Syrian Studies Association Bulletin The Bulletin is the bi-annual publication of the Syrian Studies Association, an international association created to promote research and scholarly understanding of . Andrea L. Stanton serves as Editor, with Beverly Tsacoyianis as Book Review Editor.

Taxis at Baramkeh Garage in the rain, February 2006. Credit: Andrea L Stanton

Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 1 Table of Contents

Letter from the President Joshua Landis (p. 2)

Syrian Studies Association News SSA-Sponsored Events and Syria-Related Papers at MESA 2012 Zayde Antrim (p. 3)

Feature Articles Buq'at Dau' (Spotlight) Part 9 (2012): Tanfis (Airing), a Democratic Facade, Delayed Retribution, and Artistic Craftiness Rebecca Joubin (p. 7)

Modernization, Communal Space and Inter-confessional Conflicts in 19th Century Anais Massot (p. 12)

To Protest or not to Protest? The Christian Predicament in the Syrian Uprising Salma Mousa (p. 16)

“Syria Love”: Watching Syrian Propaganda in Edith Szanto (p. 19)

“Our Real Educated People:” Neoliberalism and Syria’s New Elites Mandy Terc (p. 22)

Field Notes The Remnants of the Assad Regime Radwan Ziadeh (p. 25)

Book Reviews Review of Kürt Tarihi (The Kurdish History) magazine Ahmet Serdar Akturk (p. 26)

Samar Yazbek. A Woman in the Crossfire, Diaries of the Syrian Revolution. Translated by Max Weiss Alexa Firat (p. 28)

Negotiating Influence: The Economy, Security Apparatus, and the Assad Regime Karam Dana (p. 30)

Letter from the President Prize Committee Chair, all of which will be announced at MESA. 2012 has been a year full of activity for the Syrian Studies Association. For the Dissertation Prize, to be announced at MESA, we had a whopping nine entries. Steve The SSA has prepared a new constitution for Tamari, the head of the Prize Committee writes discussion at our board meeting at MESA. We that the entries cover “a host of issues from WW have made some big changes. We felt that the I to Palestinian refugees, to music, and Sayyida SSA needed to modernize the way it selects Zaynab. All are written by women, too! We officers and carries out elections. To that end, have entries from Ireland, England (3), Sweden, we have democratized our process. From now USA (3), and Canada. The fields represented are on, the SSA will ask the membership to sociology, political science, music, nominate and vote on all officers. anthropology, and religious studies.”

Voting has taken place for a new Here are the entries: Secretary/Treasurer, Member-at-Large, and

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 2 1. Anaheed al-Hardan, Trinity College, Dublin, Sociology, 2011, Remembering the catastrophe: Uprooted Histories and the Grandchildren of the Nakba, 294pp. Syrian Studies Association (SSA)- 2. Sophia Hoffman, SOAS, London, Political Sponsored Events and Syria-Related Science/Sociology, 2011, Disciplining Papers at MESA 2012 movement: State sovereignty in the context of Zayde Antrim Iraqi migration to Syria, 287pp. 3. Emma Jorum, Uppsala University, Sweden, Meetings in Conjunction Political Science, 2011, Beyond the Saturday, 11/17 Border, Syrian Policies towards Territories SSA Board Meeting: 2-3pm, Plaza Court 1 Lost, 264pp. (Plaza-C) 4. Shayna Silverstein, University of Chicago, SSA Business Meeting: 3:30-4pm (Plaza Court Music, 2012, Mobilizing Bodies in Syria: 3 (Plaza C) Dabke, Popular Culture, and the Politics of SSA Panel Discussion, “Perspectives on the Belonging, 402pp. Syrian Uprising”: 4-5:30pm, Plaza Court 3 5. Melanie, Tanielian,, University of California, (Plaza-C) Berkeley, History, 2012, The War of Famine: Panelists: Seda Altug, Rebecca Joubin, Ben Everyday Life in Wartime Beirut and Mount Smuin, Keith Watenpaugh, Max Weiss (1914-1918) , 236pp. 6. Amanda Terc, University of Michigan, Ann SSA Sponsored Panels Arbor, Anthropology, 2011, Syria's New 1. Sunday, 11/18, 2:00pm: Neoliberal Elite: English Usage, Linguistic Practices and Group Boundaries, 300pp. Post-Ottoman Citizenship Discourses in the 7. Nadia von Maltzahn, St. Anthony's College, Arab Levant (P3008) Oxford, Oriental Studies, Political Science, The mid-nineteenth century in the Ottoman 2010, "Bridging the Cultural Divide: rian- Empire was a period of great reform which in Iranian Cultural Diplomacy since 1979", 346pp. turn influenced new concepts of governance, 8. Maria Kastinou, Intimate bodies, violent social structure, and political and civil identities. struggles: the poetics and politics of nuptiality One of the most influential laws to be passed in Syria. Durham University, 2012. during this time was the Ottoman Nationality 9. Edith Szanto, Following Sayyida Law, which declared all inhabitants of Ottoman Zaynab: Twelver Shi‘ism in Contemporary territory as Ottoman nationals. At the same time, Syria, University of Toronto, Religious Studies, French concepts of patrie and so-termed 'natural 2012. rights' began to spread in the Arab region, particularly Egypt and cities such as Beirut. The Fred Lawson and Heghnar Watenpaugh have ramifications of Ottoman nationality and the organized a terrific panel that will follow the discourses it influenced appeared on a broader SSA business meeting on Saturday, November level after the post-World War I creation of the 17, 2012. Titled “Perspectives on the Syrian and the international mandate Uprisings”, it will include: Rebecca Joubin, system. Both Ottoman precedents and colonial Seda Altug, Max Weiss, Keith Watenpaugh, and concepts of citizenship came to play a major role Ben Smuin. in the history of civic identity and rights and the discussions of nationality and citizenship in the Andrea Stanton, Bulletin Editor and Beverly early years of the mandates. This panel seeks to Tsacoyianis, Book Review Editor, have put explore legacies of Ottoman discourses of together another excellent issue of the SSA citizenship and nationality, and historicize post- bulletin. Ottoman legislation, discourses and concepts of citizenship in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Joshua Landis Transjordan and Iraq. In particular, how did the November 2012

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 3 figure of the (Arab) primordial national conflict with the figure of the newly-invented, 2. Sunday, 11/18, 4:30pm: internationally-recognized citizen? What role did education play under the mandate in creating Blurring Nationalism and Religion in the Early civic identity and counter-narratives to colonial 20th-Century Middle East (P2985) citizenship? What were the differences in Anthony Smith has defined nationalism as “a citizenship rights and duties under the system of new religion of the people,” with its own mandates administered by France as opposed to prophets, scriptures, holy days, and rituals. Britain? Emigrant and refugee status are key to Nationalism, rooted in the triumph of secular these discourses. ideologies of the l9th and early 20th centuries, clearly demonstrated religious Equally important is the position of Arab qualities. This panel aims to reconsider the emigrants who had been born Ottoman nationals nature of the relationship between religion but left their homelands before or after the and nationalism in the Middle East following imposition of mandates. In various cases, these World War I by considering the following native could not return to their homelands questions: How did religion, religious to claim citizenship. In cases such as this, the practices and religious classes address practices of nationality as discussed by the nationalist discourse? Did nationalists, as the Arabs came into contrast with the colonial creators of nationalist rhetoric, did the authors imposition of citizenship. Historians have of nationalist rhetoric couch nationalism in focused heavily on nationalism and the religious terms or symbols, and to what extent development of national identities in the post- did they link national struggles or the nation Ottoman world but the study of nationality and to religion? Were there any attempts to its relation to citizenship have yet to be fully reform, rationalize, modify or nationalize explored. This panel will explore just that, as religious ideas, rituals or organizations? How well as begin the process of comparing how did religious classes and institutions engage Arabs in different mandates internalized nationalist movements and try to shape their citizenship, as well as practiced and rejected respective politics and economies? What did components of its civil, political and social the rise of national consciousness mean to the rights. religious or sectarian minorities? Our first paper will analyze conflicting views of Shira Robinson (George Washington religion held by exiled Kurdish nationalists University), Chair living in Syria and Lebanon under French mandatory rule. The second paper discusses Benjamin Thomas White (University of an activist network in Latin America that Birmingham), “Refugees and Naitonality in linked the Maronite Church to Lebanese 1920s Syria and Lebanon” emigrant parties and its impact on Lebanese Lauren Banko (School of Oriental and nationalist ideology and the church during the African Studies), “Nationality, Citizenship early Mandate period. Our third paper, and Rights: Palestinian Counterdiscourses focusing on investment in Lebanese energy and Practices, 1920-1930” companies, examines the role of the Maronite Hilary Falb (University of California, Church as a material and rhetorical force in Berkeley), “‘Are They Educating Their Pupils the creation of a distinctively national for a World in which They are To Be First or Lebanese economy within the wider French Second?’: Government Schools and mandate in the inter-war period. The final Citizenship in the Mandates for Mesopotamia paper will offer an analysis of al-Azhar’s role, (Iraq) and Palestine through student and ulema activism, in the Seda Altug (Boğaziçi University), “Debating Egyptian anti-colonial movement prior to and Syrianness in French-Syria (1936- 1939)” during the 1919 revolution, and ways in Will Hanley (Florida State University), which such activism blurred the lines between Discussant secular nationalism and religion. In

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 4 presenting both local and trans-global empire. The panel begins with an examination perspectives, the papers will make use of of the structure and uses of the coffeehouses archival documents, periodicals, private in Ottoman Aleppo, with special attention to collections, interviews, and diaries in , the Coffeehouse of the Waqf of Iphsir Pasha, English, French, Kurmaji Kurdish, and Aleppo (1653). The rise of new commodities, Turkish. In their respective historical sociability, and leisure culture in Aleppo's contexts, the panelists will demonstrate the coffeehouses will be linked to the wider fluid dynamics that characterized the global consumption in coffee as well as to the reciprocal interaction of religious and broader architectural environment of the city. nationalist discourse as well as the role of the The second paper examines urban bathhouses church in bolstering the emergent state, its through the lens of eighteenth century policies and economics. bathhouse regulations that sought to segregate Lisa Pollard (UNC Wilmington), Chair Muslim women from non-Muslim women. Ahmet Serdar Akturk (University of The author will examine the juridical basis for Arkansas), “Many Faces of Religion: Kurdish barring mixed confessional bathing and place Nationalism in French Mandatory Levant” it within the context of Ottoman anxiety over Matthew Parnell (University of Arkansas), the transgression of non-Muslims in public “What is ‘National Unity?’: Religion, space. The next paper maps bathhouses in Egyptian Nationalism and the 1919 Ottoman Damascus, Aleppo, and Hama using Revolution” historical and archaeological methods to Stacy Diane Fahrenthold (Northeastern document commonalities and differences. University), “Men of the Nation, Men of the Drawing upon a database of rural baths in Cloth: Lebanese Diasporic Nationalism and Ottoman Syria, the author will examine the the Church, 1919-1932” ways urban and rural bathhouses were Simon Jackson (European University Ottomanized as well as the ways rural Institute, Florence), “Sacred Infrastructure: bathhouses adapted to local needs and tastes. the Maronite Church as Institutional Another paper explores imperial soup Shareholder in Mandate-Era Economic kitchens (imarets) situated along the main Development” pilgrimage and trade routes in Syria. Using Joel Gordon (University of Arkansas), endowment deeds, chronicles and travel Discussant accounts, the author examines social inclusion or exclusion within imperial public 3. Monday, 11/19, 2:30pm: kitchens and mosques. The panel finishes with a discussion of social gatherings in the Mapping Spaces of Inclusion and Exclusion: private space of the home, including Sociability in Ottoman Syria (P3118) courtyards and gardens in sixteenth century What can we learn about the intersection of Damascus with special attention to ethnic everyday social practice and imperial power differences between Ottomans and local within the walls of favored Ottoman Arabs who encountered each other in these institutions? How is Ottoman authority gatherings and the power relations brokered sustained and/or contested in public through social networking. Through the lens bathhouses, coffeehouses, and imarets? How of multiple spaces, the panel examines do these institutions treat social difference in coffeehouses, bathhouses, imarets, and the form of Muslim and non-Muslim, and private homes as loci of global and imperial male and female, and urban and rural interests that are sustained and, at other times, identities? Drawing upon interdisciplinary contested in popular rural and urban social methods and archival research, the panelists practice. will show how many local and global trends Helen Pfeifer (Princeton University), “Meet converged within the bathhouses, Me in the Majlis: Sociability and Ethnicity in coffeehouses, and imarets situated along Sixteenth-Century Damascus” caravan routes and major arteries in the

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 5 Heghnar Watenpaugh (University of [P3022-12867] Did the Crusades Change California, Davis), “The Coffeehouse: Jerusalem’s Religious Symbolism in Islam? by Architecture and Sociability in the Ottoman Suleiman A. Mourad City” [P3203-12937] Gentrifiers, Preservationists and Vivian Elyse Semerdjian (Whitman College), the Changing Urban Landscape of Damascus, “Nudity and the Dhimmi Woman: Regulating Syria by Domenico Copertino Co-Confessional Bathing in Eighteenth [P3090-12970] The Syrian state and official Century Aleppo” Islam by Leif Stenberg Astrid Meier (University of Halle- Wittenberg), “An Ottomanization of the Sunday, 11/18, 2:00pm: Countryside? Village Bathhouses in Ottoman [P3035-12770] Jihad Propaganda in Damascus: Syria (Damascus, Aleppo, Hama)” Scholars, Rulers, and the Masses by James E. Marianne Boqvist (Swedish Research Lindsay Institute, Istanbul), “Hospitality Unlimited or [P3035-12860] The Earliest Documented Arabic Confined? Imperial Imarets on Ottoman Book Collection: The Profile of an Endowed Syrian Highways” Library in 13th-Century Damascus by Konrad Hirschler [P3035-12771] Apocalypticism in the Service of Full List of Syria-Related Papers Politics: 'Ali ibn Tahir Al-Sulami' Response to Saturday, 11/17, 5:30pm: the Crusades by Paul E. Chevedden [P3204-13281] Aleppine Armenians during the [P3037-12975] Assimilation and Arabization: Last Decades of the Nineteenth and the First Language and Linguistic Identity amongst Quarter of the Twentieth Centuries by Serife in Syria by Christian Sinclair Eroglu Memis [P3037-13015] Kurdish-State Relations in Syria: [P3021-12772] Collective Memory and A Precarious Balance by Matt Flannes Nationalist Narrative: On the Possibility of [P3037-13451] Identity building among Yezidis Recounting a "Syrian Experience" of the First from Syria: Discourses of history, homeland, World War by James L. Gelvin and exile by Sebastian Maisel [P2986-12791] Arabic Books in Flux: The Early [P2993-12800] Analogy and Tradition in East Publications of The American Syria Mission Syrian Law: A Dispute over Cousin Marriage by (1836-1860) by Hala Auji Lev Weitz

