Necropolitics: The Taxonomies of Death in Syria (1)
The silence of slippers is more dangerous than the sound of boots.
—French priest Martin Niemöller
It’s not a civil war. It’s a genocide. Leave us die but do not lie.
—Kafranbel banner, November 2, 2012
This chapter explores the taxonomies of death and technologies of violence that the Syrian regime has deployed over the past eight years to crush the uprising. It argues that the current politics of death would not have been possible without the imposition of a state of emergency in Syria. Emergency was a vital political tool that allowed the regime to maintain power for several decades. It would not have been consequential, however, without the prison system and state terror that enforce it. The chapter begins with a brief history of the state of emergency and how Assad used it to eliminate his political opponents and consolidate state power. It explores the significance of Giorgio Agamben’s “state of exception” in the Syrian context. The second section examines the various ways the politics of death or necropolitics was implemented during the Syrian revolt. Using Achille Mbembe’s notion of necropolitics as an entry point, I argue, can shed light on new aspects of the conflict. Finally, in the last section, I explore the prison system in Syria and the ways it allowed the regime to conceal its atrocities.
State of emergency since 1963
The Baath party takeover in 1963, followed by Hafez al-Assad’s authoritarian rule after 1970, aborted the democratic process that Syrians had built in the 1950s. Political life in the mid-1950s was organized around two poles: on the one hand, the hegemonic politics of urban notables, and on the other hand, the pan-Arab and progressive parties. During this democratic period, Syrians had first-hand experience with political pluralism, free elections, and freedom of the press.1 The landed oligarchy, which had dominated the political, economic, and cultural spheres until then, was losing power. Instead, Arab nationalists such as the Baath party and Nasserists, as well as progressive parties, were gaining momentum.
The Baath party first emerged as a political force in the Syrian parliament, thanks to the democratic environment of the mid-1950s. The parliamentarian progressive coalition, to which the Baath belonged, was unable to implement land redistribution and other reforms due to the landed oligarchy’s powerful opposition. The parliamentary members of the urban notables won the elections and undermined the ambitious program. As a result, the Baath party mobilized workers and students in the street, and attempted to control crucial positions in the army.2
Baathists were also facing another important challenge in the 1960s, namely, the Soviet Union’s growing influence in the Middle East. In 1957, the Baath party ended its alliance with the Syrian Communist Party, fearing that their growing popularity and ability to mobilize the working class would sideline the pan-Arab party. By the end of the year, the landed oligarchy and the Baath both felt threatened by communists, who had the support of the Soviet Union. In the context of the Cold War, Syria became a site of conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the escalation between the two was on the verge of taking a military turn. The Baath party believed the best way to regain influence in the political sphere was to forge a union with Abdel Nasser, who shared their ideal of pan-Arabism.
The United Arab Republic (UAR) was established in February 1958, and was primarily a bureaucratic entity that maintained Nasser’s dominance over Syria’s political life. Nasser banned Syrian parties and controlled every aspect of politics. He ruled Syria with the help of traditional politicians, while purging the most progressive officers in the army. His nationalization of banks and the implementation of the agrarian reform alienated the same political class he was allied with. During this tense political conjuncture, a conservative segment of the army seized power through a military coup in September 1961 and put an end to the UAR.
The failure of the union with Egypt and the military takeover by the Separatist Officers split the Baath party into two main competing branches. The first was led by the ideological founder of the party, Michel Aflaq, but was marginal and mostly based in Damascus. The second was dominant in cities such as Latakia, Deir ez-Zor, and Dara’a, and was backed by a clandestine military committee constituted of Baathists and Nasserists. While the military branch of the Baath was critical of the union with Abdel Nasser, since he had banned their party during the union, they nonetheless formed an alliance with Syrian Nasserists for opportunistic reasons. During the 1960s, Nasserists were influential in the entire Arab world, and especially so in Syria. The Baath would not have been able to overthrow the Separatist Officers and seize power in 1963 without the vital support of the Nasserists. Once in power, the coalition marginalized the conservative notables who backed the Separatists.4 The Baathist and Nasserist alliance was initially motivated by radical ideas, and opposed the powerful notables who had dominated political life until that point. Baathists operated in an anti-imperialist context, where opposition to Western interests in the region and solidarity with Palestinian struggle were the norm.
