Syrian Masquerades

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Syrian masquerades of war

Joshka Wessels

Figure 6.1 Creative resistance by Syrian artist Wissam al Jazairy ©

A Personal War Since the Syrian uprisings began in 2011, it has been estimated that over 300,000 user-generated videos have been uploaded on the internet using platforms such as YouTube, often recorded with mobile phone cameras and other small video recording devices. These show a global audience and other Syrians what has been happening in parts of Syria where international media has been denied access (Elias and Omareen, 2014). As a counter reaction to this, progovernment media outlets and activists also began to use YouTube to rally support for their causes. The result is a varied media landscape of war in Syria, forming the backbone of an evolving dataset for ongoing research to disentangle the numerous masquerades that comprise the Syrian war. From 1997 until 2002, I lived and worked in Syria as an anthropologist and ethnographic filmmaker with the International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA). While living in the old city of Aleppo, I conducted visual anthropological fieldwork in a small village nearby. Syrians are hospitable people and they took me into their lives. I learned their language. As long as we did not talk politics all was fine. Most Syrians knew about the government prisons and what transpired there. Lisa Wedeen (1999) suggests that Syrians pretended as if they revered their glorious leader, knowing perfectly well what happened beyond the barrel of the gun and in the torture chambers. That was precisely the reason no one dared to talk politics; I soon realized one survives dictatorship by keeping quiet. Syria was known as ‘the kingdom of silence’ (Stienen, 2008; George, 2003). In contrast to the urban areas, the Syrian countryside had relative freedom, because the long arm of the security services, the mukhabarat, did not often reach remote areas without electricity, and that is where I spent a lot of my time: in the desert, in a small village without electricity, with farmers and the Bedouins.1 I returned to Syria nearly every year until 2010. Immediately when I heard news of protests in the streets of Syria in 2011, I went online, checking Facebook statuses of Syrian friends to see if they were fine. There was a sense of hope, of a successful revolution emerging. A friend even invited me over; she told me, ‘come in a year’s time and we will celebrate our freedom in the streets of Damascus!’ How different it became when the protests were brutally put down by Syrian army and security forces shortly afterwards. Some friends denounced the violence and did not want to be involved in an armed revolution. Some fled. Some stayed. Others went underground to film the protest. Some were killed by snipers. One day, I received a Facebook message from an ICARDA colleague: ‘Go and watch this video, it is Zakarias al Atek, he got killed on the frontline.’ Scared of what I would see, I clicked on the hyperlink. I saw a grubby vernacular video recording of bodies, a lot of people shouting, and a body dragged into a pick-up truck. The dead fighter had a long beard and, upon watching the footage closely, I recognized his face. He had been the kindest man at ICARDA, a janitor who would do everything for everyone who asked. There he was on my computer screen, a lifeless body in a pick-up truck that I was watching from my Swedish home. The war had turned personal through a computer screen. Zakarias had lost most of his family in a barrel bomb attack in Aleppo and had joined the Free Syrian Army (FSA) to fight Assad’s army. I switched off my computer and cried. A week later, another colleague from ICARDA reported that a bright young woman with a PhD was killed by an FSA sniper. She had been caring for displaced refugees in Aleppo schools. Yet another message some months later informed me that a talented young Syrian filmmaker called Basel Shehadeh got killed in Homs in 2012 by a government sniper. Basel had been covering the anti-government protests and making a film on non-violent resistance. A one-hour tribute to his work, called ‘Syria Through A Lens,’ includes interviews with Erica Chenoweth and Noam Chomsky. 2 The list of personal losses is long.

