An interview with Yassin al-Haj Saleh. A noted Syrian public intellectual, critic and former political prisoner discusses the centrality of culture to the Syrian uprising
Yassin al-Haj Saleh stands at the precise point where culture and politics intersect, analysing with depth and vision the state intellectual in Syria – known as ‘the Commissar’ – and his relationship to the ruling regime. He also anatomises the relationship of the new Syrian intellectual to the revolution. In his criticism and analysis he deals with the roles that the intellectual should take up, and his or her place in society and the revolution.
Saleh belongs to a generation of Syrian intellectuals who have long opposed the Assad regime from its earliest stages. Armed only with words and ideas in the face of the regime’s merciless violence, they were fully committed to the ideal of liberal democracy.
It would be an injustice to confine Saleh’s political struggle to the period when he was imprisoned for sixteen years under the rule of Hafez al-Assad. Although this was an individual experience, many others spent years – some more than Saleh, some less – in the same prison. It is his deep commitment to the revolution that makes him an avant-garde political activist and intellectual today, as does his uninterrupted struggle against the dynastic dictatorship after his years in prison. For many people, this has seemed a quixotic involvement at various moments, but it has proved nothing other than the early stages of a delayed revolution and, for Saleh, a way of life.
A prolific writer and contributor to numerous intellectual and cultural publications, Saleh’s articles and studies have appeared in both Arabic and foreign periodicals and media, and his ideas have taken shape in a number of books: Myths of the Other: A Critique of Contemporary Islam and a Critique of the Critique, followed by Walking on One Foot and, finally, his latest book, Salvation, Boys! Sixteen Years in Prison. The last narrates a long period spent in prison, and is a text that moves back and forth between the voices of the literary, the social and the psychological.
In 2012, Saleh received a Prince Claus Award, which recognises intellectuals who make an impact on their societies. He sent a letter from hiding in Damascus to explain his deep-rooted motivations for writing and political activism, as an attempt ‘to get back to real sources – the ones I encountered in prison’.
After the revolution broke out in March 2011, Saleh lived in hiding inside Syria. He moved constantly between cities and regions in an effort to be ‘further inside’, as he describes it in the following conversation. In autumn 2013, he escaped to Turkey.
In your most recent book, Salvation, Boys!, you write: ‘Prison intellectuals emerged from prison as intellectuals, whereas beforehand they were just members of their parties … In contrast, we have people who were intellectuals before their imprisonment, like Michel Kilo, who was well-known before his arrest at the beginning of the 1980s.’ To what extent did political imprisonment and persecution shape the identity of culture in Syria, whether as tacit consent to it or as a stand against it?
In my opinion, the impact of imprisonment, and tyranny in general, has been evident in Syrian culture since the 1970s. From that time, the idea of democracy and its accompanying political, legal and ethical issues have dominated the work of Syrian intellectuals. In literature and art, too, people became more concerned with issues of oppression, prison and freedom.
At the same time, there are two other issues that we can bring to the question of culture, society and politics in Syria. First, culture did not have an influence on society and political life in general because it was subjected to constant siege and appropriation for two full generations. As a result, Syrian intellectuals were isolated and lived in something of an archipelago that was cut off from the mainland of society. Instead, their intellectual, academic and artistic works should have played an important role in developing this society’s consciousness and representing its circumstances to its members.
Political and military power wields a prominent and indisputable influence over [Syrian] society and life more generally. Meanwhile, the substantial influence of money is increasing, and religion also has a significant influence. In contrast, the impact of culture and free thought is little more than insignificant. As a result, the intellectual is the weakest of the players at large; those with power hold first place, while those with money and religion compete to win second place.
The second issue is represented in the deep divide that has split Syrian intellectuals in the last quarter-century and the emergence of two polarised, even opposing, axes – politics and religion – that, in turn, mask deep social divisions. Commentary on religion or politics has consistently been an indirect expression of these deep divides in this society rather than a sound, conscious reflection of its assumptions and its social and political fault line. Thus, all this talk can’t yield any results.
On top of this, we have intellectuals’ infatuation with people who have access to power, politicians, the rich and those who speak in the name of Islam and can easily attract followers. This infatuation gives the appearance that intellectuals are careless with their independence and with the dignity of culture. In turn, intellectuals are entirely cut off from the social world, the world of work and production.