Sunday, 11/18, 8:30am: Sunday, 11/18, 4:30pm: [P3134-13612] The Radicalization and [P3175-12818] The Echoes of Fitna: Developing Ruralization of the Ba`th Party by Bassam Historiographical Interpretations of the Battle of Haddad Siffin by Aaron Hagler [P3210-13637] Aspects of Integration and [P3196-13229] Urban Morphology of Aylah, Segregation among the Muslim, Christian, and Jordan Through Digital Tools and Virtual Jewish Communities of 17th-Century Ottoman Reconstructions by Marika Snider Aleppo by Charles L. Wilkins Monday, 11/19, 8:30am: Sunday, 11/18, 11:00am: [P3193-13418] Embattled Masculinity: Prison [P3022-12821] Ideological Mobilization in the and Marriage Metaphors in Early Syrian Age of the Crusades: The Evidence of the Television Drama, 1960s-1970s by Rebecca Manuscripts by R. Stephen Humphreys Joubin [P3022-13283] The role of Ibn Sa'd's Tabaqat in [P3193-13239] “Turath-ing” the Present: ‘Arada Ibn 'Asakir's Tarikh Dimashq by Ahmad Nazir Bands in Damascus, Syria by Andrea Shaheen Atassi [P3022-12858] Leveraging the Sahaba: Monday, 11/19, 2:30pm: Discourses of Orthodoxy and Sunni Revival by [P3129-13323] Court Astrologers and Historical Nancy Khalek Writing in Early Islam by Antoine Borrut

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 6 [P3129-13256] Maghazi and Imperial Ideology [P3045-12950] Prelude to an Uprising: Syrian in Late Antique Syria: Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri as a Fictional Television and Socio-Political Critique Case Study by Sean Anthony by Christa Salamandra [P3129-13478] Was Al-Zuhri an Umayyad Zayde Antrim is Secretary/Treasurer of the Court Historian? by Steven C. Judd Syrian Studies Association and Associate [P3202-13605] Peasants, Pests, and Pine Trees: Professor of History and International Studies at State Power and Environmental Control in Late Trinity College. Ottoman Syria by Samuel Dolbee [P2979-13716] Kurdish Responses to the Syrian Uprising of 2011-2012 by Robert Lowe Feature Articles Monday, 11/19, 5:00pm: [P3147-13655] Demanding Images: Documenting Revolution in Syria by Anne- Marie McManus Buq‘at Dau‘ (Spotlight) Part 9 (2012): [P3137-13326] “Shaykh Salih al-?Ali” between Tanfis (Airing), a Democratic Façade, Local Uprising and Nationalist Revolt by Max Delayed Retribution, and Artistic Weiss [P3148-13495] From "Let Me finish" to "Eat Craftiness Shit": How a Lebanese Political Talk Show on the Conflict in Syria Went Sour by Nadine Rebecca Joubin Hamdan A sleek, chauffer-driven car approaches a tall Tuesday, 11/20, 8:30am: building. A dignified, love-struck man in a [P3184-13381] Anxious Ambivalence: New gray suit descends and peers longingly at his Borders, Old Fears, and Confronting Modernity office. He opens his office door, and swoons as in Post-Ottoman Syria by James Casey if to a lover, “Sabah al-Khayr, Sabah al-Ward, [P3184-13712] Cultivating Land, Negotiating Sabah al-Ful, al-Yasmin. Oh, if only you knew Change: The History of an Ottoman Agricultural how I struggled to reach a time like this when it School by Elizabeth Williams is just you and me.” As he approaches, the [P3187-13494] Muhammad Kurd ‘Ali's Project camera shows that he is not talking to a lover, of Arabization by Anthony Edwards but to his chair, which he caresses and [P3179-13668] Why Not Jordan?: A embraces. Breathing heavily, he proclaims, Comparison of Jordan and Syria using Three “You’re my love, dearer to me than my Theoretical Frameworks by Daryl Carr children, my mother, my father. You are my life. My God, you’re beautiful. I’m prepared to Tuesday, 11/20, 11:00am: sell my son, wife, sister, children for you. [P3168-13194] Building Dams, Building States: Allah, what fine leather. I swear nothing in this Water, Development and Politics in the Tigris- world will separate me from you. You and no Euphrates Basin 1920-1975 by Dale Stahl one else.”i [P3000-12752] New Evidence for the Survival of Libertine Rites among Some Nusayri 'Alawis As he sits in the chair, a group of men with of the Nineteenth Century by Bella Tendler flowers surround the secretary saying they wish [P3211-13088] Waqf Activity of Grass-Roots to congratulate the new director. When she Level in 16th Century Damascus by Toru Miura approaches him for permission, he orders her to make them stand at a distance, since he is Tuesday, 11/20, 1:30pm: “sensitive.” Additionally, he demands that they [P3049-12885] Confession over Community: place themselves in a straight line so no one Forced Decisions in 1919 Palestine by Andrew can hide himself behind the other. He tells Patrick himself, “They need to be aware that I’m firmly established, and that if anyone thinks

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 7 about attaining my chair, it will be the last day viewers.ii Previously such a sketch would have of his life.” been held up as an example of Tanfis (Airing), a theoretical conception propagated by many As the men enter the room, his suspicions Syrian intellectuals themselves, and aptly heighten, in particular of Ahmad and Beshar. A analyzed by Lisa Wedeen in Ambiguities of nightmare that the two men are stealing his Domination.iii Yet, if Tanfis was intended as a chair shakes him in the middle of the night. He means of letting out frustration in order to keep quickly calls his secretary and demands that the population from protesting the regime, then she head to the office with a file of all surely it loses its meaning in today’s context department heads. The next morning, he when the wall of fear has been broken and transfers Ahmad from Damascus to Qamishli. resistance is a part of daily life in Syria. Still mistrustful, he sits on his chair as his secretary and employee push him through the The first season of the multi-year television hallway to sign paperwork. He then desperately mini-series Buq‘at Dau‘ Part 1 (Spotlight, searches for a way to get rid of Besher. His 2001), which openly discussed taboo topics such solution for Besher’s demise is clear when we as state corruption, sectarianism, and see him entering a room full of mourners. Two mukhabarat, was indicative of the hope that thugs (shabiha) in black glasses deliver the intellectuals felt during the first year of Bashar director’s chair, which he clutches during the al-Asad’s presidency. Media specialist Marlin funeral. Though he has eliminated his rivals, Dick documented how Suriya al-Dawliyya his doubts do not dwindle. He dines out (Syria Art Production International), a leading accompanied by his chair; shops with his wife television production company with connections as thugs transports his chair alongside him; he to the state, approached two young, talented sleeps handcuffed to his chair. The sketch ends comedic actors to create a comic mini-series for with the insecure director surrounding the chair the 2001 season. The two actors, Ayman Rida with piles of large brown sacks. Toting a gun, and Basim Yakhur, chose Laith al-Hajjo to he hugs and kisses his chair, vowing, “There is direct Buq‘at Dau‘. This group came up with a no power in the world that can separate us from sketch-based mini-series engaging in socio- each other. Remember what I told you thirty political critique, and welcomed the years ago, ‘You and no one else.’” participation of a multitude of actors and writers. President Bashar al-Asad’s 2000 inaugural In this short sketch, written by Hazem address – in which he advocated tolerance of Suleyman, in Buq‘at Dau‘ Part 9 (Ramadan multiple opinions and a campaign against 2012), it was not lost on the Syrian viewer that endemic corruption – inspired their courage and the director was a visual representation of audacity to push the boundaries of accepted Bashar al-Asad. Discussions of this sketch and content. Though Vice President ‘Abd al-Halim others in Buq‘at Dau‘ this season manifested Khaddam attempted to stop the show, the the split among intellectuals that has become president intervened on its behalf. In his detailed accentuated during the uprising. Some analysis of the inauguration of Buq‘at Dau‘, discounted Buq‘at Dau‘, alleging that those Marlin Dick contends that this mini-series who contributed to this season (as well as marked a departure from traditional musalsalat others) are muwali (supporters of the regime), and brought together "revolutionary innovations an accusation often leveled against drama in comedy form with more daring reformist creators who sharply critique the regime content." He continues, “Spotlight has fused new without facing punishment. Others argue that approaches to comedy production – cinematic the government is too distracted this season to techniques combined with flourishes more in really pay attention, and that the mu’arid keeping with theater, an emphasis on collective (dissident) writers will pay the price later. Yet, talent over the individual, slapstick interspersed others contend that these kinds of sketches are with social realism.”iv meant to paint a democratic façade to outside

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 8 Noted television screenwriter Colette Bahna, couple’s house to crush them. They barge into argues that after these two key seasons, Buq‘at the couple’s house, and from the balcony, Dau‘ lost its exemplary cooperative and shoot at the “terrorists,” whom we never really democratic spirit, yielding itself to the see. Despite the dangers Abu ‘Izz and his wife selfishness of individuals who aspired to are proud that their house is being used for dominate others. Additionally, she laments that nationalist purposes. As the sound of the the stipulations imposed on writers became bullets imbue the air, Um ‘Izz prepares tea and increasingly harsh. Her sketches would appear in hands the tray to her husband to give the men a truncated version once they were finally as they are still shooting. Abu ‘Izz slides the presented, ultimately leading her to cease tray of tea to the men, exclaiming, “Who are affiliation with the show.v Actor Jihad Abdo these terrorists? Why do they want to ruin our refused roles after season three due to increased country?” The lights go out and their house is arrogance of some its founders who each tried to on fire as the shooting continues. Um ‘Izz goes usurp credit for its success. According to him, into labor and begs her husband to take her to a once acclaimed director Laith Hajjo exited the hospital. He refuses, however, saying that they sketch comedy it went downhill, since only he have a nationalist duty to stay home and help was able to protect creative talent and standing the mukhabarat. As the gunshots pierce the air, up to the production companies to ensure a we hear the sound of a baby born into the chaos strong show.vi Scholars reiterate that due to of the night. The next day, cameras arrive at artistic rivalries and tensions, Buq‘at Dau‘ the sights of their destroyed house, praising eventually lost some of its initial momentum, Um ‘Izz and Abu ‘Izz for standing by the just like the reform process it was seen as mukhabarat to banish the terrorists. Um ‘Izz, representing.vii holding her infant, declares in a sad voice that they willingly sacrifice themselves for their Similar rivalries that plagued the artistic creators country; a now deaf Abu ‘Izz declares: Allah of early the burlesque, politically-oriented Akbar (God is Great). Here, we have a clear Syrian comedies of the 1960s and 1970sviii critique of citizens who buy into government afflicted those intellectuals involved in Buq‘at propaganda, as well as indictment of the Syrian Dau‘, and this is not without significance. government that is willing to destroy its own Indeed the direct nature of the government’s country and citizens while professing to rid relationship to the intellectuals involved in itself of the terrorists. It was as if Zira‘i were television production exemplifies the capacity of predicting the massive government retaliation the leaders to distribute privilege to some and of the 2011 uprising against “terrorists,” which not to others. The system’s heavily ingrained is costing the country its history and people. It divide and conquer policy prompts inequities is noteworthy that while Zira‘i had originally and ignites animosities, thereby upholding the gotten away with his sketches, he was arrested foundation of the political system. Yet, in my and imprisoned during spring 2012 when opinion, despite divisions in the intellectual several of his earlier sketches were now held community, Buq‘at Dau‘ has continued to responsible for inciting the population.x proffer innovative critique, a continuity of a long, deeply rooted tradition of political satire in According to Rania Jaban, the supervisor of Syrian drama. Buq‘at Dau‘ Part 9, the increasing leniency of the censorship committee has allowed this Consider Season 6’s Al-Jundi al-Majhul (The season to reach new levels of political critique, Unknown Soldier), written by ‘Adnan Zira‘i.ix though it sought to eliminate all obvious Here we begin with Abu ‘Izz and his pregnant references to terms such as “shabiha.” She wife, Um ‘Izz, dancing in their home as a long argues, however, that Buq‘at Dau‘ suffered from line of mukhabarat forms outside their home. marketing problems and only aired on only three These mukhabarat believe that there are channels: Al-Manar, Al-Jadid, and Al-Dunya. terrorists in the area and that they need to go up Despite its audacity in perspective, many argue to a particular vantage point provided by this that this season is no longer marked by the

