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Building Bridges
Strengthening Trust & Conflict Resolution for Sustainable Peace in Syria
A comprehensive qualitative research initiative spanning seven Syrian governorates, engaging 700 participants across 56 community dialogue sessions and 7 intensive mediation and negotiation workshops. This mind map presents the integrated findings, cross-cutting themes, community-identified pathways to reconciliation, and workshop outcomes from the full body of research conducted between November 2025 and April 2026.
Research Overview
The Building Bridges project was designed to address a persistent gap in Syria-related research: the absence of community-grounded, narrative-driven evidence that centers how residents themselves understand what happened, what continues to shape their lives, and what they believe might allow relationships to mend.
Project Rationale
Most post-conflict analysis in Syria has operated from the outside — through displacement statistics, damage assessments, and macro-level governance frameworks. This project begins from the inside: from the way residents narrate grievances, reflect on forces sustaining fragmentation, and identify pathways toward reconciliation on their own terms. The seven governorates were chosen deliberately for their diversity of conflict trajectories, demographic compositions, and governance histories.
Research Design
Qualitative narrative methodology using multi-session data integration. All sessions within each governorate were treated as a single dataset, enabling cross-group comparison. Three-stage thematic coding (open, axial, selective) yielded 64 to 102 codes per governorate. Participant quotations preserved in Arabic with English interpretation, anonymized, with sensitive handling of sectarian, tribal, and political dimensions.
Two-Phase Approach
Phase One consisted of community dialogue sessions across all seven governorates (56 sessions, 700 participants). Phase Two extended into intensive four-day Mediation and Negotiation Workshops in all seven governorates — Homs (22–25 Dec 2025), Hama (23–29 Dec 2025), Latakia (24–27 Jan 2026), Deir Ezzor (7–10 Feb 2026), Raqqa (2–9 Mar 2026), Aleppo (23–26 Mar 2026), and Damascus (30 Mar–2 Apr 2026). These workshops transitioned selected participants from collective reflection to applied mediation practice, equipping them with conflict analysis tools, the Onion/Iceberg Model, and scenario-based simulations grounded in the specific grievances surfaced during dialogue sessions.
Geographic Scope
Homs bore the brunt of urban siege warfare. Hama carries layered historical wounds. Latakia occupies a misunderstood coastal position. Deir Ezzor is defined by resource wealth alongside institutional neglect. Raqqa endured successive authorities. Aleppo, the industrial capital, carries a deep east–west divide and complex Arab–Kurdish relations. Damascus, the capital, absorbed the war in uneven ways across its peripheral neighborhoods. Together, they form a mosaic whose patterns and divergences are equally instructive.
Three Layers of Grievance
Across all seven governorates, grievances were analyzed through three interconnected layers that reinforce one another. Structural failings amplify communal distance, and communal tension deepens the personal burden of hardship.
Personal Grievances
The daily pressures participants described most immediately: unstable employment, declining health services, interrupted education, rising costs, and the erosion of the ability to plan even a few months ahead. In Hama, participants described going days without work and without any sense of security. In Deir Ezzor, families pay 7 million SYP per semester for private tutoring.
Communal Grievances
Social distance that reshapes relationships — fragmentation between neighborhoods, stigma, self-censorship, and the quiet thinning of bonds. In Homs, shared spaces have been socially emptied. In Latakia, participants described still being afraid of each other. In Raqqa, social labeling from successive authorities continues to shape suspicion even when unspoken.
Structural Grievances
Institutional failures that amplify everything else — governance opacity, corruption, selective law enforcement, unequal resource distribution, and the perceived absence of justice. In Deir Ezzor, oil symbolizes both injustice and potential reconciliation. Across all seven governorates, justice surfaced as the gravitational center.
Voices from the Field
Each governorate carries a distinct conflict trajectory, emotional register, and social dynamic. Click any card to expand the full context, key conflict drivers, and community-identified recommendations.