Masquerades of war: a theoretical reflection As Christine Sylvester emphasizes in her book War as experience, there is a strong empirical need in the field of International Relations (IR) for approaches to war that study up from people rather than study down from elite or systems viewpoints (Sylvester, 2013: 109). How do Syrians experience war and in what sense does it shape their worldview and perceptions of International Relations from the ground? This study investigates the Syrian war experience from the bottom-up and engages with war masquerades through online video material and audiovisuals. Before embarking on the empirics, I would like to reflect on masquerades of war in relation to justifications of violence and war. Fear, grief and loss are direct emotional experiences in war zones. Judith Butler analysed the power of grief after the attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001, and warned that grief and revenge can lead to dangerous precedents in which the ‘enemy’ is dehumanized (Butler, 2004). She points out that in the Western media, rarely can people identify with those killed in faraway countries in the same manner that they can when reading obituaries in local newspapers: ‘we seldom, if ever, hear the names of the thousands of Palestinians who have died by the Israeli military with United States support, or any number of Afghan people, children and adults. Do they have names and faces, personal histories, family, favourite hobbies, slogans by which they live?’ (p. 32). In other words, we are prevented from empathizing with ‘the enemy’. Selective empathy is, I believe, part of the essence of a masquerade of war. Dehumanizing an enemy, or framing a perceived or constructed enemy, is done in a certain way to justify violence and killing. Once someone is able to experience empathy, in other words by starting to ‘love the enemy’, it becomes much harder to kill the other without feelings of guilt. Therefore it is of utmost importance in a masquerade of war to mask the other as the enemy to prevent fighters, soldiers and loyal supporters of the war from developing empathy. Assuming that killing and murder are not easy tasks for someone, a masquerade of war prevents potential feelings of guilt and shame, replacing those emotions with pride and honour. In her book on authoritarianism, Hannah Arendt (1976) describes how the concept of honour in Nazi Germany was used to motivate the military command and the masses for a heroic war. Dead victims of war were considered ‘honourable martyrs’ and were memorialized. Those on the other side were ‘killed enemies’ and forgotten. The dehumanized enemy who gets killed is part of the victory of the war hero and thus a mere object without a character or life legacy, even though these descriptions could refer to one and the same person, depending on which side of the war the dead are on. In his book Solidarity and Suffering, towards a politics of relationality (1998), Douglas Sturm calls for mutual respect and creative dialogue promoting justice as solidarity and relationality as a reconstructive approach to a wide range of social issues, including human rights, affirmative action, property, corporations, religious pluralism, social conflict, and the environment. He aims to go beyond divisiveness and look at our common or cosmopolitan relationality. I find the concept of cosmopolitan relationality an important analytical tool for indentifying various masquerades of the Syrian war, many justifications for killing and violence. Cosmopolitan relationality can move us away from a process of othering, wherein empathy for the dead is selective. When empathy is non-selective, grief then becomes grief for all humankind. Cosmopolitan relationality differs from the concept of cosmopolitan rationality in the sense that the former highlights universal human emotions, such as empathy, and the latter focuses on rationality as the Western ideal of quarantining emotions from strategic and rational thought. This separation has specific consequences in a postcolonial context (Sylvester, 2013; Jabri, 2012), where resistance to the war on global terror responds to Western military violence and longstanding patterns of Western control, meddling, belittling, and insistence on democratization as a justification for intervention (Sylvester, 2013). The ‘democratization interventions’ in Afghanistan and Iraq have failed miserably because the great powers have gravely underestimated local resistance to NATO bombings, targeted assassinations via remote-controlled US drones, and the power of postcolonial agency. Rein Mullerson (2013), in a critique of democratic peace theory, argues that neo-Kantian theories have become an argument for military interventions, despite evidence that a global democratic world would not necessarily be more peaceable. The Western world views the Middle East as the other, and in this discursively orientalist construct ignores potential cosmopolitan relationality and the agency of postcolonial civil society activists who experience dictatorship, oppression, war, grief and loss. In the mess and complexity of war, the will for peace is not a rational construct but rather a feeling of security and resistance to killing others. As Vivienne Jabri (2012) states, ‘postcolonial subjects, now in late modernity, are still faced with a colonial rationality which discursively and materially places them in a globally subordinate position’ (Jabri, 2012: 134). In this context, if postcolonial subjects rise up against dictatorship and oppression, local agency is limited by a neoliberal geopolitical economy dominated by the world economic powers. Jabri (2012) describes the Arab Spring revolutions as monumentally significant for providing an opportunity for

postcolonial societies to claim the political in late modernity, against the construction of the Middle East, and Arab societies in particular, as sources of violence (Jabri, 2012: 135). Within the context of the Syrian war, I argue that the global war on Islamic terror has de facto converged with Assad’s masquerade of his ‘war on terrorism’. The positive side is the relative freedom of access to internet technology and social media platforms like YouTube. Besides militant jihadi groups, these media are used as virtual platform by various other non-violent secular resistance groups in the Syrian war zone that want to reach out to the world and establish a cosmopolitan relationality that can foster solidarity and empathy and humanize them. In other words, to show the world that not all Syrians are terrorists.

Who is the real enemy? A forest of masquerades of war This study takes the concept of cosmopolitan relationality as described by Sturm as a transboundary and cross-cultural dimension inside a Syrian non-violence movement that seeks justice, freedom, dignity, human rights and democracy. Cosmopolitan relationality can be used to deconstruct various justifications for killing and violence that divide the world into the good and the bad. That dichotomy can justify wars; but what remains is the question of who the real enemy is and who is so bad that they must be killed without due legal process. An enemy can be identified in vague terms, as in the colonial sub-alternating terms ‘savages’ and ‘uncivilized.’ Another way of depicting the enemy is the claim that there is a foreign threat, whereby the enemies are ‘infiltrators’ who want to ‘create troubles’ and break down the state. A third enemization is more sectarian and racist; it applies to those who by religion or ethnicity, appearance, or sexual orientation pose an existential threat to the traditional lifestyle of those who are ‘good’. There is also an othering process that originates from envy, anger and resistance by the oppressed towards their abusers, between the haves and the have-nots, or the colonial subject towards the colonizers (Jabri, 2012). This kind of enemization can feed wars by religious extremists who despise Western cosmopolitan and consumer lifestyles. It can also be a justification for violence by guerilla militias and, to a less extent, by certain indigenous people fighting for human rights and freedom from neocolonialism. Religious masquerades of war are not unimportant within the context of the Levant, where Abrahamic religions have rationalised violence for centuries as sacred and therefore just (Clarke, 2014). The following section describes various dimensions of cosmopolitan relationality among the secularist opposition in Syria. It is a form of relationality created between those experiencing war and ‘war spectators’ located outside Syria. Centered around the village of Kafranbel, local cartoonists have developed political commentaries on the Syrian war and the international relations around it, in the form of a vast collection of cartoons carried in anti-government and anti-Islamist demonstrations (Halasa et al., 20 14). Unlike scholars, who often do not know of the personal experiences of war, people who directly experience war often have a distinctive vision as analysts on the ground. Arrayed against them are various violent actors in the Syrian crisis, primarily Assadists and jihadists, those seeking ‘jihad by the sword’ or jihad bil saif (Arabic) and not other forms of jihad.3 These two groups rely on a plethora of masquerades, which the cartoonists satirise. The section concludes with an analysis of regime masquerades that also appeared found in the Syrian presidential elections of 2014. Cosmopolitan relationality and grassroot political commentary: Kafranbel When the Syrian uprising started in March 2011, almost immediately Syrian civilians started to upload YouTube videos and use platforms like Facebook and Twitter to offer commentaries on street demonstrations, violence, and international reactions to the Syrian crisis. Not long before, the Syrian regime had finally allowed access to internet, YouTube and Facebook, which had previously been blocked. Nevertheless, many Syrians still used proxies, out of fear of surveillance by the regime’s security apparatus. One of the most prolific and witty social and political commentaries came from a village in the Northern part of the country -- Kafranbel, in the province of Idleb (Halasa et al., 2014; Wedeen, 2013). Anonymous local cartoonists started to design and draw banners that were used in street demonstrations and posted online for a global audience (Halasa et al., 2014). The cartoons map a certain cosmopolitan relationality of moral outrage (Wedeen, 2013). This section analyses a selection of Kafranbel banners used in local anti-government demonstrations from 5 February 2012 until the Presidential elections on 5 June 2014. The banner in Figure 6.3 was drawn on 5 February 20124 as a political commentary on UN vetoes cast by Russia and China against a resolution condemning the Assad regime for war crimes. In a strong denunciation of the UNSC veto system, cosmopolitan relationality is expressed by a hand outstretched toward a wounded revolution that is cut in half and made worthless. The young girl wrapped in the Syrian flag from the French Mandate symbolizes the Syrian revolution, a recurring feminine theme in the secular protests. Figure 6.4 shows birds as ‘angry Syrians’ targeting bad