Akram al-Hourani, an Arab populist from Hama who had played a prominent role in opposing the hegemony of urban notables, merged his party with the Baath in 1952. He advocated for an ambitious program of land reform, and brought many peasants to the Baath who later became the pillars of the party. He went into exile when the Baath seized power in 1963. After its successful coup in March, the Baath consolidated power through the military and security apparatuses, but also by mobilizing its peasants and workers bases.
The Iraqi Baath party, which had led a successful coup a few weeks earlier, incentivized the Syrian Baath to go ahead with its own coup. A military committee that included three Baathists (namely, Muhammad Umran, Salah Jadid, and Hafez al-Assad) in addition to two Nasserists planned and executed the coup. Michel Aflaq, the Baath secretary-general, reluctantly approved the plans, despite his disapproval of the military’s increasing influence in party politics.
After the coup, Aflaq and his followers were marginalized, while the progressive leaders of the party who favored socialist policies dominated the political scene. They began implementing their program of land reform and industrial development, while at the same time marginalizing the urban notables who owned most of the land. Nasser began land redistribution in 1958, but the radical branch of the Baath party, which passed land reform laws in 1963 and 1966, mostly implemented it. Land reform was completed in 1970 when Assad came to power.5 Between 1963 and 1970, internal conflicts and repeated political purges within the Baath led to the gradual domination of the pragmatic branch that Assad represented. Salah Jadid and the radical tendency he headed were subsequently frozen out, especially after the 1967 War and Syria’s defeat by Israel. Hanna Batatu, a renowned Palestinian historian, explains, “[w]hen the Six Day War of 1967 broke out, [Assad] was still a military amateur and did not have the qualifications to be the thinking head of the armed forces.”6 According to him, on June 10, 1967, Assad issued the devastating Communiqué No. 66, in which he announced the fall of Qunaytara when it was actually still in the hands of the Syrian army. The announcement caused panic at the front line, and did in fact precipitate the fall of the city. To protect the regime, he pulled out the 70th armored brigade to reposition it nearby Damascus. After the humiliating defeat against Israel and the loss of the Golan Heights, Assad blamed Jadid, despite being Minister of Defense himself and playing a central role in the war. In 1970, he finally threw Jadid in jail, consolidated his rapprochement with segments of the Syrian bourgeoisie, and put a halt on the socialist program of the Baath party.7
The state of emergency
To maintain power, Hafez al-Assad built a coup-proof regime that survived several serious crises after 1963. The internal conflicts of the Baath party, in addition to the turbulent political life of the 1950s and 1960s, informed his trajectory. He implemented a complete restructuring of the Syrian state to prevent military coups. Assad built a patrimonial state where the upper echelons of officers were recruited from the Alawite sect. The vast majority of these officers were loyal to the regime, despite a few defections in times of crisis. However, as political scientist Steven Heydemann explains,
A second resource played a critical role in stemming opposition advances and stabilizing the regime: informal networks of nonstate actors, organized on the basis of familial ties, sectarian affinity, or simple mercenary arrangements, and cultivated by regime elites over the years to provide a range of (often illegal) functions that could be conducted without any formal scrutiny or accountability.8
The regime’s ability to survive the popular opposition is built on solid foundations. According to Syrian scholar Radwan Ziadeh, Assad’s authoritarian rule was based on a triangle of power, namely, the security branches, the army, and the Baath party.9 It was these dense networks of power that allowed the regime to crush the rebellion. However, Ziadeh’s framework ignores class analysis, which is essential to understand Assad’s consolidation of power. The modern history of Syria shows that Assad paid close attention to class composition inside Syrian society, and built a complex balance between elites and popular classes.10 One of the most important technologies of oppression in Assad’s regime was the state of emergency. The Separatist Officers first imposed it in 1962, and the Baath party maintained it until 2011. It allowed the regime to operate at the periphery, and often outside the legal system, without any significant backlash. Under the state of emergency, the Syrian regime incarcerated thousands of its political opponents and assassinated many in Syria and abroad without accountability. This was the case for Salah el-Din al-Bitar, Muhammad Umran, Kamal Jumblat, and Rafic al-Hariri among others.11
The codification of death
