Spectrums of death
A spectrum of violence was operating in Syria well before the revolution, but since 2011, it has been reconfigured. It allows the Syrian regime to deploy gradual techniques that create uneven death worlds. The spectrum of violence starts with the fear of being arbitrarily arrested and subjugated to torture. It includes the siege and subsequent politics of starvation. It involves the various ways Syrians are tortured and indiscriminately killed. In many of these cases, torture is not performed to gain information, but rather to actualize state power. The combination of direct and indirect violence that Syrians have experienced since 2011 has led to catastrophic humanitarian conditions.68
The Syrian regime and its allies have created a spectrum of death worlds where bodies are subjected to various forms of violence. The cruelty of a technique does not have a universal impact; its effect varies from one body to another. For example, crossing a checkpoint has an uneven impact, depending on various factors including the place of birth or the last name of a person. Some people have reported that their unusual last names have helped them bypass certain checkpoints, whereas others have disappeared or were killed because they had the wrong family names.69 Since 2011, Syrians living in regime-controlled areas have been under a constant threat of being stopped, searched, and arrested. In many cases, residents of a neighborhood construct a mental map of the level of dangerousness in the surrounding areas. They know where the most dangerous checkpoints are and which ones are more lenient. For men, there is the fear of being conscripted into the army. Women are often sexually harassed and raped at these checkpoints. A UN Human Rights Council report details the violence women endure at checkpoints by government soldiers and pro-regime militias. In one case,
a young woman who had been stopped at a checkpoint in a suburb of Damascus in October 2012 was taken to a military vehicle, subjected to mock executions, and raped by a Syrian army officer. Afterwards, the officer burned her hair and she was subsequently taken to a detention centre.70
In some cases, young men had to choose between two bad options. If they stayed home, they could face conscription; if they left, they might be killed by a sniper or arrested at a checkpoint.71 Evidently, not all checkpoints are the same, as a 2014 study about Aleppo has shown.72 The Karaj al-Hajez crossing point was known as the Death Checkpoint because many Aleppans lost their lives trying to cross it.73 Then there are the various spatial strategies utilized by the regime to control the urban texture. They include roadblocks, snipers positioned on rooftops, or the siege of an undesirable area. The gradation in the politics of cruelty goes all the way to the starvation of entire quarters, such as al-Yarmouk camp in Damascus, as one example among many.74
The uneven deployment of the politics of death is used to punish and reward specific areas. For instance, the regime’s killing machine can target a liberated neighborhood incrementally to break the will of its inhabitants. There is often strong correlation between a neighborhood or village’s ability to develop successful grassroots politics and the level of punishment it receives. The more inhabitants are able to produce autonomous politics, the more they are perceived as a threat to sovereign power, and as a result, are punished.75 In 2016, this was the case of Ma’art al-Nouman, which was well organized and was one of the first cities to be liberated in 2012. Four years later, the al-Nusra Front tried to take control of the city, but the population rose against it by organizing large, daily protests.76 The regime perceived grassroots organizing against al-Nusra as a direct threat to its legitimacy. Through their struggles, protesters and organizers in Ma’art al-Nouman were essential in debunking the narrative that Assad had tried to impose since 2011. Since shortly after the first protests in 2011, Assad and state officials have insisted there is no authentic revolt in Syria, but only Sunni terrorist groups terrifying minorities.77 A few days after the protests in Ma’art al-Nouman, the regime’s jets targeted popular markets multiple times, killing dozens of civilians.78
The same logic of cruelty applied to individuals who played a crucial role in the revolt. For example, a media activist who videotaped a demonstration and uploaded it to YouTube would get a harsher treatment than a protester. Former prisoners explain that in many cases, media activists and doctors were subjected to more torture than FSA fighters, because they constituted a greater threat to the regime.79
Scales of death
A second lens through which one might examine the politics of death in Syria is the scale of violence. Necropolitical processes operate at different scales, starting at the micro-level of the body and going all the way to the macro-level that comprises an entire city. They can be deployed to inflict pain with precise intensity on specific parts of a prisoner’s body, as well as to target an entire neighborhood with chemical weapons. In addition, these necropolitical processes work at the level of an entire nation and should be understood as part of a genocidal politics. One of the main implications of necropolitics on Syria is how the combined effect of various techniques initially curtailed, and later reversed the growth of the population. At the national level, the size of the Syrian population fell from 21 million in 2010 to 17.7 million at the end of 2014. The combination of displacement and deaths led to a 23 percent drop in the projected size of the population in 2014.80
If a region is too difficult or costly to control, due to the inhabitants’ organizing and level of resistance, the regime considers it to be enemy territory and targets it indiscriminately. This was the case of Dara’a in the south, Homs in the west, Idlib province in the northwest, and Hassakah in the northeast. Other areas were more docile in the beginning because of the violence they experienced in the past. Aleppo and Hama had witnessed the violence of the regime prior to the 2011 revolt.81 This could, in part, explain why certain social groups in Aleppo were initially reluctant to participate in large numbers in the protests.82 In addition, the regime built an extensive network of surveillance and repression in certain areas, making it risky to protest. It used the Berri Clan in Aleppo to repress the revolt and terrorize the population.83 This is, in part, why the level and intensity of protests were uneven in different regions. It is worth noting that the regime’s geography of violence correlates closely with its fear from specific areas. The more organized protesters in a city or a village are, the more brutal the militia’s or security branch’s response.
