“Syrian revolutionaries owe nobody an apology”
Interview with Fawaz Traboulsi on the Syrian revolution
(Interview conducted by Mohammed Al Attar on February 20, 2013)
Lebanese thinker, author and Leftist activist Fawaz Traboulsi has clearly voiced his support for the Arab revolutions and followed their progress as a writer and analyst, culminating in his 2012 book, Democracy is Revolution. At watershed moments in the region’s contemporary history, from Lebanon to Yemen, the university professor and historian has been not merely an observer but a fully-fledged activist intellectual. His publications include: On Incurable Hope: A Diary of the Siege of Beirut (1982); Marxism and Some of our Arab Issues (1985); The Promises of Aden: Travels in Yemen (2000); Lebanon’s Modern History (2008). He has also published a number of well-regarded translations of works by John Reed, Antonio Gramsci, John Berger and Edward Said.
The greater part of this interview is taken up with the situation in Syria, including discussion of the interwoven roles of international and regional players (foremost among them the Americans) in addition to an evaluation of the political opposition’s performance. It also examines the thorny relationship of Lebanon’s various parties with the revolution and provides an overview of the stance taken by the Left towards the Arab revolutions in general and the Syrian revolution in particular. Finally, it examines the role of the intelligensia and their position on the revolution.
The interview took place in Beirut.
Mohammed Al Attar: As the Syrian revolution approaches its second birthday we’re seeing an unprecedented escalation of violence by the regime’s rampant military being met with an increasingly strong response by the opposition’s armed resistance, and yet there seems little possibility of a military solution in the near future. The political scene has never looked more complex than it does today. How do you read the current situation in Syria and its possible developments?
Fawad Traboulsi: It almost goes without saying that Syria’s blood-drenched crisis is extremely complex. But complexity does not mean that we cannot think about it, break it down into its constituent elements and plot the directions in which it might evolve. This past year did not differ significantly from the one before, specifically from the point at which peaceful protests began demanding limited reforms, principally the abolition of emergency law. The regime’s response has remained unchanged from the outset. At first, it refused to acknowledge the existence of internal problems that needed to be addressed. The security services’ initial approach was unambiguous and direct. The emergency laws were replaced by a counter-terrorism law, a strategy which culminated in the Clock Square massacre in Homs, and which was clearly intended to prevent a repeat of events in Tunisia, Egypt and even Yemen, where protest movements occupied the public squares.
It needs to be emphasized here that the counter-terrorism law was aimed first and foremost at the United States, a continuation of the same technique used by Arab tyrants to secure American goodwill by means of an endlessly repeated message to the effect that they—the tyrants—were partners in a global war on terror, hoping to secure their legitimacy abroad in defiance of their subject peoples. It’s no coincidence that this approach received a warm welcome from the Russian Federation, with its obsession over the Central Asian republics and a bloody war in Chechnya. The corollary of this was a view of the populist protest movements as a war-like threat that necessitated a military response over and above the standard security measures. This approach has remained unchanged to this very day. It was and remains a war, even though it has morphed from being a war against “destructive groups” into one against the “Al Qaeda organization”. It’s worth noting that this openly declared war has been accompanied by assurances of “victory” and “resolution” which naturally enough haven’t materialized, despite the escalation of military activity in the form of air-based weaponry. Air power is something of a double-edged sword: while it makes it quite clear that the regime has not the slightest compunction about causing the most terrible human losses, widespread devastation and waves of displacement, resorting to warplanes is also an admission that the policy of a speedy resolution has failed. You can’t win battles from the air alone. You can wreak havoc to your heart’s content, but you can’t control people unless you first control the ground, and that is now more or less impossible. The regime’s army has lost control of most of the suburbs and hinterland of the major cities and given the unfeasibility of regaining it, the “assured victory” will never be realised. The armed opposition, meanwhile, is able to lose battles without any single encounter proving decisive to its overall chances.
So: the first cause of this current situation is the regime’s refusal to admit the existence of a complex internal crisis that goes hand in hand with a crisis in the regime’s stance on conflicts within the region, crises that built up for four decades before exploding. The second, is the regime’s penchant for what used to be known as “exporting crises”, i.e.: placing responsibility for them on foreign parties—either accusing them of pulling strings behind the scene or bringing them in as mediators in the conflict between the regime and significant segments of its population. Let us not forget that the initial “exportation” was categorizing the conflict as part of the global war on terror. This strategy lay behind the decision to make the Turks mediators in the attempt to reach a solution, before the Turks themselves discovered they were being used to buy time in order to achieve a military solution that never materialized. And it is what happened with the Qataris, who took the case to the Arab League in concert with the Saudis. The regime accepted the Arab League’s initiative and exploited it for the same ends: a breathing space in which to achieve their military solution. Finally, the Syrian crisis was transferred to the United Nations and the Security Council where the regime succeeded in obtaining a Russian and Chinese veto, and at the same time created a competitive US-Russian double-act embodied in the two separate missions of Kofi Annan and Lakhdar Brahimi. The upshot was the unprecedented spectacle of an entire people and their demands being sidelined for months, with the world diverted by the regime’s promises of reform, a bubble that finally burst with the issuing of a constitution which only strengthened the dictatorial powers of the head of state.
I recall that you wrote a detailed article on the new constitution at the time.
That’s right. It’s astonishing to read. I mentioned at the time that the powers granted to Syrian president by the new constitution were no less despotic that those of the Amir of Qatar.
Anyway, back to the foreign factor in the Syrian revolution. I’d like to pause over the American position. It’s common knowledge that the Syrian opposition was divided over the question of foreign intervention. One party welcomed it, even called for it openly, and the other rejected it. Today, both sides have a duty to explain the reason for this dispute, given that the Libyan solution was never on the table.