The Separatist Officers, who seized power after the failure of the union with Egypt, proclaimed a state of emergency on December 22, 1962. When the Baath party took power in the following year, the first decree it issued on March 9, 1963 was concerning the amendment of the state of emergency and the imposition of martial law. The state of emergency had been issued in Syria multiple times before 1962. Edward Ziter explains, “[t]hese laws replaced the Emergency Laws instituted by Nasser in 1958 during Syria’s short-lived union with Egypt. Before that, martial law had been instituted in both 1953 and 1956.”12 The state of emergency was declared several more times before the 1950s. As the French prepared to occupy Syria, Yousef al-Azmeh imposed martial law in July 1919, a few days before the unsuccessful battle of Maysaloun.13 The French colonial power used martial law multiple times, starting in 1920, when it faced a popular rebellion. It was implemented in the rebellious regions only, namely, Damascus, Hawran, and Jabal al-Druze.14 The state of emergency was declared again in 1939 at the outbreak of World War II, as the French government prepared for the war.15 In 1948, the Syrian government declared it, after riots erupted in Damascus and other cities due to a heated debate in parliament about the partition of Palestine in the previous year.16
Before 1962, the state of emergency was typically lifted after a few months or years. When Assad seized power, he maintained it for almost half a century. It was finally lifted in April 2011, a few weeks after the eruption of the revolt. The end of the state of emergency and the release of political prisoners were the protesters’ main demands during the first months of the revolt. The new legislation put an end to the state of emergency and also dissolved state security courts.17 The state of emergency was hastily replaced by a counter-terrorism law, which went into effect on July 2, 2012.18
For five decades, any criticism of the Syrian regime was severely punished under the pretext that it could lead to the “weakening of national sentiment.”19 In March 1968, the Syrian government created several courts and new laws to consolidate its power: the Supreme State Security Court (SSSC), martial courts, and military field courts. They were responsible for enforcing emergency laws and operated outside the legal and court systems; as such, they had far-reaching power and only responded to executive orders. There was no mechanism to appeal their decisions. In addition, several articles were added to prevent the prosecution of officers involved in the disappearance, torture, or killing of Syrians.20
The new constitution went into effect after being approved by the people’s assembly in 1973, and was valid until February 2012, when the Assad regime, under popular pressure, amended it.21 The 1973 constitution gave unprecedented powers to the president. Article 101 states that: “The President of the Republic can declare and terminate a state of emergency in the manner stated in the law.”22 Article 107 explains, “[t]he President of the Republic can dissolve the People’s Assembly through a decision giving the reasons.”23 Moreover, Article 111 gives power to the president to assume authority when the People’s Assembly is not in session and “even when the Assembly is in session if it is extremely necessary.”24
The international context allowed the Assad family to impose the state of emergency for almost half century with no real consequences. International institutions such as the United Nations failed to address the issue, due to the pressure of powerful state actors. Many states were reluctant to voice opposition to the state of emergency, in the event they needed to implement it themselves. In addition, in the 1970s and 1980s, many states around the world declared states of emergency and utilized them to repress their own societies. In 1978, 30 countries had imposed a state of emergency; whereas by 1986, their number had grown to 70.25 Thus, the international politics of silence allowed the Syrian regime to maintain the state of emergency without being held accountable. In 1979, Amnesty International published its first report about human rights violations in Syria, addressing the question of torture and the state of emergency.26 The report came out 17 years after the emergency was first implemented and didn’t have much impact.
Throughout the Assad rule, the state of emergency was an effective tool for repressing political opponents. The Seventh Country Conference of the Baath Party in 1979 concluded that there was a need for “intensifying the political security campaign to eradicate the gang of the Muslim Brotherhood and its foundation in the state and society.”27 To justify and consolidate the state of emergency, the regime criminalized the Muslim Brotherhood and presented the group as an eminent and permanent threat. In 1980, the Assad regime issued the infamous Law 49, which banned the Muslim Brotherhood and made affiliation to their party punishable by death. After crushing the Brotherhood’s rebellion in 1982 and the killing and incarcerating of thousands of political opponents, the regime was able to impose a ubiquitous politicide for several decades. It was only after the death of Hafez al-Assad in 2000 that political opposition re-emerged.
