Fabrice Balanche

Fabrice Balanche (born November 3, 1969 in Belfort, France)[1] is a geographer and specialist in the political geography of Syria, Lebanon, and the Middle East in general.[2][3]

Biography

In 2000, he defended his thesis The Alaouites, space and power in the Syrian coastal region: an ambiguous national integration, which was taken up and published in 2006 under the title The Alaouite region and the Syrian power.[4]

He has a Doctorate in political geography[5][6] from the University of Tours (2000)[7] and an associate in geography.[8]

He lived for ten years between Lebanon and Syria,[9] countries which represent his main fields of study[7] since 1990.[5] His field of research focuses on the interaction between power, community and territory.[5]

On November 29, 2013, he obtained the accreditation to direct research on the theme: The community factor in the analysis of Syrian and Lebanese space.[10]

He is a lecturer[11] in geography, authorized to supervise research, assistant professor of geography and director of research[12] at the University of Lyon 2,[5] where he headed the Research Group on the Mediterranean and the Middle East (GREMMO ) until the end of 2015, the date of cessation of its activities.[7][13][14][15]

In 2012, he published the Atlas of the Arab Middle East, a work devoted to the four states of Bilad al-Sham which, according to Confluences Méditerranée, brings "in an editorial landscape already provided (...) a real added value" notably thanks to its “original and educational” cartography.[16]

He lodged an administrative appeal for having been excluded in December 2014 from the candidacy for the post of lecturer at the Institut d'études politiques de Lyon.[17][18][19] The court ruled against him in December 2016.[20] According to the academic Jean-Claude Pacitto, the appeal of Fabrice Balanche highlighted "the real reasons - patronage, politics - which govern exclusions, in particular in the human and social sciences" in higher education establishments in France . This affair revealed "the domination of certain currents of thought on the studies devoted to the Middle East, often marked either by an indulgence towards Islamism, or through an extreme left prism, or both at the same time.”[21]

In 2015, Fabrice Balanche decided to leave Lyon and emigrate to the United States where he was a guest researcher at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think-tank[7][11][22][19] from 2015 to 2017, then at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

The Atlas of the Arab Near East was published in English by Brill under the title Atlas of the Near East: State Formation and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1918–2010. In February 2018, Fabrice Balanche published a book on the Syrian conflict in English: Sectarianism in Syria's Civil War, in which he explains the community aspects of the war in Syria.

In November 2018, he spoke at an international conference entitled "One hundred years after the Eastern Front, Armenia and the Levant between wars and peace" along with experts on Armenia such as Richard G. Hovannisian, Claude Mutafian or Gérard Dédéyan which took place at the Municipal Library of Lyon.[23]

During the Syrian civil war, he was accused of having a pro-Assad bias of the conflict, which he defended himself by asserting himself as “realistic.”[24] He argued that his candidacy for a post of lecturer at Sciences Po Lyon had been rejected because not only of “patronage reasons,” but because his analyses on Syria went “against a certain ideological position, which turned out to be the Foreign Ministry's line on the Syrian revolution."[25]

Publications

Books
  • The Alaouite region and the Syrian power, editor Karthala, 2006, 313 p. ( ISBN 2845868189 )
  • Atlas of the Arabic Near East, Paris-Sorbonne University Press RFI, 2012, 135 p. ( ISBN 978-284-050-7970 )
  • Geopolitics of the Middle East, La Documentation française, Documentation photographique, Paris, 2014
  • Atlas of the Near East: State Formation and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1918–2010, Brill, Amsterdam, 2017
  • Sectarianism in Syria's Civil War, Washington Institute, 2018.

Collective works

An Arab Spring? : conference, Brest, 25–27 January 2012 / the Geopolitics of Brest; under the direction of Linda Gardelle; with contributions from Fabrice Balanche, Bernard Botiveau, Assia Boutaleb ... et al. / Paris: L'Harmattan, 2013. Articles "The die is cast: the Kurds cross the Euphrates", in Syria: a hope? Les Cahiers de l'Orient n ° 122, spring 2016. The battle of Aleppo is the center of the Syrian chessboard, February 5, 2016, Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The die is cast, the Kurds cross the Euphrates, January 5, 2016, Washington Institute for the Near East Policy. The Alawi community and the Syrian crisis, Middle East Institute, May 14, 2015. Syria: civil war and the internationalization of the conflict, Eurorient, n ° 42, 2013. Geography of the Syrian revolt, Outre Terre, n ° 27, September 2011. Clientelism, communitarianism and territorial fragmentation in Syria, A Contrario, March 2009. Syria, article on the Encyclopedia Universalis (collective writing)

Reception

He is regularly quoted in the written press on the subject of Syria[26] in order to present his methods of mapping the Syrian civil war and to express his point of view on the situation.[5][27][28][29]