The fact of the matter is that the Americans have held an unambiguous and unwavering position since the outbreak of revolutions in the Arab world. In Egypt they supported Mubarak resigning in favour of his deputy, only for the people to spoil the plan and block Omar Suleiman. In Tunisia it was left to the French. In both these countries, however, the army refused to intervene against the people and the president was sacrificed in the hope of saving the wider regime. In Yemen, the American ambassador promoted the solution put forward by the Gulf initiative: getting Ali Abdullah Saleh’s deputy acclaimed as leader while keeping large swathes of a military leadership made up of Saleh’s sons and relatives in place, on the pretext that they were engaged in a war against Al Qaeda. It’s my view that overly hasty talk about repeating the Libyan model obscured the fact that Libya was a unique case. United States policy in the region is founded on security: Israel’s security, oil security, and prioritizing a generalized security mind-set over all other considerations through imposing a global war on terror. Last but not least, it seeks to complete the implementation of neo-liberal structural adjustments in the region as dictated by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
These are the four basic considerations that have shaped American policy towards Syria, a policy which continues to waver between a desire to weaken and split the Iranian-Syria alliance and the need to preserve the status quo along Israel’s northern borders. The Syrian regime is still regarded as responsible not only for two countries (Syria and Lebanon) but also for the security and stability of the northern borders of occupied Palestine. It’s no coincidence that American policy is following the same blueprint it attempted to implement in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen (calling on the president to step down in favour of his deputy and thus rescue the regime by making superficial adjustments). At the most basic level, an alternative regime would have to be capable of ordering its army to perform the same geo-strategic role: to preserve the safety and security along Israel’s northern borders and if possible, to contain Hezbollah, which is treated in Western circles as an irregular military force that needs to be managed by a caretaker state.
That state was, and is, the Syrian state.
So if we want an explanation for America’s distaste for military intervention in Syria we need look no further than the absence of any alternative that is ready to take up these tasks. Add to this an American administration which has learnt the dangers of disbanding armies from its experimentation in Iraq and is keen to keep the Syrian army together, a sentiment expressed by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta on more than one occasion.
Secondly, if we suppose that American and Western plans favour the destruction and fragmentation of Syria—as a people, if not as an entity—(as advocated by adherents of the Israeli-American and the New Middle-East schools of thought) then we see that the regime itself has been charged with the task carrying it out, its capacity for murder and devastation outstripping the imaginations of Washington’s most cold-blooded pragmatists. The question is: Why doesn’t the regime reach an accommodation with its people, instead of insisting that its opponents are foreign agents? Why not cut out these foreign powers? Why does it prefer to negotiate with the foreign paymasters of its rebellious populace who live abroad?
The enquiring mind has to ask: How does one explain the most recent Israeli strike? It’s the beginning of an intervention in the Syrian conflict with clear objectives: to weaken Syria’s war-fighting capabilities, destroy its chemical weapons and advanced rocket systems (a not inconsiderable deterrent) and of course to stop the flow of weapons to Hezbollah. To this list we can add: an attempt to check the growth of Jihadist forces within the armed resistance (by building an electrified fence along the border).
To sum up, I believe that the dream of a decisive resolution has come to an end with the passing of another year and the failure of the policy of systematic destruction from the air. On the other hand, while the armed resistance has steadfastly eroded the regime’s military power it does not possess the weaponry needed to tip the odds in its favour. Clearly, Western policy still balks at supplying the resistance with the arms needed to achieve this goal.
At this juncture, I’d like to sound a warning about the strategy of offering concessions and selling out positions, which has come to characterize the approach of some of the opposition’s leaders, who make concessions in the hope of securing American sanction. There’s talk of regaining the Golan, occupied and annexed through political maneuverings, with the assistance of “our French and American friends,” as though the regime had ever tried to take it through force! This equates to an abrogation of the Syrian people’s right to reclaim its occupied and assimilated territories by force of arms, a right enshrined in every single international treaty and Security Council resolution. It is a self-delusion, and misleads others, to suppose that the Israel of Netanyahu, Lieberman and the settlers would renounce ownership of the Golan just because Syria’s Baath regime and autocratic rule had been swept from power. It is a mirror image of the advice doled out to the Syrian opposition by the Arab neo-conservatives (the Lebanese in particular), that they should make more concessions over Golan as this would encourage the US administration to intervene militarily on their behalf.
But don’t you think that most of the Syrians calling for foreign intervention under the spell of what happened in Libya, have come to realize that by and large these foreign powers do not have honest intentions, especially the United States, whose murky role is coming in for increasingly vocal criticism?
Let’s understand each other first of all: there’s no such thing as “most Syrians.” Next, I take issue with the idea of “intentions”, honest or not. There are no intentions. There are interests. That you understand these interests and take them into account does not mean you go along with them or submit to them, nor that you fail to take note of them. As for the idea that “honest intentions” include military intervention in a revolution prosecuted by large swathes of a Syrian population opposed to their regime: that’s closer to being a disaster than honesty. That said, I fully appreciate the suffering of the Syrian people and the revolutionaries, who face these horrors on a daily basis. I understand their desire to call on the outside world to save them, even militarily. I understand the simplified approach that makes easy comparisons with Libya. However, I’m talking about the political leadership, who should be capable of pondering the question of the fundamental difference between circumstances in Libya and Syria through an accurate reading of the interests and policies of the American administration. And I think, too, that they will have had clear answers, or at least clear indications, of the absence of any will for military intervention, in which case they should have based their approach on more accurate calculations.
For a while now the phrase “Syrian revolution” has lost some of its currency in the world press. Even “Syrian crisis” is less common than before. There is now a widespread use of “civil war” accompanied by an increasing focus on sectarian aspects of the conflict, which were highlighted by a recent UN report. A considerable number of Syrians feel very bitter when they see their efforts reduced to such descriptions. How do you see it?
Obviously, I regard what is taking place in Syria and other regions of the Arab world as a revolution: a revolution which gives expression to a profound crisis in the societies concerned, leading millions to take to the street to demand change and summon up a limitless capacity for self-sacrifice to achieve this change and, eventually, to take responsibility for bringing down the regime. It is a revolution, because it gives voice to two impossible conditions: that there are rulers who may no longer remain in power, and that there are peoples who can no longer put up with their rule. (And by rulers we are not talking just about individuals, but rather a system of control). Furthermore, these are revolutions that do not hide their causes: unemployment, dictatorship, social divides, the citizen’s abused dignity. To which they roar back: Work! Freedom! Social justice! Human dignity!
