At the end of his book, Yasser Munif asks pwertinent questions that are still relevant today after the collapse of the Assad regime.
“In a way, the Syrian uprising announced the demise of Assadist eternity, despite the shortcomings of the revolution.
International Relations, as a field of study, exists to maintain hegemonic relations of power. It is utilized to preserve the interests of the state and prevent non-state actors from disrupting the status quo. In the end, mainstream frameworks can become lethal in myriad ways, as the past eight years have amply shown us.
How do people develop a critic of the state while, at the same time they recognize the real power of global institutions, laws, and economies in which their practices are rooted?
How do people develop grassroots strategies while at the same time operate within a world order that works against their aspirations?”
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The demise of the Syrian revolt is perhaps signaling the end of a revolutionary cycle, while the popular struggles in other parts of the Arab world, namely, Algeria, Iraq, and Sudan are gesturing toward the beginning of a new one. These revolts will take many years, possibly several decades before they reach maturation. In the process, they could potentially alter the socio-political and economic structures in the Arab world. In addition, they are disrupting the geography of knowledge and structures of thinking. As people struggle against dictatorship, common sense is being transformed. A democratic future, which appeared impossible a decade ago, has now become possible, despite its daunting absence.
Dictatorship, which until 2011 was the only horizon in Syria, is today undergoing a structural crisis. One of the repulsive Syrian slogans was “Hafez al-Assad, our leader until eternity, and beyond eternity.” Struggles against dictatorship, despite their pitfalls, have shown to Syrians that another outcome is possible. In a way, the Syrian uprising announced the demise of Assadist eternity, despite the shortcomings of the revolution.
The five chapters explore the relationships between microphysical processes and hegemonic structural. They examine micropolitical forces, or what I have called the politics of death, and the way they were operationalized to crush grassroots resistance. The focus on the politics of death, allows for a capillary analysis of violence. It sheds light on micropolitical processes concerning urbicide in Aleppo. It examines the ways official nationalism was weaponized against Syrians, and their aspirations for democracy. The politics of life on the other hand, opens new vistas to comprehend Syrians’ resistance against the devastating violence of the regime. A politics of life revolves around grassroots narratives and iterative experimentation.
This book is not a definitive assessment of revolutionary processes in Syria since 2011; it is rather an invitation to explore specific aspects of the revolt using unconventional theoretical tools and methodologies. It argues that the outcome of these unconventional tools is highly unpredictable. Unlike mainstream methodologies that constrain the purview of the research and predetermine the array of findings, some of the tools proposed here indicate new pathways. When geopolitics is the sole point of entry to examining the Syrian tragedy, then the starving bodies of Palestinians (and Syrians) living in besieged al-Yarmouk Camp are invisiblized; their agonizing voices are inaudible. International Relations, as a field of study, exists to maintain hegemonic relations of power. It is utilized to preserve the interests of the state and prevent non-state actors from disrupting the status quo. In the end, mainstream frameworks can become lethal in myriad ways, as the past eight years have amply shown us.
This book attempts to investigate the subterranean territories of the Syrian revolt. What one finds in these spaces are people struggling to create new institutions; negotiating ways to provide food for their com- munities; telling their stories despite monumental obstacles, at the same time they reinvent the meaning of the nation-state. They experiment with various tools to create livable spaces; and they do so without the guarantee of success. The iterative process is central in this context since revolutionaries are destroying the oppressive structures of the state and inventing new ways of being.
The Syrian revolution was developing strategies against authoritarian rule but equally as important, it was functioning in a world-system that speaks the language of the nation-state. The Syrian people were/ are organizing against dictatorship but also struggling against an oppressive world order. For example, the United Nations refused to have any relationship with non-state actors and as a result refused to deliver food to the opposition controlled regions. The Syrian regime was tasked with distributing UN aid, while it was besieging dozens of regions and burning crops in insurgents areas. The UN provided medical equipment and medication to a state that had been targeting the medical infrastructure in a systematic way for years.
The question then is how do people develop a critic of the state while, at the same time they recognize the real power of global institutions, laws, and economies in which their practices are rooted? Another challenge facing Syrians is the question of bottom-up deliberation and democracy. The technologies of violence and the politics of death deployed in Syria reached levels unmatched in recent history. The main perpetrator was obviously the Syrian regime but others had also their share. What kind of democratic praxes can be developed in a context that violence permeates? Finally, how do people develop grassroots strategies while at the same time operate within a world order that works against their aspirations?
Yasser Munif, The Syrian Revolution, Pluto Press, 2020.
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A revolution could be (mainly) political or it could be both political and social. Syria after Assad has so far witnessed a political revolution led by armed factions not a mass movement yet it that has the potential to establish a parliamentary democracy. It would be a weak and unstable because the social structures, the level of economic development and a few the external powers will hamper the development of even the early experience of Tunisia before Qais Saied. Furthermore, the leading Islamist factions will stifle any movement towards the equality between genders and changes in property relations.
Initially, in the transitional Syria, the Islamists running the regime might tolerate this or that voice, this or that photo, but if they cannot provide bread, peace, electricity, jobs, etc. they will be discredited and different types of conflicts will emerge. There will be a mixed basket of items from Islamist authoritarianism and items from a neoliberal form of capitalism.
Frantz Fanon, writes Adam Shatz, “saw very clearly that people suffering from the traumas of racism, violence, and domination were not likely to reinvent themselves overnight—and that they had no choice but to continue fighting, if only so that they could continue breathing. The struggle for human freedom and disalienation was a constant battle between the wound and the will. Fanon bet on the latter, but his work is also a devastating acknowledgment of the former, even though pessimism was a luxury he could not afford. He had witnessed torture and death; he had languished in the zone of nonbeing. But he always placed himself on the side of life, and of creation.”
Syrians who struggle and yearn for social justice, dignity, real freedom free from exploitation and oppression – whether cloaked in religion or in ‘liberal democracy’ – and free foreign domination and manipulation will not reinvent themselves overnight. Their struggle is not seperate from the Palestinian, Kurdish or Iranian struggle. Nor is it separate from the struggle of the oppressed in the world..
Further readings
- Arabia Without Sultans, Fred Halliday, 1974
- The Shell, Mustafa Khalifa, 2008
- Lineages of Revolt, Adam Hanieh, 2013
- Popular Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East, John Chalcraft, 2016
- Revolution Without Revolutionaries, Asef Bayat, 2017
- The Impossible Revolution, Yassin al-Haj Saleh, 2017
- The Rule of Violence, Salwa Ismail, 2018
- Assad or We Burn the Country, Sam Dagher, 2019
- A Critical Political Economy of the Middle East and North Africa, 2020
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