These are the long-standing structural limits of the situation of culture in Syria. Because of them, culture could only play a limited role in shaping intellectual currents and a sense of identity for Syrians in general.
The Syrian government’s massacres, killings under torture and random shelling of civilians are becoming more widespread. Millions have been displaced, and anger and despair are growing. Can culture be an influential factor in a time of war?
I don’t believe so. War ignites people’s anger. This acts against culture, which is the work of the mind and the imagination. It appears that the influence of culture has declined rather than increased as the revolution has transformed into an open war. Culture had a stronger impact at the beginning of the revolution, when it was still led by peaceful demonstrations. But this culture was, at the same time, its own worst enemy, and most of its representatives have chosen to turn a blind eye to the dangers of the conflict and its complexities. Instead, they cling to simplistic clichés or make unnecessary demands that only reflect their inability to keep up with the march of change, transformation and creation [in Syria].
The violence and the war have affected Syrian intellectuals, although they aren’t the largest swathe of society, which is far from cultural circles, and pushed them towards politics. Is it possible that the revolution will give rise to a new type of culture and cultural creativity? In my area of interest, literature and the humanities, I don’t see any indication that anything like this is happening.
That said, it is very apparent that visual culture and sound are flourishing. One of the first features of the Syrian revolution was the appearance of a large number of ‘citizen journalists’ and people working with images and the Internet. Similarly, committees or media offices have been a permanent feature of the political and social organisations we’ve seen in liberated areas, as well as military organisations. Based on this widespread phenomenon, it’s likely that we’ll see extremely talented and creative people coming forward in the future.
The regime has participated in the cultural field and used the Ministry of Culture, associated with the security services, to keep a tight rein on it. It has stifled all forms of independent cultural work under the claim of the need for ‘resistance’.1 Are you afraid that the revolution might repeat this process under different names, most prominently ‘the revolution’ itself?
Yes, I do fear this. I think it’s entirely possible that culture could be used again in the name of the revolution, in the name of Islam or in the name of both together. What happened in Iran is an example of this, but our case risks being more complicated. We are truly facing a criminal and terrorist regime, and the only just thing to do, for the nation and for humanity, is to destroy it. This is what makes it easier for Islamist extremists to exploit Syrians’ hopes and pain to advance their ambitions for power.
Some signs of this are already apparent, but there are also indications of resistance to it. I believe that the new culture will take shape around the experience of resistance to the Assads’ tyranny, but also around experiences of resistance to emerging forms of domination. I don’t see any link between this culture and Shabiha culture, which is obsessed with outdoing and humiliating the public; with political struggle for the sake of a bleak future; with proselytising for even worse circumstances in Syria; and with convincing the general public that they are inadequate, their actions futile.
In any case, I expect that culture after the revolution will be more serious and block its own appropriation.
The political demands of the Syrian revolution have been accompanied by the rise of diverse forms of cultural expression regarding identity. These demands have appeared at a number of levels, from popular carnivals, songs, and posters all the way to articles, analyses and institutional forms of culture in the cities that have risen against the regime. Is the diversity of this cultural expression a sign of the democratisation of Syrian identity? Is it genuine, and will it be able to withstand the war and ongoing violence?
If the regime doesn’t manage to finish off what’s left of Syria or feed the worst inclinations of Syrians more than it has already done, then the cultural expressions that you mention will become a repository for Syrians to draw upon to confront emerging forms of oppression in a post-Assad Syria. These cultural works have been a source of pride and an indication of strong feelings of freedom and individuality in the revolution, and they share an unprecedented turn toward Syria as a nation. This is why we can say the revolution has established, for the first time, a uniquely Syrian national identity.
My ongoing field observations suggest that the public who used to join demonstrations against the regime are now supporting demonstrations against opposition military groups who aren’t held accountable for their actions. So it is likely that, in the future, this public will defend itself against anyone who oversteps their limits.
The culture of protest is now firmly entrenched in Syrian society, and it will not come to an end with the downfall of the regime. Nor will it retreat if it faces new actors looking to restore dominance and oppression for their own ends. For me, this suggests something that goes beyond national identity and pushes the very notion of identity toward a new concept of the self and new meanings for life that will be freer, more radical.