He is recognized and named as an expert on the issues of development of the Middle East and the Syrian crisis[7][30] and as "one of the leading French experts on Syria."[5]

References
  1. "Fabrice Balanche | Université Lyon - Academia.edu". univ-lyon2.academia.edu. Retrieved 2017-02-27.
  2. Cairn.info
  3. www.asile.org/meyssan. "Fabrice Balanche". www.bibliomonde.com. Retrieved 2017-02-25.
  4. "Comptes rendus". A Contrario : Revue Interdisciplinaire de Sciences Sociales (in French): 208–227. 2009-06-22. ISSN 1660-7880. Retrieved 2017-02-25.
  5. "The Political Geography of Syria's War: An Interview With Fabrice Balanche". 2015-01-30. Retrieved 2017-02-22.
  6. Balanche, Fabrice (2017-01-02). "Syrie : pourquoi l'accord de cessez-le-feu n'annonce pas la fin de la guerre". Le Figaro (in French). ISSN 0182-5852. Retrieved 2017-02-22.
  7. "Fabrice Balanche - The Washington Institute for Near East Policy". www.washingtoninstitute.org. Retrieved 2017-02-22.
  8. "VIDEO. Après la reprise d'Alep-Est, quels pourraient être les prochains objectifs de Bachar al-Assad?". 2016-12-14. Retrieved 2017-02-22.
  9. RTS.ch. "Geopolitis". rts.ch. Retrieved 2017-02-22.
  10. "The Work of Fabrice Balanche on Alawites and Syrian Communitarianism reviewed by Nikolaos van Dam". 2013-11-30. Retrieved 2017-02-28.
  11. Balanche, Fabrice (2017-02-10). "Syrie : six mois pour libérer Raqqa de l'État islamique". Le Figaro (in French). ISSN 0182-5852. Retrieved 2017-02-22.
  12. "Fabrice Balanche | Université Lyon - Academia.edu". univ-lyon2.academia.edu. Retrieved 2017-02-22.
  13. "Fabrice Balanche | Middle East Institute". www.mei.edu. Retrieved 2017-02-22.
  14. Gremmo.mom.fr
  15. Mom.fr
  16. Pierre Blanc (2012-10-10). "Notes de lecture". Confluences en Méditerranée (in French): 222–4. ISSN 1148-2664. Retrieved 2017-02-25.
  17. Sillières, Antoine. "Nominations à l'université : le cri d'alarme d'un chercheur lyonnais". www.lyoncapitale.fr (in French). Retrieved 2017-02-22.
  18. "Recalé par l'IEP de Lyon, l'enseignant spécialiste du monde arabe saisit la justice". Lyonmag.com (in French). Retrieved 2017-02-22.
  19. "Nomination : l'enseignant-chercheur fait condamner l'IEP de Lyon" (in French). 2016-12-24. Retrieved 2017-02-22.
  20. , Causeur.fr
  21. Jean-Claude Pacitto, «L'indépendance d'esprit est en danger dans les universités françaises», lefigaro.fr, 26 septembre 2017
  22. "Pour Fabrice Balanche, la France est forcée de faire avec Bachar". Croix (Paris, France) (in French). 2015-11-17. ISSN 0242-6056. Retrieved 2017-02-22.
  23. "Colloque : " 100 ans après le Front de l'Est, l'Arménie et le Levant entre guerres et paix "" (in French). 2018-10-01.
  24. Jean-Dominique Merchet, Fabrice Balanche : «En Syrie, une reconstruction avec les moyens du bord», L'Opinion, 14 mars 2019.
  25. Fabrice Balanche : « Sur le dossier syrien, la domination d’une école de pensée marque la fin du pluralisme », entretien Fabrice Balanche, mediapart.fr, 29 janvier 2017
  26. "Alep : pourquoi les rebelles ont-ils perdu ?" (in French). 2016-12-14. Retrieved 2017-02-22.
  27. géopolitique, Steve Nadjar, Journaliste Responsable contenu du site/Spécialisé en. "Fabrice Balanche, géographe spécialiste de la Syrie : " L'utopie mobilisatrice des djihadistes demeure la destruction d'Israël "". Actualités Juives (in French). Retrieved 2017-02-22.
  28. "Syrie : "Il est trop tôt pour parler de tournant", estime Fabrice Balanche" (in French). 2012-07-17. Retrieved 2017-02-22.
  29. "Daech espère des représailles contre les musulmans". 24heures.ch/. Retrieved 2017-02-22.
  30. "Fabrice Balanche : biographie, actualités et émissions France Culture". France Culture (in French). Retrieved 2017-02-25.
  • "Fabrice Balanche". Université Lumière-Lyon-II (in French). October 2015. Retrieved 27 February 2017.
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