The distribution of violence follows a precise sectarian logic. The regime used sectarian arguments to justify its large-scale campaigns against Sunni areas that opposed it. Opposition coming from non-Sunni regions required micro-scale responses. In other words, the Sunni regions could be collectively punished, whereas such an action would be risky outside these regions. For instance, Latakia, a coastal city with a large Alawi population, witnessed a number of protests in 2011. The regime used snipers to repress protesters and blamed “armed gangs” for targeting residents from rooftops.84 Suweida, a city populated mostly by Druze, had several waves of protests and a massive refusal to join Assad’s army. The Sheikhs of Dignity and the prominent Sheikh Wahid al-Balous supported the protestors. To avoid a full-scale confrontation with the Druze community, the regime opted for micro-scale strategies. It began with the assassination of political opponents, including al-Balous.85 Then the regime created a Druze front to counter the rebellion from within, instead of using its Alawite and Shia militias, who might have sparked sectarian strife against Assad.86 Finally, it made it easier for ISIS to attack Suweida, to remind Druze that any alternative is worse than the regime.87
The same strategy of assassination and repression through local militias was employed in the Kurdish regions in the north. Mashaal Tammo, a progressive intellectual and a grassroots leader in the Kurdish region, was assassinated in his home, most likely by pro-regime gunmen.88 The Syrian regime, with the tacit help of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) repressed Kurdish grassroots rebellion and as such avoided a confrontation between Arab militias and the residents of these regions, many of whom are Kurdish.89 The regime’s politics of death deployed in Druze and Kurdish regions is about utilizing fine-tuned techniques rather than collective punishment, which was commonplace in most Sunni opposition areas.
The regime’s fine-tuning in non-Sunni regions was supplemented with an openly sectarian logic that mobilized some segments of minority groups against a rebellion that Assad presented as sectarian.90 This sectarian logic allowed for the use of large-scale destruction in Sunni regions, and the deployment of minimalist strategies in non-Sunni areas. In the end, necropolitics operates in different ways to create uneven territories where the scale of violence is determined according to the ways the regime defines the enemy and its territories.
In 2013, the Syrian army and allied militias were overstretched and unable to sustain confrontations on many fronts. Assad explained in a speech that it was essential to maintain control over what he defined as the “Useful Syria.”91 That region includes the most populated areas, the strategic coastal region in addition to Damascus and Aleppo, and the axis that connects them to each other. Anything outside that region was deemed un-useful and unnecessary for the survival of the regime. It was a region where the killing machine of the regime could operate on a large scale and with high intensity, without restrains or constrains. What is revealing about “Useful Syria” is what lies outside it or what the regime considered “Useless,” and as such could be disposed of. Useless Syria is the equivalent of Agamben’s camp, which is the space located outside the polity. It signals that lives (or zoe) in these geographic or conceptual spaces are worthless and can be obliterated without any real repercussions.
Velocity of death
To preserve sovereignty, the state deploys multiple death worlds operating at different speeds. For example, snipers positioned on rooftops can control several strategic axes in a city. The sniper takes away life instantly, if a person crosses a prohibited line. Evidently, the rebels have used snipers to target the regime’s soldiers; however, due to its domination of the sky, the regime has near absolute control over high buildings and structures where snipers are positioned. Aleppo is one such example where snipers control the tempo of death in the city. The Syrian state and its Russian allies have absolute control over vertical power. Their air forces can hit any target anywhere in Syria and cause immediate death. Further, the regime has various tools at its disposal to inflict slow death on entire regions. While the opposition did impose a criminal siege for a short period on Western Aleppo, and longer ones on Fuaa and Kafraya in northwestern Syria, the Syrian government has conducted most sieges.92 Slow death usually requires fewer resources and is less costly to the imposer; this is why the regime uses it on a large scale. In some cases, slow death is used because the regime’s military forces are overstretched and cannot fight on more fronts—either because they lack manpower or military equipment. In these cases, and when possible, the regime imposes a siege with devastating implications.
The medical field is one of the preferred targets of necropower. When medical facilities are targeted, several temporalities are often at work. By preventing medications and doctors from entering a besieged area, the regime effectively causes the slow death of the inhabitants. Mbembe explains that necropolitics is the “subjugation of life to the power of death.” The multiple velocities of death are used to manage the deterioration of an entire population. In certain cases and when the regime is not facing an eminent threat, the siege and the slow death that results is preferable to the immediate death due to barrel bombs.
