[The following is a crucial historical analysis focusing on nationalism. With the demise of the Ba’ath nationalism in Syria, are we witnessing a triumph of a version of Islamist nationalism? Is it an emancipatory nationalism, a nationalism subordinated to class, social justice, women liberation, or just another instrumentalist nationalism – a bourgeois nationalism of the state veiled in religion and led by pious ‘middle men’ at the service of neocolonial powers and capital?]
Nation Against State: Popular Nationalism and the Syrian Uprising (1)
[The Bourgeoisie has] come to power in the name of a narrow nationalism […]; they will prove themselves incapable of triumphantly putting into practice a programme with even a minimum humanist content […].
—Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1963)
The current Syrian revolts
“One, one, one, the Syrian people are one!” In 2011, this was one of the most popular chants during protests. Syrians used it to counter the sectarian discourse of the regime. Arab nationalisms throughout the region have been reimagined and transformed by rebellious populations since the eruption of the revolts. Various actors in the region and beyond are trying to redefine the contours of official and popular nationalisms. Despots and protesters are using nationalism to mobilize the population around their respective political projects.
In addition, nationalism is critical in a region where a self-appointed Islamic State briefly dismantled century-old national borders and imposed what appeared to be a pre- or post-national state, depending on how one looks at it.1 The Kurdish forces in Northern Syria and Iraq are also attempting to create a new reality on the ground based on nationalist sentiments.2 The Syrian regime has suggested on several occasions, because it was unable to control the entire Syrian territory, that it is willing to fragment the country and create what it called a “Useful Syria,” the most vital part of the nation, according to Assad’s public statements.3
This chapter explores the significance of nationalism in the context of the Syrian revolt. It demonstrates that since 2011, Syrians have been developing a new form of popular nationalism.4 They have done so by using nationalist narratives through revolutionary councils and other institutions, as well as via slogans, graffiti, media outlets, and other dis cursive and non-discursive tools. This chapter examines these emergent discourses and practices in Manbij, a city in the Aleppo Province of Northern Syria that has played a relatively important role in the liberated areas. This makes Manbij an excellent site for the study of popular nationalism.
Furthermore, the chapter shows that the establishment of a new national community is a vital necessity for resistance against despotism. This is why the Syrian regime is using every tool at its disposal to counter and undermine popular nationalism. The regime’s violent efforts to do so are particularly visible in the liberated areas, where it fears the emergence of a post-Assad Syria that could threaten the Baathist state. The regime has used a combination of hegemonic and coercive tactics in its efforts, producing multiple counter-narratives, including the imposition of an official nationalist discourse to challenge popular nationalism. Since 2011, both nationalisms, popular and official, have competed for hegemony. These battles of narratives are taking place at the same time as the ongoing military confrontations on the ground.5
The decolonial thinking of Frantz Fanon, the Martinican intellectual and revolutionary theorist, can help us understand the anatomy of nationalism in the context of the Syrian revolt. In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon predicted that Algerian independence would be incomplete after the military defeat and departure of the French army. He understood that Algerian nationalists who fought for independence would gradually become the middlemen between the native population, especially the peasant classes, and Western political and economic elites. His predictions about Algeria, and more generally about the Arab world, were sadly accurate, as the neocolonial political maps of the current era can attest. Fanon writes,
The national middle class taking up the old traditions of colonialism, makes a show of its military and police forces […]. We have seen that inside the nationalist parties, the will to break with colonialism is linked with another quite different will: that of coming to a friendly agreement with it.6
The Fanonian framework is useful in the context of this chapter. Syrian independence, like its Arab counterparts, was unable to reach its natural conclusion; it was aborted by a pan-Arab party in the 1960s, and since 1970 has been undermined by an autocratic regime. Greek scholar Anna Agathangelou explains that the 2011 Arab revolts should be understood as a continuation of nationalist movements for national liberation that were aborted half a century ago.7 Viewed from this perspective, the current revolts are against both post-colonial despotism and neoliberalism. Iranian-American intellectual Hamid Dabashi notes, “Pan-Arabism is not just a reversal of, and a reaction to European colonialism, it is also a replica and reproduction.”8 In this sense, Fanon’s insight provides a strategic vantage point to understanding the ideological dynamics of the Syrian uprising.
