al-Nusra’s prototype governance body provided services to civilians living in areas within its influence, including certain food, heating, water, and other amenities. From this early stage of its development, the group understood the importance of governance in territories under its command, creating a relationship between a power and those for whom it cares.

The major transformations in its existence arguably came from a combination of the opportunities and challenges presented to the movement and its desire to be seen as the sole legitimate sovereign in the areas it controlled (Carenzi 2020; Grant-Brook 2023; Tsurkov 2020). On 28 July 2016, Golani announced that the group was dissolving and forming ‘Jabhat Fateh al-Sham’ (Front for the Conquest of the Levant), during which he implied the group had broken its formal organisational link with al-Qaʿida (Heller 2016, 2017). Fateh al-Sham was formed with the express statement that ‘this organisation has no affiliation to any external entity’ in reference to it abandoning transnational jihad¹ and focusing on Syria (quoted in Jazeera 2016).

Further consolidation occurred with the group challenging or co-opting other opposition groups (Khalifa and Bonsey 2021). After calling for a ‘unified Sunni entity politically and military’ (Zaman al Wasl 2017; Eldorar 2017b), Fateh al-Sham in January 2018 led the formation of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (Organisation for the Liberation of the Levant) alongside several smaller groups and splinters of mainstream opposition and Islamist movements (Eldorar 2017a; Lund 2017). With this new formulation, the group moved to take overall charge of the levers of power in north west Syria.

Various dynamics drove the transition, including a desire to unify the opposition and a recognition that links to transnational jihad were harming the international reputation of the movement against Syrian President Bashir al-Assad. But a key catalyst was the group’s desire to localise and endear itself to Syrians by focusing on local areas (Drevon and Haenni 2021). Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s legal identity efforts are the natural progression of this. As the group has solidified its control and taken over state power in Idlib, it has moved to control further governance aspects including legal identity, hoping to deepen its roots. No longer does it present itself as a transnational jihadist group; instead the picture portrayed to the world and to Syrians is of a localised, rooted entity; a home-grown state in north west Syria. It is therefore logical that this state attempts to provide civil documentation to the people located in this area, with it claiming to be the only power with the right to do so. As part of these efforts, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham in November 2017 endorsed the establishment of the Syrian Salvation Government to oversee day-to-day affairs.

The relationship between the armed group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and the political wing Salvation Government is not entirely clear or straight-forward. Drevon and Haenni’s study of the group’s governance argues it is a convoluted relationship. They establish (Drevon and Haenni 2021) that while Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham played a leading role in the foundation of the Salvation Government ‘the organisation does not embrace a logic of micro-management and daily control’. This means that the body ‘participates in Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s power strategy but cannot be considered an offshoot of the management of [the group] or its civil branch’ (Ibid, 8). The armed group’s leader Golani’s own summation of the relationship illustrates the complexity: ‘You can’t say we control it, and I can’t say we have nothing to do with it’ (Quoted in Khalifa 2020).

The crucial aspect of the Salvation Government is that whatever Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s overall levels of oversight and influence, the body functions as the legitimizing, almost government-like representation of the armed group: it is the formalisation of control that has embodied the change from transnationally focused to locally rooted (Drevon and Haenni 2021, 5). Whereas previous iterations of the group could be classified as a variant of what Arjona (2014, 1375) called an aliocracy – where an insurgent group intervenes only minimally, most notably in terms of violence – the Salvation Government has cemented Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s position as a rebelocracy, where an armed group becomes the de facto ruler and regulates activities beyond security and taxation such as politics, the economy, social relations, and private conduct.

This was not something previous versions of the movement were able or had the space to do. However, after consolidating military power, issuing documents became part of the group’s efforts to be the power in control in Idlib. It was a gradual process, a long-term assumption of these roles borne out of both necessity and design. This was further augmented by the establishment of the Salvation Government and is now facilitated by the group’s current position as the dominant military power in north west Syria.

Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s use of legal identity

Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham controls legal identity in the territory it oversees as a way to formalise and normalise its rule. Through the Salvation Government, births, deaths and life-cycle events are registered. The issuance and distribution of legal identity documentation is central to the group’s efforts to organise and regulate Idlib and surrounding areas, as well as to remind the population who is in charge. It also exemplifies the group’s shift from transnational jihad to a conservative, locally rooted Islamist nationalist de facto government.