The Syrian American Medical Society explains that in Ghouta, which is located in Eastern Damascus, “Many are simply awaiting their death at home.”93 Their report, titled “Slow Death: Life and Death in Syrian Communities Under Siege,” documents the operationalization of necropolitics in these areas.94 Even the United Nations has played an important role in covering up for the regime and helping it weaponize the medical field against civilians.95 The UN has delivered all humanitarian aid to the Syrian government, ignoring many NGOs’ pleas not to do so, and as a consequence, making it very difficult, if not impossible, for such aid to reach opposition areas.96 On the other end of the velocity spectrum, the regime’s jets have targeted hospitals and ambulances, causing instant death while destroying the medical infrastructures in many cities.97 The destruction of medical facilities is particularly cruel in wartime, but was nonetheless very efficient in breaking the cities in the liberated regions.
The prison system is another institution where different velocities of death are working together. The slow process of wearing out prisoners is part of a long-standing strategy in Syria. It can be accelerated or slowed down through various technologies of death. Jalal Mando, a media activist from Homs, witnessed during his arbitrary detention the sadistic torture and summary executions of many prisoners. In the Palestine Branch, a renowned security facility, he survived what he calls the Diarrhea Massacre. On New Year’s Eve 2014, a guard put laxative in the food without informing the prisoners; due to their frail bodies and weak immune systems, 35 inmates died that night.
Jalal explains that every prison is required to deliver, on a weekly basis, a specific number of corpses. If on a given week the Branch does not meet the required number of dead prisoners, then some individuals are selected to receive an air injection in their arterial lines and die quickly.98 In every cell, there is a homo sacer, a prisoner who is on his way to death due to starvation and exhaustion. He disconnects from his surroundings and stops eating or talking, gradually moving into a death zone or a liminal state. Neither dead nor alive.99 The homo sacer, or the disconnected, is usually the one chosen by the guards to kill to meet the threshold number.
Slow and quick deaths are often used simultaneously to achieve greater destruction. Throughout the war, the regime deployed slow death in certain areas as a form of collective punishment, while at the same time using its military capabilities elsewhere to achieve quicker results. These different temporalities of death were used effectively by the regime to crush the revolt and gradually subdue the population.
Remoteness of death
Death at close proximity usually means that its occurrence does not entail mediation. It is a death that involves intense manual work. A prisoner recounts that during torture sessions, the prison guards who did not beat an inmate relentlessly for hours without breaks could face torture themselves.100 A death at a distance requires the deployment of adequate technologies: the bullet of a sniper, a barrel bomb dropped from a helicopter, or a rocket launched from a nearby base.
The target of the war machine can be in the vicinity or not. Individuals can be killed with long-range weapons fired hundreds of miles away. On the opposite side of the spectrum, a prisoner can be killed in close proximity and by the bare hands of his torturer.
Necropolitics does not necessarily stop after the death of a prisoner. There are countless accounts of bodies that have been disfigured or dismembered after their deaths. Former prisoners have also provided detailed stories of large-scale operations of organ harvesting in Syrian prisons and hospitals.101 In the latter case, necropolitics works from within the body: it involves the collection of an organ that could potentially save the life of a militia fighter, and as a result revitalizes the killing machine.
The dangerousness of an individual determines whether he or she needs to be detained and tortured. Activists and opposition fighters experience the cruelest treatment, and are often tortured to death if arrested at a checkpoint. They frequently die in proximity of their torturer in the interrogation chamber. Many pro-regime doctors work in prisons to monitor the prisoner’s tortured body and assess whether it has reached its limit or can withstand additional pain. These death doctors use their expertise to guide the guard during the interrogation, to bring the body as close to death as possible but still prevent its demise.102 The collaboration between the prison system and the medical field produced new death worlds where the limits of the possible were extended. Those who survived their stay in Hospital 601 in Damascus tell nauseating stories about the treatment of prisoners, and how many preferred to go back to the horrifying prison rather than stay in the “slaughterhouse.”103
Those who are killed at a distance by the war machine usually inhabit a space the regime considers as threatening. They die as part of the collective punishment in enemy territory. Government militias were behind several sectarian massacres in the first two years of the conflict. The main purpose was to scare religious minorities and deter them from joining the rebellion. These massacres required direct contact with the body of the victim, and their outcomes were gruesome. They were used to dissuade people from participating in protests and to turn a popular revolt into a sectarian conflict.104
Accuracy of death
This dimension overlaps with several others described above. Oftentimes, closeness leads to more precise targeting, but this is not always the case. The sniper, for example, can kill his target with high precision from a distance. Necropolitics can be deployed to target bodies with high precision, but it can also be used in heuristic fashion against unruly territories. It punishes entire groups who live in the wrong neighborhood. The targeting of civilian sites with high precision can be very effective in terrorizing inhabitants and pushing them to surrender. Mbembe notes