This chapter’s first section explores two vital moments in the history of Syrian nationalism. The first moment started in the early twentieth century, when Syria witnessed the emergence of popular nationalism. This early form of nationalism was instrumental in the struggle against French colonialism. The second crucial moment began in the early 1960s, when the Baath party seized power. The ruling party produced an official nationalism based on the writings of Michel Aflaq, Zaki al-Arsuzi, and Salah al-Din al-Bitar, which helped it maintain a position of dominance in public discourse. The second section examines the emergence of a popular nationalism since 2011 with a focus on Manbij.
Fanon’s new humanism
In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon proposes decolonial tools to explore the question of nationalism. He identifies two types of nationalism. On the one hand, a bourgeois nationalism is utilized by African elites to build a hegemonic bloc against colonial powers. However, in the post-colonial period, this elite class became economically and politically subordinate to Western powers. The indigenous Arab elite strove to emulate the Western model, while simultaneously deploying pan-Arab and anti-imperialist discourses.
The second type of nationalism analyzed by Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth is anti-colonial. His analysis is based primarily on the experience of the Algerian Front for National Liberation and its struggle for independence. The Algerian struggle sometimes produced a Manichean worldview in which the colonizer and the colonized confront each other. There are no gray areas and no spaces in between.9 British scholar Nigel Gibson explains that anti-colonial nationalism reached a deadlock in the post-colonial period. He writes, “Rather than developing new relations with the peasants and workers and genuinely involving them in the decision making process, nationalism regards them merely as the means to accumulate the capital needed for ‘modernization’.”10
Fanon suggests that the way out of this binary framework is to envisage a third type of nationalism. Such a nationalism, which Fanon calls “new humanism,” would consist of an authentic process of decolonization in the Global South. This form of nationalism would open the field of possibilities and produce different subjectivities. It is a nationalism that does not follow a script or a rigid ideological repertoire. Rather, new humanism is a nationalism of praxis that takes shape through people’s struggles and everyday resistances. It furthers the political goals of the downtrodden. In addition, it is a nationalism that proposes a philosophy of mutual recognition and reciprocity.11
Prior to undertaking an examination of decolonial nationalism or the new humanism that is emerging in certain areas in Syria, an exploration of two important moments in the history of nationalism in the Levant is necessary. A concise historiography of Syrian nationalism is beyond the scope of this chapter.12 Instead, the chapter proposes a short historical exploration to contextualize the current struggles against dictatorship. Paradoxically, a historical exploration of nationalism to explain emergent discourses seems almost antithetical to Fanon’s philosophy. The Caribbean intellectual warns in the first page of The Wretched of the Earth:
[D]ecolonization is quite simply the substitution of one “species” of mankind by another. The substitution is unconditional, absolute, total, and seamless. We could go on to portray the rise of a new nation, the establishment of a new state, its diplomatic relations and its economic and political orientation. But instead we have decided to describe the kind of tabula rasa which from the outset defines any decolonization.13
To justify his “tabula rasa” claim, Fanon notes that the violence of colonization obliterates pre-colonial cultures and prevents their reconstitution. For Fanon, nothing from the past is worth saving or preserving. One might suggest that he conflates dominance and hegemony, which are two distinct dimensions of colonialism. British scholar Neil Lazarus explains that domination of a colonial power over a people does not necessarily lead to the hegemonic imposition of colonial values and norms over subaltern groups.14 In other words, colonialism does not always erase Indigenous culture, as Fanon might suggest.
While Lazarus’ point is a valid one, it is possible to read Fanon as a historian of the present. In that regard, it is true that Fanon rejects the possibility of unearthing the past, but he opens a space for a reading of the past from the standpoint of a decolonial present. This is how one ought to read Fanon’s call for a “history of decolonization.” Lazarus writes:
The immobility to which the native is condemned can only be called in question if the native decides to put an end to the history of colonization—history of pillage—and to bring into existence the history of the nation—the history of decolonization.15
It is this history of decolonization that this chapter attempts to present here. It argues that only such a history can unsettle and destabilize bourgeois and anti-colonial nationalisms that are both competing for hegemony in the current Syrian context. Unlike them, decolonial nationalism, or what Fanon calls “new humanism,” and what is referred to in this chapter as popular nationalism, occupies marginal spaces in Syria. Instead of proposing an accurate reading of the multifaceted and heterogeneous emergent culture of the Syrian uprising, this chapter proposes a perspectival reading of “the history of decolonization.”
