Rebel populism

Revolution and loss among Syrian labourers in Beirut

Philip Proudfoot

• Editore: Manchester University Press
• Anno: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781526158093
• Argomento: Politics & International Relations
• Categoria: Middle Eastern Politics

Workers from the Syrian diaspora have maintained a presence in Lebanon for decades, building multimillion-dollar apartment complexes, toiling for backbreaking hours in grocery stores. From the mid-2000s, liberalising reforms saw accelerating levels of poverty among workers, often paid as low as $20 per day. Instead of 'opportunity', workers faced the prospect of indefinite economic exile, the unending drudgery of hard labour, and a constant struggle to make ends meet. But in 2011, revolution came to Syria. Rural towns and villages exploded in revolt, but even those workers who remained in Beirut found means to protest at a distance. Their movement, which this book identifies as 'rebel populism, ' represents an early instance of an increasingly common global contentious political formation, a form of mass politics that emerges not via a charismatic orator or developed ideological convictions, but through the weaving together of grievances aimed at the ruling class.

1

Cynicism, socialism, and labour migration

It is a warm summer’s evening in mid-July 2012. In the corner of Bilal and Mohammed’s breezeblock shack, a battered old TV is tuned to the Saudi-sponsored news station Al-Arabiya. A report describes a skirmish between the Syrian Armed Forces (SAF) and several recently formed opposition militias. “Clashes broke out today in the Damascus countryside,” the presenter announces.¹

Bilal and Mohammed – two cousins living and working in Beirut – glance momentarily at the screen, before their eyes return to our game of cards. A few minutes pass, and the news feature begins describing the increasing prominence of “Jabhat Al-Nusra,” an Al-Qaeda-aligned opposition faction.² Bilal, now paying the TV more attention, breaks the silence. He issues approving comments and salutes Al-Nusra’s virtues among the opposition: bravery, ferocity, and military prowess. But we’ve all heard his opinions before, and a predictable look of frustration sets across his cousin’s face. Mohammed has grown tired of Bilal’s unwavering support for the uprising’s more radical elements.

The cousins are 20 years old; they grew up in a small village in rural Idlib, a province in Syria’s North West. They live together at “Urban Dreams,” a luxury Beirut apartment construction site in central West Beirut. Mohammed is the taller of the two. He is skinny with a large nose, his eyes are dark and his hair is curly. Bilal is shorter, his features balanced, and his hair is styled with care. Mohammed is quiet and reserved; his cousin is brash and confident. Three other men live at Urban Dreams, all are from the same village, and all maintain a regular coterie of visitors from back home.

During the beginning months of my fieldwork, I visit these men often. We meet to drink tea, eat snacks, and while away the hours. Sometimes we play cards; other times we spend the night playing computer games at a nearby internet café. The men, it turns out, are great fans of the classic First-Person Shooter: “Counter-Strike.” Having misspent my own youth playing it, I always look forward to this “fieldwork activity.” But it was through participating in these seemingly mundane activities that I built friendships and attuned myself to the rhythms of workers’ daily lives. With no predetermined “research question” or “hypothesis,” I joined in with whatever pursuit men were willing to share. The nature of this open-ended methodology was encapsulated best by the anthropologist Michael Agar when he described it as “the fieldwork funnel.” That metaphor captures how we move, first from broad observation, to gradually more targeted inquiry.³

Stepping foot on Beirut’s countless construction sites was my entrance into that funnel, where there are hundreds of luxury apartment projects and commercial ventures dotted across the capital.⁴ The emergence of these buildings relies upon an uninterrupted stream of cheap, malleable, Syrian labourers.⁵ Indeed, for well over half a century, the Lebanese economy has leaned heavily on that imported workforce.⁶

In Spring 2012, I became a regular visitor to Mohammed and Bilal’s home. From the construction site’s entrance, their living space – a square room built from breezeblocks – is obscured from view. It is hidden behind plant machinery, rusting scaffolding, stacks of iron foundation rods, and heaps of excavated dirt. The boys must first cross a splintering wooden beam that bridges a deep foundation trench; it wobbles with each step. Bilal enjoys teasing me about how dangerous I find it: he sprints at full pelt across the beam, occasionally jumping just to turn my stomach.

Once at the other side, their home moves into view; on its roof sits a grey tank supplying an improvised shower at the rear; a persistent drip of water runs down into the exposed orange earth leaving a thick, muddy residue in its wake. Three-quarters of the site’s perimeter is bordered off by ten-foot-high wooden barriers. Street-side, these walls are decorated with computer-rendered graphics illustrating the project’s final outcome: “elegant contemporary living.” Advertisements like this are typical of Beirut’s luxury apartment industry: the capital’s streetscape is replete with photoshopped scenes of grinning children and attractive young (predominately white) parents.⁷ At Urban Dreams the external barriers also display an oversized architect’s floor plan mapping out maids’ rooms, large bedrooms, a private gym, electricity generator, and underground parking. Apartments are set to retail at prices beyond the reach of all but the privileged few.