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 9 artistic collaboration that made earlier seasons much for them; one thousand new homes are exemplary, since Hazem Suleyman wrote the ready for our youth.” After the news highlights, majority of the sketches. Critic Amer Sheikh Lahza Haqiqiyeh (A Moment of Truth) contends that the hegemony of one writer described as a show with “credibility and created one vision, which could have been transparency” commences with news summarized in just a couple episodes.xi broadcaster Widad holding the microphone to a Ironically, despite the lack of internal villager, Abu Ahmad. As his face reddens in democratic spirit among artists contributing to anger as he complains, a voiceover says, “Our this season, this sketch comedy was one of the life is boring, since we have no problems. The few mini-series of the season to make direct director of our region calls us every day to see if reference to the political uprising and society in we are okay. Our governor leaves good-night the midst of war. messages on our cell phone. Kol Shay Tamam (Everything is okay). Don’t worry about us.” In Episode 2, Tajara al-Qabur (The Tombstone When the voiceover ends, Abu Ahmad grows Business), by Hazem Suleyman, members of the more irate, but Widad quickly dashes off. In a community fall into a mad frenzy about factory, when Widad asks Abu Hassan about his purchasing a gravestone, since so many are life, he talks with passion and throws papers, as dying. Abu Omam, played by slapstick a sweet voice over says, “We have more than we comedian, Ayman Rida, who wears a blue need. We want to work more. The director headscarf and talks incoherently, owns a grave refuses to have a higher salary than us, saying he business, and is having a hard time keeping up is sitting and doing nothing. So, yes, Kol Shay with people’s demands for nice spacious graves Tamam.” Widad then sees a woman on the street in prominent areas of the graveyard. As Abu banging her own head in frustration as the Omam tries to convince one customer to take a voiceover repeats, “Kol Shay Tamam.” remote grave, they hear explosions overhead. They decide to cut discussions short and write Let us end with an examination of an important their contract. The sketch cuts to a scene of two sketch satirizing the government’s attempt to men in front of a fruit stand. One man tells his exploit television drama creators, based on the friend about new deals to purchase a gravestone true story of the 2011 mini-series Fauq al-Saqf in installments, and his friend tells him that there (Above the Ceiling, originally entitled Al-Sha‘b now even exist graveyard projects in which you Yureed – What the People Want), which was can register your name for a large plot where directed by Samer Barqawi and suddenly your entire families can be buried. We then cut stopped airing after only fifteen episodes.xii back to a scene with Abu Omam surrounded by Written by a group of writers who also masses of people holding coffins and contribute Buq‘at Dau‘, according to Barqawi, complaining that their corpses are starting to "The work aimed to touch the aspects of the emit an odor. Just as Abu Omam insists that crisis that were not dealt with in television there is paucity of burial sites, they hear before the crisis. We attempted to probe the new bombing sounds and they all enthusiastically surface of freedom."xiii Commissioned by the agree to make a mass grave for the dead. Information Minister, the mini-series was overtly political – it demanded freedom and was Several sketches deal directly with government one of the first productions by the newly manipulation of knowledge. In Episode 2, Kol established Syrian Radio and TV Production Shay Tamam (Everything is Okay) by Hazem Organization to broadcast on Syrian Arab Suleyman, a Syrian news channel announces its satellite channel. Phrases and words like Al- Mojez al-Akhbar (News Highlight): “People in Sha‘b Yureed (The People Want), Hurriyyeh the world are jealous of our way of living; (Freedom), and Selmiyeh (Peaceful) abounded in Syrian citizens want the price of mazotte (cheap the scripts, words that were always on the news diesel) to increase but the government refuses; during this crisis.xiv there has been an increase in salaries and the people tell the government that it is doing far too

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 10 The astounding circumstances of the it. A woman says she has an idea about violence government commissioning the writing of Fauq against women, but Nasser questions what al-Saqf and the resulting confusion among the women have to do with the current crisis. screenwriter community was satired in Bila Saqf Another writer says he has a story of a spy. (Without a Roof), Episode 21, written by Nur Nasser discounts them all and yells, “How do we Sheeshekly in Buq‘at Dau‘ Part 9. This episode benefit? What does it mean? What message? I starts with screenwriter Hisham telling his wife said lift the ceiling!” The mini-series ends with Maysa that he is not able to concentrate on a the writers sweating profusely at the table, new screenplay because of the fighting and Nasser standing over them and ordering them to instability surrounding him. Hisham write their screenplay about huriya (freedom) immediately receives a phone call saying he is immediately.xv on “the list,” and his wife is immediately scared it is the “list of Ar (Shame)” compiled by the Syrian drama creators walk a fine line to government indicating those intellectuals who introduce their subversive ideas. Even though are against in the regime. He runs out in fear to television drama is not directly controlled by the the meeting to which he is summoned. He sits at government, as is the film industry, their a table with a group of writers, anxious to know production is extremely influential over the why they have gathered before him. A comical, public and government officials closely monitor preppy looking man comes in, with a loose blue the messages that television conveys. The late shirt, beach hat, and sunglasses. He introduces poet, Mamduh ‘Adwan, a prominent Syrian them to Nasser, an official in a suit and dark drama screenwriter, lamented that intellectuals black glasses, who hands a piece of paper to the had to play an important balancing act in finding preppy man to call out some names of the homeostasis between daily security co-opted by writers. Those who hear their name are ordered the state and engaging in all out creative to stay. Nasser, speaking in long, run-on rebellion. In turn, the best method of survival sentences, tells them that they are writers and and articulation of their dissent was to find that there are “some problems … actually many equilibrium with the bureaucratic contradictions problems on the streets” and he wants the of the ruling regime.xvi Recently it has been writers to write a sarcastic comedy on the argued that while the previous generation was upheaval they are now living in. He ensures that engaged in a constant struggle to widen the they are allowed to speak with complete courage boundaries of accepted discourse, this new about politics. generation is implicated in "the whisper strategy," encouraging a comfortable dialogue The writers ask about censorship, their level of with power as they produce drama.xvii I argue, freedom in expression, and Nasser responds that however, that while there are some artists and there is absolutely no ceiling. Then he orders intellectuals that the regime manages to them to go home and write. Hisham stays up all “buy,”xviii this kind of vast generalization not night trying to write, but is terrified. His wife only presents Syrian intellectuals as a monolithic says he should go the next day and see what group, but also discredits attempts on the part of others are writing. But the next day he sees that many drama creators to engage in metaphorical none of the other writers have an idea. Nasser language in order to subvert the contradictions in insists they need to talk about freedom, but official doctrine and state rhetoric. Additionally, Hisham still cannot write and his wife by focusing merely on reasons the government hypothesizes that it is because they have never allows this material to air, we are turning experienced freedom. At the next meeting, the intellectuals and artists into passive participants, writers are still confused, but Nasser insists, rather than savvy and seasoned individuals who “The ceiling is gone. Complete freedom, no navigate the perils to create truly subversive censorship, what else do you want? Talk… Lift work. We can recall that although the censorship the ceiling.” Hisham says he has idea of story of committee prohibited the use of the term the son of a leader, but Nasser quickly discounts shabiha in Season 9, murderous shabiba can be

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 11 seen in the first sketch illustrated above – “You way to modernization, outbursts of primordial and No one Else,” for example. In my research, I inter-religious hatred demonstrating the need for argue that many Syrian cultural producers such further reforms.xx This modernizing discourse as those involved in Buq‘at Dau‘ have been able presents violence as an offshoot of to cross over the red lines of prohibited traditionalism and associates ‘modernization’ discourse, question the very foundations of with peaceful societal relations. However by regime legitimacy and subvert official discourse, examining inter-group relations in Damascus through innuendo, stratagem, and guise, thus culminating in the 1860 attacks, it becomes clear underscoring artistic agency. that “modernizing” reforms, far from improving societal relations, actually contributed to inter- Rebecca Joubin is Assistant Professor and Chair group conflicts in Damascus. Indeed, the of Arab Studies at Davidson College since fall Tanzimat reforms, in addition to other 2009. She lived in Damascus from 2002 to 2008, international or local dynamics, undermined the and returned for fieldwork during the summer of crosscutting urban fabric in which Christians 2010 and 2011. She is currently completing a and Jews played a variety of societal roles. In manuscript on gender and politics in the previous centuries, the overlapping system of contemporary Syrian television drama. craft corporations, neighborhoods and patronage networks created crosscutting markers of identity that were as important as religion in defining one’s place in society. In the 19th Modernization, Communal Space and century, the reforms, coupled with other Inter-Confessional Conflicts in dynamics, created a language of rights through Nineteenth-Century Damascus which communities defined their identities and loyalties. In this process, religion became the Anais Massot main border on which society was imagined.

The 1860 riots have been explored through a In 1860 the Christian quarter of Damascus, variety of prisms but the communalization of called Maḥalla al-Naṣārā was attacked by a large space has not yet been explored. How was group of people coming from different parts of ‘communal space’ constructed through the the city. Many Christians were killed and their language of the Tanzimat reforms and how did it houses plundered. This event is part of a series contribute to inter-confessional conflict? In of attacks against Christians in the Ottoman th order to address this question, the changes to the Empire in the mid 19 century. Violent urban fabric introduced by the Tanzimat will be historical events such as riots and events of explored. Then I will look at how the reforms communal violence are subject to a variety of enacted a paradoxical language of Christian interpretations. Classic theories about civil rights that led to the communalization of space. violence tend to be underlined by a specific Finally I will describe how a specific part of conception of state-society relations based on Maḥalla al-Naṣārā came be the target of the European historical experience. When non- resentments through the interaction of European contexts are addressed it is through the international relations and consular politics. prism of ‘ethnic violence’ between primordial xix groups. Context, structures, inter-personal Ashutosh Varshney, in the context of India, networks and state policies are often ignored and indicates that violence or the lack of it in the groups are considered as given entities. This context of conflicts can be explained by the theoretical approach can be observed in the way strength of inter-ethnic civil engagement. He the attacks on the Christian neighborhood of argues that the possibility of conflict Damascus in 1860 have been interpreted in the transforming into violence depends on the context of the Ottoman reforms. Ottoman presence or absence of crosscutting cleavages, reformers and an early scholarship presented blurring the border between binary groups. Such inter-confessional violence as setbacks on the societal links also makes it harder for politicians

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 12 to polarize the society on the religious line.xxi Catherine Brun, in their work on Sri Lanka, While Christians, Jews and Muslims had always describe a process of “institutionalization of been distinct religious groups, in the 19th century ethnic differences and a new system of political their religious identities became the most representation” under British rule.xxvii In the important determinant of political alliances and Ottoman Tanzimat case, differentiation was relation to the state. Other societal borders such institutionalized but through the opposite as class, status or guild were becoming less medium: the institutionalization of a paradoxical relevant in capturing popular imagination. This notion of equality. The Tanzimat decrees process was a consequence of both the enacted between 1839 and 1861 abolished the undermining of the crosscutting system of urban legal distinction which had existed in the governance and the politicization of religious Ottoman Empire between Muslims and non- identifications. Muslims. This meant that Christians and Jews did not have to pay the poll tax any longer.xxviii The Tanzimat reforms attempted to undermine At the same time there was an obligatory the urban fabric and networks of power in place conscription into the army for all subjects. through the creation of an administrative council However, Christians and Jews could pay a lower in charge of tasks which were previously fee than Muslims to avoid conscriptions.xxix This undertaken by various societal actors, such as example exposes the truncated notion of equality craft organizations and neighborhood leaders embedded in the reforms. acting as intermediaries.xxii The way conflicts were resolved also changed under the Ottoman The language of rights that was enacted during reforms. Conflicts were formerly addressed by the reforms focused on rights to build churches, shuyūkh (leaders) of craft organizations, rights to hold crosses in processions, rights to appointed by its members and empowered by the ring church bells and to participate in the council qādī.xxiii The guilds often occupied a certain which was the instrument of the Tanzimat.xxx neighborhood and acted as administrative agents Therefore notions supposed to be universal to maintain order.xxiv In addition neighborhood rights and portrayed as progress were shuyūkh were also in charge of diffusing and understood as specifically Christian rights.xxxi regulating conflicts.xxv Interpersonal issues, The Tanzimat were thereby seen as devoted to which were previously dealt with in the sharī‘a improve the status of Christians. However this courts were now addressed by the administrative was indeed a perception as many Muslims also council, which was put in charge of the benefited from the reforms.xxxii Still, opposition judiciary. The role of intermediary actors was and support for the reforms were often framed thereby challenged, and conflicts were now to be through this discourse of communal distinction. addressed centrally. Then, in the sharī‘a court the judgments used to be systematized and The rights that were given to Christian and Jews individuals from all social groups could bring were only superficial as they focused on complaints to the judge. However, under the representations in public. They were rights to council, judgments were not systematized and display, supposed to show the improved status wining a case depended on the political weight of Christians rather than actually improving it. of the complainer. This change had the This phenomenon might have to do with the fact consequence of allowing only groups or that those reforms were enacted to please influential individuals to bring cases to court. European powers and therefore were reforms of Therefore individuals had incentives to turn image rather than structure.xxxiii Those rights interpersonal issues into communal issues to were based on an understanding of status as xxvi give more weight to their claims. visibility. Visibility, however, should not be assumed to reflect a better status in society even Then the reforms instituted a language of rights if some Christians did improve their status that contributed to marking the religious border economically and were involved in the as the main axis on which political loyalties and administration of the Tanzimat. If rather than solidarities were understood. Tariq Jazeel and successful individuals, all the communities are

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 13 considered, Christians’ place in society might Catholics came out firing muskets and chanting even have worsened because they were ‘Vive le Roi’.xxxviii increasingly excluded from the urban fabric and the local networks of power.xxxiv The display of European flags also created social tensions: from 1855 onwards, European Religion was politicized through a variety of consulates started to fly their own flags.xxxix The dynamics, including the use of space. Indeed, intertwining of foreign policy, political through the language of the reforms, space was allegiances and intergroup relations is institutionalized as a tool of group exemplified by the following event: a debate identifications and group narratives. Brun and which erupted in 1841 between Greek Catholics Jazeel argue that to think about cultural politics and Greek Orthodox over the donning of a we must think spatially, indeed identifications certain priestly attire took an international do not happen in a spatial vacuum but dimension when the English consul sided with differences are rather produced through space. the Catholics and the governor Najib Pasha with They see space not only as a container of inter- the Orthodox. The administrative council group relations but also as a fabric through imposed restrictions on the priestly attire of the which identifications are shaped.xxxv Catholics.xl As a response and an act of defiance to this decision the Catholic churches flew the An example of the interaction of the language of French flags on their roof.xli In the previous the reforms with spatial dynamics is the right to centuries those types of conflicts could have undertake religious processions. Indeed been resolved through the urban ‘ancient processions are often a place of contestation, a regime’ based on interpersonal problem solving means to mark communal space. Processions and the involvement of intermediaries but in the have always been embedded in the urban 19th century, the interaction of international structure of Ottoman cities. They were social policy and local dynamics created a very practices weaving the fabric of the city together sensitive and politicized environment. In this and delimitating ownership of spaces and the context, local conflicts could take an borders of neighborhoods. They were also a international scope. In the same period, foreign medium to show respect to other neighborhoods powers’ intervention on behalf of Maronite and and leaders thereby reinforcing hierarchies and Catholic Christians eventually led to a petition the overlapping system of power.xxxvi When the signed by influential Damascenes, both Muslim legal authorization to carry Christian processions and Jews, asking the expulsion of Europeans and in the city were enacted in the context of the Uniate Christians from the city.xlii Tanzimat, they were no longer seen as a tool of reinforcement of urban relationships but instead Then, the status of Christians and the discourse were seen as privileges awarded to Christians. of their rights were also used in inter-personal Processions came to be seen, whether this was power struggles between consuls and governors. the intention or not, as political claims. During Complaints to the sultan that the governor was those processions, displays of political not enforcing Christian rights could make the allegiances contributed to the conflation of local latter lose his position. For example the British Christian communities with foreign powers, consul complained to the Sultan that Najib thereby creating a binary vision of the world Pasha, the wālī of Damascus for the years 1841- based on religious identifications. An example 1842, was not treating Christians correctly as he of such a procession occurred on May 1st 1841, was expected to because of the Tanzimat on the occasion of the celebration of the French reforms. Najib Pasha almost lost his position King. The French consul M. Ratti Menton because of those accusations.xliii wearing his best clothes organized a procession inviting all the Catholics from his house to the Then, European consuls started to give protected Catholic Franciscan convent of Terra Santa.xxxvii status to Christian individuals, which meant that After celebrating a mass at the convent, they could enjoy the tax breaks accorded to Europeans during the Capitulation treaties from