Emergence of Syrian nationalism
Before exploring the anatomy of popular nationalism in Syria since 2011, it is vital to examine two important moments in its recent history. The first focuses on popular nationalism in the early twentieth century, while the second analyzes state nationalism that emerged during the post-independence period. Unlike the state-sponsored nationalism of the Baath party, popular nationalism is grassroots, praxis-oriented, bottom-up, and liberatory. It first emerged to oppose the oppression of the ruling classes as well as colonial domination. The emergent popular nationalism since 2011 is polyvalent and can be observed in the sites of struggle, whether they are liberated or under the regime’s control.
The new popular nationalism in Syria should be understood as both a rupture with the state-centric nationalism of the Baath party, and a re-imagination of the early nationalism of 1919–1920 and the Great Syrian Revolt of 1925–1927. Popular nationalism is operating a dual move that vacillates between delinking from an oppressive and centralized nationalism of the Baath party, which represents state terror, while simultaneously connecting with the democratic, decentralized, and multi faceted popular nationalism of the early twentieth century.
The emergence of nationalism in the Levant is a much-debated topic. Lebanese-American historian Philip Khoury has written extensively about it. He suggests that nationalism emerged in the region in reaction to the revolution of 1908 of the Young Turks. The revolution was a counter-move against the absolutist rule of Sultan Abdul Hamid II. It was followed by a politics of Turkification and centralization. The revolution of the Young Turks opposed any form of autonomy that the Syrian elite was requesting at the time. In addition, the notables of Aleppo, Damascus, Hama, and Homs felt that Istanbul failed to defend Muslim interests against European economic, political, and cultural hegemony. They reacted by developing an oppositional identity that Khoury qualifies as an emergent Arabism, but which was in reality an unstable and undetermined ideology, a combination of Arab, Muslim, regional, and local identities.16
Roger Owens refutes Khoury’s analysis about the emergence of nationalism during the first decade of the twentieth century. He argues that Arabism in the early twentieth century was a combination of Islamism, regionalism, and loyalty to a town or tribe. According to Owens, Sharif Hussein adopted Arabism to defend his own interests, but was not really pursuing a project of Arab unification. His revolt was motivated by selfish political goals and an interest in maintaining political power.17
The revisionist historiography of scholars such as James Gelvin and Michael Provence shows that the nationalism of notables during the first decade of the century was elitist and did not affect popular classes.18 These authors demonstrate that the notables could not have had any authentic nationalist aspiration, since they were demanding autonomy for Syria rather than complete independence from Ottoman rule. The question for Khoury and others is, why would notables develop and disseminate a nationalist discourse if they were not interested in independence? For these revisionist authors, nationalism emerged at least a decade later, as a reaction to the defeat of the Ottoman Empire at the hands of the allies during World War I.
Gelvin shows that the penetration of capitalism in the region undermined traditional relations of power. Instead of the vertical ties that linked individuals to a family, a tribe, or a landowner, the new economy favored horizontal connections, and as such made national belonging an intuitive choice. The existence of these objective factors does not necessarily produce nationalism. Gelvin acknowledges the existence of a nascent Arab nationalist identity among Syrians during the war, but he also explains that this identity did not become a dominant paradigm until after the war. Popular nationalism, which emerged after the war, was countering the pragmatic and top-down nationalism of King Faysal.19
What is particularly important in the context of this chapter is that during these years, there was an unprecedented political mobilization among Syrians. Gelvin notes that in fall 1919, a broad collation of intellectuals, notables, lower-middle class religious dignitaries, qabadayyat, 20 and merchants was formed. They opposed Faysal’s government, which they viewed as illegitimate and controlled by foreigners. They created democratic popular committees in many neighborhoods. Damascus had 48 neighborhood committees, each of which had representatives in the Higher National Committee. They also formed committees of national defense, not only to maintain security in their neighborhoods but also to protect Syria in the event of foreign aggression.
For the first time, Syrians from all social backgrounds became directly involved in politics through popular committees. Syrians took matters into their own hands by creating a structure of democratic committees at the neighborhood, municipal, regional, and national level. These committees challenged the power of the central government and rendered local politics obsolete, while making national democratic politics a commonsensical choice. They performed a number of tasks, including guaranteeing a fair price for grain, recruiting volunteers for the committees of national defense, and providing relief to the displaced and the poor.21
The parallels between the popular nationalism of 1919 and that of 2011 are striking. Although explicit connections might not exist between the local coordination committees, which were formed in many neighborhoods starting in August 2011, and the popular committees of 1919, their appearance during periods of deep state crisis is telling. The popular nationalisms of the early twentieth and early twenty-first centuries both produced new institutions, cultures, and discourses at the national level. In both cases, nationalism was developing without concern about capturing state power. The main objective for both was to create a parallel structure to the state that could ultimately undermine the existence of colonial and neocolonial states.
