Quick Notes/Thread on Syria angles: What explains the stark polar reactions we are observing everywhere in the wake of the Syrian regime’s collapse? It is as though people are watching different realities, or approaching reality from singular angles. I’ll try to unpack here though I treated this phenomenon extensively elsewhere 12 years prior, and since. [warning: this is not fun reading] 1/7
Deeper inquiry aside, what we are and have been witnessing in Syria since the eruption of the uprising in March 2011 revolves in a significant way around what I called back in 2012 “the political economy of pain,” i.e., how some observers, Syrians or otherwise, prioritize opposing local authoritarianism and others prioritize opposing Imperialism, and the pain they both cause. This translated into closed workshops that we will revive publicly soon. In most cases, neither is oblivious to the other argument, but the other angle somehow vanishes in much of one’s commentary/analysis/position. This is as close as can be of an explainer to the immeasurable rift we are witnessing, not least for people living in Syria. There are other considerations/angles to be sure. 2/7
And those of us who are actively, not just theoretically/analytically, opposing both repression and imperialism are maligned by all sides depending on what part of our discourse/commentary they happened to have read/heard at any given moment. I have been accused by both sides for being wishy-washy (to be polite here) given my firm opposition to both domestic repression and external intervention. Admittedly, it can become somewhat of an untenable/nuanced position in decisive moments, making you sound naive, unrealistic, and even opportunistic, if your opposition to both is just a matter of an intellectual/moral position—because it can be a copout. So what to do? What to think? What not to ignore? How to measure pain (collective/individual) in space and time? How to develop a rich and layered position that translates into practicality without sounding anti-human? 3/7
I have always found only imperfect answers, but they are my own, developed from a class-based social justice political-economic perspective that sees culprits in hierarchical concentric circles: there is no doubt that local dictators are horrible/brutal/repressive, generating an untold amount of pain in space and time. While true, there are usually also bigger external culprits that can be held responsible for fashioning this horrid context, also in space and (much longer) time, and often on an even larger scale that includes global metrics of political-economic power (from global capitalism and financial power to colonialism and notions of supremacy, racial or otherwise). 4/7
I lived in Syria and visited family yearly until I was banned after 2011. I know well how ordinary decent grown men and women shiver (or piss their pants literally) in the face of a visit/communication from a Mukhabaraat/مخابراتagent. I studied the horrific Syrian prison system with political prisoners who are far more pro-resistance and anti-imperialist than the regime itself. I do not undermine any of this pain. It kills me. But I also view many such dictatorships in a global context of colonialism, subjugation, grand land/resource theft, ruling class complicity (in the periphery), and wars/invasions/genocide that devastate an entire people (Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Libya—in the region alone) and set them back decades/centuries in the service of attaining/maintaining/expanding global political-economic power. So while I cannot but firmly despise dictatorship at a human and granular level, I cannot lose sight of the structuring (or direct) impact of this context by imperial/colonial powers. The bigger structural culprits. 5/7
Hence, I am ecstatic for the release of prisoners of conscience who languished/tortured for years/decades, and people generally who had suffered immensely in Syria, including friends and family; but, aside from the immediate precarity, I am even more wary of the now increased reach and control of imperial powers and their local allies in subverting further any forms of self-determination, not least because of the degraded nature of resistance to the domination of U.S. and friends in the region. The United States, Israel, conservative Arab Monarchies, and Turkey, all of whom participated in dirty intervention in Syria, have now ensured a weakened capacity of popular self determination for some time to come. Syria was just the latest. Mark these words. And NO, Iran, Syria, Hizballah are/were certainly not flawless in this formula. 6/7
Despite the privilege of opining from afar, we all have to, and often do, find a balance of sorts. And despite the fact that I wrote books and articles for the past 2.5 decades about the regime’s brutal repression and neoliberal gutting of Syria/ns (bit.ly/3ZnpISV), I have no compunctions regarding prioritizing opposition to the bigger culprits as I look to the future of Syria/region/beyond amid a Genocide conducted by the same parties that benefited the most today. We can only wait and see, but follow the capital. 7/7
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