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 14 1838 onwards and that they were to benefit from churches and the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate diplomatic representation as if they were foreign were directly attacked during the 1860 riots, individuals.xliv The local politics of the consuls while the other churches are described as only contributed to a perceived association between affected by the general fire of the local Christians and foreign powers, indeed they neighborhood.li The violence therefore did not would often use their protective power over target the whole Christian community but rather Christians to interfere into interpersonal specific groups within it. It is not surprising that issues.xlv They thereby turned personal matters this is the case since France had a strong role in into issues of international relations. This the Egyptian occupation, and was seen as language of minority rights, closely related to causing the trouble in Mount Lebanon to weaken power struggles, placed Christian communities the Ottoman Empire.lii In the context of the in a difficult situation as they became associated Russo-Ottoman wars and after the Greek with foreign intervention – which in this period Revolution, the Greek Orthodox were also was seen as contributing to the disintegration of increasingly seen as Russian agents working to the Empire. This dynamic is especially true in weaken the Sultan’s authority. The 1860 the case of the Greek Orthodox, who became destruction of Bāb Tūmā can therefore be associated with Russia and the Greek Catholics, considered not as an attack against Christians who were seen as France’s agents. Their but rather as strikes towards what those spaces religious identity became the main prism came to represent. Resentments were not through which their role in Syrian society would directed at displays of a certain religious identity be seen. but rather at the claims and political meaning these displays came to embody. As a consequence of those dynamics and uses of space, a strong spatial dimension can be read in In conclusion, the modernization reforms of the the accounts of the riots. Indeed, the Ottoman Empire enacted a language of rights neighborhood called Maḥalla al-Naṣārā, was the that affected intergroup relations. The end of the sole target of the 1860 violence. Christians Ottoman Empire saw an urban transformation living in other areas were not bothered, even from a system in which different cleavages were when they lived a few streets away from the overlapping into one in which a clear majority targeted neighborhood.xlvi It is also interesting and minority were delimitated. The distinction that some groups from the Midan, a suburb between Muslims and Christians’ relation to the where Christians also lived, participated in the state was institutionalized through the language riots and therefore had to pass in front of of the reforms, consular politics and Christian houses in their own neighborhood in international dynamics. While those changes order to reach the city center but did not harm were designed to improve the situation of them. In addition, only the consulates present in Christians in society it actually extracted them the neighborhood were attacked; the ones from the overlapping crosscutting system of outside were ignored by the crowd.xlvii Maḥalla local governance. The reforms, with their al-Naṣārā was also increasingly associated with emphasis on visibility, designated space as a tool Catholicism and therefore with France. Indeed, of identification claims and conflicts, which many Catholic churches were built or renovated contributed to turning Bāb Tūmā into a specific in this area in the beginning of the 19th locus of resentment. In this context, the century.xlviii It should be added that those politicization of religious identities by the Catholic institutions tended to center on a interplay of international relations, consular particular zone of the Christian neighborhood politics and other local dynamics, created the called Bāb Tūmā. This zone, as the surroundings possibility of violence. of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, was the least populated by Muslims.xlix The eastern area Anais Massot is a Research Master’s student in of the neighborhood, called Bāb Sharqī, was Area Studies at Leiden University, and a Master composed of a mixed population and hosted the 2 student in Sciences of Religions and Society at non-Uniate churches.l The Catholic missions and

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 15 the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences city of Dera’a, with the disenfranchised Sociales. revolutionaries suffering the most from the strains of population explosion that particularly afflicted the rural poor living in government neglected peripheries, the urban poor To Protest or not to Protest? The disillusioned with crony capitalism and legions Christian Predicament in the Syrian of unemployed youth.liv Inclination to protest is Uprising influenced more decisively by class background (and proximity to the political, economic and Salma Mousa military elite) than religious affiliation, though the two often overlap. For instance, the Sunni

Nahhas and Jood families of Latakia, who “The demonstrators are nothing but terrorists,” benefited from regime-espoused “sweet-heart said Archbishop Tabé of the Syrian Catholic deals,” are among the most ardent regime Church, scarcely veiling his contempt. “In any loyalists— demonstrating that co-optation is political system, there are always 10% who have liii contingent on affiliation with the professional to be sacrificed.” Although hardcore Christian classes rather than sect.lv support is steadily waning, after a year of political crisis, the majority of Christian Syrian Christians (especially Greek Orthodox, leadership and laity alike failed to support the the most populous Christian sect in Syria) have Sunni-led democratic movement in any historically been more urbanized than Muslims collective, cohesive or concrete way. With the and do not generally belong to the lower class. specter of post-Spring Islamist rule looming, Proportionately more Christians receive Christians in Syria were forced to choose secondary education, join skilled-labor between secular autocracy and sectarian professions and attend Western-oriented, private democracy, a decision informed by the and foreign language schools. lvi Under Hafez perception that the status quo ante under al- al-Assad, the Sunni underclass with ties to the Assad, though democratically deficient, put a Muslim Brotherhood was categorically denied (temporary) lid on civil hostilities and afforded state protections, jobs and opportunities, while Christian minorities with extensive secular anti-Islamist, secular Christians established protections and even prosperity. While Christian connections (wasta) with state officials and rose acquiescence is driven largely by the perceived to socio-economic prominence.lvii Yet even the alternative of an Saudi-style theocracy, smaller proportion of lower class Christians who analyzing the polarization at the heart of the suffer from the same protest-inducing factors as pluralistic Syrian society through a binary lens their Muslim compatriots—high unemployment, of majority vs. minorities neglects the a devastating drought in the East, an inefficient importance of socio-economic interests—which public sector, the effects of international cut across sectarian boundaries. As the persistent sanctions and the post-uprising collapse of the co-optation of religious minorities continues to tourism industry—disassociated socio-economic hinder democratic reforms, and as the position frustrations from the regime due to the lingering and security of Christians (who constitute two effects of decades of propaganda. lviii million citizens) grows increasingly precarious as Syria slides into a civil war fragmented along Although they are better integrated with sectarian fault lines, understanding the Muslims in big cities, Christians tend to be motivations behind Christian passivity is crucial. geographically self-segregated. As class is a

function of locality, that districts and villages are Despite Syria’s history of religious pluralism, so clearly delineated along sectarian lines (such Muslims and Christians are socio-economically as the Valley of Christians consisting of over 30 segmented— with Christian presence in the predominantly Greek Orthodox villages and the middle and upper class contributing to Christian majority Assyrian governate of al-Hasaka, home passivity. The uprising started in the agrarian to the 75% Christian city of Qamishly) indicates

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 16 that class is closely associated with confession in near Homs and 48 in the mainly Christian and Syria, which also explains the potency of Druze Damascus suburb of Jaramana.lxiii sectarianism. lix Members of the Armenian Armenian Orthodox Christians have picked up Orthodox Church—the second largest in Syria— arms to defend their neighborhoods in Aleppo are especially prone to self-imposed isolation, against attacks from the Free Syrian Army rarely mixing with Muslims (or even other attacks as well as the regime’s militia.lxiv Syrian Christians) in less prosperous districts.lx The Christian refugees from the border town of affluence of middle to upper class Syrian Qusayr fled to Lebanon after rebels equated Christians, relatively unaffected by the same Christian neutrality with hardcore regime socio-economic grievances afflicting the hordes support and drove them out of the country.lxv of protestors, further facilitated Christian Such incidents disconcerted minorities and reluctance to join the uprising. drove them to rally behind the government, even if they had been skeptical of al-Assad before the The importance of preserving secularism—here uprising. The regime fomented Christian defined as state equidistance and radical anxieties by continually stressing that the neutrality vis-à-vis religious identities—was an greatest fears of the Christian community— even more salient source of Christian loyalty to Islamists, Shar’ia law and the prospect of the embattled regime at the outbreak of burning churches— would be promptly realized demonstrations. Syrian Christians enjoy not only if the regime were to fall.lxvi State-sponsored legislative and constitutional freedom of propaganda—like Donia TV broadcasts of the worship, but practical treatment as “full” citizens funeral processions of Christian soldiers facilitated by a non-sectarian framework in one “assassinated by thugs” alongside hysterical of the few remaining Arab countries where, as relatives— affirms that the regime has invested one bishop puts it, a Christian can “really feel much of its energies into intertwining the fate of the equal of a Muslim.”lxi Syrian non- Christians with its own to scare them into sectarianism paradoxically grants elites derived submission for the purpose of regime self- from minority communities a privileged societal preservation, as authoritarian leaders did in position, leading Christians to view the al-Assad Egypt, Lebanon and Iraq.lxvii regime as a bastion of (a favorably distorted) secularism and, as such, their only chance at Soon after the uprising was underway, maintaining prominence in state and society. revolutionaries (both Muslim and Christian) Such guarantees pushed Syrian Christian liberals identified the importance of secularism to to trust the Baath Party and embrace the so- loyalists by emphasizing a minority-friendly called Damascus Spring when Bashar succeeded civil rights discourse, noting that only a shared his father in 2000.lxii Although the Syrian state democratic future can protect Syrians of all nominally privileges Sunni Islam in some ways confessions. Aside from brutal fringe elements, (and de facto, the Alawite elite), discrimination activists overwhelmingly promoted the notion of is reserved for those only for those who egalitarian pluralism under a civil, secular state, jeopardize regime authority. Most Christians dismissing the regime’s oft-repeated canard that therefore prefer the devil they know, four only the al-Assad-headed Ba’ath Party can decades of secular autocracy, to an uncertain and protect Christians from radical Islamists as a potentially dangerous future under Islamists, “bogus argument meant to frighten the West and who will undoubtedly demand a stake in a post- divide Syrians from one another.”lxviii The Assad Syria. In short, Christians are terrified of opposition’s commitment to a civil state is an ‘Islamist winter.’ reflected in survey results that found that opposition members ranked the French political Such fears are not unfounded. At the onset of system highest (5.45/7), with a government protests, reports quickly surfaced of styled on the Iranian model receiving the lowest demonstrators chanting “Christians to Beirut and marks (1.26/7), and a majority of respondents Alawites to the coffin,” and in August 2012 affirming the importance of protecting alone, anti-regime elements killed six Christians minorities, including Alawites (4.69/7).lxix

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 17 man who cannot work miracles.”lxxvii This stance The Muslim opposition cites the (admittedly led George Sabra, a Christian and the small) presence of Christians in the opposition spokesperson of the oppositional Syrian movement, Syria’s long history of religious National Council, to attribute the mass absence cohabitation and the solidarity among the of Christian protestors to the lack of Church- demonstrators to support its claims of secular sponsored mobilization.lxxviii The Russian aspirations.lxx A Friday protest on Easter Orthodox Church’s open support of the al-Assad weekend was dubbed ‘Azimeh Friday (Good regime may also be spurring similar attitudes Friday) in honor of Christians, protest organizers among their Syrian counterparts. It is difficult, were quick to silence signs of sectarianism however, to determine to what degree the amongst demonstrators, and the Facebook Church response reflects the attitude of its groups “Syrian Revolution 2011” and “We are constituents or creates it. All Syria,” with over 800,000 members collectively, list a code of ethics against It is similarly problematic to ascertain whether sectarianism.lxxi Ali Sadr Al-Din Al-Bayanouni, such institutional displays of support on the part former General Supervisor of the Muslim of the Church are voluntary. Christians may well Brotherhood in Syria, announced that the party be coerced into obedience, with the Church would adopt civil notions of citizenship if they leadership constrained by the watchful eye of a came to power and avowed the importance of praetorian government brandishing a carte separating the crimes of minority elites from the blanche arrest policy borne of the 1963 lay members of these sects.lxxii Sheikh al-Zouabi, emergency law. Stories of attacks on Christian the leader of the Syrian Salafists, stressed the protestors—including the assassination of Father importance of cooperation between protestors, Basillius of Homs and the beating and detention the need for international intervention to protect of 20 year-old student activist Hadeel Kouky Syrians of all faiths and the theological kinship and actor Jalal al-Tawil— serve as warnings to of Muslims and Christians.lxxiii In the absence of their community and demonstrate the systematic a multi-party system in Syria, the treatment of silencing of dissident Christian voices, however minorities under Islamist parties remains an rare they may be.lxxix Christians therefore fear open question and claims of good will may mask not only for their security tomorrow, but also different realities. Nonetheless, such rhetoric today. clearly identifies the importance of secular guarantees to pro-regime factions—even if many When choosing allegiances, Syrian Christians Christians, like Greek Catholic leader also consider the experience of ill-fated Iraqi Archbishop Jeanbart, continue to prefer the Christians and the ongoing post-revolutionary current situation to a “mere promise.”lxxiv struggle of Egyptian Copts. Syria neighbors Lebanon and Iraq, which both deteriorated into Unwavering regime support emanating from sectarian conflict in the absence of strong Church hierarchies further entrenches Christians. leadership. Much like al-Assad, Saddam Hussein In statement dated December 15, 2011, the three cultivated a close relationship with fellow Syrian Patriarchs declared their absolute minority Christian groups, who were perceived rejection of foreign intervention or any other as collaborators and consequently targeted when threat to Syrian sovereignty.lxxv Throughout the regime was toppled in 2003.lxxx Bloody 2011, the Armenian Orthodox Patriarch sectarian attacks then forced the exodus of at instructed churchgoers to obey the government, least 330,000 Iraqi Christians to Syria, where support the president, and keep a low profile.lxxvi refugees settled in Christian areas and came with In September 2011, Lebanese Maronite stories of atrocities at the hands of the Muslim Patriarch Rai III expressed concern over the majority. lxxxi The effect of the deeply future security of religious minorities in Syria discouraging Iraq experience is reflected in a and the region, urging the international December 2011 YouGov-Doha Debates poll, community not to rush into regime-changing which found that of the 55% of Syrians polled resolutions that could topple al-Assad, a “poor who supported al-Assad, the most common