After the Syrian regime withdrew its civil registry services from the area in 2013, and prior to the Salvation Government consolidating its control over legal identity in rebel-controlled Idlib, the work of registering life-cycle events in the area was undertaken by different actors, including civil servants employed by the regime and local councils. Due to lack of widespread recognition, most of these actors were unable to present a holistic or hugely beneficial legal identity document service to civilians (International Rescue Committee 2016). Drevon and Patrick (2020, 43) note that before 2017, Idlib was ‘a patchwork of mini-kingdoms ruled by local groups and factions’. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s drive to control the region either pushed many of these actors out or subsumed them under its control (Shadia 2019). As it consolidated military power, it also consolidated governance power, giving it the opportunity to not only control the area but also engage in performances demonstrating that control.

Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s efforts to control legal identity escalated in 2022. With the group having established its local dominance over the use of force, resources were freed up to delve deeper into governance tasks such as administering legal identity. Registration for a Salvation Government-issued specific personal identification card began in September 2022 (Salvation Government 2022). This could be read as a demonstration of the group’s aspired durability, attempting to highlight that it is not temporary entity but a permanent structure. Aware of the potential significance of personal identification cards, the Salvation Government had reportedly been working on establishing such a system for several years before they were announced (Muhammad 2021). However, it was only after they had consolidated power and control that they were in the position to do so.

Introducing the initiative, the Salvation Government’s Interior Minister Mohamed Abdelrahman said the cards aimed to address ‘many problems and challenges’ in areas under its influence including ‘documentation difficulty when concluding marriage contracts, sale and purchase contracts and real estate transactions, as well as disputes before the judiciary’ (quoted in Hamza 2022). In the same statement, Abdelrahman highlighted the role of the state in using legal identity to ease various aspects of the lives of people under its control. He also emphasised that in Idlib at present, this job falls to the Salvation Government and by association Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham. The government in Damascus does not provide legal identity services to the people living in the group’s territory (Fletcher School of Global Affairs International Law Practicum and Norwegian Refugee Council 2023). A growing body of scholarship suggests that capacity may act as a trigger for insurgent obligations (see discussions in Hampton 2019; Hampton and Petkova 2024). The potential obligation on the group to provide the population with documentation plays into Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s narrative that is the only entity able to deliver such services in the area, that it is the sole governing power in the region.

The cards have a security aspect as well. The transient nature of populations between Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham-controlled areas and other opposition areas in northern Syria (and to a lesser extent with regime-held areas) partly drove the decision (Zelin 2023b). This documentation allows Idlib’s rulers to have a simple mechanism with detailed data on the population for purposes of security, which plays into their notion of building the security arms of the state, serving and protecting civilians (Al-Asi 2022). Upon their unveiling, Minister Abdelrahman also pointed out that the specifications of the new identity card ‘were designed according to international standards’ (Karam 2022). In line with mimicking the Damascus-based government and portraying itself as a state, such comments are an attempt to show the identification was just like the thousands of other pieces of documentation issued by governments across the world. In this vein, a Salvation Government-released video demonstrated the process of obtaining a card (Salvation Government 2023a). Though of course taking into account the self-promoting nature of any such media releases, it showed a procedure familiar to anyone dealing with any state bureaucracy.

The graphics on the cards are a further important performance of statehood. The identification cards bear the landmarks of seven Syrian governorates and are decorated with signs and symbols of ancient Levantine heritage (Karam 2022), including territory outside the group’s control. This depiction offers a visual connection between the Salvation Government to Syria’s history, not just its present, and to areas outside of Idlib. Through the cards, as mentioned above, the group projects an enduring presence and a sense of permanence, installing the message that it is here to stay. The group’s leader Golani has previously said that in liberated areas the project is a transformation to build an entity and society that ‘preserves the identity and heritage of its people and is commensurate with its nature and history’ (Quoted in Alsouria 2022). The cards symbolise this, highlighting both present and future permanence, as well as connections with Syria’s past.

Issuing the cards is a move that reinforces the departure of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham-run areas from the authority of the central government in Damascus. At the same time, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham has relied on the foundations of the experience of living under the original state power, the parent regime. Reports that the identity card will become mandatory for residents, and that regime issued ones will no longer be considered valid in areas the group controls, emphasise this (Enab Baladi 2023). As it has its own sovereign aspirations, even if the extent of those aspirations is not clear, the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham-led state power explicitly mirrors the power of the state (in this case, the Assad regime) by rejecting the validity of other authorities’ documents, including those issued by its parent state.

Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham is not the only Syrian armed group to have done this (see Adamczyk and Doumit 2024; McGee 2024). Competing authorities in Syria often refuse to recognise documents issued by other powers. By not accepting documentation by other governance structures, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham – just as other governing powers it competes with – is attempting to demonstrate that it alone is the legitimate authority within a given territory. This provides many added complications for communities living under the group. Documents issued by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and other Syrian armed groups lack the recognition and legal value, both domestically and internationally, of those dispensed by Assad’s state-run civil registry. This can hugely impact Syrians, both in terms of everyday practicalities – including the possibility of violence – and in respect to being a person in front of the law (Adamczyk and Doumit 2024; Clutterbuck et al. 2018; Lund 2020). But recognising and accepting legal identity documents produced by other entities, including the Syrian government, could undermine Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s own claims to authority.

These are part of the practices of sovereign mimicry, where insurgencies copy prior institutions, symbols or processes but with small (and crucial) alterations, and sovereign encroachment, where pre-existing institutions are not entirely dismantled but co-opted and adjusted (Klem 2024, 80). Cases of mimicry and encroachment by insurgent actors have been present for large parts of Syria’s civil war. Various groups have seized governance institutions and ‘repurposed them to provide similar functions, but under rival governing structures’ (Mehchy, Haid, and Khatib 2020, 2). Mimicry and encroachment also abound in terms of legal identity; Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham is much like other Syrian actors with statehood aspirations such as the Syrian Interim Government and Islamic State who have aped recognised governments in registering life events (Sosnowski and Hamadeh 2021). Documents including marriage certificates issued by the Salvation Government largely mirror those issued by the Damascus-based government. Templates for forms are similar, with often only a change of the accompanying logo or stamp of the authority (Fletcher School of Global Affairs International Law Practicum and Norwegian Refugee Council 2023). These trends are compounded by the fact many of the offices in which Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham-run civil registries operate are the same buildings used when they were controlled from Damascus, and even staffed by some of the same workers (Ibid).

Several things stand out here. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and the Salvation Government have worked and are working with existing actors and structures such as the civil service or local elites. Such dynamics can be seen in rebel groups elsewhere including Indonesia (Barter 2015) and Sri Lanka (Klem and Maunaguru 2018). They are co-opting and subsuming previous institutions, re-shaping and reforming them as needed, carrying out tasks much as before; they are different, but they are also the same. The legal identity issuing authority may be the Syrian Salvation Government rather than the Syrian government. But unless Syrian civilians who are obtaining these documents pay close attention, for all intents and purposes they look very much the same and are issued in very similar ways. There is not the full replacement of all vestiges, processes, and narratives of Damascus.

It is also important to note here that these processes are never simply handed down wholesale by the power in charge. They are negotiated, contested, and a function of compromise with existing power networks, including the public, professionals in the civil service, and local and religious elites. For Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham this is seen not only in its legal identity moves but across all forms of its governance including in health, education, and the economy (Drevon and Haenni 2021; Alzaraee and Shaar 2021).

But while the changes may not have been total, there were changes. Even if the only adjustment was the addition of a new stamp, this still marks out that this is something different. The new logo and stamps on legal identity documentation help the Salvation Government and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham establish that they are separate from Assad’s government, even if at first these changes feel superficial and perhaps to a casual observer, relatively unsubstantial.

The audience and the performance

Using legal identity is part of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s ‘symbolic repertoire’, the set of symbolic processes rebel groups use as they attempt to influence a range of different actors (Mampilly 2015, 82), just as all states do. Part of this is to engender a relationship of control with those whose lives they administer. Boundaries are erected as an aspect of power relations. One of the ways Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham does this in Idlib is through providing legal identity; you are our citizens, we are the state. By distributing identity documentation the group is attempting to link the Idlib government to them, engender a relationship, and form them as a citizen under its control.