The state of emergency is often discussed in the context of international law and human rights treaties.28 The studies that analyze it in the Syrian context are of two types. The first is based on international law,29 while the second examines the Syrian context through a human rights prism.30 Both fields are legalistic in nature, examining the tension and contradictions between the Syrian constitution and international law. They emphasize the contradictions within the Syrian legal system, and denounce the state’s violations of human rights under the state of emergency. Legal scholar Michael Macaulay, for example, explains that the state of emergency in Syria did not meet the principle of legality in accordance with domestic or international laws, and as such was in clear violation of both, and therefore should have been abolished on that basis.31 While the legal framework is useful, it has important limitations. It does not question the legitimacy of the state or the sovereign, or explain the original violence embedded in law. To address these issues, I explore the implications of the state of emergency beyond the legalistic framework by invoking the work of Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben.
The sovereign and state of exception
Agamben’s innovative take on the state of emergency and the sovereign could shed light on the mechanisms of despotism in Syria. The Italian philosopher examines the implications of the state of emergency when it becomes the rule rather than the exception. As such, his work is particularly relevant in Syria, a country where the “state of exception” was imposed for almost half a century. In the first pages of his book State of Exception (2005), Agamben notes:
The state of exception tends increasingly to appear as the dominant paradigm of government in contemporary politics. This transformation of a provisional and exceptional measure into a technique of government threatens radically to alter—in fact, has already palpably altered—the structure and meaning of the traditional distinction between constitutional forms.32
To examine the significance of the state of emergency, Agamben engages with the work of two German intellectuals. He builds on theories of cultural critic and radical thinker Walter Benjamin, while criticizing the stern conceptual framework of conservative political theorist Carl Schmitt.
Schmitt has written extensively about the sovereign and the state of emergency. He argues that the absolutist sovereign is he who makes the exception. For him, the main attribute of the sovereign is his power to decide and impose a state of exception. The sovereign should therefore be understood as the power to suspend the legal when needed, and restore it when necessary. Schmitt explains that the state should be able to suspend law to protect its sovereignty. The state, which is usually the enforcer of law, is in some cases the force of law. For him, it can declare the state of emergency simply because it is sovereign.33 In The Guardian of the Constitution (2015), Schmitt argues that the head of the executive power, not the legal branch, should be the guardian of the constitution.34 According to Schmitt, the difference between constituted law and the sovereign who enforces the law is irrelevant when the state of exception is declared. The only thing that governs the sovereign and puts limits on it is the sovereign itself. Whenever the old order is overthrown and the new one is established, the law is suspended. During this transitional period, Schmitt argues, only the sovereign can decide what the content of law is.
What makes the sovereign unique is his/her ability to be at once inside and outside the legal order. Critical theorist, Yehouda Shenhav explains, “Instead of the legal rule of law, Schmitt suggested that ‘Sovereign is he who decides on the exception’, and that the exception in jurisprudence is analogous to the miracle in theology.”35 That is precisely what allows the sovereign to order the state of emergency and to rescue the state from collapsing. Schmitt was particularly dissatisfied with European liberal democracies that could not develop an adequate response when facing political crises in the 1920s. He argues that the state of exception and the exceptional power of the sovereign are vital to rescue the state from complete collapse. As such, Schmitt believes the only reason the sovereign transgresses the rule of law is the public good.36
Agamben provides a radical reinterpretation of Schmitt’s concept of sovereignty. He explains that when the sovereign suspends the rule, he operates in an in-between space that is both legal and non-legal. The state of exception blurs the line between the legal and non-legal, between private and public, between the political and the juridical. Agamben sees the state of emergency as indeterminate, especially since World War I. Unlike Schmitt, who believes the state of emergency is a temporary event, Agamben shows that in the twentieth century, it has become the status quo. Following Benjamin, Agamben explains that the state of emergency is not the exception but rather the rule in the contemporary world. In addition, Agamben examines it not only from the standpoint of the sovereign but, more importantly, from the perspective of the subject who experiences it. The state of exception needs to produce an outside or an enemy. As a result, the law applies to those within, that is, those who belong to the polity. The ones left out become outlaw and are denied any legal rights; they are reduced to bare life.