The revolutions are a response to the impasse reached by all Arabic dictatorial regimes (whether monarchies or republics): their legitimacy abroad is crumbling and their legitimacy at home is lost. They no longer guarantee their people the most basic level of services and means of social distribution and this has lost them the legitimacy they derived from their role in national liberation and the Arab-Israeli conflict. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the Syrian people’s greatness lies in the fact that it never failed in its patriotism. It did not rise up against regime and country when they were under threat during the American invasion of Iraq. It rose up once the armies of the US and her allies had withdrawn. The American withdrawal coincided with the Syrian regime’s failure to secure a foothold in the new Iraqi dispensation by appointing Iyad Alawi as president (and getting his bloc into the cabinet) in a joint effort with Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Instead, a US-Iranian entente led to the renewal of Nouri Al Malaki’s political fortunes and the alliance of Shia political parties that he represented.
One of the first signs of Syria’s fading legitimacy was the end of its role as leader of the Arab rejectionist front and it was no coincidence that the regime renewed its approval of a two-state solution for Palestine before cutting ties with Hamas and other Palestinian rejectionist organizations. The impasse in which it found itself was the end-point of a whole era of the Arab-Israeli conflict: the era of bilateral solutions. I have no desire to downplay the contradiction implicit in the Syrian-Iranian alliance and its support for Hezbollah but I would draw attention to the inconsistency of Western attitudes towards this alliance, which vary according to the state of negotiations between the West and the Islamic republic over the nuclear issue.
These are dictatorial regimes whose repressive tendencies have increased in step with the gradual strengthening of the hegemony of globalizing and neoliberal creeds in the region and the commensurate reduction of social services they have provided to their peoples. This is why I call the revolutions the “third wave of the Arab anti-neoliberal resistance”. The first wave struck in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, most notably in Egypt’s bread riots and the uprising of the Heitiyeen (the “loiterers” or unemployed) in Algeria. The second came in the 1990s and gave rise to uprisings in Morocco, Jordan, Tunisia and Egypt and the bread riots in Yemen’s urban centers. In this third wave, each and every one of the Arab states caught up in the revolutions set out to oppose the removal of subsidies on fuel and food or the rising cost of living, at which point the authorities’ response provoked these movements into proposing radical political change in the form of bringing down the regime.
We might make an exception of Syria, given that the crushing security presence permitted no unambiguous expression of social protest. Instead, the protests began by addressing the most basic rights and democratic freedoms: the abolition of the emergency laws.
That’s not to say that the Syrian revolution was not profoundly class-based and social. It was a revolution of the outsiders: the rural population, the poor, the marginalized and the inhabitants of the deprived suburbs that ring the major cities. It was from these roots that it first sprung before moving into the cities and the capital itself. There’s no denying that large numbers of middle class citizens, young people and members of the bourgeoisie in exile participated in various ways to this movement. It is just that the Syrian revolution is still largely characterized by its profoundly populist nature.
But there are large segments of the population engaged in the Syrian revolution that refuse to classify it as a revolution of outsiders, and most especially reject any interpretation based on ideas of class conflict or that it’s essential dynamic is economic. Let’s not forget that most Syrians prefer to describe their revolution as a “revolution for dignity”. There were a number of slogans employed in the early days, particularly in the outlying urban districts and the countryside, which emphasized that it was not a revolution of the hungry or an uprising based on economic demands. The move to rebuff economic inducements came very early. I mention this not so much to pass comment on your classification above, but because you yourself have previously expounded on this subject at great length, when you described the fight against neoliberalism as an essential motivation of the popular movement.
I won’t argue about the chicken and the egg. I started by saying that there has been a decline in these regimes’ internal and foreign legitimacy, which is first and foremost a political factor. I then said that these regimes have increased the level of their despotism to compensate for the decline in their nationalist and social legitimacy. This has compelled them to submit to, or accept, the dictates of the IMF and the World Bank. Bashar Al Assad’s reign was one of neoliberal restructuring, tearing down his father’s legacy of state capitalism and making fundamental concessions regarding the make-up of the Syrian economy, in obedience to IMF directives. He oversaw the Syrian economy’s move away from its agricultural-industrial base and into financial services, property, import and mafia-style connections with a gang of relatives and loyalists installed at the top. In my view this alone is enough to explain the rise in unemployment, the breakdown of the agricultural system, the widening of class divisions and the proliferation of expressions of visual consumerism in the cities and this is why I believe that events in Syria are no different—in this respect—from what occurred in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen.
I’d like to say something about the “revolution of dignity”. I fully understand that this phrase has arisen from four decades of the daily affront to human dignity meted out by the regime in its dealings with the Syrian people. Derogatory and abusive terms like “Boy!” and “Donkey!” still ring in their ears, and the Lebanese, too, suffered these humiliations during the Syrian mandate. Nevertheless, I’d like to imagine that the revolution of dignity has been triumphant. After all, isn’t the opposition’s program to solve the Syrian people’s problems based entirely on the all-encompassing concept of dignity? Isn’t unemployment an offence to the dignity of individuals and communities alike? What about poverty and impoverishment: can they co-exist with dignity? Doesn’t the closing off of young Syrians’ hopes for the future represent the very apogee of contempt for the idea that man has an intrinsic worth?
Let us understand one another. Does the slogan “Freedom” incorporate the idea of economic freedom? We can rest assured that the alternative elites will only recreate the circumstances that led to the revolution. We’ve started to see this in the policies of Egypt’s Salvation Front, when Amr Moussa called for reaching an agreement with President Morsi to prevent labor strikes and restrict the rights of workers and unions. At this juncture I’m going to allow myself a little digression on the subject of human rights. Why is it only in our country that these rights are interpreted as being individual and personal rights? I say this with all due respect and admiration for those non-governmental organizations that have achieved real breakthroughs in the last quarter century. However, the question remains: from the perspective of human dignity—this being our topic—aren’t employment, accommodation, drinking water, healthcare and a safe environment also human rights? Or do these areas not get mentioned in the majority of human rights workshops, pamphlets, conferences, seminars and training sessions precisely because neoliberal ideology wants them (even if they have been the state’s responsibility) to be subjected to privatization and commodification and exposed to capital and the profit principle.