how accuracy and purposeful inaccuracy are often two facets of the same necropolitical process. He notes, [o]ccupation of the skies […] acquires a critical importance, since most of the policing is done from the air. Various other technologies are mobilized to this effect […] Killing becomes precisely targeted. Such precision is combined with the tactics of medieval siege warfare adapted to the networked sprawl of urban refugee camps.105
To take one example, the Syrian regime targeted medical facilities in Aleppo with high precision. Between June and December 2016, the Syrian army and its allies completely destroyed medical facilities in the city by targeting them 73 times, in most cases multiple times each.106 The combination of precise attacks on vital facilities such as bakeries, gas stations, and hospitals, as well as the indiscriminate and massive attacks on east Aleppo with inaccurate barrel bombs, led to the fall of the city in December 2016.107
(In)Visibility of death
The state of emergency creates insides and outsides as well as zones of indeterminacy where the legal is suspended. Death worlds operate in uneven ways depending on the exposure they get and the type of witnesses that inhabit them. Torture inside a prison is invisible to those outside the facility, but is unabashedly visible to those inside. When ISIS tortures its prisoners to death and films them with high-quality equipment for the world to see, its goal is to create a death world where the inside and outside are indistinguishable. The difference between ISIS and the Syrian state is not about the level of cruelty, but rather the degree of visibility. When pro-regime militias kill more than 100 Aleppans and throw them in the river, knowing that the water will drag their bodies to east Aleppo, which is controlled by the opposition, their purpose is that the inhabitants of these neighborhoods see the massacre.108 The violence of such an act is mostly invisible to the outside, especially when media and images are easily manipulated, but is unmistakably visible to the inside. The question of visibility is essential, since it is used by the state to remind the population of the high cost of opposing it. On the one hand, visibility of violence allows the regime to re-educate the rebellious population; on the other, it hides the violence from those who do not need re-education, since they adhere to the same hegemonic framework. In addition, the regime has an interest in hiding the violence from powerful foreign players who could use graphic images to undermine its legitimacy. In some cases, inside and outside are not clearly defined. Agamben notes that:
the state of exception is neither external nor internal to the juridical order, and the problem of defining it concerns precisely a threshold, or a zone of indifference, where inside and outside do not exclude each other but rather blur with each other.109
In August 2012, the Syrian army massacred more than 500 inhabitants in Daraya, southwest of Damascus, and left “Assad or we burn the country” inscriptions on the walls. Shortly after the tragedy, a pro-regime journalist embedded in the Syrian army was dispatched to the crime scene to ask children holding their dead mother indecent questions.110 Surrounded by soldiers who had massacred the inhabitants, the same journalist interviewed an injured woman languishing in a cemetery instead of rescuing her.111 In such instances, the boundaries between inside and outside are blurred. The regime’s barbarism is shown to terrify the enemy and mislead their supporters. Overall, the combination of these techniques of state terror should be understood as part of a genocidal politics.112
This process of reorganizing society in a way that makes genocide acceptable to a majority is essential. This process is gradual, as the allies progressively internalize the regime’s narrative about the “enemy.” For many, it starts with a complicit silence, which gradually becomes a vocal approbation. Throughout the process, the production of the enemy, namely, as a foreign agent, a Takfiri Salafist, or a terrorist, is an important step toward imposing a politics of death that is acceptable to a large segment of the population.113
The prison system in Syria
This section presents a brief history of the prison system in Syria and then proposes a conceptual framework to analyze its current dynamics. The prison system played a central role during the Syrian revolt, and is the central pillar of necropower. According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, the Syrian government arbitrarily detains almost 90 percent of all prisoners in Syria as of 2019. The remaining 10 percent are in ISIS, PYD, and opposition groups’ detention centers.114 Syrian writer and former political prisoner Mustafa Khalifeh explains, “[t]he history of Syria is a history of prison, concentration camps and massacres.”115 Prisons should be viewed as one strategy of violence among several others. As discussed above, there is a continuum of violence in Syria, and the prison is only one tool among many.
The modern Syrian carceral system has a long history that begins with the French colonial occupation in the 1920s. The French mandate relied on a complex network of surveillance and coercion to maintain power and prevent revolts against the colonial order. Revolutionaries were severely punished, and in the event they presented an imminent danger, were publicly executed. During the French mandate, prisoners were often used as forced labor.116 After independence, Husni al-Zaim and Adib al-Shishakli, who seized power through military coups respectively in 1949 and 1951, both expanded the police state and the prison system.