In both cases, popular classes in different regions were transcending localism and establishing connections with other groups at the national level. Fanon explains in The Wretched of the Earth that nationalism is instrumental in developing an emancipatory discourse against occupiers. However, he urges his readers to transcend the seductive, yet destructive consequences of anti-colonial nationalism, and its aspiration to a Manichean politics. He writes,
Only the massive commitment by men and women to judicious and productive tasks gives form and substance to this consciousness. It is then that flags and government buildings cease to be the symbols of the nation. The nation deserts the false glitter of the capital and takes refuge in the interior where it receives life and energy. The living expression of the nation is the collective consciousness in motion of the entire people. It is the enlightened and coherent praxis of the men and women. The collective forging of a destiny implies undertaking responsibility on a truly historical scale.22
The new humanism that emerges in peripheral territories is not simply oppositional to the colonial or dictatorial power. It also empowers people, and provides them with tools to tackle their everyday problems. This first wave of nationalism in 1919 and 1920 prepared the terrain for the Great Syrian Revolt of Jabal Druze against French rule. The revolts, which took the French by surprise, lasted two years. The French were afraid that opposition to their rule would come from urban centers. Instead, the most steadfast resistance came from the countryside. The resistance of Shaykh Salih al-Ali in the Alawite region was not put down until late 1921. Resistance also came from the countryside of Aleppo, where Ibrahim Hannano led a very effective military formation. However, the staunchest and most sustained struggle was that organized by Druze communities in Hawran.23
The Great Syrian Revolt was a catalyst for the propagation of a Syrian Arab identity in the countryside. To counter the effective resistance in the countryside, French authorities produced a great deal of propaganda. They insisted that the revolt was not sustainable, because feudal elites could not convince Syrian peasants to join their cause. They also distributed leaflets to tarnish the image of the revolt by presenting it as sectarian and, as such, antithetical to non-Druze communities. Despite its intensity, the French propaganda was infective. For the most part, peasants were willing to set aside their class differences and join the battle against French colonialism. Druze peasants in the South and Sunni and Christian grain merchants in the Maydan Quarter in Damascus built an organic relationship through commerce.
When French bureaucrats introduced new policies that threatened their livelihood, Syrians quickly organized a network of resistance that spanned from the Druze Mountain in the South to Damascus. Druze, Christians, and Sunnis were more than willing to cross sectarian lines and regional differences and join the resistance to protect their economic interests and livelihood.
It is important to note that the rebels used fluid discursive strategies to undermine French power. In some cases, they advocated for Muslim solidarity or tribal culture. While they highlighted class conflict in certain situations, they mostly used a nationalist discourse to oppose French rule, maintaining a poorly defined meaning of what it meant to be Syrian or Arab. This openness allowed different groups to join the rebels’ battle and consider the combat against colonial power to be a main goal. The Great Syrian Revolt generated a blend of Syrian and Arab nationalisms based on loose meanings of patriotism, anti-colonialism, religion, and tribal honor.24
Michael Provence explains that the French lost no time in portraying the rebels as extremists, criminals, terrorists, and sectarian individuals who were concerned only with preserving the feudal system in Hawran. They used counter-insurgency and mass killing to quell the revolt. The aerial bombing was unprecedented at the time, and punished the entire population in the regions where the rebels took refuge. Al-Harika in Damascus was bombed for two consecutive days to drive the rebels out.25 Military might was combined with a campaign to delegitimize the struggles of the revolutionaries. The French produced a counter-narrative that focused on the supposed sectarianism of Druze, the goal of which was to deter other religious communities from joining the struggle for independence. Provence writes,
Sectarian conflict was a theoretical necessity for French colonialism in Syria, since the entire colonial mission was based on the idea of protecting one sectarian community, the Maronite Christians, from the predations of others. Without sectarian conflict, colonial justification evaporates.26
In addition, the French formed sectarian militias made up of Armenians and Circassians to ignite sectarian violence; but the rebels responded with a nationalist discourse that reminded Syrians that all sects, including Christians, Druze, Alawites, Shia, and Sunni, were “sons of the Syrian Arab nation.” French authorities resorted to all forms of collective punishment and terrorization, including aerial bombardment, house demolition, public hanging, and displacement of populations.