piggies, including Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, President Bashar al Assad and Iran’s supreme leader of the Islamic Revolution, Sayyid Ali Khamenei. All are superseded by Russian President Putin. In the pig house, Bashar wears a crown, a reference to his inheritance of the Assad presidency.5 The backers of the regime are foreign powers who have a strategic interest in the survival of the Assad regime. The cartoon was drawn on 15 April 2012, when Kafranbel was still under government control, and declares an ‘Occupied Kafranbel’, a cosmopolitan reference to the global Occupy Movement. The third banner, Figure 6.5 was drawn on 30 November 2012 when Kafranbel went under rebel control. It asserts ‘Liberated Kafranbel’ and portrays the regime of Bashar al-Assad as a burning candle that is slowly melting while Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Iran’s supreme leader beg it to stay. The subscript is ‘Useless Whisper,’ a reference to the George Michael 1980s song, ‘Careless Whisper’, another cosmopolitan form of relationality, this one with global pop culture; as well, there is a political suggestion that regional powers have tried to keep Bashar al-Assad in his seat for their own survival. The next three banners, Figures 6.6–6.8, focus more on a wider geopolitical analysis involving Russia and the United States. Figure 6.6, shows Putin feeding baby Bashar al-Assad while crushing the Ukraine and the United Nations Security Council with his boots. Here we can see the rise of Russian power in the Middle East through an alliance with the Assad regime and through repetitive weapons deals. At the same time, the cartoonist looks at Putin’s growing power in the Ukraine as well as the veto power Russia exercises in the UN Security Council, which block anti-Assad resolutions to date. The revolutionaries see a parallel Russian dictatorship with the authoritarianism of Assad. But the revolutionaries of Kafranbel are not choosing sides in a cold-war like scenario. They are very critical of Obama’s role in the Syrian crisis, as depicted in Figures 6.7 and 6.8 and portray Obama as having enabled the extremist Al-Qaeda affiliated organization called the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS). ISIS, or Da’esh in Arabic, is depicted as a meat eating plant in Syria watered by President Obama. The revolutionaries of Kafranbel are strongly critical of Democratic President Obama. They are anti-regime revolutionaries calling for outside intervention and a No Fly Zone (NFZ) to stop the violence in Syria and oust the Assad regime. Figure 6.7 warns the US administration that its policies enable extremism, which opens another front of repression in Syria via Islamic terrorist organizations like ISIS that hijacked the revolution in the interest of establishing the so-called ‘State of Islam’. In Figure 6.8 Obama is an inflated Captain America --another reference to cosmopolitan popular culture --being deflated by the hand of Putin with a pin. The cartoon refers to Obama’s threat of an American strike against the Assad regime for using chemical weapons, a threat that did not materialize once the Assad regime agreed to remove all chemical weapons from Syria. This sudden political move was beneficial for neighbouring Israel, which had been the potential target for the strategic chemical weapons. In the meantime, the Assad regime continued bombing civilian areas in Syria with barrel bombs, cluster bombs and other killing devices. Figure 6.9 appeals to the relationality of children across the world and the empathy they can evoke. The last cartoon, Figure 6.10, satirically refers to the presidential elections in June 2014, which the Kafranbel revolutionaries consider fake and staged. The film theme of the banner is The Godfather, the famous American movie. Called instead ‘The Elections’, Bashar al Assad is depicted there as the Godfather whose hands are kissed by the other two presidential candidates. In this selective description of Kafranbel cartoons, grassroot activists appeal to cosmopolitan relationality to create solidarity and encourage the international community to help their efforts to be free of the repressive Assad regime. One can also view the cartoons as an attempt by Syrian revolutionaries to ‘humanize’ and ‘de-enemize’ themselves. However creative and cosmopolitan the cartoons may be, the cries for help from Kafranbel have fallen on deaf ears; and the Syrian regime’s propaganda has taken hold outside the country. Bashar al-Assad is said to be carrying out a ‘surgery’ by killing sections of the population in the interest of Syrian security and stability. For the regime, there are no moderate terrorists, just terrorists.6 Bashar’s ‘war on terror’ appeals to the cosmopolitanism of the global ‘war on terror.’ One of the first reactions I heard from Syrian respondents during my anthropological fieldwork in rural Aleppo, the day after the September 11 attacks, was from a young farmer. He expressed sorrow for the families who lost loved ones and mentioned that now the world would blame the Arabs and demonize them. Thirteen years later, he never expected to be seen as a terrorist himself by his own president. Assadist Masquerades and cosmopolitan relationality This section describes the complex nexus of cosmopolitan relationality with various masquerades constructed by the Syrian regime, among them cosmopolitan-style neoliberalism, Islamophobia, and Western leftist anti-imperialism/antiAmericanism --all at the same time. Assadism has distinct characteristics that make it more authoritarian than totalitarian. Unlike Stalinism or Nazism, Assadism has no clear ideological basis to its wars and violence; I would call it an opportunist authoritarianism that works with contradictions of anti-imperialist rhetoric aligned with Iranian Shia