While the Syrian regime utilizes a wide array of strategies to maintain power, the carceral system is a central institution and essential for its existence. The Syrian prison system is the necropolitical space par excellence, and it is the institution where the state of exception operates seamlessly, with little obstruction. Political prisoners spend many years, oftentimes several decades, in prison without trial or communication with the outside world. Torture is part of their daily routine, while humiliation and shaming is an essential part of the prison system. Syrian novelist Ibrahim Samuel, who spent many years in prison and wrote about his experience afterwards, explains, “[m]y challenge to myself was to convey the absolute simultaneity of life and death that is part of the prison experience.”117 What he describes is the zone of death, where life and death become indistinguishable.
Sednaya prisoners depict a horrific picture of inmates who cannot endure more torture and therefore disconnect from their surrounding by refusing to eat or speak. They slowly walk toward their demise.118 American academic Miriam Cooke, who has written extensively about dictatorship and prisons in Syria, notes that “[p]rison narratives provide a prism onto life under authoritarian rule.”119 The politics of death under Hafez al-Assad reached a peak in the 1980s. Most of the violence during that period was deployed within the massive and secretive prison system that the Syrian regime had built; it was also, in part, inherited from the French colonial power and the autocratic leaders who ruled Syria after independence.
Any effort to understand necropolitical processes in Syria requires a thorough examination of the carceral system. Several things have made this institution particularly important in Syria since 1963. First, the regime uses it extensively to punish its enemies and dissuade Syrians from opposing its rule. With the exception of a few short periods of open defiance to the Assad regime, prison as an institution was effective in silencing dissent and producing a docile population. Second, prison provides a space to conceal state violence from the larger society. The level of violence deployed in Tadmur and various security branches was mostly ignored by a large segment of Syrian society until 2011. Third, prison is used to incarcerate the unproductive surplus population. With high unemployment rates and a section of the poor classes involved in petty crime, prison performs its basic task of locking up the unruly reserve army of labor. However, the distinction between political and criminal prisoners is often problematic, since it is the ruling classes that create this taxonomy. Laleh Khalili and Jillian Schwedler note,
[D]rawing a clear boundary between political and criminal prisoners is problematic. Criminalizing armed struggle in a counterinsurgency, for example, would increase the number of “criminal” prisoners, where in fact, those prisoners would consider themselves political. Beyond such conceptual confusion, “crimes” itself is a political category, over-determined by the constantly changing mores and norms […] and by the definition of politics itself.120
The Syrian revolt has shown that the boundaries between the political and criminal are at best problematic, and at worst part of the necropolitical process. Riyad al-Turk, the leftist opposition leader and former secretary-general of the Communist Party (Political Bureau), spent close to 20 years in prison under Hafez al-Assad and his son Bashar. He dubbed Syria the “Kingdom of Silence,” because no criticism of the regime, no matter how mild, was permissible. The mass production of silence in Syrian society revolves around a violent police state, surveillance agencies, and a robust prison system. Citing Frank Graziano, Sune Haugbolle notes,
Rumours of violence renders the public both “audience” because it “witnesses” the abstract spectacle of detention centers [and] “actors” because its status as audience—however passive it may appear—is a function integral to the efficacy of the spectacle by which power is being generated.121
The Syrian carceral state uses a vast array of techniques to impose this silence. If self-censorship and intimidation do not work, the regime deploys the various technologies of death at its disposal, and the prison system is its cornerstone.
Mustafa Khalifeh, who spent 13 years in ten different prisons (including the infamous Tadmur prison), explains, “[t]he regime wanted to empty society from politics.”122 He points out, “Syria’s history is a history of prisons, concentration camps, and massacres.” Without a thorough understanding of the prison system, it is impossible to comprehend the mechanisms of power in Syria. Khalifa asserts the centrality of prison in the Syrian topology of violence. He explains, “this regime came through violence, it has maintained power through violence, and it won’t be eradicated without violence.”123
It is essential not to view the prison system in Syria as simply a space of incarceration where the technologies of death are deployed against prisoners. This binary creates two distinct spaces (inside and outside) that are clearly separated. According to this view, necropolitics operates within well-defined spaces, but would typically be non-existent outside them. This minimalist definition that views prison as the space of incarceration prevents a full understanding of how the prison system operates in the Syrian context. At the same time, it is essential to avoid the maximalist view, according to which under Assad’s rule, the entire Syrian society lives in a large prison. Yassin Haj Saleh warns against such a maximalist definition, where the specificity of the prison experience disappears or is conflated with life experience outside it. As he notes, an expansive definition where distinctions between inside and outside are eliminated would be useless and ineffective to comprehend the strategies of power in Syria.124 At the same time, it is vital to highlight the shortcomings of the minimalist approach and its restrictive boundaries. The Syrian revolt shows that necropolitical processes operate well beyond the narrowly defined boundaries of prison.