I realize that class struggle is out of fashion these days and I know that many intellectuals—including the vast majority of those on the Left—neglect the economic factor, to distance themselves from what they call interest-based explanations. I’d go so far as to say that their real achievement has been to prove that everything that has happened is either political or cultural not to mention “geostrategic” and “geopolitical”. This is why imperialism, along with its local rulers and associated elites, has been the ultimate victor.
Is there no class conflict in the Syrian revolution? Tell me, the sons of the Aleppan countryside fighting in the Free Army and jihadist groups, who have swept down on the city: aren’t they practicing—with varying degrees of openness—the traditional revenge of peasants and farmers against the urban center, the stronghold of the landowners, merchants and profiteers? Isn’t this one face of the age-old conflict between the countryside and city, between the poor and the well-off? When the Syrian president tells his friends and visitors that he doesn’t care if the Damascus suburbs are destroyed because he can build new cities to replace them, isn’t he practicing a kind of classism—indeed a classist extermination—against poverty and the poor in the name of modernity and cleanliness?
In all instances I have set the economic and social factors in their proper place and established their relationship with politics and the national cause; with regional roles, even. I believe that the decline of these regimes’ nationalist legitimacy, plus the decline in their provision of social services (which begins with Saudi Arabia, where some forty per cent of the population are classified as poor, and by no means ends with Syria!) has pushed the tragedy of the younger generation to the forefront. This, in a region which boasts two global highs: the highest rate of unemployment and the highest number of young people as a proportion of the overall population. Taken together, this means the highest rate of unemployment amongst young people in the world. In my view this explains the disproportionate number of young people engaged in these revolutions, and I’m not just talking about educated youth, though the rate of unemployment for graduates is very high. So you have tens of millions of people looking for job opportunities that at the moment just aren’t there. The big question is this: What economy can guarantee their provision? Not the current economies, that’s for sure. And the biggest question of all: What revolution will open new horizons for the youth?
The Syria opposition is standing on the threshold of a new era, one that may see them—or some of them—rise to positions of power. It would be a good idea for them to take a good look around and observe what’s in store for them and what has been, or is being, implemented in other countries. More importantly, any group that takes power in this new phase will soon see people take against them and the protests start up again, precisely because of the economic situation. Look how the people welcomed President Marzouki in Sidi Bouzid: with shoes! As for democracy being a priority, I don’t think political democracy means much if it can’t end the autocratic monopoly of power and place political decision-making (and by extension social and economic decision-making) in the hands of the broadest possible spectrum of the wider public, operating on the principle of the people choosing their rulers, holding them to account and changing them if needs be. Responding to the slogan “Bread and Freedom” by saying that we need freedom but not bread is quite exceptionally naïve, though I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it’s a classist sentiment that seeks to deprecate the material needs and social rights of the citizenry. The poor in the countryside and cities want freedom, something they have proved with blood and great sacrifice, and quite contrary to theories that link democratic impulses with the urban middle class. It is, after all, the main way in which the destitute can involve themselves in public life, determine their own future and make their economic and social demands heard. The greatest challenge facing the revolutions and their revolutionaries are regional and international efforts to replace military-liberal elites with military elites allied with ideological capitalism and liberalism—and it is obvious that many people are resisting these efforts.
Returning to my question about the Syrian revolution and the terms used to categorize it: how do you see this issue?
To repeat: it is a revolution, because it seeks to effect radical change in the exercise of political power and in society itself, and because it articulates the complete state of crisis in these two areas and the fact that all chances for reform have been let slip. It states quite unambiguously: once peaceful means have failed, all change must begin by overturning the political system by force and violence. It is a revolution that simultaneously presents its causes and objectives, calling for employment, freedom, social justice and human dignity. This is the very first time that Arab oppositions have had to engage with employment and unemployment in such a stark and comprehensive manner. For a long time they ignored it, until it blew up in everyone’s faces.
The search for definitions is complicated by the debate over non-violent vs. militarized revolution. In Syria, the peaceful revolution has been militarized, chiefly because the regime first resorted to repression by the security services and then prosecuted a war against the uprising. I can quite understand a reluctance to admit that it has become a civil war. It stems from a legitimate refusal to accept that the two warring sides share equal responsibility or the violence, which would involve turning a blind eye to the regime’s war against its own people and its refusal to make any concessions or reforms; in other words, expunging the very real causes of the popular protest movement and the revolution. Nevertheless, the fact is that Syrians are killing each other. It’s an unfortunate—no, horrifying—truth, and it can’t be denied. Admitting that what is taking place in Syria is a civil war has another consequence: admitting the existence of civil war, means accepting that this war is largely sectarian in nature.
Having followed events on the ground, and knowing what you do of its negative consequences, was there ever any hope of avoiding an armed resistance?
The military option wasn’t an option, it was a response to a war waged by the regime against a non-violent insurrectionist people. But just let me take a moment to talk about the concept of non-violence. In Syria, as in the other revolutionary countries, vast numbers of people took to the streets the length and breadth of the land. They used their strength, the strength of numbers, to impose their demands. In rare cases, the ruler or regime responded to this kind of pressure. Morocco is one example of this, whatever our feelings on the limited nature of the subsequent reforms. We should keep in mind that creating pressure through strength of numbers might result in arrests and clashes with the security forces and might evolve further, with the regime attempting to push back using the army. This is what happened in Egypt, though in Egypt the army stopped at very clearly demarcated boundaries, demarcated principally by its own interests. After all, the regime was a military one at the end of the day and its leaders were completely at odds with President Mubarak on the issue of inheritance. So the army chose to sacrifice the president in an effort to preserve the army’s standing and its role in politics and the economy, and to save the regime in a wider sense.
