Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

 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 une...

In a region where colonialism, imperialism and authoritarianism are entangled in a web of interests, rebuilding Syria and developing a mass movement against Israel and US as well as an appeal to renew the spirit of 2010/2011 of overthrowing the rotten, authoritarian and crime-complicit regimes are inseparable. A ‘free Syria’ cannot be free in a sea of unfree region.  When I posted a comment similar to the above on alquds.co.uk, replying to an article by someone defending  the leader  of Hay’at Tahrir al Sham’s stance on Israel, my comment about the reactionary forces involved was censored and went unpublished. “For too long,” writes Hicham Safieddine , “the Assad regime invoked the conflict with Israel to justify its repressive measures against its people. Its opponents have long dared it to launch resistance in the Golan. Now that the opposition is in power, no such plan is in sight.” Thus  fighting colonialism and authoritarianism should not be exclusive. The curre...

Necropolitics: The Taxonomies of Death in Syria (2) Bare life and political opponents Quickly after seizing power, the Baath party produced internal and external enemies to mobilize the population and maintain supremacy over state institutions. In the early days, most of these enemies were within the Baath and hence the purges quickly took place within the party. Once Baath leaders who constituted a threat to Assad’s rule were thrown in jail, the focus shifted to the Muslim Brotherhood and Iraqi Baath members. Since the 2011 revolt, the contours of internal and external enemies became blurred and overnight a large segment of the Syrian population became the enemy and was reduced to bare life. Since it seized power on March 8, 1963, the Baath party has instrumentalized the state of emergency to crush its political enemies. The main enemy during the initial period was within the military and the party, as well as among the allies that supported its coup. The historic partner of the Baath...

This war needs to be understood in a broader perspective, beyond its stated aims of destroying Hamas and/or Hezbollah. Historically, every resistance movement that has emerged—from leftist and nationalist to Islamist and religious—have been labeled as “terrorist organizations” before being targeted by Israeli violence. This war is no exception and can be understood as a deadly turn in a long and violent history of Zionist settler colonialism in the region—this time fully and openly backed, funded, and armed by the United States of America. There is also no doubt that Israel’s technological advancement and supply of the most sophisticated and lethal weaponry (provided by the United States and many European countries) made this war clearly disproportionate in terms of military power. Similarly, the unprecedented open political backing of Israel during its televised genocide by most Western governments and, importantly, by the Arab states that have signed the Abraham Accords, has tilted t...

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....