anti-Americanism, while also hailing Syrian neoliberal secularism as national progress. Lisa Wedeen (2013:863) has called it ‘the alliance between consumer capital and the regime autocracy in the neoliberal era.’ Starting with the reign of Bashar al-Assad, which began in 2000 after the death of his father, the regime has tried to promote political and economic reforms. The so-called Damascene Spring focused specifically on economic development (Alan, 2003; Wedeen, 2013). Following the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, political aspects of the Damascene Spring were stifled and many opposition members were jailed or exiled (Alan, 2003; Stienen, 2008). Until shortly before the uprisings in 2011, Bashar-Al Assad and his wife Asma’a al-Akhras were portrayed as a Syrian version of Lady Diana and Prince Charles –a first family representing the ‘Good Life.’ As Wedeen (2013) describes it, the first couple wanted to appear cosmopolitan in an attempt to boost Syria’s image abroad. The British-born First Lady had worked as a banker with JP Morgan in London where she met Bashar al-Assad, who was studying there. Their story was the subject of a March 2011 Vogue article called ‘The Rose of the Desert,’7 which positioned them as reformers for a worldwide audience. At that time, and going back to the October war of 1973, when Syria lost the Syrian Golan Heights, the number one enemy for Assad was Israel. That trend continued under the reign of his son Bashar al-Assad. In 2000, one could a visit the town of Quneitra under the guidance of the Ministry of Tourism and the security services. The town is located close to the Alpha-Bravo ceasefire line and an entry gate that separates Syrian Golan Heights (Bravo side) from the Israeli occupied Golan Heights (Alpha side). A demilitarized zone is under the administration of the UN observer forces and the ICRC. Foreign visitors, dignitaries and tourists used to be bused to the Syrian Golan Heights from Damascus, where an open air museum commemorates the 1973 war. When I visited Quneitra in 2001, one of my Syrian friends told me to ask for the ‘special tour’, which included a visit to the cemetery. The first stop was the local hospital. When the Israeli army retreated from Quneitra in 1973, they systematically destroyed the houses, the church and bombed the hospital, or so the narrative goes. The next stop was the town’s cemetery, and I asked one of the Syrian officers why the families did not come and rebury their loved ones. The officer replied that the families of Quneitra were now living in nice apartment buildings elsewhere and had given their town to the state for patriotic reasons, out of love for their homeland and the eternal leader Hafez al-Assad. The open air museum was a physical masquerade designed to construct Israel as a cruel enemy. The way Quneitra was used as a site for war propaganda reflects disregard and disrespect for the original inhabitants of the town. In that border area, Israel was the main enemy of the Syrian state and that shaped Syria’s subsequent masquerades, which included a regime narrative about liberating Palestine. Anti-Israel rhetoric continued under Bashar al-Assad. In 2010, propaganda posters in Damascus still portrayed his æportrait next to the Dome of the Rock and Islamic horsemen liberating Jerusalem (Burgat, 2014). However, in one of Bashar al-Assad’s most recent interviews, he declared that Israel itself is not the enemy anymore but Islamic terrorism is. Assad’s notorious first cousin, who some call a ‘paragon of corrupt entrepreneurship’ (Wedeen 2013: 872), businessman Rami Makhlouf, told the New York Times that Israel’s stability depends on Syria’s stability: ‘If there is no stability here, there’s no way there will be stability in Israel,’ and the regime will fight the protestors at home ‘until the end.’8 Assad’s othering of enemies is not confined to Israel or a certain group of people; rather, he says that ‘my enemy is terrorism and instability in Syria.’9 By focusing on abstractions rather than people, Assad also denies there is a civil war or internal strife in Syria: ‘It is not about reconciling with the people and it is not about reconciliation between the Syrians and the Syrians; we do not have a civil war. It is about terrorism and the support coming from abroad to terrorists to destabilize Syria. This is our war.’10 In Assad’s view, the main enemies are outside infiltrators, CIA agents, mercenaries and terrorist proxy groups that are part of the global conspiracy against Syria. These are funded by Turkey, the Gulf States, the United States and ultimately by Israel and zionists. In maintaining this position, Assad cynically denies that there is any form of internal dissidence among Syrians or repression by the regime. Assad’s authoritarian propaganda machine uses fear of an outside attack and of future instability to rally support and legitimize the violence of the regime. As in the past, anyone who disapproves of the Assadist regime can face torture and prison (Alan, 2003; Wieland, 2012). Loyal Assadists now justify violence and the use of barrel bombs to crush ‘terrorism’ and prevent ‘instability’ in Syria. Meanwhile, the personality cult around the Assads as the nation’s first family continues from the days when the founder of Assadism, the late Hafez al Assad, said he would rule ‘until eternity’ (Alan, 2003; Wieland, 2012; Wedeen, 1999). Attached to that propaganda were state promises of state secularism, protection of religious minorities, domestic security, and the good life for citizens (Alan, 2003; Wieland, 2012). As long as people had a ‘good life’, there was no need for politics (Wedeen, 2013), because Hafez, the father, would take care of everything for his ‘children’. Back in 1971, he said that people primarily had economic demands, wanted a plot of land, a car and a house. Those who disagreed went to Mezzeh prison (Batatu, 1990; Alan, 2003). Today, we can see Assadism’s shifting masquerades in video clips uploaded by pro-Assad channels onto YouTube. Despite claiming that Israel is not the enemy anymore, the Assadists put forth paranoid conspiracy theories that the imperialist West is against the Assad