In Syria, a vast public force, the like of which had never been seen in the country’s modern history, was countered first with a security strategy and then by the military. Large segments of the non-violent protest movement made the switch to applying pressure through force of arms. Any soldier who refused to fire on demonstrators was executed on the spot. His comrades split up, fled and formed armed resistance groups with a death sentence hanging over them. In the civil society movement, after four or five successive waves of coordinators had been detained, chucked into prison and tortured (some to the point of death) some of those who were yet to be arrested or killed started saying: better that I die fighting than perish under torture. Militarization is thus the offspring of the regime’s decision to meet popular pressure with state violence, provoking violence from the population in return.
Syrian revolutionaries owe nobody an apology, nor should they have to waste their time explaining why they “neglected other options”, seeing that this magnificent people continues to mount non-violent demonstrations whenever the opportunity presents itself, to affirm its presence and its permanent readiness for non-violent action. The only thing that requires explanation is their position on foreign funding and support. Anyone who experienced what Syrian citizens have lived through, witnessed the full extent of the repression and slaughter and was forced to take up arms, would look for weapons everywhere they could. The regime that forced them to take up arms is what is forcing them to accept funding for their armed enterprise. It is no secret that armed revolutions have financial requirements completely unrelated to the domestic capacities of the population in question.
The very real question facing the Syrian opposition is how to accept support from the sources that are reaching out to the revolution while preserving an independent, patriotic, Syrian decision-making process? It’s a tricky balance to strike but not an impossible one. These funds should be seen as debts that will be subsequently used to influence the new Syrian authorities, if not hold them to ransom.
There can be little doubt that the situation in Syria makes it too difficult for foreign forces to intervene. Yet this is the greatest excuse of all, because the opposition grows ever more patriotic and refuses to see itself as indebted to anyone, whilst in reality it is the creditor. The rulers who support it, do so to prevent revolutions in their own countries, to block the transmission of the revolutionary virus to their populations. They will not bring the revolution to an end. The ruler who funds protests or armed revolutions does so rather to prevent the establishment of effective national democracies in these countries and to propagate a monolithic model of governance in the region: a capitalist profit-based, conformist Islamist (Salafist and Brotherhood) model.
Is the revolution finished for good when it transforms, in at least one of its aspects, into a civil conflict? In your opinion, is the classification “civil war”—which has become widely used in the media, and the Western media especially, as well as Western institutes and research centers—an objective description of reality? (Especially since this usage is by no means a new one, with some individuals assiduously deploying it in recent months).
Absolutely not: the revolution is not over when one of its offshoots turns into civil war. Most revolutions lead to civil war whether we like it or not. It should be emphasized: not using the phrase civil war does not change the fact that there are two militarized groups fighting until one defeats the other or both are so worn down that they end up at some form of stalemate.
What worries me is that things in Syria will continue to progress in the direction of a sectarian-type solution. Most of the foreign powers involved contribute, whether openly or implicitly, to this sectarian narrative and its ability to achieve a settlement or a solution. This is the big danger. The idea of the president stepping down and a subsequent transition period has inspired much debate on the putative president and prime minister’s sectarian identity, rather than a discussion about establishing a national conference and reformulating the constitution, the political system and the laws based on a consideration of real-world problems. The Saudi-Gulf axis has never seen this as a democratic struggle, but rather as a sectarian issue: a war against Iran being prosecuted in Syria. The US narrative relies on ethnicities, minorities and neoliberalism. Remember Hilary Clinton’s demands of President Morsi: rights for Copts and women. American policy has not got out of the habit of seducing liberals with fantasies then abandoning them in favour of Islamists. What happened to the Islamic menace? American policy makes use of the Islamists who reproduce authoritarian power structures, arguing that moderate Islam provides a bulwark against its extremist and jihadist variants.
Do you see any possibility of a sectarian war in Syria?
I do not. What I fear is sectarian solutions. But before I get into that I’d like to pause over the word “sectarian”, on which subject I disagree with both my Syrian and non-Syrian friends. I believe that to deny an already-established sectarianism is the best way to sanction it. Treating sectarianism as an evil, as evidence of backwardness, as a mark of divisiveness that we don’t want to talk about, putting the word between brackets, means that we reject it, not that we explain it. Always attributing sectarianism to the foreign “other”, constantly asserting that it is a characteristic of this “other”, prevents us from addressing it. The fact is that the sectarian issue exists whenever groups come into conflict over privileges won or withheld from political, economic, social or cultural life. I can think of no instance, historically or currently, in which a sectarian, nationalist, ethnic, tribal or ideological “issue” took shape (i.e. when these collectivist formulations were resorted or returned to or reproduced) without it feeding off inequality, discrimination, privilege or exclusion in six areas, which I shall summarize here in the form of brief headings for the purposes of comparison:
One: The unequal standing of groups in relation to political power. In other words, their control over relationships of power and decision-making in society.
Two: The disparity between their control of security and military power (i.e. the use of violence) or the group’s numerical presence in these fields compared to size as a proportion of the overall population.
Three: Inequality and discrimination and the concomitant exclusion from access to the state’s resources, services and employment opportunities.
Four: Discrimination and disparity between sectarian groups as reflected in state mechanisms of wealth distribution.
Five: Regional inequality, especially when these regions have specific sectarian identities.
Six: Disparities in the distribution of cultural capital and access to education.
If the above is correct, then it is surely better to approach this issue by abolishing privileges, while maintaining the difficult balance of legislating for equal opportunities and political and legal rights for all. This necessarily entails enacting positive discrimination towards those groups formerly subject to exclusion and injustice on the one hand, and on the other, to engineer mechanisms and controls to protect those whose privileges are to be abolished. At the same time, what we currently see and feel to be taking place in Syria is a move towards the Lebanese model of parceling out of power along sectarian lines. It is worth noting that the Yemeni solution, based on the Gulf initiative with American oversight, would compensate the president for losing his position by absolving him of thirty-three years of murder, waste and corruption.
This leads me to ask you about a dilemma facing the revolution. There are calls and demands to pacify the minorities, yet at the same time the revolution must strive to become a state of rights and citizenship, free of sectarian allocation and all privileges that run counter to these principles. Isn’t there a contradiction here?