In this context, I see the current wave of rising Islamism as an opportunity to bring about this radical intellectual and ethical emancipation, much more than I see it as a hindrance or regression. This is because of the potential for opposition to it. The harbingers of this are already apparent in both intellectual and cultural confrontations and political resistance. And in this, there is something that returns us to the possibility of political opposition with cultural depth, and to the enrichment of cultural opposition with politics.
Tyranny always tries to make culture its handmaiden. Two years into the revolution, is it still meaningful to speak of ‘the state intellectual’? How was the regime able to create this model for intellectual activity, to develop it and to exploit it during the Syrian revolution?
There is, in my opinion, an essential difference between culture and the practices of state power in Syria under the Assads. It’s more appropriate to speak of employees working in the field of culture rather than state intellectuals. Or about agents for the regime who are being driven by diverse factors – none of which, in my opinion, are humanistic or nationalist.
The mechanism that created this type of ‘Commissar’ – for example, Hussein Juma‘a, ‘Ali ‘Aqla ‘Arsan2 and their peers – are the same mechanisms for political and social advancement that the regime made widely available in society for people with the lowest levels of ability, talent, qualification and independence. What I’m getting at here is the chance to move up in the world in return for loyalty; to become well-known in return for joining ranks; to have your work circulated widely in return for dependency … and, in turn, the doors were shut in the faces of independents and those who were more qualified.
There is a particular law of evolution under the Assad regime: the survival of the bad and the promotion of the worst, the sycophant, the yes-man, the writer of reports. To say the very least, this law offered plentiful opportunities for social advancement to anyone who stood against the regime’s enemies, both local and regional.
In Syria, we can observe a significant phenomenon through the intellectuals who have never missed an opportunity to oppose the regime’s enemies (not the enemies of Syria or the Syrian people), all while sharing the regime’s deepest concerns yet presenting themselves as opposition intellectuals. I think that this group, which includes prominent names, can be called state intellectuals; or the organic intellectuals of the state’s ideology, who watch over its intellectual world. Typically, these people held high ranks in the state’s cultural apparatus.
This group of intellectuals – from the [better connected] to the less well-connected – is not in need of backing for their positions and opinions. Even when they do not stand at the heart of the regime’s fascism, they remain its cultural partners, who never oppose any element of its intellectual world and who share the regime’s condescending view of society and desire to terrorise it. They do so with a combination of general intimidation and a particular aggression reserved for regime opponents. At critical moments, these intellectuals are to be found standing with the regime.
Some suggest that Syrian culture, over a series of different phases, was exposed to significant attempts at manipulation (through corruption, nepotism and calculations based on loyalty). As a result, the role of the intellectual as an active agent in society was replaced by a ‘culture of allegiance’, represented by Abd al-Latif Abd al-Hamid in cinema, for example, or by the singer Ali al-Dik … Do you believe that these attempts at manipulation were the result of a political and security-oriented decision – that is, deliberate – or were they the product of the general collapse of the structure of Syrian society?
It’s my belief that there’s a hidden ‘intentionality’ in the current political structure that keeps the regime in place: the dominant political, security and financial complex, which is the deep, driving force behind the regime’s operations. This intentionality created scepticism and enmity among the elite toward the society they governed. It also led to the promotion of ‘trusted’ people who had declared their allegiance over people with adequate qualifications, as well as the general public.
In addition, intentionality led to the law of the survival of the worst that I mentioned earlier. Because the ‘intentional’ aspect of this structure has lasted for a long time, and because it was not widely discussed or confronted socially or politically – to the extent that it was hardly studied or analysed at all – it produced a form of culture that is imprinted with a type of racism that discriminates between Syrians and makes it easier to kill and humiliate one’s opponents. This culture raised the threshold for empathy with opponents among the ruling elite and its ideological guardians, who are working to make the regime’s brutality seem natural and to cast any opposition to it as unnatural.
The disintegration of society is the result of this strategy, which reached its highest form of self-consciousness, the politics of divide and conquer, in Syria’s most fascist and terrorist institutions: the security services, particularly military security and Air Force security, and with them the Shabiha militias.
The examples you mentioned in your question are a reflection of the logic in this system, a lens to see into it.
Translated from the Arabic by Anne-Marie McManus and Leen Zyiad