regime, and that the uprising in Syria is caused by infiltrators led by the ‘Zionists who rule the world.’ Yet Bashar alAssad has a stack of cards consisting of a variety of masquerades that provide justification for his crackdown on civil disobedience. A different card is played for the international community at the UN, the global anti-imperialist movements, Shia Iranian allies, Syria’s Russian and Chinese allies, pro-Palestinian activist groups, the American public, religious authorities, and the young, educated, Syrian urban nouveau-riche. The YouTube channel of the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), and other pro-Assad channels, focuses on militarism in the security of the Syrian homeland. These videos are often stylized clips with high production values, guided by dramatic martial music and emphasis on pride and honour for the homeland. All footage of dead civilians show those killed by an honorable army making advances into rebel controlled territory. The enemies are dehumanized as terrorists, designated as filth, savages, rats and animal-like. The focus is on protection of the Syrian homeland by the glorious leader and saviour Bashar al-Assad. In addition, Assad has tried to appeal to two different arenas of cosmopolitan relationality by referring positively both to the global ‘War on Terror’ and global anti-imperialism. On the ‘war on terror’, Assad gave a series of noteworthy interviews to US TV channels: on 7 December 2011 an exclusive interview to Barbara Walters of ABC News;11 in September 2013, after the US spoke of possible unilateral military action following the Sarin gas attacks in Ghouta on 21 August, an interview with Charlie Rose of CBS;12 and he gave interviews to Dennis Kucinic and Greg Palkot of Fox News.13 The Barbara Walters interview was a follow-up on the earlier Vogue article, where Assad presents himself as a ‘democratic’ reformer, dismisses responsibility for the uprising, and places the blame on terrorist infiltrators aiming to destabilize Syria. The second series of interviews took place directly after the chemical weapons attacks in 2013, the UN investigations into those events, and the US threat of military action. With Russian veto support in the UNSC, the interviews were staged to show that Syria was complying with international law and was fighting the just ‘War on Terror.’ Implicitly the interviews also reassured the West that chemical weapons originally meant for Israel were being destroyed. With the focus of those interviews solely on chemical weapons, the regime was free to continue using conventional weapons against dissident Syrians. The global community against US imperialism has maintained that the CIA and Mossad are behind jihadi death squads that kill Syrians and bring instability. This narrative is consistently employed by Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and President Putin, Assad’s allies at the UN. A couple of popular figureheads in support of the Assad regime also employ this rhetoric on Iranian or Russian TV: UK MP George Galloway, global conspiracy theorist Webster Tarpley14 and Syrian Girl Partisan15, who presents herself as a ‘Syrian anti-rebel activist and political commentator’ and is regularly invited to online talk shows (her real name is Mimi al-Laham and she is based in Australia). Iranian television has been active in producing documentaries on the Syrian national struggle and in supporting the Assad regime’s interest in maintaining stability against CIA-supported jihadi terrorists. The Syrian counterpart is the Press-TV documentary on Syrian volunteers in the National Defense Army,16 which was created by the regime in 2012 and caused greater sectarianism than unity in Syria, especially when “the regime opened its lands to Lebanese, Iraqi and Iranian armed forces, which espoused an extremist affiliation to Shi’ism’ (Abbas, 2014: 52). A third group of potential supporters that the Assad regime tries to connect with is the worldwide Christian community. Assadists portray Bashar al-Assad as the protector of Syrian Christians and other religious minorities against the ‘savage jihadi terrorist’. Yet opposition groups come from various ethnic and religious backgrounds, including revolutionary Christians and the Alawite Shia sect to which the Assad family belongs. One of the most talented of the Syria documentary filmmakers who joined protests in Homs and recorded the still peaceful anti-regime demonstrations, was a young Christian called Basel Shehadeh. He was killed by a regime sniper17; but others are in a collective of revolutionary filmmakers representing all different religious and ethnic backgrounds.18 As regime violence increased and opposition violence emerged, sectarianism took over the Syrian revolution. Jihadist factions that entered Syria during the uprising became part of the revolution against Assad, albeit these fighters are anti-democratic and often sectarian themselves and are backed by Gulf States like Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Many early activists saw such developments as a threat to the revolution against the regime: Since the early days of the uprising, the Syrian revolution adopted the slogan ‘one, one, one: the Syrian people are one’ which announced a clear refutation of sectarianism and division. However the regime on one hand and Islamist jihadis on the other, each acting in their own interests, sought to draw the revolution off this path (…) Killing, destruction, massacres and other forms of violence have unleashed in Syrian society a chocking desire for revenge, which represents a true murder of tolerance. (Abbas, 2014: 53–58)

Jihadist masquerades: anti-Assad and anti-democracy Although Islamist non-jihadi groups, such as the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, were instrumental in organizing antiregime protests in the run-up to the popular uprising against Bashar al-Assad, the jihadi militant groups that currently fight the Assad regime entered later and formed a minority in the general opposition. Kafranbel protests criticized the international media for focusing mainly on the violence of extremist jihadist armed groups like ISIS, Jabhat al Nusra, and Ahrar al Islam, while ignoring rebels groups that are secular or Islamist. The activists from Kafranbel and moderate FSA rebels see themselves in the same struggle for freedom against the Assad regime and the Islamist factions that want to establish an Islamic State and implement Sharia law. What is the justification for religious violence by these groups, and in what manner are extremist Islamist groups like Hezbollah different from extremist jihadist groups like Jabhat al Nusra, Ahrar al Islam, and The Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS)?