The Syrian prison system should be understood as a complex institution, not simply the built space used to incarcerate inmates. Unlike prisons in the West, its primary purpose is to lock up political prisoners. While the main function of prisons in the United States is to maintain a racial order and generate profit,125 prisons in Syria operate at an economic loss, and their primary purpose is to maintain the Assad regime in power. The US prison became a central institution for the policing of the Black body and crushing resistance of the Civil Rights Movement. The “prison–industrial complex” plays a vital role in oppressing racial minorities and removing the disruptive surplus labor from public arenas. In addition, US politicians and companies have turned the coercive institution into a lucrative business.126 Yassin Haj Saleh explains that prisons in Syria are unproductive in the economic sense, and their management is not bureaucratized the way it is in Western countries.127 It is precisely because the human body is unproductive in Syria that it is disposable and can be tortured. Since the prison system in Syria defies any economic rationale, it could be viewed as a “prison non-industrial complex.”
While there is no economic incentive for the Syrian prison system, unlike its US counterpart, both are complex institutions. The US prison industrial complex is composed of several institutions, including the media, construction companies, lobbies and politicians, prison guard unions, etc. Likewise, Syrian prisons should be understood as a complex network of various institutions, and as such cannot be reduced to just the space of incarceration. The Syrian revolt has shown that strict separation between the checkpoints, the patrolling vans, and the network of snipers on the one hand, and the prison system on the other, is not sustainable. The prison system is a complex network with multiple nodes that include incarceration centers, security branches, checkpoints, and militias patrolling at night. The Syrian regime uses a multidimensional set of violent techniques, including intimidation and threats against individuals and their families as well as political assassinations. Snipers constitute a central node in the complex carceral network. They regulate the space through their accurately calculated positioning. They shoot enemy targets in opposition neighborhoods, but also provide vertical control over regime areas through surveillance networks by, for example, preventing residents from circumventing a checkpoint through back alleys. During the revolt, the carceral system was expanded significantly by turning new spaces, including schools, Baath party offices, hospitals, and official buildings into detention centers.
One way to examine the scope of the prison system is through Agamben. The Italian philosopher explains that the killing machine needs to identify a specific space to operate. That space, according to Agamben, is not necessarily the one the enemy occupies. For him, the distinction between friend and enemy is not a valid one in the modern era. In a state of emergency, argues Agamben, power does not make such a distinction, but is rather interested in the figures identified above, namely, zoe and bios. In such a context, there is “absolute indeterminacy between inside and outside.” Likewise, it is impossible to distinguish between “observance and transgression of the law.”128 Following Agamben, there is a need to carve a space in between the minimalist conceptualization that confines prison to the enclosed space and the maximalist one that abolishes all boundaries.
Conclusion
This chapter examined the geography of violence in Syria since the Baath rise to power in 1963. One of the most effective tools the regime used against its political opponents is the state of emergency. It was utilized as an anti-politics machine to prevent the emergence of political spaces. When the Syrian revolt broke out in 2011, protesters’ most important demand was an end to the state of emergency and the release of political prisoners. During the uprising, the regime deployed an array of technologies of violence to crush the protests. These techniques were used effectively to undermine grassroots struggles. Today, the prison system is producing death at an industrial scale. Its boundaries have expanded to include new spaces while its scope is virtually unlimited.
Notes
68. The Syrian regime caused most of the destruction and killing, but other actors were involved as well. They include Russia, Iran, ISIS, the United States, and rebel groups. See this Human Rights Watch report: “Syria: events of 2017,” Human Rights Watch. Accessed May 19, 2019. www.hrw.org/world-report/2018/country-chapters/syria.
69. Amal Alachkar, “A Syrian scholar in exile,” News Deeply. Last modified October 8, 2013. Accessed May 19, 2019. www.newsdeeply.com/syria/community/2013/10/08/a-syrian-scholar-in-exile.
70. “Human rights situations that require the Council’s attention,” Human Rights Council Thirty-Seventh Session 26 February–23 March 2018, Agenda item 4. Conference room paper of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic. Accessed May 20, 2019. www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/CoISyria/A-HRC-37-CRP-3.pdf.
71. Raluca Albu and Raad Rahman, “Leaving Aleppo: crossing Syria’s most dangerous checkpoints,” The Rumpus. Last modified September 19, 2016. Accessed May 20, 2019. https://therumpus.net/2016/09/leaving-aleppo-crossing-syrias-most-dangerous-checkpoints/.
72. David Kilcullen, Nate Rosenblatt, and Jwanah Qudsi, “Mapping the conflict in Syria: Aleppo, Syria,” Caerus. Last modified February 2014. Accessed May 20, 1019. http://caerusassociates.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Caerus_AleppoMappingProject_FinalReport_02-18-14.pdf.
73. Lava Selo, “The deadly checkpoint that divides Syria’s biggest city,” NPR. September 6, 2013. Accessed May 20, 1019. www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2013/09/05/219258334/the-deadly-checkpoint-that-divides-syrias-biggest-city.