Sosnowski's (2020, 68) arguments on citizenship constellations – where people are simultaneously de jure citizens of the Syrian state and in practice citizens of other de facto sovereigns – has relevance here. Through the provision of documentation and through controlling legal identity, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham is styling residents of Idlib as citizens of the Salvation Government. Although it appears Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham would like Idlib’s population to be both de facto and de jure citizens of its entity, they are not. Yet that such citizenship constellations exist points directly to the ambiguity and complexity of such fluid political situations. As Sosnowski (2020, 69) further explained, ‘without people being bound to the state through the documented act of citizenship, a state would struggle to assert that it fulfilled the international legal criteria of statehood’. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham do not yet meet the criteria of internationally recognised statehood but appear to be attempting to make residents of Idlib citizens of the entity the Salvation Government administers through providing documentation.

But as a citizen of what kind of entity exactly? For other insurgent movements and de-facto states, these things are clear as their desired end goal is obvious or stated. Nationalist and separatist movements often use legal identity to style those under their control as citizens of a nation separate from their parent state. Other armed groups, for example the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Klem 2024) or the Polisario Front (Immanuel 2024), have expressly desired a full, separate nation-state. What makes the case of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham fascinating is that unlike many other de-facto/sovereign aspirants, the movement’s end goal is not clear. Much of its actions point towards a desire for a form of statehood, but the contours of that statehood and how it may relate to other governing entities in Syria is uncertain. Complicating this further, its current structure and formulation is vastly different from those at its beginnings as a Syrian wing of al-Qaʿida (Tsurkov 2020) leaving open the possibility of further change.

Golani’s ambiguous references to the overall project amplifies the complexity. While utilising the language of revolution and promising to defend it, Golani has explained that the Salvation Government is a ‘very important stage in the history of the Syrian revolution, which is the transition from the state of chaos that the liberated areas were in to an organizational and legal state’ (Alsouria 2022). The use of the term stage is revealing, suggesting it is not its final form. Meanwhile the Salvation Government also gives little away in describing its vision as ‘to advance the liberated areas’ and ‘maintain security and stability’ (Salvation Government 2023b). While the end goal remains contingent on various factors such as the drift of the Syrian war, so does the exact form of citizenship, of relationship between ruler and ruled. Thus the case of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham adds further complexity to our understandings of sovereign performances by armed groups; despite ambiguity over its desired end-goal, it engages in the same legal identity practices as other armed groups with far more defined objectives and intended statehood. This contradiction is intensified by the fact these performances using legal identity have developed over time along side the movement’s own shifts and development.

Using Mampilly’s (2015) ideas, both insurgents and civilians under their control engage in a set of performances and symbolic acts that reinforce that one is the ruler and the other the ruled. For Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, the issuing of legal identity is central to this, socializing the public towards the structure of power in Idlib in a series of reccurring activities. For example, by using and handing over your Salvation Government-issued card, reproducing its rule in small acts. Of course, other forms of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s governance have also entailed sovereign and statehood performance, from the provision of basic services to the demonstrated capacity for violence. Each act as an authority reproduces it as the state power. But in few others is the act so explicit, the performance so overt, as in legal identity. This is because the use of the identification cards ties the individual and the government together in a relationship of ruler and ruled, the cards replete with the Salvation Government’s insignia and name alongside a picture and name of the cardholder. Through symbols and styling Idlib residents as subjects of the Salvation Government, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham is creating a direct link between the two.

Distributing such documentation is a drastic change from the group’s previous attitudes. Some anecdotal reports suggested in its previous form as Jabhat al-Nusra, the group considered certain documents to be secular and therefore blasphemous, refusing to recognise them (International Rescue Committee 2016, 5). This created risks to civilians’ safety in certain areas, who could be detained - or worse - on the basis of the documents they carried. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham’s concerns are now less about the religiosity of identity documents. Instead, through legal identity, the group is pushing those living in its territory to both tacitly and openly acknowledge its supremacy by participating as both an audience to its performance, and performing themselves by having the documents and using them.

The group itself publicly denies the formation of these relationships through legal identity distribution is a deliberate act. Sources close to the Salvation Government told journalists that ‘there is no political dimension, at least at the present time, regarding the issue of issuing personal cards’ (Al-Asi 2022). They explained that it was simply a ‘necessity, [that] meets the needs of thousands of people who do not have personal cards at the present time’. However, the act is innately political, portraying the armed group and the Salvation Government as a fait acompli (Zelin 2023a). As Pfeifer and Schwab note, rebel governance itself is inherently political (2023). By also portraying the act as non-political, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham has attempted to demonstrate that its control of legal identity (and further its control of state power in Idlib) is not a politicised act but simply the natural state of things in Idlib. This is another aspect of the group’s performance of its capabilities, with Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham taking the mantle of being the entity in charge of governance necessities.