In the long term, the asymmetrical power of the French and their counter-insurgency tactics were effective, since sympathy for the rebels gradually declined. When the revolt was finally crushed, 6,000 rebels had been killed and more than 100,000 civilians were left homeless. By 1927, the rebels were not welcome in most urban areas, and the population was afraid of possible French retaliation if the rebels were allowed to operate in their region.27
After the defeat of the rebels, the National Bloc appeared as the main political force. The coalition was made mainly of landowners from the four main cities. They were 90 percent Sunnis and had a reconciliatory approach to politics. The National Bloc was the main nationalist force after the defeat of the 1925 Revolt. Writing about African countries, Nigel Gibson explains that this type of nationalism produces a native bourgeoisie that depends on Western capital for its survival.28 He notes that this:
…“caste” [is] essentially an unproductive caricature of the Western bourgeoisie, that then assumes national leadership. In this scenario, independence does not lead to decolonization but to a curious self-recolonization where a native leadership simply mimics the privileges and postures of the Europeans and follows it on the path towards “decadence” […] while the masses sink deeper in poverty.29
Popular nationalism of the early twentieth century gradually metasta-sized to become an instrumentalist nationalism by mid-century. It was a reconciliatory nationalism that often avoided confrontation with the colonial power.
Arab nationalism after independence
The second pivotal moment in the history of nationalism in Syria starts in the early 1960s. It revolves around the Baath party’s authoritarian rule since 1963 and the despotic ideology it produced. The history of the Baath party and its rise to power is beyond the scope of this chapter, but suffice to say that the period from 1946, when Syria became independent, to 1963, when the Baath party seized power, was a turbulent one. Nationalist, communist, and Islamist groups were competing for power, sometimes using democratic means, while at others times exercising force. This period could be described as nationalist par excellence. Due to structural transformations, the notables began losing their economic and political power. The notables’ politics became ineffective, and notables had only two options: either become marginal, or join nationalist parties.
During that period, in addition to the notables’ politics, the Baath and Communist parties dominated the political scene in Syria. Interestingly, there are several parallels between the rebels of the Great Syrian Revolt and the intellectuals of the Baath party. Salah al-Din al-Bitar and Michel Aflaq were both the sons of grain merchants from the al-Maydan Quarter in Damascus, and their ally in the rural south was the son of Sultan al-Atrash, the leader of the Great Syrian Revolt.30 The Baath party utilized the register of the Great Syrian Revolt to gain legitimacy. Many members of the Baath were teachers and doctors who knew the history of the 1925 revolt, and sometimes emulated its strategy by building lasting relationships between the city and countryside. They did so by opening clinics in remote villages and educating the sons of peasants. However, the parallels between the 1920s and 1950s should not be pushed further. The openness and inclusiveness of the Baath gradually disappeared as the party became hegemonic.
The intellectuals of the Baath party produced a very rigid discourse about Arab identity that led to an exclusive brand of nationalism. In that regard, the Baath nationalism was unlike that of the 1920s. Nationalist leaders of the 1920s built a popular nationalism, which was vital for self-determination struggles, while those of the 1950s were primarily interested in seizing and maintaining state power. In the first case, nationalism was inclusive, organic, and anti-colonial, while in the second, it paved the way for an authoritarian, exclusive, and neo-colonial ideology. The former created a nationalism that could have produced an independent post-colonial state, while the latter used the state to create an instrumentalist nationalist rhetoric, the main goal of which was to produce legitimacy for the ruling party and its leaders. It is no coincidence that, between 1963 and 1970, civilians within the party were marginalized, while Baathists with military backgrounds gradually took over.
Yasser Munif (The Syrian Revolution, Pluto Press, 2020)
Notes
1. On the 100th anniversary of the Sykes–Picot Agreement, which divided the Levant into different countries after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, ISIS released a statement in which it rejected the borders imposed by “Crusaders.” For the full statement, see “The Islamic State and the world after Sykes Picot,” Internet Archive. Undated. Accessed August 28, 2016. https://archive.org/stream/TheIslamicStateAndTheWorldAfterSykesPicot/The%20Islamic%20 State%20and%20the%20World%20after%20Sykes-Picot_djvu.txt.