74. Salim Salameh, “Starving the Palestinian Yarmouk Camp,” Carnegie Middle East Center. Last modified April 28, 2014. Accessed May 20, 1019. https://carnegie-mec.org/diwan/55450.
75. Zabadani, which is located in the west near the Lebanese border, was the first to organize a democratic election and elect a revolutionary council. The city was besieged and starved until it surrendered, and its inhabitants were forcefully displaced. With a few exceptions, the regime prevented food and medication from entering the city. See Anne Barnard and Hwaida Saas, “In Syrian town cut off from the world, glimpses of deprivation,” New York Times. Last modified January 14, 2016. Accessed May 20, 2019. www.nytimes.com/2016/01/15/world/middleeast/madaya-syria.html. [See also https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/inside-madaya-syrian-town-assad-starved-death]
76. Sadik Abdul Rahman, “Maarrat al-Nu’man: a hundred days of confrontation with al-Nusra Front,” Al-Jumhuriya. Last modified June 21, 2016. Accessed May 20, 2019. www.aljumhuriya.net/en/content/maarrat-al-nu’man-hundred-days-confrontation-al-nusra-front.
77. Barbara Walters, “Transcript: ABC’s Barbara Walters’ interview with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad,” ABC News. Last modified December 7, 2011. Accessed May 20, 2019. https://abcnews.go.com/International/transcript-abcs-barbara-walters-interview-syrian-president-bashar/story?id=15099152.
78. “Syria conflict: air strikes on Idlib markets ‘kill dozens’,” BBC World News. Last modified April 19, 2016. Accessed May 20, 2019. www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-36084848.
79. Ellen Francis, “The war on Syria’s doctors,” Foreign Policy. Last modified August 11, 2016. Accessed May 20, 2019. https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/08/11/the-war-on-syrias-doctors-assad-medicine-underground/; and Peter Beaumont, “Shoot the journalists: Syria’s lesson from the Arab spring,” The Guardian. Last modified February 25, 2012. Accessed May 20, 2019. www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/26/syria-targets-journalists.
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90. Paulo Gabriel Hilu Pinto, “The shattered nation: the sectarianization of the Syrian Conflict,” in Nader Hashemi and Danny Postel (Eds.), Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
91. Matthias Sulz, “Loyalty over geography: re-interpreting the notion of ‘Useful Syria,’” Syria Comment. Last modified September 6, 2018. Accessed May 20, 2019. www.joshualandis.com/blog/loyalty-over-geography-re-interpreting-the-notion-of-useful-syria-by-matthias-sulz/.
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95. Annie Sparrow, “How a UN health agency became an apologist for Assad atrocities,” Middle East Eyes. Last modified January 16, 2017. Accessed May 20, 2019. www.middleeasteye.net/big-story/how-un-health-agency-became-apologist-assad-atrocities.
96. Annie Sparrow, “How UN Humanitarian Aid has propped up Assad: Syria shows the need for reform,” Foreign Affairs. Last modified September 20, 2018. Accessed May 20, 2019. www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/syria/2018-09-20/how-un-humanitarian-aid-has-propped-assad.
97. Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian, “Hospitals become the front line in the Syrian Civil War,” Foreign Policy. Last modified May 31, 2017. Accessed May 20, 2019. https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/05/31/syria-hospitals-assad-civil-war-russia-usaid/.
98. Syria TV, “The necks of the neck and the neck ...” Jalal Mando, witness to the murders … O Freedom (English Subtitles). YouTube. Video File. August 2, 2018. Accessed May 20, 2019. www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9_ccYOWql0&frags=pl%2Cwn.
99. For an in-depth discussion, see Abdulhay Sayed, “In the Syrian prison: disconnected and desubjectified,” Global Dialogue 4, no. 2 (2014). Accessed May 20, 2019. http://globaldialogue.isa-sociology.org/in-the-syrian-prison-disconnected-and-desubjectified/.
100. Syria TV, “The necks of the neck and the neck …,”.
101. Lizzie Porter, “Former detainees recount torture, organ harvesting in Syria’s prisons,” Middle East Eyes. Last modified 13 August 2016. Accessed May 20, 2019. www.middleeasteye.net/news/former-detainees-recount-torture-organ-harvesting-syrias-prisons.
102. Tohama Marouf, “Tihameh known: credit for the children of Daraa out of jail in 2011 YAHRIYA,” (Arabic). YouTube. Video File. Syria TV. May 17, 2018. Accessed May 20, 2019. www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLCzolIUfo4&list=PLeMwite1QcQ3JIAdAEsJ_8ySjbjf0weai&index=34&frags=pl%2Cwn.
103. Louisa Loveluck and Zakaria Zakaria, “‘The hospitals were slaughterhouses’: a journey into Syria’s secret torture wards,” Washington Post. April 2, 2017. Accessed May 20, 2019. www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/the-hospitals-were-slaughterhouses-a-journey-intosyrias-secret-torture-wards/2017/04/02/90ccaa6e-0d61-11e7-b2bb-417e331877d9_story.html?utm_term=.bc0af0daa5b4.