Bare life is the condition of living at the edge of the juridico-political space. They are often undocumented, migrant, racialized, sexualized, poor, or “abnormal” individuals. Agamben warns,
[As] long as the two elements (law and anomie) remain correlated yet conceptually, temporally and subjectively distinct, their dialectic can nevertheless function in some way. But when they tend to coincide in the single person, when the state of exception, in which they are bound and blurred together, becomes the rule, then the juridico-political system transforms itself into a killing machine. The normative aspect of law can thus be obliterated and contradicted with impunity by a government violence that—while ignoring international law externally and producing a permanent state of exception internally—nevertheless still claims to be applying the law.37
To overcome the violence of law and counter the power of the sovereign, Agamben introduces Benjamin’s notion of revolutionary violence. The German cultural critic makes a distinction between two forms of violence. The first is the “[l]aw-preserving violence [that] pertains to the order of ‘constituted power’ and consists in legal, para- or extra-legal measures that sustain the existing law and order of things.” The second Benjaminian violence is revolutionary and operates outside the law, instituting the ‘constituent power.’ Only the second type of violence, according to Benjamin, has legitimacy and cannot be controlled by the sovereign.38
Benjamin’s second type ruptures the link between life and the legal. Through revolutionary violence, the life of the revolutionary subject is no longer bound by the legal system. For Benjamin, the only violence that can oppose the violence of the sovereign is pure or revolutionary violence. This type of violence operates outside law and revolves around the lives of the subaltern. He writes,
The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must attain to a conception of history that is in keeping with this insight. Then we shall clearly realize that it is our task to bring about a real state of emergency, and this will improve our position in the struggle against Fascism.39
The Benjaminian distinction between the two forms of violence is vital in a revolutionary situation such as the Syrian one. It allows for a rethinking of the notion of sovereignty and violence in a context of state terrorism internally, and oppressive international law externally. The Syrian legal system legitimizes the state of emergency, and criminalizes any opposition to it. International law does not recognize non-state actors or subaltern violence outside the state. In short, it delegitimizes Benjamin’s revolutionary violence. Applying Benjamin’s notion of revolutionary violence in Syria provides a framework to counter the state of exception outside the legalistic framework described above.
Since there is revolutionary potential outside the polity, Agamben examines the ways life is transformed in a state of emergency. He makes a distinction between bios, which is the political life that operates within the polity, and zoe, which is “the simple fact of living” outside the political.40 Zoe is therefore the form of life excluded from the polis, because it does not have a political dimension. It is prediscursive and cannot have any qualified form. “Bare life,” for Agamben, is the introduction of zoe into the polis. What makes this form of life interesting for Agamben is that it cannot be controlled or captured by the political. It is ungovernable, and as such undermines the power of the sovereign. This is not an invitation to return to that form of life, but rather to understand the potential that resides in it. In addition, the concept of bare life and zoe can help to examine the continuum between life and death in the Syrian context. In addition, Agamben’s critique of the oversimplified way sovereignty and the state of emergency are defined by international law allowing an exploration of the zones of indeterminacy in Syrian history. The Agambenian perspective allows for an understanding of the state of emergency outside the limiting framework of international law and human rights. It reveals state violence and the ways the legal system is instrumentalized to produce enemies rather than protect citizens.
While Agamben’s work on the state of exception mostly focuses on Europe, it also provides important conceptual tools to examine the Middle East. His unwillingness to examine the Global South has led many post-colonial scholars to criticize his work as Eurocentric.41 The scholarship that engages with his ideas in the context of the Middle East focuses primarily on the politics of Western involvement in the region. These studies are about neocolonial politics and Western implementation of the state of emergency in the Middle East. Many scholars invoke Agamben in their work about the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,42 or Israeli’s racist policies toward Palestinians.43 There is, however, an emergent literature about the Middle East and Syria that engages with Agamben’s work.44
Yasser Munif (Pluto Press 2020)
Notes
Kevin W. Martin, Syria’s Democratic Years: Citizens, Experts, and Media in the 1950s (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2015).
