Syria Muslim Brotherhood After the Arab Spring

Since 2011, the Syria Muslim Brotherhood (SMB, hereafter) activism has been going through a shift at both political and military level. This paper explores various elements of this shift to explain the expansion of SMB political opportunity structure as well as the evolvement of their internal organizational structure and within the wider structure of the Syrian opposition and finally the framing approach adopted by the SMB to mobilize people and communities. The SMB’s efforts to institutionalize the opposition in exile and mobilize a wider spectrum of the Syrian society including the poor and middle class have helped increase their popular bases. On the military front, SMB lack of needed experience and resources hinder their progress in the battle field. Nevertheless, SMB continued to verify its engagement strategies based on application of the opportunity and threat analysis which helped expanding its operational space as a political, military and social movement laying the ground for a presumably steady role of the SMB in the post conflict era.