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 18 reason (46%) was “we do not want to see Syria strategic alliance stems from the Alawite desire become another Iraq,” rooted in the Christian to garner diverse allies to bolster legitimacy and fear of majority leadership giving free reign to create a pluralistic national identity, the Muslim fundamentalists. lxxxii Christian desire to break away from the inferior societal position of minorities, and most Alternatively, the military and political importantly, mutual concern of an Islamist integration of Christians partly explains the takeover.lxxxvi This stance is understandable, Christian reluctance to join the protests. though not admirable, as pulling away from the Christians demonstrated their indispensability to Alawite regime may leave Syrian Christians public administration and civic life through the vulnerable.lxxxvii founding of the country’s two most significant post-independence political ideologies and the As the fragmentation at the core of Syrian subsequent parties they spawned. The Syrian society between loyalists and dissidents National Social Party (SSNP) and the ruling intensifies, the silent Christian community is Ba’ath Party both created a secular framework to caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. unite the Sunni majority with minorities under As the stakes get higher, so does the eagerness an inclusive banner of nationalist identity. for sectarian revenge—a recipe for a Lebanon- Christians are counted among the late Minister style civil war. By failing to defect in a of Defense and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, significant way to an increasingly violent as well as previous Prime Minister Fares Khoury opposition movement, Christians risk and head of the Syrian Central bank, Adib irrelevance in a post-Assad context, or worse; Mayaleh.lxxxiiiAlthough the highly influential being viewed as “cowardly and timid sycophants despotic bureaucracy, presidential guard and who were afraid to do the right thing when the intelligence services are controlled in part by an opportunity presented itself,” which Sunni outer governmental layer of religious minorities compatriots may not easily forget.lxxxviii Betting such as Christians, the informal but dominant on the losing horse—al-Assad—will only incite inner circle composed of Alawite security elites the animosity towards Christians that the (and the weak Christian parliamentary presence) community is trying so desperately to avoid, yet suggests that as the regime has been cautious siding with the insurgents might incur the wrath about totally co-opting Christians into its core of of government troops and hasten the advent of a decision-makers. lxxxiv Sunni, sectarian democracy. Whatever trajectory takes shape, the inclusion of religious minorities Despite the administration’s vehement denials of will undoubtedly mold the social, cultural and a minority alliance, co-optation is also driven by political identity of a post-revolutionary Syria in the Alawites’ unofficial incorporation of particular, and the in general. Christians in a power-sharing minority coalition underpinned by the belief that ‘minorities An Egyptian graduate of the Georgetown protect minorities.’ The al-Assad regime has University School of Foreign Service in Qatar, historically portrayed itself as the protector of Salma Mousa is currently Research Assistant at Syria’s Christians in a politically expedient act the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies of superficial solidarity, with Christians taking in Doha, Qatar. comfort in their mutual minority status.lxxxv The advantage of being ruled by a minority is that the Alawites are engaged in a constant struggle for legitimacy due to their own minority status. “Syria Love”: Watching Syrian The choice is then made simple for Christians: it Propaganda in Iraq is better to remain attached to Alawite rulers, however unpalatable they may be, because they Edith Szanto will fiercely defend the status of other minorities to prevent hegemonic Sunni rule that could prove unresponsive to minority demands. This

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 19 Ramadan 2010 was the last time I visited Syria. birthdays, displaying pictures of them. By May I have been aching to go back, but the situation 2012, Syria Love and Syria Balad disappeared. there does not allow it. For the last year, I have Now, clips from these channels can only be been sitting across the street, in a manner of found online, where they compete with other speaking, talking with neighbors, watching the videos, which range from non-political patriotic events from a safe distance. The place from songs to anti-government music. What does the where I have been observing Syria is from death of these channels mean? The violence is neighboring Iraq. Iraqi to be exact. still ongoing. Has the government given up on From here, I have spoken with Syrians who have its image? Unfortunately, the task of answering left before and during the current crisis. Some these questions must be left for future research of my students are Iraqis who have spent years as I lack the necessary access to sources. The in Syria. They grew up in Syria and they miss it questions I focus on here are: What were the just as I do. In the beginning, when I first I main themes that emerge? What do they say came to Iraq in the fall of 2011, Syrian friends in about the kind of social imaginaries the Syrian Iraq (but not all of my Iraqi students who lived government promotes? And how did these in Syria) univocally supported the uprising. channels compel support? Many have reconsidered their stance. They want neither religious factions to take over, nor Syria Love was the shorter-lived of the two do they want civil war. They were optimistic in channels. I ceased being able to watch it around the beginning. They were certain the regime February or March. Two months later, Syria would fall quickly. Today, they expect Syria to Balad was also off-air. While on the air, Syria turn into another Iraq, predicting a decade or Love played love music. It expressed love for more of violence. Among the many questions the country and love for Bashar al-Asad. There this raises is why the Syrian government has were different themes: there were military lasted this long (in contrast to the Tunisian and songs, mass marching songs, songs about Egyptian governments, which fell relatively Syria’s heritage, and strong-men songs. Military quickly). Moreover, what has the Syrian songs mainly demonstrated the strength and government done (besides employ sheer force) dedication of the Syrian military forces. Mass to remain in power? In this article, I examine marching songs showed viewers supporters of two Syrian TV channels whereby the Syrian Bashar al-Asad, casting them into the same role government has been trying to promote itself of supporters, albeit the masses were actively and gain support. displaying their loyalty publicly, while television viewers remained passive and private. When I settled into my new apartment in Mass marching songs aimed to recreate September 2011, I browsed the satellite TV effervescent moments and to compel viewers to channels in search for news about Syria. I found identify with the “Millions of Lovers.”lxxxix Syria News and Syria Drama, the usual Heritage songs took viewers on virtual tours of channels. However, I was surprised to discover the country, stopping by Roman ruins, the channels entitled Syria Education, Syria Umayyad mosque, crusader castles, and the old Medicine, Syria Love, and Syria Balad. Syria cities of Aleppo and Damascus. They celebrated Education and Syria Medicine simply repeated a nationalist history, claiming nativist Euro-American subtitled documentaries. In authenticity, and equating it with loyalty to the contrast, Syria Love and Syria Balad were country. Notably, heritage songs often domestic productions. Syria Love was a displayed groups of young people, many of nationalist and loyalist music video channel. whom play the role of university students, given Syria Balad played Arab classics such as Fairuz their dress and their book bags. By having and hosted call-in shows while renting out the university students celebrate nationalist history, screen. As callers and the moderator in turn the channel equated university education with blessed and prayed for all of Syria to remain stability, regime-loyalty, and authenticity. safe, pictures and messages flashed across the screen mainly congratulating children on their

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 20 The singers included both amateurs and community, he also invokes an image of organic professionals. Military, mass marching, and support. As a part of localized structures of heritage songs sung by female performers power and authority, the ‘abadai system portrayed Syrian women as patriotic and even includes Muslims, Christians, and other militant.xc These songs emphasize a moderate minorities. The system itself is not religious and (and non-rebellious) form of religiosity hence, can be used to symbolize inter-sectarian coexisting peacefully and even cooperating with coexistence and cooperation. When strong-men secular and non-Muslim citizens by showing sing about their love for Bashar al-Asad and both women with and women without scarves, Syria, it links local structures of power, which and by excluding munaqqibat (or face-veiled are tied to the government, to local guarantors of women). Children occasionally sung mass peace, as well as folk heroes. While images of marching and heritage songs. Little boys, in national heritage sites, military training, and particular, sing praises to Bashar al-Asad.xci mass protests flash by in the background, strong- men performers symbolically tie Syria together I have categorized strong-men songs, such as institutionally, socially, and religiously. They those by Ali Deek and Wafiq Habib, separately remind domestic and foreign viewers that the because they can draw on elements from the stability of Syrian society is at stake. other types of nationalist music, but are visually focused on the fact of the performer’s physical Syria Balad was more inter-active than Syria strength.xcii These strong-men recordings invoke Love. While Syria Love played amateur artists the ‘abadai or strong-man system, as examined to submit their patriotic performance to be by Michael Gilsenan in Lebanon.xciii judged and aired. Syria Balad allowed for more Traditionally, strong-men were young men who direct access. Syrians could call at almost any guaranteed peace in the neighborhood. The time in to live shows and they could pay for ‘abadai system has most recently been idealized personal messages to be run on air. The later in Syrian Ramadan series “Bab al-Hara (the feature attracted upper-middle and upper-class Gate of the Neighborhood)” where ‘abadai are families who congratulated their own children depicted as defenders of local values. They are and the children of other important families for chosen by the neighborhood (al-hara) and they their birthdays. It was both a prestige contest are from the neighborhood. Ideally, the and a way to create and consolidate family characteristics of a strong man include youthful connections. The shows had little thematic bravery, generosity, and general leadership content. They allowed Syrians to access air- qualities, but not wealth, education, and time by calling in and requesting songs for loved certainly not old age. The ‘abadai system ones. The only patriotic content was that at the evokes memories of an undifferentiated beginning of each conversation, the hostess coexistence between neighbors, regardless of (invariably female) and the caller formulaically religion and class. Under the Ottomans (and in repeated that “Syria is well” (suriya bi-khayr). “Bab al-Hara”), the ‘abadai system was both Most callers were male, making interaction organic and well integrated into official imperial gendered conversations directed towards a politics. It could facilitate rebellions against common goal: loving Syria and implicitly, the outsiders, whether rulers or enemies, or it could current regime. The gendered aspect marked promote cooperation with external powers. these as secular or at least liberal religiously. Only few aspects of the ‘abadai system have Callers never requested religious songs. They survived the emergence of the modern nation generally requested classical Arabic music, such state in the Levant. The za’im (who closely as the songs of Abd al-Halim Hafez and Fairuz. cooperates with the strong-men) is now a local This music invokes history, authenticity, and clerk and administrator. As in the past, his stability, thereby symbolically linking the cooperation with the state and especially the current government with continuity. By government’s executive branch, the police, lends allowing Syrians to post messages and call in, him not only authority, but power. Yet, as a Syria Balad compelled Syrians to participate in mediator between the distant state and the local

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 21 official propaganda and in supporting the state.xciv “Our Real Educated People:” Neoliberalism and Syria’s New Elites Beyond Syria’s borders, these channels allowed the Syrian state to demonstrate that it could still Mandy Terc muster support. Considering the fact that Iraqi and Lebanese Shi‘i forces, in particular, have The Damascus branch of Junior Chamber come out in support for the Syrian regime and International (JCI), Syria’s largest others in Iraq and Lebanon have added the entrepreneurship organization for young adults, opposition movement, it makes sense that the held its 2008 annual dinner in a large ballroom Syrian government would try to influence its in Damascus Sheraton on a December Sunday neighbors through aesthetic and rhetorical evening. Banquet tables to accommodate means. These channels are part of a larger approximately 200 attendees formed a semi- battle. They partake in the aesthetic, the circle around a wooden dance floor and DJ affective, and the discursive battle for the hearts booth. Four projection screens equipped to play and minds of Syrians and their neighbors. video lined the walls, and professionally-printed programs and annual reports sat at each place According to Walter Benjamin, modern art (or setting. Members of JCI and their invited Syrian “art in the age of mechanical reproduction”) guests – directors of banks, company owners does not allow viewers to concentrate and truly and representatives of global corporations who reflect on the events, emotions, and symbols financially support JCI’s charitable activities – depicted. Rather, mass produced art (or arrived in large numbers, dropping their kitschxcv), such as pro-government propaganda xcvi European cars with the Sheraton valet. The on television, distracts. It affects viewers attire was business formal; men wore crisp suits viscerally by invoking nostalgia for and pride in and patterned ties and women sported cocktail Syria’s heritage and linking these to structures of dresses and elaborate hairstyles. power. It affects viewers by casting them into the role of supporters, who stand (or sit) with the As the guests took their seats, an hour-long masses marching in support of Bashar. Syria program of speeches and award presentations Love and Syria Balad elicit a kind of distracted celebrated the organization’s achievements, consent. It is important to see this point because recognized members for extraordinary efforts Syria Love and Syria Balad are not unique in and acknowledged the support of Damascus’ this approach. Their tactics echo those of other businessmen and women. A slick video nationalist and sectarian groups who produce documentary featured local celebrities like and disseminate propaganda on VCDs, DVDs, xcvii television and radio personalities praising the and on YouTube today. group for its contributions to the community. In English, a Damascus radio celebrity proclaimed, Edith Szanto is currently an Assistant Professor “it’s not easy what you guys do, not at all.” The at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani, outgoing leadership presented formal speeches a where she teaches Middle Eastern History, year’s worth of activities, and reminded Western Civilization, and Comparative World attendees of a sense of group affiliation, Religions. Edith received her PhD in Religious proclaiming in English that JCI is “all for one Studies from the University of Toronto in 2012. and one for all.” The screens projected Her dissertation examined Twelver Shi'i snapshots and personal information of members practices in Syria, where she spent three years who had won prizes such as “the Dreamer” or as a Fulbright scholar researching popular “the Entrepreneur.” In between the formal Islamic practices and working for the UN. Her program, the room buzzed with the next project examines in . conversations of members and guests as groups laughed at their tables, individuals circled