2. Raymond Hinnebusch, Syria: Revolution from Above (London: Routledge, 2001), 37–9.
3. Hinnebusch, Syria, 42.
4. Ibid.
5. Myriam Ababsa, “Fifty Years of state land distribution in the Syrian Jazira: Agrarian Reform, Agrarian Counter-Reform, and the Arab Belt Policy (1958–2008),” in Habib Ayeb Reem Saad (Ed.), Agrarian Transformation in the Arab World Persistent and Emerging Challenges (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2013).
6. Hanna Batatu, Syria’s Peasantry, the Descendants of Its Lesser Rural Notables, and Their Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 198.
7. Ibid., 198–201.
8. Steven Heydemann, “Tracking the ‘Arab Spring’: Syria and the Future of Authoritarianism,” Journal of Democracy 24, no. 4 (2013), 66.
9. Radwan Ziadeh, The Years of Fear: The Forcibly Disappeared in Syria (Washington, DC: Freedom House, 2014).
10. Adam Hanieh, Lineages of Revolt: Issues of Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East (Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2013); Omar S. Dahi and Yasser Munif, “Revolts in Syria: tracking the convergence between authoritarianism and neoliberalism,” Journal of Asian and African Studies 47, no. 4 (2012): 323–32; Gilbert Achcar, The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising, trans. G.M. Goshgarian (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013); Joseph Daher, Syria after the Uprisings: The Political Economy of State Resilience, forthcoming (London: Pluto Press, 2019); Bassam Haddad, Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience Book (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011); and Batatu, Syria’s Peasantry (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999).
11. Leon T. Goldsmith, Cycle of Fear: Syria’s Alawites in War and Peace (London: Hurst and Company, 2015).
12. Edward Ziter, Political Performance in Syria: From the Six-Day War to the Syrian Uprising (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
13. Karim Atassi, The Strength of an Idea (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
14. Philip S. Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920–1945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014); 185.
15. Michael Provence, “French Mandate counterinsurgency and the repression of the Great Syrian Revolt,” in Cyrus Schayegh and Andrew Arsan (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the History of the Middle East Mandates (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015), 136–51.
16. Atassi, The Strength of an Idea, 150.
17. Khaled Yacoub Oweis, “Assad ends state of emergency,” Reuters. Last modified April 20, 2011. Accessed May 18, 2019. www.reuters.com/article/us-syria/syrias-assad-ends-state-of-emergency-idUSTRE72N2MC20110421.
18. TIMEP, “TIMEP Brief: Law No. 19 of 2012: Counter-Terrorism Law,” The Tahrir Institute of Middle East Policy. Last modified January 9, 2019. Accessed May 18, 2019. https://timep.org/reports-briefings/timep-brief-law-no-19-of-2012-counter-terrorism-law/.
19. 20. Ziter, Political Performance in Syria, 57. “Syria: The permanent state of emergency—a breeding ground for torture report submitted to the Committee Against Torture in the context of the review of the Initial Periodic Report of the Syrian Arab Republic,” Al-Karama. Last modified April 9, 2010. Accessed May 18, 2019. https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CAT/Shared%20Documents/SYR/INT_CAT_NGO_SYR_44_10098_E.pdf.
21. Neil Macfarquhar and Alan Cowell, “Syrians said to approve Charter as battles go on,” New York Times. Last modified February 27, 2012. Accessed May 18, 2019. www.nytimes.com/2012/02/28/world/middleeast/syrian-violence-continues-as-west-dismisses-new-charter.html?.
22. “The Syrian Constitution—1973–2012,” Carnegie Middle East Center. Last modified December 5, 2012. Accessed May 18, 2019. https://carnegie-mec.org/diwan/50255?lang=en.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. Michael Macaulay, “Syria: the need to reform monitoring of state of emergency,” 19–20. Thesis for International Human Rights Professor Esmeralda Thornhill. Lawyers Rights Watch Canada. Last modified December 2, 2005. Accessed May 18, 2019. www.lrwc.org/ws/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Syria.StateofEmergency.Macaulay.Feb_..06.pdf.