Figure 6.2 Critique on the international media focus on jihadi groups from Kafranbel activists

A wide range of jihadi and anti-Assad YouTube channels consist of videos uploaded from Syria. It is striking to see the use of rap music and Western masculinities in the videos --cowboys on horses as soldiers of Islam show pride and honour in ‘raising the Koran’, i.e. establishing Sharia law. Mixed in are Islamic emotional appeals and Arabic chants called nasheed. The Merciful Servant YouTube Channel, based in the UK, has three videos that describe the main motives for going to Syria for jihad. These are called Bashar Assad the Dog – Syria Situation;19; Soldiers of Allah;20 and Syria – Nasheed.21 Bashar al Assad as a dog dehumanizes him as a kufar, an infidel worth killing. Others try to convince young Muslims from the UK and other parts of Europe to join the fight as a jihadist in Syria by appealing to the supposed global Ummah of Muslims. Yet, the underlying theme is end-time messianism; with the global establishment of Sharia law and the Islamic State, the coming of the savior --the Khalifa, Jesus or the Mahdi --will establish world peace. The comments sections on the Merciful Servant YouTube channel indicate that this is one of the main justifications for religious violence: ‘The arrival of al mahdi and Jesus are very close inshallah. Allah will help syria and all muslims no doubt just be patient my brothers and sisters’ and ‘Inshallah the khilafah is coming and the Muslims will be able to live in peace and tyrants like Bashar will live in fear and be destroyed by the system of la illah illallah.’ Most of the YouTube channels that propagate violent jihad in Syria also refer to the scare tactics of Satan and the evil doings of the devil; the jihad is a fight against the devil, against evil spirits, jinns, ruling the world and leading people to sin and to hell. To go on violent jihad in Syria will make a Muslim a soldier of Allah, part of the army of jundallah. In the jihadist view, a jundallah in Syria is supposed to pray for the martyrs and act to avenge their death by Assad and by his Shia supporters from Iran, such as Hezbollah. Because Assad has started to kill fellow Muslims, he and his supporters are viewed as kufar. In this, jihadi groups like Ahrar al Islam and Jabhat al Nusra differ from Shia groups fighting in Syria; while jihadi anti-Assad factions view the kufar, the infidels who deviated from the right path, as their main enemy, Hezbollah sees the so-called takfiri as their main enemy (the jihadi Muslims who accuse others of being infidels, which thus makes them not true Muslims). The Shia believe that Imam Ali, son-in-Law of Prophet Mohammed and married to his daughter Fatima, was the rightful inheritor of Mohammed’s Empire. They believe in the holy words of 12 Imams, one of whom disappeared and will return as saviour, or mahdi, on the day of judgement (which is reminiscent of Christian end-time messianism. Sunni jihadis believe that Abu Bakr, Mohammed’s best friend, was the rightful heir to Mohammed). With a strong belief in the Koran, they await the return of the khalifah and implementation of Sharia legislation worldwide to take back Jerusalem and re-establish the Caliphate Empire. What unites the two opposing extremist groups is their religious end-time messianism, albeit interpreted from different perspectives. It must be stressed that messianic Muslims form a minority and salafi jihadist extremist groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS represent even less than 1 per cent of the world’s 1.9 billion Muslims. Eschatological Shia cults like Hezbollah believe it is a sacred mission to join Bashar al-Assad in his war on terrorism in order to kill the Sunni takfiris so the mahdi can appear. Sunni jihadi extremists see the return of the khalifa as a justification to kill kufars and fight the Assad regime which will, in their view, result in a grand victory for the soldiers of Islam and eventually the liberation of Jerusalem. With the arrival of these competing jihadi Islamist groups and the Iraqi-based Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS), lethal infighting has occurred and is reflected in YouTube videos. Syrian jihadi mujahedeen have posted trophy videos of the capture and execution of ISIS jihadis coming from Baghdad.22 Likewise, ISIS factions have been battling FSA militias and killing Syrian rebel commanders. In Raqqa, the jihadi factions are particularly hated by the non-jihadi Syrian rebels and civil society activists. Raqqa is a northern Syrian town now under control of ISIS, where ISIS courts carry out regular beatings, beheadings and crucifixions. The local Syrian population has suffered brutality, violence and oppression by these jihadi militant groups. The Assad regime believes, however, that all rebel areas are held by jihadis which is not true.

