The Syrian Revolution

Between the Politics of Life and the Geopolitics of Death

Yasser Munif

• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780745340722
• eBook ISBN: 9781786805812
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Military Science & Technology
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Understanding the Syrian revolution is unthinkable without an in-depth analysis from below. Paying attention to the complex activities of the grassroots resistance, this book demands we rethink the revolution.

Having lived in Syria for over fifteen years, Yasser Munif is expert in exploring the micropolitics of revolutionary forces. He uncovers how cities are managed, how precious food is distributed and how underground resistance thrives in regions controlled by regime forces. In contrast, the macropolitics of the elite Syrian regime are undemocratic, destructive and counter-revolutionary. Regional powers, Western elites, as well as international institutions choose this macropolitical lens to apprehend the Syrian conflict. By doing so, they also choose to ignore the revolutionaries' struggles.

By looking at the interplay between the two sides, case studies of Aleppo and Manbij and numerous firsthand interviews, Yasser Munif shows us that this macro and geopolitical authoritarianism only brings death, and that by looking at the smaller picture - the local, the grassroots, the revolutionaries - we can see the politics of life emerge.

1

Necropolitics: The Taxonomies of Death in Syria

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.³

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 ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Necropolitics: The Taxonomies of Death in Syria
• 2. The Geography of Death in Aleppo
• 3. Nation Against State: Popular Nationalism and the Syrian Uprising
• 4. The Politics of Bread and Micropolitical Resistance
• 5. Participatory Democracy and Micropolitics in Manbij: An Unthinkable Revolution
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Index