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 22 around the room greeting friends and colleagues changes. They participated in the new and small groups chatted in the corners. associations, businesses, schools, commercial venues, volunteer campaigns, linguistic During the dinner, an elegant and vivacious JCI resources and social outings enabled by official member, Lana, seated next to me leaned in to reform. Numerically, the group did not remind me how novel an affair like this was for represent a substantial percentage of society, but Syria, stressing that there are very few the group and its members were visible and comparable opportunities for Syrians to gather influential and thus had an outsized significance, like this. She told me that a decade prior the particularly in urban areas. These were the very existence of JCI would have been Syrians who embraced the changes and actively unthinkable, and that the success of the dinner positioned themselves to take advantage of and elaborately displayed local celebrity support them. They developed a feeling of internal for it was just another sign of how much Syria cohesion and begin to enjoy external had changed. I replied that I too felt the changes recognition. Significantly, the group was multi- in Syria, as new businesses and activities sectarian, incorporating large numbers of seemed to appear almost every week. Lana Sunnis, Alawites, Christians and other sects. nodded in affirmation. She replied that even Syrians had a hard time keeping abreast of the In addition, they began to adapt a social rapid changes around them. She told me, only ideology that paralleled the economic ideology half jokingly, that if she stayed home and of Syria’s neoliberal turn. Beyond their shared worked for a month or two, before she went out institutional affiliations, prominence and social again, she would have to call around to her connections, it was the unwavering belief in the friends to ask what had transpired in her following principles that united them: absence. And the changes, she insisted, went far 1) Advocacy for the retreat of the state beyond superficial developments like new from service provision and economic nightclubs and boutiques; it extended to social leveling mechanisms. norms about marriage, children and 2) Belief that strengthening the private employment. Almost anything, she believed, sector can better society. was subject to change in this energizing 3) Focus on individual responsibility to atmosphere. build “skills” and achieve economic success. Similar articulations of a rapidly changing Syria 4) Teleological approach to social surfaced in many of the interactions I had in development. Syria in the years leading up to the uprisings. 5) Alignment with transnational non-state Indeed, in those years it was hard to ignore the institutions that promote similar ideals. flourishing of newness at every level of life in They also lived these principles: by flocking to Syria. The consensus seemed to be that change the private sector, by organizing volunteer had originated from a series of government-led campaigns to impart “skills” to the less economic reforms and then spread into an eager fortunate, by joining entrepreneurship population who quickly availed themselves of organizations to enhance their own development the new opportunities. Political scientists and and by labeling those who did not adopt their economists were quick to note that these ideology as backwards or personally deficient. changes followed a neoliberal turn (see Abboud 2010a, 2010b, 2009; Hinnebusch 2008, 2005; In the Syria of the last decade, there was a great Selvik 2009; Sottimano 2009). At a societal deal of movement and adjustment as Syrians level, urban economic elites who capitalized on from various sectors of society responded to these new openings began to coalesce into a new these new circumstances by forming and joining social group: Syria’s neoliberal elite. The group new non-governmental organizations, enrolling was composed of individual young Syrians in in new educational institutions, consuming their 20s and 30s who eagerly adopt the newly available goods and services, pursuing ideological component of neoliberal economic new private employment and speaking and

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 23 learning increasingly valuable foreign languages, particularly English. With the While no one dynamic is solely responsible for excitement and sparkle of the new, however, the year and a half of protests and violence in came the frustration and alienation of exclusion. Syria, certainly this rising socio-economic As engagement with the norms of an stratification did contribute to the dissatisfaction organization like JCI create occasions of social of so many Syrians. Given that many Syrians mobility, those same norms also act as social understood the prominence of neoliberal elites – barriers. JCI’s annual dinner, for instance, was whether in private sector employment, private perceived as unique and new in the Syrian education or civic organizations – as a direct context because it utilized its newly permitted result of regime policies, neoliberal elites could activities and newly venerated wealth to create a stand as one symbol of the regime’s unjust and sentiment of prestige and exclusivity. The vast exclusionary preferences. Neoliberal elites majority of Syrians would have felt neither themselves, however, have presented varied comfortable nor welcome there. Furthermore, responses to the conflict in Syria. I should the neoliberal ideology that pervaded such caution here that I, like many of us, often have occasions carried an additional moral burden for had difficulty contacting Syrians in Syria and those who felt unwelcome. Since these elites obtaining information. That said, over the believed that it was the responsibility of course of the conflict I have had email and individuals to prepare themselves for the more private Facebook conversations with several “developed” private sector, it was an members of the neoliberal elite on their feelings individual’s personal shortcoming if they failed about the conflict. Interestingly, even though to learn and display the norms and credentials to they took different political stances (some firmly participate. anti-regime, others firmly pro-regime and still others ambivalent), in all their explanations, they The economic changes encompassed by Syria’s all utilized their shared neoliberal ideological proclamation of a new, neoliberal “social market framework to articulate their positions. economy” – permitting foreign investment, private banking and finance, reducing import Comparing exchanges I had with two young tariffs and allowing private education – reflected professionals, both Sunni and both well-known a free market/neoliberal orientation that members of the neoliberal elite, illuminates this. privileged urban cosmopolitanism. Yet the After noticing that they had been unusually benefits of the new economic order permeated vocal and personal in public Facebook posts Syrian society in uneven and often alienating about their reactions to the uprisings,2 I reached ways. As Samer Abboud has noted, the regime out to them via private Facebook messages. The also reduced or eliminated its subsidies on key first, Jawad, frequently posted pro-regime commodities such as food stuffs, heating oil and sentiments that were unique for their personal electricity.1 In other words, the cessation of content and fervor. I asked him to summarize economic leveling mechanisms means that the what was happening in Syria, and he invoked the gap between rich and poor expanded, as Syrians idea of teleological social progression and not experiencing wage increases in the new blamed the uprisings on Syrians who had failed private sector faced stagnant salaries and rising to develop with the society. prices. The end result was that more Syrians suffered under the new system than profited believe me I’m with what is the from it. best for my country after all, and

1 The regime reinstituted certain subsidies in early 2 In the early stages of the conflict, most neoliberal 2011, seemingly in attempt to prevent revolts in elites posted formulaic messages of regime support. and Egypt from spreading to Syria. After time, the majority stopped posting any 2 In the early stages of the conflict, most neoliberal messages with explicitly political content, preferring elites posted formulaic messages of regime support. either personal content (baby pictures, birthday After time, the majority stopped posting any announcements) or no content at all.

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 24 we all want this, but some areas Economy and the Transition Paradigm, here are still thinking the old tribe edited by Samer Abboud and Ferdinand way . . . you actually lived the Arslanian, v, 79 p. Boulder, CO: Lynne simplicity and the goodness of Rienner Pub. our real educated people. ———. 2010. "Locating the 'Social' in the Social Market Economy." Lund, Sweden, Jawad frames the uprisings as a conflict between October 2010. those who want Syria to develop and those who Armbrust, Walter. 2011. “A revolution against maintain an outdated (“tribal”) worldview. neoliberalism?” www.aljazeera.com. Those who oppose the status quo are dismissed (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011 as backwards and uneducated, rather than /02/201122414315249621.html) marginalized or disenfranchised. In contrast, Hinnebusch, Raymond. 2005. "Inheriting Syria: Haneen cast the protesters as part of Syria’s Bashar's Trial by Fire." Middle East development and future. It was the protesters, Journal 59 (3): 494-496. she believed, who would bring Syria into its next ———. 2008. "Modern Syrian Politics." History phase of development. She wrote me: “In fact I Compass 6 (1): 263-285. was about to immigrate . . . because I lost faith Selvik, Kjetil. 2009. Changing Regime in my country's youth and future, but after Discourse and Reform in Syria. Boulder, March 15th I decided to stay, this country CO: Lynne Rienner. deserves to fight for.” Sottimano, Aurora. 2009. Changing Regime Discourse and Reform in Syria. Boulder, While Jawad and Haneen’s opposing viewpoints CO: Lynne Rienner. caution against any generalizations about elites in Syria, the prominence of the neoliberal elite and the social stratification they represent highlight the importance of incorporating socio- Field Notes economic factors into any analysis of the strife destroying Syria right now. Economic injustice was a central tool of the regime’s punishing policies and the resentment again it. Socio- The Remnants of the Assad Regime economic stratification both overlaps with and diverges from other divisive fault lines in Syria, Radwan Ziadeh including sectarianism. As the Arab Spring began in early 2011, observers of Egypt Three of the five border crossings located on the wondered if it were “a revolt against northern border between Syria and have neoliberalism” (Armbrust 2011). The answer to fallen under the control of the Free Syrian Army. that question, of course, will not be a simple yes These are the Bab al-Hawa, Bab al-Salamah, and or no, but we need to take its premise seriously Jarablous border crossings, respectively. The fall in Syria as well. of these portals illustrates the inability of the Mandy Terc received her PhD in linguistic Assad regime to control its borders and shows anthropology from the University of Michigan in the ever-growing threat that the FSA poses to 2011. She resided in Damascus from 2007 to the regime. As a result of these seizures, the 2009 researching her dissertation, “Syria’s New opposition is capable of resupplying with Neoliberal Elite: English Usage, Linguistic relative ease via direct supply lines passing from Practices and Group Boundaries.” She is Turkey through the rebel-controlled border posts currently a lecturer in Middle Eastern Studies to the liberated areas and front lines without the and Anthropology at Northwestern University. threat of direct contact with regime forces. I personally had the opportunity to cross the Works Cited Turkish-Syrian border as I headed to the city of Abboud, Samer. 2009. "The Transition Azaz via the rebel-held Bab al-Salamah border Paradigm and the Case of Syria." In Syria's

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 25 crossing. Al-Salamah was originally liberated by and military resources to do so. Instead, the the North Storm Brigade, one of a number of Assad regime targets captured areas with air rebel groups formed directly prior to the battle strikes, leaving hundreds of civilians injured or of Aleppo. dead daily. Constant aerial bombardment is the main impediment to the complete liberation of Signs of the conflict in Azaz are ubiquitous. Syria. A no-fly zone is needed to protect Either at the city entrance or through its public populaces and civilian infrastructure from buildings, it's clear that that Azaz was heavily complete destruction. bombarded by the Assad regime. Even private and public hospitals were targeted for allegedly It is the responsibility of the international helping to rescue and relieve the injured. Homes community to help and protect the Syrian people of the civilians received the worst of the in their fight to liberate Syria as well as to assist shelling. It is now clear that artillery strikes on in the management of the transition process, the city were part of a systematic campaign to either through imposing a no-fly zone or by collectively punish Azaz's population for providing technical and financial assistance to tolerating the presence of the Free Syrian Army. the civil society organizations that are currently administrating the liberated areas of Free Syria. However, rather than undercutting the base of support for the FSA, the army's indiscriminate Dr. Radwan Ziadeh is executive director of the shelling actually galvanized support for the Syrian Center for Political and Strategic rebels. Many citizens of Azaz were inspired to Studies, a senior fellow at the U.S Institute of join local militias in order to defend their city Peace, and a fellow at the Institute for Social and exact revenge for the crimes perpetrated Policy and Understanding (ISPU) in against innocents. Case in point: around 121 Washington D.C. individuals were killed in the city of Azaz during the clashes leading up to its liberation -- only 12 of were actually professional soldiers from the Free Syrian Army. Reviews

The main challenge today is that Syria is stuck in the middle of a pre-transitional period. Huge swaths of Syria are liberated while the regime Review of Kürt Tarihi (Kurdish History) still controls other areas, such as the capital, magazine’s first issue (June-July 2012) Damascus. As a result, the Syrian opposition's main challenge is to manage liberated areas while working toward freeing the rest of the Ahmet Akturk country. Such a process is extremely difficult because complete liberation would require a Turkey is a good place to observe how true is large amount of administrative, military, and the proverb “Happy is the country which has no political effort and organization, as well as history.” Many individuals and groups do not administrative bodies to manage the transitional agree with the official government account of – period following liberation, a role that would or silence on – the country’s troubled past as normally be played by the remnants of a central presented in Turkish school textbooks. Thus, the government. official history, originally designed to provide a common base of identity and national unity, has However, the state has collapsed completely in often lead to disagreements. From time to time, the northern areas. Whether in the suburbs of even the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Aleppo, Idlib, and Deir Elzzour, or even in the Erdoğan’s speeches in his ruling party’s weekly city of Aleppo itself, the Syrian army doesn't meetings appear to turn into history lessons. even consider attempting to retake FSA-held Quoting documents from Turkish state archives territory because it completely lacks the human or old newspaper headlines, Erdoğan criticizes

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 26 unpopular policies of the Republican People’s Though the language of the magazine's Party of the 1930s and 1940s. National publication is Turkish, it accepts articles in newspapers frequently include articles by English on Kurdish history that, if approved, historians who challenge the official narratives will be published in Turkish. of the country’s past. People stay up at night to watch TV programs that deal with the hot topics The first issue of Kürt Tarihi (June-July 2012) is hard to find addressed in their government- a promising start and full of rich content. After approved textbooks. The publication of the editorial introduction, there is a “these two numerous books on history and the proliferation months in history” section that explains of popular history magazines are other indicators important recent events in Kurdish history of the public obsession with history and their emphasizing the two months of the published efforts to find out “the truth” about the past. The issue. This is followed by a news section first history magazine on the Kurds published in informing readers of recent activities relevant to Turkish, Kürt Tarihi (Kurdish History) has students and scholars of Kurdish history and developed in such a context. culture all over the world. The magazine also has an interview section introducing a scholar Kürt Tarihi is a bimonthly magazine that first and his or her works dealing with Kurdish appeared in June-July 2012. It is a full-color history. Finally, in the book review section a 10”X12” magazine published on quality glossy new book on Kurdish history or culture is paper with many illustrations. The magazine is introduced to the readers. This first issue available across Turkey through bookstores and includes eight articles that vary in length from newspaper distributors. National and two to eight pages. The articles are very international subscriptions to the magazine are informative, well-researched, footnoted, and also available. A testament perhaps to its highly readable, accompanied by images and popularity, the first issue of the magazine sold historical documents. The articles cover a out in only a few weeks. Mesut Yeğen, a variety of topics, including culture (as with the professor of sociology at Istanbul Şehir article on the development of Newroz as a University, is the editor-in-chief of the Kurdish holiday); political history (exemplified magazine. Yeğen is an internationally renowned in the studies of Mullah in CIA scholar with numerous publications on the documents, and the Shamsadinov Kurds’ Kurds in Turkey and, especially, on the official relations with the Russian Empire); language Turkish view of Kurds and the Kurdish (including a piece on the development of Question. In addition to students of the Kurdish Kurmanji Kurdish language in Syria under the studies field like myself, the editorial board of French Mandate and in Soviet Armenia); the magazine includes well-known academicians literature (with a focus on a Kurdish poet’s view such as Hamit Bozarslan, Martin van of Sultan Abdulhamid II, and the first anthology Bruinessen, Janet Klein, Hakan Özoğlu, Abbas of Kurdish poetry); press (such as the study of Vali, and Nicole Watts as well as independent Kurdish periodicals in the late Ottoman period) scholars such as Rohat Alakom, Mehmet and photography (with analysis of Ottoman Bayrak, İsmail Beşikçi, Ahmet Kardam, Naci postcards portraying Kurdish and Qizilbash Kutlay and Müfit Yüksel. The editor-in-chief figures). summarizes the magazine’s goal as increasing “knowledge on the history of the Kurds and Kürt Tarihi as a popular history magazine will Kurdistan in Turkish” and sharing it with the fill an important gap in Turkey. It will not only public. He also adds that while the magazine make new studies on Kurdish history available does intend to carry out this goal, it will keep “a to Turkish-language readers but also help distance from academic elitism and [Kurdish] academic scholars and independent researchers nationalist pride.” In other words, the magazine share their work with a wider audience. Overall, wants to make the latest academic scholarship the magazine is a timely and welcome project in on the Kurds non-partisan, comprehensible to Turkey that will expand public interest in non-academic audiences, and easily accessible. historical events on which it has been hard to