Homs
Homs served as one of the conflict’s most devastating urban theaters. Facilitators documented trembling hands, teary eyes, deep sighs, and nervous laughter. Many participants disclosed these sessions were the first time they had spoken openly about their wartime experiences.
People in Homs have not given up on coexistence. They continue to reach each other in small ways — ways that matter more than they realize.
Hama
Pain absorbed rather than articulated. Years of compounding pressure settled into daily life. Cautious tone. Complex historical memory. The workshop came at a pivotal moment after liberation.
The problem is not one incident — the problem is that it accumulated over years.
The road is long, but it is not closed.
Latakia
Silence as data. Hesitations and careful qualifications. Perceived as insulated from violence yet participants described absorbing displacement, detention, and economic collapse with less visibility.
We are still afraid of each other.
Deir Ezzor
A governorate thinking aloud after years of compression. Fatigue with campaigns, opacity, stereotypes. Fear shifted from violence to invisibility. 92+ thematic codes — second-highest density.
Oil has become a curse for the people of the city.
The labeling of people from the eastern region as ISIS members.
Raqqa
Densest dataset — 102 codes. The concept of ‘negative peace’ was spontaneously generated by participants. The workshop uniquely included institutional actors alongside community members.
I believe we are living in a state of negative peace.
Marginalization in Raqqa has existed since the French mandate.
Aleppo
Syria’s industrial capital, carrying a deep east–west divide, complex Arab–Kurdish relations, and layered returnee-vs-stayer tensions. Participants spoke carefully but returned repeatedly to dignity, fairness, and coexistence. The Sfarat al-Salam women’s market and the carpentry and tailoring workshops of Bustan al-Qasr and al-Kalaseh were named as quiet spaces where trust still gets rebuilt without slogans.
Rates of trauma-related disorders have risen in the community, especially among women and children, as a result of fear and loss.
Damascus
The capital as a miniature of wider Syria. Participants came from Jaramana, Ghouta, Duwaila, Daraya, Douma, Adra, Mezzeh, Tadamon, Zahira, Harasta, Sbeineh, Al-Tall, Al-Nabk, and Dir Asafir — each locality carrying its own memory. The political transition of late 2024 was referred to variously as ‘al-suqūt’ (the fall) or ‘al-taḥrīr’ (the liberation) — the choice of term was itself informative.
Inflation, poverty, and unemployment are the triad of inability.
Cross-Cutting Themes
Six themes converged across all seven governorates — surfaced by participants themselves, not imposed by the research framework.
Justice & Accountability
The gravitational center. Recognition, fairness, due process, and prevention of repetition — not revenge.
Economic Hardship
Both a divider that intensifies competition and a potential unifier that creates shared conditions forcing cooperation.
Misinformation
Accelerants of existing tension. They gain traction because trust is already fragile.
Youth as Stabilizers
Both vulnerable and central to the future. Investment as long-term conflict prevention.
Community-Led Solutions
The most trusted pathway. They should complement — not replace — formal justice.
Memory Integration
Not forgetting but integrating. Silence breeds rumor; recognition stabilizes narrative.
Seven Pathways to Reconciliation
Participants articulated reconciliation as a layered, gradual process — legal, moral, social, and economic.
Acknowledgment
Recognition of suffering as the starting point.
Moral Courage
Institutional transparency and procedural clarity.
Everyday Encounters
Schools, markets, and workplaces dissolving mistrust through repetition.
Community Initiatives
Grassroots dialogue, volunteer efforts, informal mediation.
Youth Investment
Education and employment as long-term conflict prevention.
Economic Cooperation
Shared livelihoods creating interdependence.
Integrating Memory
Structured documentation preventing narrative fragmentation.
Methodology Pipeline
Open Coding
Initial categories from participant statements.
Axial Coding
Linking to broader themes: justice, identity, trust.
Selective Coding
64 to 102 thematic codes per governorate.
Narrative Reconstruction
Preserving emotional authenticity and original voices.