The fact is I haven’t seen or heard any clear explanation of how the minorities are going to be brought on board in Syria. Inclusive slogans were certainly present in the street but it was not evident on the level of the main political forces. These political players have to reflect this message unambiguously. For example, political discourse has not succeeded in convincing the majority of Kurds—even those neutral towards the revolution—that a future Syria will bring them a just resolution of their cause. Almost all their political forces have resorted to the “imposing reality on the ground” option. There are some genuinely involved discussions over the issue, but these are confined to intellectual circles; Kurdish political leaders and veterans of the cause seek to delay the matter until after the “victory” has been achieved, reject it in favour of other priorities, or confine themselves to disapproving of Syria’s Kurdish region being named “West Kurdistan”.
There are those that say the best way to placate some of these groups in to ensure their direct and open involvement in the revolution. Perhaps this is the simplest way?
I’m not keen on this idea of “placating”. I’m with those who question how you’re meant to placate someone who’s slaughtering you. The question is how can we find a political way out of this mindset. There are no easy answers or solutions, but certainly the era of catch-all nationalism has had its day. Denying sectarian realities leads to disaster.
The difficult Lebanese experience taught us a lesson about the need to establish rights of citizenship before the rights of groups and communities could be imposed. Fifteen years of war has forced a compromise between individual and collective rights on the new Lebanese constitution, by calling for the establishment of two chambers, one for citizens with no sectarian restrictions and the other a senate elected by sectarian groups. It is no coincidence that Lebanon’s ruling class have blocked the implementation of these constitutional articles ever since they were first ratified in 1990.
I do not believe that calling on minorities to join the revolution is an adequate response. The revolution must recognize them first, and their rights especially. This will not be through the democratic fundamentalism that seeks to stuff people into the framework of citizenship rights without thought of correcting historical injustices or the possibility of new injustices being perpetrated. It is for this reason I sense that the sectarian issue is still being talked about as this horrible, sinister taboo, when it is basically a set of privileges and exclusions that can be corrected if admitted to. The call to let every one of Syria’s constituent communities freely exercise its culture, which appears in the manifestos of all Syria’s opposition groups, fails to address the reality these improper privileges and exclusions.
How do you see the Syrian revolution influencing Lebanon, in light of domestic Lebanese disagreement over the issue?
First of all, I think we need to do away with the idea of causal, ontological relationships and secondly, that Syria, as a state and society, will be too bloody and bruised to play the part of Lebanon’s guardian (there’s a silver lining to every cloud). On the other hand it’s hardly to be expected that one side will win in Lebanon and another will lose, as a result. Never forget that Lebanon has a peculiar parliamentary system, though the electoral law predetermines the outcome of elections. To speak frankly, I myself, as a Lebanese citizen, didn’t regard it as the slightest bit significant when the parliamentary majority was overturned and the March 14 camp replaced the March 8 camp and formed a new government. We’ve tried both of them and reaped nothing but disaster for the most basic human and citizenship rights.
When it comes to Hezbollah and its weapons, the heart of this issue, in my view, will be nature of the next Syrian state and the policies pursued by its governments. Will hostility between Syria and Israel be ended by a peace treaty in which some or all of the Golan is returned? Suppose it were (though this is highly unlikely given what has happened in Syria and the settlers’ control of Israeli policy): the Syrian government would be obliged, by both regional and international players to include Lebanon in the normalization process. Otherwise, I see no reason for the existence of a Syrian government that has no control over its army or ability to develop its capabilities to confront Israel. In such a case, would it not be in Syria’s interest to have a strong Lebanon alongside it? However, in response to a hypothetical future Syrian government wanting to revenge itself on Hezbollah (and personally I don’t believe that vengeance drives policy even in the Arab world) I would say that it wouldn’t have the capability to do so. The possibility of halting the flow of arms to Hezbollah remains an option, given that Hezbollah continues to suffer a huge decline in its popularity in Lebanon, Syria and internationally, for its continued support of the Syrian regime, even affecting its role in the anti-Israeli resistance.
As for Hezbollah’s weapons, I can’t see any Syrian position that would consider weakening Lebanon’s defensive capabilities to be in Syria’s national interest. For the first time in history, Lebanon has a defensive force capable of deterring Israel. Is that against the interests of a future Syrian state? Hezbollah is now an armed force that does not exercise its force of arms. Until we reach a solution that sees the country’s two defensive forces united (i.e. Hezbollah’s army and the Lebanese Army) I will continue to regard Hezbollah’s weapons, and its heavy weapons in particular, as part of Lebanon’s defensive arsenal.
I’d like to wrap up this point by saying that the arrival of a new regime in Syria might lend hope and impetus to those Lebanese who have long despaired of the farcical, counterproductive and meaningless division between the March 14 and March 8 parties, both of which have taken turns ruling with the same degree of corruption, waste and impotence. There has been a great deal of anger over the support shown by growing numbers of the Syrian opposition for the March 14 camp, seen as provocative by those (by no means confined to forces allied with the March 8) who did not belong to this camp. Nevertheless, I believe these forces will not despair of the Syrian opposition and will not use this bias to form a position on the opposition, nor to take revenge for it.
But how do you explain the March 8 camp’s continuing insistence on supporting the Syrian regime, despite it being quite obvious that Syria will not return to its pre-March 15, 2011 state, whatever the result of the current situation? Can it really be political naivety? I’m completely baffled by this insistence: it’s as though nothing has or can ever change in Syria.
That question should be put to Hezbollah and its allies. It’s not a matter of awareness. It’s about accepting an outsider’s perspective of the conflict as a battle between two regional and international camps, one of which Hezbollah itself belongs to. I’d add that Hezbollah clings ever tighter to the talismanic label of resistance the weaker the actual resistance becomes and the more Hezbollah is forced to turn to some moral value with which it can cover up its failed involvement in the internal policies of a sectarian system and its role in perpetuating and exacerbating this system… not to mention the part it has played in covering for economic policies hostile to people’s interests and their most basic social rights, as well as turning a blind eye manifold forms of corruption.
Do you believe that changing this position is impossible, even if it were in Lebanon’s interest to do so?
