A Heuristic Equation of Transformation, Justice, and Violence in Post‐Assad Syria

Abstract The Syrian conflict, in a fragile transition after Bashar al‐Assad's ouster, raises urgent questions about the conditions for sustainable peace. Rather than viewing postwar Syria solely through the lens of return and reconstruction, this article conceptualizes peace through a heuristic framework in which enabling variables are persistently eroded by structural violence. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in six Syrian provinces, it employs a triangulated qualitative methodology combining participant observation, visual ethnography, and documentary analysis. The findings show that communities enact resilience through grassroots reconstruction, memorialization, and everyday survival, even as authoritarian continuities, fragmented governance, and humanitarian collapse dominate. Symbolic gestures mask carceral practices and inequality. Women and children, central to survival, remain excluded from decision making, reinforcing cycles of vulnerability. The study introduces an original interpretive model—Peace = (X × I) + (T + R) − S—where conflict transformation (X), institutional peace building (I), transitional justice (T), and representation (R) interact but are undermined by structural violence (S). This framework functions not as a mathematical but a conceptual device linking theory with field evidence, situating Syria's transition between negative peace and the unrealized promise of positive peace.