The theatre of ‘Syrian Democracy’ as a masquerade of peace To increase the legitimacy and justification for Assad’s ‘War on Terror’, the regime organized presidential elections for June 2014 and claimed that these would herald the end of the war, the replacement of the revolution, and the return to stability and peace. Support for Assad would come through the ballot box in democratic elections, or so it was claimed. The other carefully chosen presidential candidates voiced support for the current President,23 making the elections farcical theatre. Bashar al-Assad won the elections by 88.7 per cent according to state media. How much of that support was real and relative to obedience as a survival strategy? The election was overseen by Iranian, Russian and North Korean observers, countries Assad finds ‘stable’ and backed by a majority of ‘public support’ to the glorious leader. Alan George has remarked that that even though the Assad regime might be perceived as on its last legs, that does not mean it cannot survive: ‘if North Korea – and indeed the Oceania of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four – can stagger on for decades, why not Syria too?’ (George, 2003: 176). The Syrian elections of 2014 were a typical masquerade to justify Assad’s ‘surgery’ to rid Syria from terrorists. It was carefully staged by the regime to rationalize the scale of state violence used against dissidents. (Beside the police violence, barrel bombs, chemical and helicopter attacks, systematic sexual violence was carried out by prison guards and Syrian Army officers and then denied by the regime.24) The state media showed military victories and dead Syrian terrorists, whom the state television claimed were foreigners. No mention was made on Syrian state television of the regime’s barrel bombing of Bustan al-Qasr in Aleppo; rather all focus was on the rebel’s mortar shells. Bodies of the ‘terrorists’ appear in video clips as trophies in the Assadist theatre of war, but the bodies of Syrian children killed in regime attacks do not. Occasionally some children are mentioned but there is no empathy for them as, according to Syrian state television, these children would have grown up to be Islamist terrorists anyway. Another focus was international legitimization of the Syrian presidency by Russia, Iran, Lebanon and North Korea. A visit by the North Korean delegation was framed as a victory against imperialism. TV interviews with Syrian national political experts, like Sharif Shahadeh, stressed the importance of Syrians voting against the global conspiracy and for their homeland. The narrative of homeland fits Assad’s SAWA (together) campaign on television, in the streets, and on social media that aim to rebuild Syria together by fighting terrorism with President Assad. Bashar al-Assad’s personality cult reached high peaks during the 2014 elections. The preferred slogan is ‘We will kiss the ground that your boot is walking’, an slogan from the ancient ‘Through our souls and our blood, we sacrifice for you oh Bashar’ (Wedeen, 1999: Alan, 2003). At election booths, pins were made available for voters to prick their blood to show allegiance and obedience to Assad. In markets the Sword of Ali, symbolizing the Shia version of sacred war against takfiri Sunnis, was part of the Assad paraphernalia on sale. Some Assadists went as far as to claim Palestine as part of Greater Syria, insisting that Bashar al Assad will liberate Palestine from Zionist occupation. As reliable national polls do not exist in Syria, the proportion of people who support the revolution against Assad depends on what we define as ‘The Revolution’. Some anti-regime activists do not see the armed jihadi factions as part of their revolution and struggle for freedom and human rights. Rather, they are believe armed foreign Islamists have hijacked the civil society revolution and become Assad’s ‘ideal enemy’. Some pro-revolution people have felt this way since the armed factions arrived, but some business people from Aleppo say they are basically protecting their businesses; they want reform, regime change maybe, but no troubles. Some Syrians genuinely support the regime and put their faith in the police state out of fear for the future. Others believe there could be a third way through the elections. Syrian refugees in Jordan, however, seem to view the elections as a scam and want Assad out of Syria. or Finally, in the Israeli occupied Golan Heights, one can find genuine Assad supporters among the elderly, who long for a return to the old Syria, young anti-regime activists who want a democratic Syria to liberate them from Israeli occupation, and some Shia Alawites of al Ghajar (a small village on the border with Lebanon) who are Israeli citizens and believe Assad can bring peace and stability after the war on ‘takfiri terrorism’. Israelis find the prefer the Syrian dictatorship ‘the lesser of two evils’. With strategic chemical weapons removed, a past military threat to Israel from Syria is also removed. Not alarmed by the prospects of a Syrian attack the military sets its sights on Islamic terrorists as the most relevant security threat. For Israel, Bashar al-Assad can kill as many of his own people, as long as the Israeli border is untouched and protected. The ‘elections’ gave a boost to Assad’s ‘war on terrorism’ behind which he hides the war against Syrian opposition. As long as the UNSC stays deadlocked on accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity by Assadists and allied with North Korea, Russia and Iran, the situation in Syria is likely to continue.

Conclusions In all Syrian masquerades of war and peace described above, there have been conscious attempts to appeal to cosmopolitan relationality as a way of creating empathy and solidarity by like-minded groups outside Syria. The tools have been the mainstream media, social media, and video platforms from Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Creative resistance coming from Kafranbel is one of the clearest attempts to resist oppression nonviolently and as postcolonial

subjects. However, cosmopolitan relationality is a two-sided sword and is also part of the masquerades of war undertaken by various violent actors in the Syrian crisis to create selective empathy for repressive courses of action against their enemies. Convergence of Assadist masquerades of war with the global ‘war on terrorism’ is a conscious move that the international community seems to accept. By inviting selected international media to cover the staged presidential election, Bashar al-Assad, succeeded in remaining in power, something the international community has partly accepted too. As Chris Doyle stated: ‘Assad wants to show the invited media that he can get a large turnout even after a record of 160,000 killed, the destruction of most of the country and displacement of a third of its population.’ 25 Furthermore, the Assadist masquerades appeal to a global audience that believes the actions of Bashar al-Assad, supported by Iran and Russia, are justified as a form of resistance against imperialist infiltrators, whose sole purpose is to destabilize Syria through proxy terrorist groups supported by the West and zionism. Regionally, Assadist war masquerades also appeal to a different audience --the Shia extremist factions that fight with the Assadist army as part of a sacred mission to kill takfiri muslims, a.k.a. sunni jihadis. Israel has remained fairly quiet throughout the Syrian crisis, recognising that it is in its strategic interest for Syria to remain focused on the domestic crisis and avoid attacks on its northern borders; strategically, Israel prefers the Assad regime to the prospect of a jihadi takeover. Forgotten in all these masquerades of war are the many non-jihadi Syrian groups fighting jihadi militias as well as the Assad regime. The Syrian non-violent movement uses cameras, mobile phones and social media to resist oppression and strive for justice, freedom and democracy. Without support from the international community, the situation is increasingly difficult for these groups, who coexist with armed revolutionaries while continuing their campaigns and engaging in activities such as distributing humanitarian aid to Syrian refugees (Zouhour, 2013). One of the main reasons the Syrian non-violent movement has been ignored is the international media attention paid to the arrival of brutal extremist jihadi factions, whose agenda is not democratization but the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate in the region. Jihadist masquerades appeal to a certain religiously motivated cosmopolitan relationality based on messianism, which aims to rid Islamic communities of infidels constructed as Shia kufars, but in fact includes anyone who is not, in their perception, a proper Muslim. Even though these groups represent an extreme minority of the world’s Muslim community, they are supported by various geopolitical actors in the Syrian conflict. Their brutality captures the eye of the international media, and the Assad regime is happy to have this international cover for its menacing moves on Syrian dissidents. The convergence of Assad’s ‘surgery’ and the global ‘war on terror’ is supported by Russia and China, while US foreign policy towards Syria has been characterized by complacency in allowing Bashar al-Assad to continue carrying out his ‘surgery.’ Studied up from below, thanks to digital innovation and access, creative cartoonists from the little Syrian hamlet of Kafranbel provide a grassroots analysis of international relations and geopolitics in the Middle East. This has been missing so far from the ugly masquerades of the Syrian wars and must be brought to light. Short note on artists and artworks The cartoon banners of Kafranbel are produced locally by anonymous Syrian artists. Figure 6.3 depicts a painting by Wissam Jazairy a Syrian mixed media artist who was born in Damascus in 1990. He studied Arts at the University of New Bulgaria between 2008 and 2011. His work has been exhibited in United States, Europe, and the Middle East. See also: www.wissamaljazairy.daportfolio.com/