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 27 agree. Crossfire) and collective (Diaries of the Syrian Revolution). The text documents Yazbek’s Ahmet Serdar Akturk is a doctoral candidate in journey underground, her personal anguish as the History Department at the University of her family and many friends turn their back on Arkansas. her for standing with the opposition (and ipso facto becoming a traitor to her community). Unable to participate publicly (she is repeatedly harassed, arrested, and tortured by security Samar Yazbek. A Woman in the Crossfire: officers) she struggles with finding the most Diaries of the Syrian Revolution. effective way of participating from within. She Translated by Max Weiss. London: Haus is also a mother, terrified by the thought of the Publishing, 2012. 269 pgs. harm that is threatened upon her teenage daughter by both security officers and “ordinary citizens.” What kind of role can a silenced pubic Alexa Firat intellectual – a journalist, writer, and former TV

personality – play, as the brutality of the regime Reading A Woman in the Crossfire in the Fall of reveals itself to be more and more unimaginably 2012 was not easy; the pain and suffering, both vicious with each unfolding day? personal and collective, recorded by Samar

Yazbek during the first one hundred days of Yazbek’s experiences during these first months Syria’s uprising against the regime continues of public outpourings are enough to constitute a unabated, and shamelessly without any effective memoir. She is a deft writer who takes the international effort to relieve the suffering of reader into her interior hell. What is happening civilians coming under fire from their to her and to Syria is almost killing her: she government and the hardships of refugees who can’t sleep without taking the anti-anxiety live in make-shift camps on neighboring sedative Xanax; she witnesses the savagery of borders. It is now 19 months later and lethal the prison system first-hand after she is brought attacks are no longer one-sided affairs in front of senior security officers who demand committed against unarmed demonstrators. she go on television to denounce the Instead, they have escalated into a militarized demonstrators as armed gangs and salafis. She conflict in which killing and brutality is refuses. They walk her among prison cells to perpetrated on both sides, snuffing out the witness the consequences of demonstrating, of original voices of opposition to the authoritarian raising one’s voice against the regime, to regime and its legacy of repression against acts witness the remnants of clobbered bodies before of dissent. they possibly disappear forever. She looks into

the eyes of a dead man for the first time in her Samar Yazbek was born into a respected life. She will see these eyes again. Death invades Alawite family in Jableh, Syria in 1970, her thoughts. Every demonstrator is marked for meaning that she has lived her whole life as a death, but they continue to go out into the streets subject of the Asad regime (le père mounted his in Damascus, Dar’a, Douma, Baniyas, Jisr al- “corrective movement” that same year). Rafik Shughur, Latakia, al-Baida, Rastan, Hama, Schami wonders in the foreword, “Where did Homs, Bab ‘Amr and in many more towns and this extraordinary woman find the courage to villages where ordinary people, young and old, abandon all the securities of a well-to-do men and women, fight against their fears to Alawite family and to declare her solidarity with demand an end to the seeming inevitability that Syria’s oppressed?” This text is doubly an has determined their lives. effusive and thoughtful response to this question that also manages to document the versatility of Yazbek finds inspiration in these extra-ordinary Syria’s social and political movements during people, and purpose as a public intellectual, by their initial development. As the title suggests, documenting their experiences. She writes that the narratives are both personal (A Woman in the she will “approach these stories like an

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 28 investigator,” and they become her passion and happens in Dayr al-Zur is not connected to what anchor. Interspersed between her private anguish happens in Damascus, and so forth. Yazbek and torture, she records the testimonies of establishes that the development of the activists, witnesses, journalists, and survivors coordinating committees located throughout from all parts of the country. Between cigarettes Syria emerged slowly (sometimes too slowly for and tears, she listens, and later after more her) and even (I use the word hesitantly) cigarettes and tears she transcribes these organically, i.e. out of local needs. According to eyewitness accounts as an act of struggle against Yazbek, a group of activists met before March the regime and as an act of rebuttal to their 15 and staged demonstrations in solidarity with distorted renderings of events. As these accounts Tunisians and Egyptians in their revolutions. unfold, Yazbek begins to realize another They were swiftly repressed. The organizers consequence of the work: her attempt to decided to move their meetings into the understand the revolution. How did it begin? mosques, not on religious grounds, but rather to Who are these people that defy every shred of remove themselves from the sight-line of logic that should keep them indoors? How can security forces who were deployed everywhere she render this chaotic and incomprehensible throughout Damascus. This is how “the zone of rupture legible? Durable? protest started to grow.” “On 15 March we were blown away by how many people came out to If one has been following the events unfold demonstrate, which meant there was no need to since March 15, 2011, one may recall the shock mobilize and rally them. The people were upon hearing the news of the massive siege on ready.” The mobilizations grew into Dar’a and later Bab ‘Amr and Homs. We “coordination committees” by early May, each watched shaky You Tube images of receiving a task according to various issues: demonstrations, of tanks rolling through streets, politics, media, organization, medicine. Each of bodies laying on curbs and brave citizens Friday was given a rallying name, and each carrying them home. We heard reports of injured Friday people demonstrated anew. demonstrators being arrested in hospitals, of soldiers defecting, and more and more atrocities. No matter what, we knew that the Yazbek corroborates all of this and intensifies mobilization came first on the popular our perspective with her first-hand accounts of level and attempts were made to pull the non-sectarian and peaceful intentions of the mobilization forward for the benefit those first few months. Through Yazbek we hear of all sides. After much debate we from a journalist who broke the Dar’a seige; a concluded that pulling the mobilization woman who watched her husband and child in any one direction signaled the murdered by security forces in Hama 1982 and victory of the regime and the end of the who, along with most Hamawis, faces the popular mobilization, a distortion of it. regime in 2011 steadfastly; an Alawi in Jableh at We entered into discussions with them. the time of the massacre; a defecting lieutenant; The young men were open-minded and stories from Latakia and more. Time and again, understanding, regardless of whether people testify how the regime’s shabbiha and they were nationalists or Islamists or security forces would wreck havoc in their leftists. The beautiful thing was that attempt to demonstrate sectarian, i.e. Sunni everyone realized that the mobilization extremist, motivations. Only the opposite would had a democratic platform, not just in prove to be true according to the stories Yazbek Syria but across the entire Arab world. recorded. Furthermore, she reiterates how the (200) regime was using Alawites as “human shields,” exploiting communal loyalty to shore up Sadly, Yazbek is forced out of Syria. She leaves support. for the safety of her daughter and commits herself to writing this text. She knows that Syria One of the more prominent criticisms directed at and Syrians are at the point of no return; neither the opposition is their lack of unity, that what the regime nor the people can go back to

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 29 anything resembling pre-March 15. “There is no business relationships in Syria since the 1970s dialogue with a traitor who kills his own and paints a picture of the Syrian regime as one people.” From the vantage point of Fall 2012 we concerned primarily with its own survival. know that it is only armed fighters who are part of the dialogue now. Yazbek has endured Haddad provides indispensable and in-depth unquantifiable suffering, yet still manages to critical insight to explain the relationship distill a narrative that maps countless small acts between the regime and some of the business of kindness amidst an enormous web of cruelty. elite of Syria. The process, as Haddad suggests, As thousands die (34,000 as of this writing) and began in the 1960s but became a standardized buildings crumble, A Woman in the Crossfire is dialectic relationship in the 1970s, lasting until a text that stands against the erasure of these 2005, and explains state intervention in the experiences, of their burial alongside corpses, or economy, prolonged economic stagnation, and of their re-editions by the next regime. No the erratic Syrian economy of many years. In matter who or what is to come next in Syria, this reaction to a severe foreign exchange crisis in text inscribes the many voices and shapes of 1986, the state’s “top leadership internalized the rage that finally and peacefully erupted. need for reform.” (4) Haddad provides an elaborate historical and socio-political context Alexa Firat is Assistant Professor of Arabic and centered around the legacy of mistrust between Arabic Literature at Temple University. the state and the business elite. He asks whether the security apparatus of the regime occupied the center stage of the relationship from the viewpoint of the regime. Elites in business Bassam Haddad. Business Networks in networks found their agency limited to a context Syria: The Political Economy of of mistrust and narrowly defined interests. (105) Authoritarian Resilience. Stanford University Press, 2011. Pp. 280. Haddad’s research focus on business networks allows for a stronger theoretical understanding of the Syrian economy since the 1970s, and Karam Dana provides clear methodological grounding to the complex puzzle of state-business relations. In Negotiating Influence: The Economy, Security this case, looking at the networks themselves Apparatus, and the Asad Regime rather than limiting the study to a Marxian class- based analysis of society yields more As waves of Arab revolts continue to sweep the comprehensive explanations of certain socio- Arab Middle East, different political political and economic phenomena. While formulations of power have appeared. While the Marxian analyses can be helpful in collective Arab societies’ quest for change has understanding the context of state-business met some measurable outcomes in various relations, Haddad's exploration of business countries in the Arab world, the case of Syria networks goes beyond such approaches to remains a cliffhanger. The conflict between the effectively present a more plausible explanation loyalists of the regime and the opposition of the inner workings of politics in Syrian continues, but most notably, the cliffhanger is society. due to the uniquely sophisticated political and economic legacy of state-business partnerships While taking into account the political legacy of between the state and select business elite. the Ba’athists in Syria, Haddad argues that Drawing on first hand accounts, and using all informal relationships between the state and types of data a social scientist could possibly business moguls were established in a way that utilize, Bassam Haddad’s Business Networks in would disallow the entire business sector from Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian joining. The reason, Haddad argues, has to do Resilience provides an unparalleled insight into with Hafez al-Asad’s and Salah Jadid’s the politics, economy, and nature of state- understanding of the potential costs associated

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 30 with allowing a prosperous business elite to early 2011, leaves the status of Syria’s society, exist; they could have jeopardized the authority economy, and state unknown. One hopes for a of the Syrian regime, as they did in 1961. state whose security apparatus does not occupy its mission, but rather a state with better Five years after the death of Hafez al-Asad and informed economic and social policy that can the subsequent “inheritance” of the presidency address the concerns of most of its citizens. by his son, Bashar, the policy of state-centered economic policy began to shift and a new mixed Karam Dana is Assistant Professor of Middle economy developed. Under this new approach to East Politics in the School of Interdisciplinary dealing with the economy, the state continues to Arts and Sciences at the University of play a role, but market forces would play a more Washington Bothell. significant role in the economy than in the past. Thus, the year 2005 marks the beginning of a new economic policy approach and changing relationships between business elites and the iHazem Suleyman, Episode 3, Anti wa la Ahad (You state. Haddad questions, however, if changes to and No one Else), Buq‘at Dau‘ 9 (Spotlight Part 9), economic policy were earnest efforts to reform, directed by Amr Fahd and produced by Syrian Art ii or yet another episode in the state's strategy to Interview with television editor Eyad Shehab Ahmad, September 11, 2012. strengthen its security apparatus. This question iii remains unanswered, and we await research that Lisa Wedeen, Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria can address this issue, perhaps in Haddad's (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, second edition. 1999), 87-92. ivMarlin Dick, "Syria Under the Spotlight: Television The book provides a detailed explanation of a Satire that is Revolutionary in Form, Reformist in complex socio-economic picture where the state Content," Arab Media & Society (October 2007), 2-4. engages in relationships with a select business vInterview with screenwriter Colette Bahna, October elite, in networks where social status, class, and 10, 2012. vi communal identity all play a role. On an Interview with actor Jihad Abdo, October 14, 2012. vii organizational note, the book is a bit hard to Christa Salamandra, “Spotlight on the Bashar al- follow, in large part due to the number of issues Asad Era: The Television Drama Outpouring,” Middle East Critique Vol. 20, No. 2 (Summer 2011), tackled. Helpfully, Haddad does clearly outline p. 157-58. his arguments and explanation of causal viii See: Milh wa Sukkar (Salt and Sugar), written by mechanisms early on in the book, which aids Nihad Qalai and directed by Khaldun al-Maleh, readers in their efforts to understand the various 1973; Dai‘a Tishrin (The Tishrin Village), written relationships and complicated concepts the Muhamad al-Maghout and produced by Usra Tishrin author so skillfully presents. Masrahiya, 1974; For examples of tensions between artists of the time see: Rafiq Sibayi, Thaman al- Haddad's Business Networks in Syria is a must Hubb: Min al-Sira al-Dhatiya (Damascus, Syria: read for scholars of political economy and state- Mu’assasa al-Wahda al-Tiba‘a wa al-Nashr, 1998), business relations. Those interested in Middle 155-175. ixAdnan Zera‘i, Al-Jundi al-Majhul (The Unknown East society and politics will find his study to be Soldier), Buq‘at Dau‘ 6 (Spotlight Part 6), directed a great contribution to understanding practices by Samer Barqawi and produced by Syrian Art of some authoritarian regimes in the region. He Production International, 2008. provides insight into how a regime’s repressive xInterview with television editor Eyad Shehab internal measure operates where the security Ahmad, September 11, 2012. apparatus occupies center stage in state-society xi“Al-Juz’ al-Tasi‘ min Musalsal Buq‘at Dau‘…Jur’a relations. Business networks of Syria have led to Televizyoni Tafshal fi al-Iqtirab Jur’a al-Shari‘, devastating economic results, especially since August 20, 2012, retrieved in: relations were based on mistrust. Syria's move http://www.aksalser.com/?page=view_news&id=7e2 into a new economic position after 2005, cb9353925642da. coupled with the revolt against the regime since