It would be more accurate to say that it is in both Lebanon and Syria’s interest that neither Lebanese party intervene in Syria. The March 14 forces have also made a major contribution, both financially and supplying weaponry. Hezbollah has taken over military duties on least two fronts across the border at Al Zabadani and Al Qaseer.
You have criticized a statement released by Syrian and Lebanese intellectuals a few months after the start of the revolution. My question to you now is what you consider to be the best way to build relations between the two countries based on mutual respect and trust and which can also achieve a degree of economic integration?
I opposed the statement because it contained unconvincing formulations of the “ideological Lebanism” type (i.e. independence for Lebanon and democracy for Syria), which talk about independence for Lebanon as if Lebanese democracy has already been achieved. I objected because they made no mention of confronting Israel and furthermore for their clear bias towards the theses of one party (i.e. March 14) to the exclusion of another.
The Beirut-Damascus Declaration, which I’m proud to say I played a part in drawing up, pointed out that there are mutually exclusive two paths open: annexation and separation. There is a separationist tendency in Lebanon that thinks we should leap out of Syria’s arms and join the rest of the world. Annexation is something the Syrian regime practiced during thirty years of controlling Lebanon. I believe that there are many areas of cooperation: there are common policies we can adopt against Israel and there is a lot of space for joint projects. Incidentally, I believe that the Lebanese have a greater opportunity to benefit from this since Syria is a huge market. In short, our relations should be reconstructed on the basis of national requirements and the possibility of economic integration and cooperation, but always in the interests of the two peoples, not of the currency traders, importers, speculators and real estate investors.
Before we get to that stage there are a lot of tensions to deal with that might be hard to overcome later. One minister in the current government stated that restricting refugees and closing the borders to them was in the Lebanese national interest. Don’t you find that quite staggering?
There is racism against Palestinians and Syrians in Lebanon, beyond doubt. All parties participate in it, and it includes such things as the war on the Palestinian camps. This racism worsens with the decline in economic and social conditions, but none of that makes the recent statements by the Free National Party or the Phalange any the less horrifying. There are politicians and parties among the supporters of the Syrian revolution who owe their prominence, if not their very existence, to Syria’s control of Lebanon, and they include those who sanctioned the murder of Syrian workers and those who did murder them following the assassination of Rafiq Al Hariri.
You are an activist and Leftist intellectual of long standing. On more than one occasion you’ve brought up the subject of the Left and its role during the Arab Spring. In one of your articles you criticized what you called “the Left that supports dictatorship on the pretext of nationalism.” You also mentioned how the Arab revolutions brought a blend of existential challenge and historical opportunity to the Left. In light of the Left’s confused reaction to the situation in Syria, do you believe that at least some of the Left has missed this opportunity?
The vast majority of the communist and socialist parties in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen, can be classified as opponents of tyranny. They became part of the new dispensation, but they are on the weaker side. The problem of this weaker side is that it has to confront powerful opponents such as the Islamists, who possess a comprehensive and integrated worldview. The Left is afflicted with a lack of vision: its only concern is to establish its intellectual and political independence from both its friends and enemies. This is its biggest problem, not to mention the historical weight of the Party—with its unilateral decrees, its demand for praise and its doctrinaire hatred for democracy as a “bourgeois” system—which still oppresses the Left.
Nevertheless, I maintain that there is still a place for the Left. Theoretically at least, it remains capable of uniting nationalism with democracy and social justice. The only condition is that its role should be constrained by an obligation to prioritize the people. This entails liberating it from its doctrinal, avant-garde, elitist attitude towards the people, a legacy shared by all communist and nationalist parties reared on “the power of the word”. When the word becomes sacred it is used as means to measure faith and infidelity and gives birth to a secular takfeeri mindset that is the legacy of totalitarian dictatorships. This inquisitorial tendency becomes in turn an enabler of despotism and dictatorship because it establishes a pedagogic relationship between the vanguard and the people: the people are ignorant of their interests and it is the task of the “little prophets” to guide and lead them.
Do you think that self-criticism is the way to correct the attitudes of some parties and individuals on the Left or is an effective presence best achieved by actual participation in all aspects of the currently ongoing revolutions?
I’ll be frank with you: I’m fed up with self-criticism, body and soul. I believe that Leftist intellectuals in general have one thing in common, which is a belief in the necessity of self-criticism. It’s exactly the same as religious extremism based on deep feelings of guilt. It’s also the logic of the Leftist apostate, who performs a complete volte-face whilst being ashamed of his new position. It isn’t the position of a Leftist who wants to admit his mistakes in order to learn from them. Anyway the only doctrinal school that preaches self-criticism is the Left and in putting it into practice it is either permanently delayed, directed at others or takes the form of nihilistic self-flagellation. It is also the extinction of all distinctions and differences in the guise of “an end to ideology”, given that the Left supposes itself to posses a theory (not an ideology) for generating knowledge about reality for the purpose of changing it. Allow me to expand on this “end to ideology” business. In a time in which market-worship is elevated to the status of a new religion, cultural terminology has imprisoned people in mutually antagonistic identities and affiliations and religions themselves have become enablers for control, exploitation and murder, they want us to believe that the Left and the Marxists own a monopoly on ideology!
Self-criticism is the product of the terrorizing, Stalinist whispering campaigns, which sent millions of communists into exile and death to join the tens of millions of Soviet citizens who fell victim to the Stalinist terror. According to Stalinism the communist is first and foremost a sinner, more so than the average citizen, because he is a true believer in the mold of the revealed religions, while the man on the street is ignorant and unenlightened. The faithful communist is thus vulnerable to accusations of committing sin or having his faith called into question, precisely because he believes. He is permanently being tested, treated with caution, even suspicion, due to his natural tendency to fall into doctrinal error and heresy.
The great strength of Marxist theory is that it is a theory of practical engagement and that it calls for learning from this engagement. If we do not absorb and learn from the Soviet experience, for instance, then what is the purpose of all this prattle about self-criticism? To learn from experience, one needs to possess the theoretical tools for the job. These days we read a lot from some in the Left that “there is no revolution,” or about the “wretchedness of this blood-spattered Spring”. Many people want the revolution to live up to their dreams, dreams inspired by some entirely imagined historical revolution. There can be no revolution without force and violence: the degree is determined by the response of counter-revolutionary forces. The ten days that shook the world during the Bolshevik October revolution in Russia were the opening act to four or five years of civil conflict, famine and disaster and left indelible scars on the Soviet experiment itself.
