Today, we remember his texts that have been compiled in the second
edition of his book “The State of Barbarism”, with their ingenuity and
pertinence, even though it has been three decades since they were first
published.
In the context of the ongoing Syrian Revolution, we can contemplate two
issues he addressed in his texts: the “Asabiyya”
and “The conflict between Society and State”.
The driving element for the regime: the Asabiyya
To understand the regime founded by Hafez
al-Assad, Michel Seurat adopted Ibn Khaldoun1 “Asabiyya” concept (or what was
referred to by Durkheim as “automatic solidarity” that creates strong cohesion
between members of a specific group). Adopting this concept allowed him to
explain, the role of the power circles and non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) created by the Assads in transforming the “Alawite community” into a
political sect, and not just a religious one (in a way regarded by Seurat as
similar to certain Lebanese sects of the time). The transformation came about
through implementing a discourse and a terminology, resurrecting the collective
memory of indignation towards the City as a historic symbol of the abuse of
rural groups as well as focusing on enlisting thousands of the sect’s youth in
the army and intelligence apparatuses. Then all that was cemented through
imposing the Baath Party’s control on public life and employing its bodies to
subdue and control the state institutions and community organizations,
especially the urban ones.
With that, Assad was able to establish a dominant Asabiyya in the country.
Once it was entrenched, it was followed by a gradual expansion of the regime’s
social base in addition to the economic and utilitarian networks (from various
sectarian affiliations) associated with it.
These days, we see that the sectarian
issue, as well as all issues related to the roles of military and intelligence
apparatuses and the Baath Party, have a strong presence and are integral to the
understanding of what is happening in Syria of Hafez’s heir, Bashar al-Assad.
The Asabiyya exists
as a solidarity factor to preserve the regime. It is most likely, the sole
primary element of strength left for it after the decline of its power, the
disintegration of its symbolic influence, the narrowing of its social base, and
its transformation into a mere repressive machine since March 2011.
In contrast, the demographic and social developments have amended the
Urban-Rural paradox. The revolution is no longer Urban, as depicted by Seurat
in the early 80’s (of the past century), it is also Rural. And the Rural-Urban
duality is no longer able to reduce it or draw separation lines within it.
Separation lines have, in fact, been surpassed by the new generation that is
reinventing political action, whether in the peripheral rural areas, or the
areas annexed to urban spaces due to their expansion, or in the heart of Syrian
cities themselves.
“The Syrian Society against its State”
Michel Seurat used the “Hegel-Marx
controversy” with regards to Society and State as a headline for one of his
texts to address the conflict that erupted between the Muslim Brotherhood (in
addition to a number of political and syndicated Islamic and leftist
formations) and Hafez al-Assad’s authority between 1979 and 1982. A conflict
that ended in horrific massacres in the revolting city of Hama and campaigns of
arrest and detention targeting thousands of political opponents. It the end,
Assad, through relying on the Asabiyya internally
and a blind eye or corroboration from abroad as well as speeches, and
ideological slogans that proclaimed Arab Nationalism and a struggle against
imperialism and Zionism, succeeded in turning the Syrian political field into
ashes and eradicating the Muslim Brotherhood within the country. Yet his
success was also a result of the Brotherhood’s inability to expand their
popularity horizontally, Damascus and its bourgeois abstaining from supporting
them, and the sheer height of the walls of fear and silence built by oppression
and terror. Ultimately, Syria became a fragmented space, with autistic
residents, and people “crushed upon each other” as described by Hannah Arendt
in The Origins of
Totalitarianism and its effects on society.
If the Syrian society’s defeat in the
early eighties has prevented every political citizenship action for decades
(with the exception of the short lived Damascus spring in late 2000 and early
2001), then the Syrian revolution that has been going on for over a year
constitutes the final emancipation from autism and agony. From Daraa to Homs,
Deir Ezzor to Hama, Damascus to Idlib, Aleppo to Salamyeh, and Kafranbel to
Qamishli, the Syrians– in their daily demonstrations and resistance to the
death machine – are rebuilding the political field on the ruins of fear. They
are regaining their citizenship solidarity and land relations, repossessing
their geography, their public space, for the sake of overcoming fragmentation
and disintegration, and reweaving their social ties.
Thus, the Syrian society is being
liberated by the day from the residual burdens of tyranny. Being born again,
exploring itself, and forming a new memory for the future. Only the fading
regime remained as it has been three decades ago, exactly as Michel Seurat
called it: The State of Barbarism.
Ziad Majed
Translated to English by the Free Syrian Translators
1 Ibn-Khaldoun is a XIVth
century historian and sociologist from the Maghreb.