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 31 xii“Fauq al-Saqf (Over the Roof), directed by Samer xxv Ibid, 136-137. Barqawi and produced by Syrian Arab Television, xxvi Zouhair Ghazzal, L'Economie Politique de Damas Damascus, Syria, 2011; Interview with Colette durant le Xixe Siècle : Structures Traditionnelles et Bahna, October 10, 2011. Capitalisme, Publication De L'IFEAD. (Damas: xiii“Al-Televiziyon al-Suriy Yooqef Musalsal 'Fauq al- Institut français d'études arabes de Damas, 1993) 63. Saqf' Ba'd Munawashat Raqabiya," August 27, 2011, xxvii Catherine Brun and Tariq Jazeel, “Introduction: in Spatial Politics and Postcolonial Sri Lanka,” in http://www.levantnews.com/index.php?option=com_ Spatialising Politics: Culture and Geography in content&view=art. Postcolonial Sri Lanka, ed. Cathrine Brun and Tariq xivYara Saleh, "Fauq al-Saqf: Al-Musalsal al- Jazeel (Los Angeles: Sage, 2009) 7. Mokhtalef," Weds, August 3, 2011, in xxviii Bruce Alan Masters, Christians and Jews in the http://www.bostah.com/2010-03-20-17-08-42/2010- Ottoman Arab World: The Roots of Sectarianism, 08-01-14-49-30. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization xvNur Sheeshkely, Buq‘at Dau‘ 9 (Spotlight 9), (Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Episode 21, Bila Saqf. Press, 2001) 136. xviMiriam Cooke, Dissident Syria: Making xxix Moshe Ma'oz, Studies on Palestine During the Oppositional Arts Official (Durham and London: Ottoman Period (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1975). Duke University Press, 2007), 75-77. 22-27. xviiDonatella Della Ratta, “Dramas of the xxx Masters, Christians and Jews, 138. Authoritarian State,” February 2012, Middle East xxxi Moshe Maʻoz, Ottoman Reform, 2. Research and Information Project, p. 1, retrieved in: xxxii Linda Schatkowski Schilcher, Families in Politics: http://www.merip.org/mero/interventions/dramas- Damascene Factions and Estates of the 18th and 19th authoritarian-state?ip_login_no_cache=... Centuries (Berliner Islamstudien. Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, xviii At an opposition event in Qatar after the 2011 1985) 71; Commins, 10. uprising, Syrian novelist Zakaria Tamer exposed xxxiii Makdisi, 10, 19-20. Durayd Lahham’s record from the 1970s recounting xxxiv how he put together a march of artists to Hafiz al- Bruce Masters, “The 1850 Events in Aleppo: A Asad’s presidential palace to congratulate him for his Aftershock of Syria's Incorporation into the Capitalist Corrective Movement. In return, Tamer claims that World System.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 22, no. 1 (1990): 16. Lahham was granted a tax break from imports. See xxxv Bassem Alhakim, “Duraid Lahham: No Politics, Brun and Jazeel, 1-24. xxxvi Raymond, 304. But…,” June 20, 2012, retrieved in:http://english.al- xxxvii akhbar.com/node/8699. Andrew Archibald Paton, The Modern Syrians: Or, xix See Charles Tilly, The Politics of Collective Native Society in Damascus, Aleppo and the Mountains of the Violence, Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics Druses, from Notes Made in Those Parts During the Years (Cambridge, U.K. ; New York: Cambridge 1841-2-3. (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1844) 36. University Press, 2003); Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic xxxviii Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of Paton, 37. xxxix Ma’oz, Ottoman Reform, 227. California Press, 1985). xl xx Ussama Samir Makdisi, The Culture of Sectarianism : C.E. Farah, “Necip Pasa and the British in Syria Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century 1841-1842”, Archivum ottomanicum, ii (1970) 121. xli Ibid, 131. Ottoman Lebanon (Berkeley, Calif.: University of Californiaxlii Press, 2000) 3,6. For an example of the early scholarship on Ibid, 140. xliii Ibid, 117. the Tanzimat see Moshe Maʻoz, Ottoman Reform in Syria and xliv Palestine, 1840-1861 : The Impact of the Tanzimat on Politics Joel Beinin, Workers and Peasants in the Modern and Society ( Oxford, London: Clarendon P., 1968). Middle East, The Contemporary Middle East. xxi Ashutosh Varshney, "Ethnic and Civil Conflict: (Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 45-47. India and Beyond " World Politics 53 (2001): 363. xlv xxii David Dean Commins, Islamic Reform : Politics See for example such interventions by the French and Social Change in Late Ottoman Syria. Studies in consul in A.E. CPC/ Turquie, Damas, vol. 1, 2, Ratti Menton- Francois Guizot, January 6th 1841. Middle Eastern History (New York: Oxford xlvi University Press, 1990) 13. Leila Tarazi Fawaz, An Occasion for War: Civil xxiii Andre Raymond, Grandes Villes Arabes à l’EpoqueConflict in Lebanon and Damascus (Berkeley: Ottomane (Paris: Sindbad, 1985) 130-133. University of California Press, 1994) 100. xxiv Ibid, 131. xlvii Ibid, 85, 89.

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 32 xlviii Stefan Weber, Damascus: Ottoman Modernity lxi Dalrymple, “Syria shouldn’t be demonized,” The and Urban Transformation (1808-1918). 2 vols, Spectator. Proceedings of the Danish Institute in Damascus. lxii Hind Kabawat, “The Devil You Know: Syria’s (Århus Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 2009) vol Christians Support Assad,” The American Interest, 2, 51-62. December 2, 2011, http://blogs.the-american- xlix Marino, Brigitte. "Le "Quartier Des Chretiens" interest.com/wrm/2011/12/02/the-devil-you-know- (Mahallat Al-Nasara) de Damas au Milieu du Xviiie syrian-christians-support-assad/ Siecle (1150-70/1737-57)." REMMM 107-110 lxiii Anthony Shadid and David D. Kirkpatrick, (2005): 343-344; Weber, vol.2, 55. “Promise of Arab Uprisings is Threatened by l Weber, vol.2, 51-59. Divisions,” The New York Times, May 21, 2011, li Chantal Verdeil Donzel, "Les Jésuites de Syrie (1830-1864) : http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/world/middleea Une Mission auprès des Chrétiens d'Orient au début des st/22arab.html?pagewanted=all Réformes Ottomanes " (Université Paris IV Sorbonne, 2003) “Anti-Regime Gunmen Kill 16, Mostly Alawite and Christian, near Homs,” Naharnet, August 7, 2012, 166; Mikhāʼīl Mishāqah, "Kitāb mashhad al-‘āyān bi http://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/49274 ḥawādith Suriyā wa Lubnān." ed. Milham Khalis Abduh and“Deadly Car Bomb Hits Funeral in Damascus Andrawus Hanna Shakhashiri (Cairo, 1908) 248; Weber, vol Suburb,” BBC, August 29, 2012, 2, 53-61. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east- lii A.E. CPC/ Turquie, Damas, vol. 7, 8, Outrey- 19400970 Thouvenel, July 28th 1860. lxiv Ruth Sherlock and Carol Malouf, “Syria: liii Berbner, Bastien. “The Tolerant Dictator: Christians Take Up Arms for First Time,” The Christians Side with Assad out of Fear,” Der Spiegel, Telegraph, September 12, 2012, November 30, 2011, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middlee http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,800 ast/syria/9539244/Syria-Christians-take-up-arms-for- 450,00.html. first-time.html liv Patrick Seale, “Averting Civil War in Syria,” The lxv Ulrike Putz, “Christians Free from Radical Rebels Middle East Online, November 22, 2011, in Syria,” Der Spiegel, July 25, 2012, http://www.middle-east- http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/christians- online.com/english/?id=49164 flee-from-radical-rebels-in-syria-a-846180.html lv Khudra, “What do Sunnis Intend for Alawis lxvi Elian Sheperd, “Assad is not our friend,” Syrian Following Regime Change?” Syria Comment, June Christians for Democracy, December 20, 2011, 18, 2011, http://syrian-christian.org/dr-elian-shepherd-blog/ http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/?p=10267&cp=all lxvii Donia TV, “Christian Soldier Killed in Syria,” lvi “A Country Study: Syria,” Library of Congress, October 12, 2011, available at March 22, 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVs3z33bodY http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/sytoc.html lxviii Hind Kabawat, “The Assad Delusion,” The lviiInterview, Hind Kabawat, Foreign Affairs Director National Post, January 30, 2012, for the Syrian Public Relations Association and a http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/01/30/hind Senior Research Associate in Public Diplomacy at -aboud-kabawat-the-assad-delusion/ the Conflict Resolution Program of Syria at George lxix Oren Dorell, “Syrian Rebels Said to Favor Mason University, April 10, 2012. Democracy,” USA Today, September 23, 2012, lviii “Sanctions Against Syria: As Effective As Bullets, http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/usworld/article/ Maybe,” The Economist, December 3, 2011, accessed 274998/6/Syrian-rebels-said-to-favor-democracy December 7, 2011, lxx Nicholas Blanford, “Q&A with a Syrian Jihadist: http://www.economist.com/node/21541078 Minorities have nothing to fear in post-Assad Syria,” lix William Dalrymple, “Ignore the hype: Syria Christian Science Monitor; September 29, 2011. shouldn’t be demonized,” The Spectator, October 27, lxxi “We Are All Syria” Facebook page, modified 2007. March 2012, Amnesty International Report: Refugees in Syria, https://www.facebook.com/We.Are.All.Syria Suffering in Silence, 2008, Basmah Kodmani, “To Topple Assad, it takes a http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/MDE14/010/ Minority,” New York Times, August 3, 2011. 2008/en Patterson, Margot. “Syria in Crisis.” America lx Interview, Syrian-Armenian from Aleppo, April 10, Magazine 205 (2011): 13-17. 2012.

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 33 lxxii Sheikh Al-Baynouni, former Secretary-General of Radwan Ziadeh, Power and Policy in Syria: the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, Brookings Institute Intelligence Services, Foreign Relations and Lecture, September 19, 2011, Doha, Qatar. Democracy. (Washington DC: Library of Modern lxxiii Blanford, “Q&A with a Syrian Middle East Studies, 2011). Jihadist,”Christian Science Monitor. Mikhail, “Statut Enviable,” 9. lxxiv “Syrian Archbishop Says Give Assad a Chance,” lxxxv Sheperd, “Assad is not our friend,” Syrian Now Lebanon, January 11, 2012, Christians for Democracy. http://nowlebanon.com/NewsArchiveDetails.aspx?ID lxxxvi Barah Mikhail, “Un Statut Enviable, Ou Une =351227 Sérénité Simulée ?”Confluences Méditerranée, 66 lxxv “Patriarchs’ Message to their Faithful and to their (2008) : 16. Fellow Citizens in Syria”, Melkite Greek Catholic lxxxvii “Assad is not our friend,” Dr. Elian Sheperd’s Church official website, last modified 2012, Blog. https://melkite.org/patriarchate/patriarchs%E2%80% lxxxviii Elian Sheperd, “Christians in Syria or the 99-message-to-their-faithful-and-to-their-fellow- Missed Opportunity,” Syrian Christians for citizens-in-syria Democracy, October 8, 2011, http://syrian- lxxvi Interview, a Syrian-Armenian from Aleppo. christian.org/christians-in-syria-or-the-missed- lxxvii “Rai Urges International Community to Give opportunity/ Assad Time to Implement Reform,” The Daily Star, lxxxix “Malayin mithatf binhabbak,” accessed October September 9, 2011, 17, 2012, http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Politics/2011/Sep- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eX4bHPhT2Ew 09/148314-rai-urges-international-community-to- &list=UUodwo9GTRIAQXjTYiY3LyRw&index=4 give-assad-time-to-implement- &feature=plcp. reform.ashx#axzz1ohlbJIRt xc One of the songs which was played often in the fall Al was “Hamak Allah ya Asad” by Asala Nasri“) اﻟﻜﻨﯿﺴﺔ اﻟﺴﻮرﯾﺔ أ ﱠﺧﺮت ﻣﺸﺎرﻛﺔ اﻟﻤﺴﯿﺤﯿﯿﻦ ﻓﻲ اﻟﺜﻮرةlxxviii keneesa al-soreyya okherat musharakat al (accessed October 17, 2012, meseheyeen fel thawra”), Al-Arabiya, February 3, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=058eGyHgQqA). 2012, Notably, Asala Nasri has since allied herself with the http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/02/03/192394. opposition. Narmeen Ibrahim (accessed October 17, html 2012, lxxix “Actor Jalal al-Tawil Attacked After a Damascus http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6qTjV8b3v4&fe Protest on 19/12/2011,” Syrian Christians for ature=related) Democracy, December 20, 2011, http://syrian- and Manal Mousa are other female singers who sing christian.org/actor-jalal-al-tawil-attacked-in- in support of Bashar al-Asad (accessed October 17, damascus-protest-on-19122011-arabic/ 2012, Rania Massoud, “La menace des chabbiha : ‘Ton https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCpnBvUUj6c& Beau Visage, Nous le Brûlerons avec feature=related). l’Acide,’” L’Orient Le Jour, 25 February 2012, xci Cf. “Malayin mithatf binhabbak.” http://www.lorientlejour.com/category/%C3%80+La xcii “’Ayuni rabbak Suria” accessed October 17, 2012, +Une/article/746849/La_menace_des_chabbiha_:_% https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buL4JR14lvc&fe 22Ton_beau_visage,_nous_le_brulerons_avec_de_la ature=related; “Hayou Souria,” accessed October 17, cide%22.html 2012, “Al-’ab Basiliūs Shaheed al-Kinīsa, Syrian https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AgOWunMKL Christians for Democracy,” 26 January 2011, Y&feature=bf_prev&list=PL51FE7A43F026DF8F. - - - xciii Cf. Michael Gilsenan, Lords of the Lebanese . اﻷب ﺑﺎﺳﯿﻠﯿﻮس ﺷﮭﯿﺪ اﻟﻜﻨﯿﺲ/www.syrian-christian.org lxxx Blanford, “Q&A with a Syrian Jihadist,” marches: violence and narrative in an Arab society Christian Science Monitor. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). lxxxi Frances Harrison, “Christians Besieged in Iraq,” xciv Cf. Lisa Wedeen, Ambiguities of Domination: BBC, March 13, 2008, Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7295145.stm Syria (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). Interview, Hind Kabawat. xcv Kanan Makiya, The Monument: Art, Vulgarity, lxxxii Syria’s President Assad- Should he resign?,” and Responsibility in Iraq (Berkley: University of Doha Debates and YouGov Poll Report. California Press, 1991). lxxxiii Berbner, “The Tolerant Dictator,” Der Spiegel. xcvi Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, ed. Hannah lxxxiv Andrew Hinnebusch, “Modern Syrian Arendt and trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken Politics,” History Compass 6 (2008): 265. Books, 1968), 238-239.

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 34 xcvii Edith Szanto, Following Sayyida Zaynab: Twelver Shi‘ism in Contemporary Syria (PhD dissertation, University of Toronto, 2012), 125-132.

Syrian Studies Association Bulletin Volume 17, Number 2 (Fall 2012): Syria: Past, Present, Future 35