104. Christoph Koettl, “UN reveals further evidence of atrocities in Syria,” Amnesty International USA. Last modified August 15, 2012. Accessed May 20, 2019. https://blog.amnestyusa.org/middle-east/un-reveals-further-evidence-of-atrocities-in-syria/.
105. Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” 28.
106. Maksymilian Czuperski, Faysal Itani, Ben Nimmo, Eliot Higgins, and Emma Beals, “Breaking Aleppo: Hospital Attacks,” Atlantic Council. Last modified February 2017. Accessed May 20, 2019. www.publications.atlanticcouncil.org/breakingaleppo/hospital-attacks/.
107. Eliot Higgins, Emma Beals, Ben Nimmo, Faysal Itani, and Maks Czuperski, “Breaking Aleppo,” Atlantic Council. Last modified February 2017. Accessed May 20, 2019. www.publications.atlanticcouncil.org/breakingaleppo/.
108. Martin Chulov and Mona Mahmood, ‘Syrian rebels recover scores of bodies from Aleppo River as floodwaters recede,” Guardian. Last modified January 29, 2013. www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/29/syrian-rebels-bodies-aleppo-canal.
109. Agamben, State of Exception, 23.
110. 0areej0, “Scandal of Al Dunya TV anchor in Daraya 26/8/2012,” (Arabic). YouTube. Video File. August 26, 2012. Accessed May 20, 2019. www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gCeE5e2k5g.
111. Janine di Giovanni, “Syria crisis: Daraya massacre leaves a ghost town still counting its dead,” Guardian. Last modified September 7, 2012. Accessed May 20, 2019. www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/07/syria-daraya-massacre-ghost-town.
112. Chip Carey, “Syria’s Civil War has become a genocide September,” World Policy 16 (2013). https://worldpolicy.org/2013/09/16/syrias-civil-war-has-become-a-genocide/.
113. A takfiri is a Muslim who accuses another Muslim of apostasy. While al-Qaeda and ISIS are takfiri groups, the large majority of the Islamist opposition rejected takfirism. The regime branded the entire opposition (Islamist and secular) of takfirism to legitimize its war against Sunnis who opposed Assad.
114. “Record of arbitrary arrests,” Syrian Network for Human Rights. September
24, 2018. Accessed May 20, 2019. http://sn4hr.org/blog/2018/09/24/record-of-arbitrary-arrests1/.
115. Mustafa Khalifeh, Interview with the author on Syria TV.
116. Joyce Laverty Miller, “The Syrian Revolt of 1925,” International Journal of Middle East Studies (1977): 550–5.
117. Cited in Miriam Cooke, “The cell story: Syrian prison stories after Hafiz Asad,” Middle East Critique 20, no. 2 (2011): 169–84.
118. Abdulhay Sayed, “In the Syrian prison: disconnected and desubjectified,” Global Dialogue 4, no. 2 (2014). Accessed May 20, 2019.
119. Cooke, “The cell story,” 184.
120. Laleh Khalili and Jillian Schwedler, “Introduction,” in Policing and Prisons in the Middle East—Formations of Coercion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 22–3.
121. Sune Haugbolle, “The victim’s tale in Syria: imprisonment, individualism, and liberalism,” in Laleh Khalili and Jillian Schwedler (Eds.), Policing and Prisons in the Middle East—Formations of Coercion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
122. Syria TV, “O Freedom Mustafa Khalifa: a witness on the Syrian shell that begins with cells,” YouTube. Video File. April 12, 2018. Accessed May 20, 2019. www.youtube.com/watch?v=weeIqvOS-xE.
123. Syria TV, “O Freedom Mustafa Khalifa.”
124. Yassin Haj Saleh, Bil Ikhlas ya Shabab (London: Dar al-Saqi, 2017), 110–12.
125. Most scholars who work on the prison system in the United States highlight primarily its economic dimension. Some academics have pushed back against the economistic framework. The work of Laura Whitehorn shows the importance of the non-economic dimension in the prison–industrial complex (PIC). She argues that the PIC is a form of genocide of black people, not simply a source of revenue for big corporations. See Laura Whitehorn, “Black Power incarcerated: political prisoners, genocide, and the state,” Socialism and Democracy 28, no. 3 (2014): 101–17, DOI:10.1080/08854300.2014.954928.
126. Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007); and Elizabeth Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017).
127. Yassin Haj Saleh, “Alsunh altdmuryh: sydnaya, althwl al’ensry, alebadh,” March 24, 2017. Accessed May 20, 2019. Al-Jumhuriya. www.aljumhuriya.net/ar/37459.
128. Prozorov, Agamben and Politics, 102.
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