Appendix I

Banners of Kafranbel26

Figure 6.3 Cartoon banner from Kafranbel

Figure 6.4 Cartoon banner from Kafranbel

Figure 6.5 Cartoon banner from Kafranbel

Figure 6.6 Cartoon banner from Kafranbel

Figure 6.7 Cartoon banner from Kafranbel

Figure 6.8 Cartoon banner from Kafranbel

Figure 6.9 Cartoon banner from Kafranbel

Figure 6.10 Cartoon banner from Kafranbel

Notes 1. For a film compilation about my qanat research work visit the UNESCO website: www.unesco.org/archives/multimedia/?s=films_details&id_page=33&id_film=1557#.U48tOHb5rFI www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nem33Ow8wb4. 2. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nem33Ow8wb4 3. The author is aware of the different interpretations of the concept of jihad in Islam. Jihad meaning ‘struggle’ in Arabic, can also be interpreted as an existential struggle, a journey of discovery in the personal relationship with God without it being necessarily a violent action. Giving charity and doing good, can also be seen as part of jihad. However jihadism in this chapter is used as a concept to describe the violent jihadism found in Syria (jihad bil saif) as opposed to non-violent jihadism as jihad of the heart (jihad bil qalb/nafs) , jihad by the tongue (jihad bil lisan) and jihad by the hand (jihad bil yad) (see Khadduri, 2010: 56). 4. See Appendix I for photographs of the banners. 5. When Hafez al-Assad died in June 2000, his son Bashar al-Assad was quickly sworn in as President, notwithstanding that the constitution had to be changed to provide for Bashar to be able to become president at the age of 34 years (Alan, 2003). 6. Al Ikhbaria interview with Basha al-Assad 18/04/2013 YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYrebrcA5ck. 7. The article was subsequently taken offline by the publishers when the crackdown started, although still available online: www.scribd.com/doc/166321310/Asma-Al-Assad-A-Rose-in-the-Desert-Culture-Vogue-March2011. 8. Anthony Shadid, ‘Syrian Elite to Fight Protests to ‘the End’, 11 May 2011, www.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/world/middleeast/11makhlouf.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 9. Exclusive interview with Russian Television, 24 January 2013, www.thesleuthjournal.com/rt-exclusive-interview-withassad-video/ 10. Idem. 11. www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL9h9vSOHDk 12. www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBe0cShOf-4 13. www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmMmGZQaVsc 14. www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L49L6iZSSg#t=25 15. www.youtube.com/channel/UC4unV5BVmWubfAF0Al_AVdw 16. www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKM-Pxh-OUQ

17. A tribute to Basel Shehadeh and his non-violent resistance films can be found on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YMKPT3WxKo&index=12&list=PL8fjpw OGK3sicS6-wh_F6JokAfv5JRx5r 18. The Abounaddara Collective: www.wnyc.org/story/emergency-cinema-syria/ 19. YouTubeVideo from The Merciful Servant: Bashar Assad the Dog – Syria Situation:www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9D82u4A6MA 20. YouTubeVideo from The Merciful Servant: Soldiers of Allah – Nasheed: www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8GDLy9K2Fk&index=3&list=TLvt2bHpuwoPK5gwsnCyEDobnAvQ2Hp6dG 21. YouTubeVideo from The Merciful Servant: Syria – very emotional Nasheed: www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxWo9UO4B3A&list=TLvt2bHpuwoPK5gwsnCyEDobnAvQ2Hp6dG&index=4 22. www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQSjhn7Fj9Q&list=PL8fjpwOGK3sh9dXLROdK5iRvpPamz1bbP&index=9 23. Seewww.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10871369/Syria-presidential-elections-rival-candidate-voicessupport-for-Assad.html?fb 24. http://m.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/06/take-your-portion-a-victimspeaks-out-about-rape-in-syria/276979/ 25. Chris Doyle (2014)’The media played Assad’s game in Syria’, Al Arabiya, 4 June 2014, available at: http://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/2014/06/04/The-media-played-Assad-s-game-in-Syria.html 26. Re-printed with permission courtesy of the Kafranbel Revolutionary Committee, www.facebook.com/kafrev

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