This does not mean that those in Idlib feel this is legitimate, but the existence of rules that both sides follow show there is a shared notion and understanding of authority, even if it is contested. What is key about the performative aspect of statehood is that it works with an audience (Klem 2024). In the case of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, there are various audiences including international governments and the residents of the area they administer. These performances are not accepted uncritically and are often challenged, contested, and reduced, with Idlib’s population navigating or adapting to the group’s attempt to demonstrate power, often on a case-by-case basis (Drevon and Haenni 2021). But here Wedeen’s theories around acting ‘as if’ come to mind; the audience (perhaps in this case supporting actors would be more appropriate) do not necessarily have to believe the performance is convincing to reinforce it. In the many cases where they are performing and acting ‘as if’ they do, they help reproduce the authority and bolster the social power and control behind it. This practice is a form of camouflage, engaging and complying with and reifying the state ideology, even if it is not a sincere belief.

Referring to a public celebration by the recognised government in Yemen, Wedeen noted ‘the event had the effect of exercising power by announcing it publicly’ (2003, 689). Such processes are also evident in the performance of legal identity control by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and the participation in the performance by those who are given said identity. All this helps constantly reinforce the group as rulers of the area, even if, unlike the example in Wedeen’s case, the governing power is not one that is recognised internationally.

Conclusion

Through the Salvation Government, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham is trying to show that the hand of the state is present from birth, through life, and ultimately at death, as with other governments across the world. By also engaging Idlib residents in the practice of legal identity, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham is pushing them to tacitly and openly participate in acknowledging its power.

Whatever shape or form it appears in, legal identity creates the impression of a state, and conjures up relations to it. Navaro-Yashin (2012, 6), in her study of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, argued that non-universally recognised entities have to be ‘crafted in two senses … through actual material practices on its land and territory and through the use of political imagination’. The same is occurring in Idlib through legal identity and its reproduction; something is being made up and created, not just the defined border of the land Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham controls, but the idea of an entity represented by the Salvation Government to which citizens have some form of relation.

Like other armed groups, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham is probing, experimenting with particular forms of authority that change and adjust, and are at some points accepted, at others rejected. These shifting flaws and imperfections in the governance attempt are instructive to highlight the ways in which armed groups can and do use civil documentation to garner legitimacy and project state power, with its messy complications and interweaving strands. Whether the group is seen as the state or not depends on the viewpoint it is seen through. But the complexity that exists in these cases and highlighted by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham is not something to be simplified in analysis, but integral to understanding their very nature; not fully a recognised state, not simply an armed group, but entities entangled in the messy contradictions that exist between these two conditions.

Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham has used legal identity just like other unrecognised governing entities that have an agenda of seeking implied or explicit forms of recognition through the documents they issue (Sosnowski and Klem 2024). Examining the group alongside the tactics and impact of its sovereign performances can help enrich our understanding of not only legal identity but also of how insurgencies and unrecognised states perform for various audiences. The case of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham differs from others recounted in this collection by being more nascent than de-facto states that have existed in some cases for several decades. But the relative youth of the group’s experiment in governance, and the growing importance Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham appears to place on legal identity as part of these efforts, make it all the more relevant to study, highlighting the centrality that legal identity documentation plays in governance by unrecognised but de-facto entities.

While probing such aspects, it is also important to remember the very real impacts these documents and practices have on citizens’ lives. For many, these are not abstract phenomenon, but real and tangible problems that confront them when attempting to document their births, their deaths, and a whole range of life in between.

Acknowledgments

I would firstly like to thank Marika Sosnowski and Bart Klem for both being excited about the proposed idea for this article and then helping unjumble some of the thoughts in various drafts. Thanks also to the two anonymous reviewers for their positive suggestions. And to all the participants of the Hamburg workshop for their constructive comments that helped guide my thinking.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For most Muslims, jihad generally consists of an internal effort at living devoutly and an external one focused on spreading the message of Islam. The term ‘transnational jihad’ refers to a very specific reading of this idea of jihad by Islamic extremists, often exported violently. The term is used in this paper to identity those who support or engage in violence outside of Syria and not just as part of the conflict against the Damascus-based government.