2. The Democratic Union Party (PYD), the left-wing Kurdish political party,
aspires to control Rojava, a loosely defined territory in Northern Syria that has a large Kurdish population and a long border with Turkey. The Kurdish forces are trying to connect three separate cantons (Afrin, Kobane, and Jazira), while the Turkish military is trying to undermine their plans by occupying a strip of land that prevents the connection of the cantons. See “Charter of the Social Contract—self-rule in Rojava,” Peace in Kurdistan. Last modified January 29, 2014. Accessed August 28, 2016. https://peaceinkurdistancampaign.com/charter-of-the-social-contract/.
3. The regime was facing challenging military, political, and economic obstacles that prevented it from regaining full control of the Syrian territory. In 2015, it suggested that its goal was to control what it labeled “Useful Syria,” that is, the most densely populated and economically viable part of the country, which connects Damascus and Homs to the coast. The remaining territory was controlled by various groups, including the Kurds in the North, Islamists factions in Idlib, ISIS in Raqqa and Deir Ez-Zor, etc. See Hassan Mneimneh, “Will Assad create a “Useful Syria?” Fikra Forum, November 12, 2015. Accessed June 17, 2016. http://fikraforum.org/?p=8076#.V82DCWPZrds; and Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami, Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War (London: Pluto Press, 2016), 145.
4. Salwa Ismail, “The Syrian uprising: imagining and performing the nation,” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 11 (2011): 538–49; and Manal al-Natour, “Nation, gender, and identity: children in the Syrian Revolution 2011,” Journal of International Women’s Studies 14, no. 5 (2013): 28–49.
5. The distinction between official and popular nationalisms was first suggested by Hugh Seton-Watson in Nations and States: An Inquiry into the Origins of Nations and the Politics of Nationalism (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1977) and then popularized by Benedict Anderson in his seminal work, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1983). Anderson explains that official nationalism was originally a conservative and top-down ideology in reaction to the spontaneous popular nationalism that was thriving in Europe in the early nineteenth century—that official nationalism is the “willed merger of national and dynastic empire—[…] developed after, and in reaction to, the popular national movements proliferating in Europe since the 1820s”; Anderson, Imagined Communities, 86.
6. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (New York: Grove Press, 1963), 123–4.
7. Anna M. Agathangelou, “The living and being of the streets: Fanon and the Arab uprisings,” Globalizations 9, no. 3 (2012): 451–66.
8. Hamid Dabashi, The Arab Spring: The End of Postcolonialism (London: Zed Books, 2012).
9. See Fanon’s “The pitfalls of national consciousness,” in The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington.
10. Nigel C. Gibson, Fanon: The Postcolonial Imagination (London: Polity, 2003), 184.
11. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox (New York: Grove Press, 2004), 237–8.
12. See Philip S. Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920–1945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014); Elizabeth Thompson, Colonial Citizens (New York: Colombia University Press, 2000); Michael Provence, The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2005); and James L. Gelvin, Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998).
13. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox, i.
14. Neil Lazarus, Nationalism and Cultural Practice in the Postcolonial World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 78–103.
15. Ibid., 86.
16. Philip S. Khoury, Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism: The Politics of Damascus, 1860–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 67.
17. Roger Owen, “Arab Nationalism Arab Unity and Arab Solidarity,” in T. Asad and R. Owen (Eds.), Sociology of the “Developing Societies”: The Middle East (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983), 16–22.
18. Provence, The Great Syrian Revolt; and Gelvin, Divided Loyalties.
19. Gelvin, Divided Loyalties.
20. Qabadyat is plural for qabaday, the local strongmen who have a good reputation in the neighborhood and are willing to protect their neighbors.
21. James L. Gelvin, “The other Arab nationalism: Syrian/Arab populism in its historical and international context,” in G. Israel and J. James (Eds.), Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 231–48.
22. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox, 144.
23. Provence, The Great Syrian Revolt.
24. Both Gelvin, Divided Loyalties and Provence, The Great Syrian Revolt suggest that Syrian nationalism should be understood as a non-essentialist discourse with unstable and historically fluid meanings.
25. Harika means fire in Arabic. The French bombed the neighborhood and burnt it down on October 18, 1925 to punish the population because of its support for the revolt. Approximately 1,500 residents were killed.
26. Provence, The Great Syrian Revolt, 17.
27. Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate, 237.
28. Gibson, Fanon, 184.
29. Ibid., 182.
30. For a history of post-independence nationalism, see Youssef Chaitani, Post-Colonial Syria and Lebanon: The Decline of Arab Nationalism and the Triumph of the State (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); and Adeed Dawisha, Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century: From Triumph to Despair (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003).
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