Also, you never get a revolution that succeeds completely or fails completely. The student revolution of 1968 that took place in France and across the world changed the fates of whole populations and left its mark on many aspects of human civilization but despite all that it never achieved any kind of political victory. The first democratic revolution in history took place in 1640 in England. Just how long did it take the House of Commons to attain ascendancy over the inherited offices of the House of Lords? What about the French revolution? A group of clubmen and a nascent proletariat ended in fighting between leaders and the formation of blocs that soon led to dictatorship and from there, back to a monarchy! Three revolutions followed, which derived their legitimacy from claiming to fulfill the goals of the first, or original, revolution, before the whole business eventually produced the democratic republican system at the start of the twentieth century.
You’ve spoken at length about your dissatisfaction with the idea that the intellectual deals with high culture. You’ve also mentioned the profound influence of Gramsci on you and spoken about a popular genius that is usually ignored by Arab intellectuals. In your view, does this disregard explain the lukewarm enthusiasm of some intellectuals for the current revolutions or their hesitant, and sometimes skeptical, views on whether they can achieve any real change? Perhaps there is some form of unprecedented debate going on to redefine the intellectual and his role?
My criticism revolves around the extra importance we accord to the intellectual (as an intellectual) in our countries, which I am not aware of existing elsewhere in the world. He is credited with awareness, intelligence, conscience, an immunity to material interests and virtue, a view which involves the arrogation of privileges and values that include a great deal of zealous pride and a quite unjustified superiority. It also facilitates his move from intellectual to pedagogue, which grants him an intellectual authority over people.
Intellectuals are a social class whose role within society’s division of labour is a mental one. This status as mental labourers is itself a privilege, which excuses them from manual work. It is a broad class of people—not confined to what we might call the public intellectual or the author and artist—whose way of life is determined by rules and mechanisms as is the case with all other social classes. We should be aware, though, that we are currently in a unique phase of transformation in the typology of the intellectual. The cliché of the intellectual who is a professor in some rural school or engaged in one of the free trades, the intellectual who strives to bring modernity and progress to those around him, is fast fading. In his place we see the media figure, the researcher, university professor, the expert, the specialist in some obscure branch of knowledge, the computer specialist, etc. This transformation has many knock-on effects for his role, his critical mission, even his ability (or inability) to produce knowledge.
In the revolutions, the intellectual is judged by where he stands: with the people or with the regime.
There are those that claim we need a temporal and critical buffer from the event itself in order to make a cultural or epistemological contribution. In the introduction to your book Democracy is a Revolution you go against this received wisdom and state that contributing during exceptional periods by offering one’s opinion and attempting to shape public views is an absolute necessity.
I regard these revolutions as an epistemological event whose meanings need to be extracted and re-presented. The critical buffer is mental, not temporal in nature. This task cannot be delayed: revolutions are rare and crucial historical events that turn the political authorities and society inside out and offer rare glimpses into their inner workings. But a critical buffer does not imply distance from the revolution. Whoever regards their chief contribution as being in the field of intellectual production—the critical theorist, especially—is obliged to engage with revolution as a critical process stemming from a quarter-century of globalized ideology that has been imposed upon us, the fantasies, myths, half-truths and superficial concepts that have accompanied it and the stasis, stagnancy and intellectual conformism it produced.
You are extremely sceptical of the American position regarding the Arab revolutions in general and the Syrian crisis in particular, not to mention the attitudes of the Russians and the regime’s allies. How do you see the Syrians, suffering in isolation as they are, being able to achieve their basic revolutionary goals of freedom, dignity and social justice?
There is no liberation movement anywhere in the world that has been able to achieve its goals without leaving a mark in the colonizing country or the system of global hegemony within which this colonizer operates. A school of thought takes shape within the colonizing entity, which believes that submitting to reality on the ground and accepting the independence of the colony is in the interests of the colonizer itself. Despite its huge sacrifices Algeria did not gain independence until France produced such a school of thought—De Gaullist in this instance—that negotiated for independence and ending the occupation on the grounds that it was now in the French national interest. The interests of a liberation or revolutionary movement may fall into line with a US or Western position at a specific period in time, or the liberation movements and revolutions may benefit from American indifference to snatch a victory.
This is not the case with us. The United States is trying to salvage these regimes through a partial renewing of their elites. For them, this partial renewal entails a mix of current elites (including the military) and Islamist capitalists. Forty years on and after vast sacrifices a handful of countries have barely succeeded in changing their leaders and a handful of non-essential laws. This is why we must exercise extreme caution towards political solutions for Syria. Without bringing this regime to its knees and forcing sweeping concessions out of it, you will end up with a motley military-Islamist assemblage forced on you, all with US-Gulf oversight.
My other obsession is the youth. What will become of their role? This is first and foremost a revolution of young people. We see them reappearing in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen with new protest techniques and organizational models, leading us to watch and wait for a new wave of revolutions.
The time has come for the non-Islamist opposition to crystallize its vision of Syria’s future and clearly distinguish itself from the Islamist opposition. It’s not enough to say, “We’ll think about it when we get to power.” I hope that the Syrian opposition will learn from the lessons of the other revolutions and find a way to move beyond the Lebanese and Yemeni solutions. I hope they will forge a way to guarantee the rights of individuals based on the rule of the political majority and at the same time to take the rights of sectarian groups and minorities into consideration. There can be no avoiding the claims of these groups. It is not right that we deny the existence of a sectarian issue in Syria just because it was once suppressed and buried by secularist propaganda. I would add that the war, the fighting and the violence have produced fatal identities and extremisms in abundance.
It is not enough to benefit from the experience of Lebanon and Yemen. There is also Iraq: a sectarian group punished en masse by the removal of a regime, whose members—soldiers and civilians alike—fought back in every way they could, sometimes brutally, in response to this marginalization and mass punishment. This is another lesson to take into consideration.