Urban Dreams is located in a district of the city aligned with the Lebanese political party Harakat Amal, and, to a lesser degree, Hezbollah – two organisations that win support among Shia Muslims on a sectarian basis.⁸ Both parties backed the Assad government against the uprising. The district’s political affiliation is made manifest on flags fluttering atop lampposts and banners waving between balconies. When I asked the men about their neighbourhood politics, Mohammed and Bilal told me they felt surrounded by foes: “people who hate us,” they said. Nevertheless, when I enquire if they’d ever thought of moving, both stress they can cope. Living at Urban Dreams means avoiding substantial costs incurred through renting an apartment. Bilal brought in around $400 per month as a labourer on-site. This is, he tells me, a significant improvement on his previous job, selling bananas at the roadside in South Beirut. Still, he enjoys telling wild stories from that time.

“Maybe you just were not good at selling bananas,” I joke with him one evening.

“Well, listen, one day a man came up and asked me how much for a banana,” Bilal says. “So, I told him 250 lire … but then he said not those bananas, I want to buy your banana!”

“And were you ready to sell it?” I reply.

“No, of course not. But let me tell you: I’d have made more than I do in two weeks if I’d said yes! We’re from Idlib – everyone knows we like to fuck!”

Before the war, his cousin Mohammed was enrolled in Damascus University’s journalism department. He planned to work in Beirut only for the summer, but soon he decided to wait out the mounting violence. Having secured a job behind the counter at a local pastry shop, Mohammed brought in the same wage as his cousin. To keep costs down, he too slept on a spare bed at Urban Dreams. For both, their salaries often brought complications. Gaps widened between payments with “miscalculations” regarding their labour hours. During our evenings together, Mohammed, who finished later than those working on the site, often stormed back announcing he was “finished.” His boss talked down to him; “there is no respect.”

These tense working conditions caused Mohammed constant anxiety. Without any form of collective representation and no union or embassy willing to take action, Syrian migrant workers have no recourse to collective bargaining power to resist exploitation. As more refugees moved across the border, men found that any protestation could be easily met with responses like “Go then! There are a hundred like you,” “You’re not special,” or “I can easily put someone in your place.” Feeling totally at a loss, Mohammed once even asked me to visit him during his working hours. Once at the shop, he planned that we were to talk to each other across the counter for a while. His reasoning was that this would signal that he is close to “wealthy foreigners” and that perhaps he is somehow “important” or has “wāsta” – that is, social connections and clout.⁹

Despite the anxieties and inconveniences that come with living rough on a construction site, the boys still took pride in the home they had constructed. Bilal points the shelving out to me that he fashioned from discarded wood, the hooks on which pots and pans hang, a salvaged electric fan, nooks and crannies between breeze blocks used to stash cigarettes and the pièce de résistance, a working television. Mohammed had found the set next to some trash cans, probably discarded because of its damaged colour filter, which confers a green tinge to all the programmes. The internal speakers are just as broken; base notes fizzle and crack. Despite its poor state, and electricity supply permitting, their TV was now nearly always broadcasting live scenes direct from Syria’s frontlines.

Returning to that evening playing cards on the construction site, Bilal continues to speak up. In his view, Al-Nusra’s role in the revolution must be expanded, for they are, he stresses, the only group powerful enough to bring victory to the people. Bilal does not seem bothered by Al-Nusra’s Islamic credentials; his rare mention of religion was contained within assertions like “they’re good Muslims,” or “Islam gives them strength.”¹⁰ Indeed, it seemed to me that, following Bilal’s reckoning, Al-Nusra’s piety was only noteworthy in so far as it informed their military prowess, or acted as a source of inspiration behind their revolutionary deeds.

During one of his many commentaries on heroism, Bilal told me about his elder brother, Khalil. In early 2012, he received word that the police arrested Khalil; they dragged him from their family home in the middle of the night, beat him, and tortured him over several days. Bilal describes himself and his brother as “normal guys,” and “not that political.” True, they had attended the occasional protest when the uprising began; however, this was just because friends invited them and “they wanted to have fun.” That having fun led to his brother’s arrest, and the torture was more than enough evidence for the fact that “the regime is monstrous.”

Revenge for Khalil, Bilal reasons, is best meted out by Al-Nusra. Mohammed disagrees – for he prefers to lend support to smaller organisations, l...