26. “Syria: a brief review,” Amnesty International, 1979.
27. 28. Ziadeh, The Years of Fear, 23. “Commission on Human Rights, Question of Human Rights and States of Emergency, CHR,” December 1998/108, UN CHROR, 54th Session, UN Doc. E/CN.4/DEC/1998/108 (1998); Leandro Despouy, “The administration of justice and the human rights of detainees: question of human rights and states of emergency,” UN ESC, 49th Session, UN Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1997/19, (1997); Tom Hadden, “Human rights abuses and the protection of democracy during states of emergency,” in Eugene Cotran and Adel Omar Sheri (Eds.), Democracy, the Rule of Law, and Islam (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 1999), 111.
29. Macaulay, “Syria: the need to reform.”
30. Amnesty International, “Syria: 41 years of the state of emergency—Amnesty International reiterates its concerns over a catalogue of human rights violations,” March 2004. Accessed May 20, 2019. http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/ENGMDE240162004.
31. Macaulay, “Syria: the need to reform,” 25–6.
32. Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 2.
33. Carl Schmitt, Political Theology (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006).
34. Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt, The Guardian of the Constitution: Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt on the Limits of Constitutional Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
35. Yehouda Shenhav, “Imperialism, exceptionalism, and the contemporary world,” in Marcelo Svirsky and Simone Bignall (Eds.), Agamben and Colonialism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 19–20.
36. Schmitt, Political Theology.
37. Agamben, State of Exception, 86–7.
38. Sergei Prozorov, Agamben and Politics: A Critical Introduction (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), 115.
39. Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the philosophy of history,” trans. Harry Zohn. Illuminations. Hannah Arendt (Ed.) (New York: Schocken, 1968), 254.
40. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 1.
41. Marcelo Svirsky and Simone Bignall (Eds.), Agamben and Colonialism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012); and Achille Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” Public Culture 15, no. 1 (2003): 11–40.
42. Jasbir K. Puar, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007); Steven C. Caton and Bernardo Zacka, “Abu Ghraib, the security apparatus, and the performativity of power,” American Ethnologist 37, no. 2 (2010): 203–11; and Derek Gregory, “Vanishing points: law, violence and exception in the global war prison,” in Derek Gregory and Allan Pred (Eds.), Violent Geographies: Fear, Terror and Political Violence (New York: Routledge, 2006).
43. Nurhan Abujidi, “The Palestinian states of exception and Agamben,” Contemporary Arab Affairs 2, no. 2 (2009): 272–91; Ronit Lentin, “Palestine/Israel and state criminality: exception, settler colonialism and racialization,” State Crime Journal 5, no. 1 (2016): 32–50; Stephen Morton, “The Palestinian state of emergency and the art practice of Emily Jacir,” in P. Lichtenfels and J. Rouse (Eds.), Performance, Politics and Activism: Studies in International Performance (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); and Sari Hanafi and Taylor Long, “Governance, governmentalities, and the state of exception in the Palestinian refugee camps of Lebanon,” Journal of Refugee Studies 23, no. 2 (2010): 134–59.
44. Lucia Ardovini and Simon Mabon, “Egypt’s unbreakable curse: tracing the state of exception from Mubarak to Al Sisi,” Mediterranean Politics (2019): 1–20, DOI: 10.1080/13629395.2019.1582170; Salwa Ismail, The Rule of Violence: Subjectivity, Memory and Government in Syria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Jules Etjim, “Notes on Syria and the coming global thanatocracy,” Paths and Bridges. Last modified July 11, 2018. Accessed May 19, 2019. https://pathsandbridges.wordpress.com/2018/07/11/notes-on-syria-and-the-coming-global-thanatocracy/amp/?__twitter_impression=true; George Abu Ahmad, “Order, freedom and chaos: sovereignties in Syria,” Middle East Policy 2 (Summer 2013): 47–54; and Abdulhay Sayed, “In the Syrian prison: disconnected and desubjectified,” Global Dialogue 4, no. 2 (2014). Accessed May 20, 2019
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