tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65666419591836513072024-03-21T22:06:25.062+02:00retreatzouhairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18243592617841882763noreply@blogger.comBlogger33125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6566641959183651307.post-66607521048635235372024-02-16T14:04:00.003+02:002024-02-16T14:04:33.138+02:00إقتفاء أثر وضّاح شرارة: خروج الأهل على الدولة الملِّية الحديثة<p dir="rtl" style="text-align: right;">
</p><p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; font-size: 16.0pt;">إقتفاء
أثر وضّاح شرارة:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; font-size: 16.0pt;">خروج
الأهل على الدولة الملِّية الحديثة</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; font-size: 16.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; font-size: 16.0pt;">زهير
غزّال</span><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";"></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">(محاضرة ألقيت
في مركز عصام فارس في الجامعة الأمريكية في بيروت يوم الخامس من أيار ٢٠٢٢ تكريماً
لوضّاح شرارة.)</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">رحلتنا مع وضاح
شرارة بدأت بالقرب من هنا في مبنى الوست هول المجاور في بدايات الحروب الأهلية
الملبننة، أي النصف الثاني من السبعينيات من القرن الماضي.</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">المناسبة كانت
معرضاً مصغّراً لبعض دور النشر اللبنانية ومن بينها دار الطليعة البيروتية.</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">حملت الدار
يومها كتابين لوضاح شرارة. الأول « حروب الاستتباع » وفي طياته سرديات وسير عن السنين
الأولى للحروب الملبننة. والاستتباع مفهوم خلدوني يتتبع المسارات الأهلية للجماعات
الخاضعة للدولة (أيضاً بمفهومها الخلدوني) أو الخارجة عنها. في كلتا الحالتين
تستتبع الجماعة الأهلية الأقوى، والتي غالباً ما تقوم بموقع سلطوي، جماعة أو
جماعات أخرى دون التمكّن من «تفكيك» الأواصر الداخلية، كعلاقات القرابة، لهذه
الجماعات المُستتبعة والمُلحقة عُنوةً. فما يستوقف شرارة، رغم البعد الزمني بين
القرون الوسطى الإسلامية والحاضر اللبناني بحروبه الأهلية المتعددة الأطراف، هو
الوجه الثابت لمفهوم الاستتباع الخلدوني. إذ لا رغبة سياسية أو ثقافية عند
الجماعات الأهلية اللبنانية لطموحاً أشد وطأةً من الاستتباع الخلدوني. وقد يشكّل
العَصَب الديني والثقافي الرابط الأساسي الذي يمنع، أو على الأقل يحدّ، من «تخطٍّ»
للاستتباع الى عمليات «دمج» سياسية من خلال إلحاق الأفراد خارج طوائفهم بكوادر
الدولة السياسية والقانونية الحديثة. وانعدام قدرة كهذه يراها شرارة في أعماله
اللاحقة والمتأخرة منتشرة في الأفق السياسي الشرق أوسطي (أو شرق المتوسط تحديداً)
ضمن تسمية «الدولة الملّية الحديثة»</span><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR" lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";"><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span> </span><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">أو
الدولة العصبيّة الريعية. في كلتا الحالتين، يبدو أن عصبيّة ابن خلدون مدخل لا بد
منه للاستتباع وحروبه الأهلية المُضمرة. كما أن في المجتمعات الحديثة، أي ما بعد
انهيار السلطنة العثمانية، تساهم العصبيّة الريعية في تسلّطها على أجهزة الدولة،
مع حروب الاستتباع، تمهيداً لا بد منه لانسلاخ الدولة عن المجتمع (أو المجتمع
المدني، إن جازت العبارة في المفهوم التاريخي والأنثروبولوجي الأوروبي الأصل)،
وتصبح الدولة بذلك طرفاً في النزاعات الأهلية المُستتبعة. سنأتي لاحقاً في القسم
الأخير من المداخلة لهذه التسمية المليّة للدولة الحديثة من منظور «الاقتصاد» أو
«الاقتصاد السياسي» إن جاز التعبير. والسؤال هو التالي: بما أن «الاقتصاد» بمفهومه
الحديث لا يخرج عن نطاق الدولة الحديثة، أو الدولة – الأمة، فهو بطبيعته خاضع
لسياسة الدولة وسيطرتها على أرضية معينة وجماعاتها الأهلية، وله «أولوية» على
المستويات الأخرى، أكانت عقائدية أم ثقافية، فهل يُسهِم الاقتصاد الليبرالي الحديث
بفك أواصر استتباع الجماعات الأهلية التقليدية ويحولها الى قِيَمْ أخرى لها دلالات
اقتصادية؟ نرى من جانبنا إنه من الصعب التكهُّن بـ «اقتصاد أهلي» يواكب مسارات
الجماعات الأهلية، أكانت حزبية أم دينية، خارج أطر الدولة الحديثة واقتصادها
وماليتها وعُملتها الوطنية. إضافة، لا وجود لاقتصاد حديث خارج الليبرالية
الاقتصادية التي تُخضع واقعها للجماعات الأهلية وتُجبرها على التأقلم. نرى أن
الليبرالية الاقتصادية، وهو المنهج غير المُعلن للدولة اللبنانية، يُخضع ضرورةً
حروب الاستتباع ودولة حزب الله، كما يراهما شرارة، الى السياسة الاقتصادية للدولة
وواقع السوق، مما يساهم حتماً في تفكك الأواصر الأهلية التقليدية الى مكونات
اجتماعية أخرى غير واضحة المعالم. ولكن الدولة – الأمة ليست الأفق الهيغيلي
المُحتّم للعصبيات الأهلية والمليّة التي تتغذّى من مفاهيم الدولة وممارستها
المالية والاقتصادية، وبنفس الوقت تؤسّس كل على حدة «اقتصادها» ضمن ممارسات ملّية
وعقائدية خاصة بها. وقد يكون النموذج الشرق أوسطي الأكبر الحرس الثوري الإيراني
الذي يسيطر مباشرة على نحو ٦٥ بالمائة من الاقتصاد، أكان من صناعات عسكرية،
كيمائية، نفطية، منزلية، أو الكترونية، وهو بذلك نموذجاً عن الخروج عن الدولة
والمُساهم الأساس في تقويضها وزعزعة نفوذها. وما حزب الله اللبناني سوى نموذجاً
آخر للخروج على الدولة وتكوين «اقتصاده» الخاص به وبأهله ومتأقلماً مع الانهيار
التام للعملة الوطنية. فالعملة الوطنية، القابعة في قعر العملات، أفرزت «عُمُلات»
متعدّدة، طابعها «سياسي»، بمعنى أنها صادرة عن سياسات خارج الدولة، وقد تكون
مُستتبعة لخارج إيراني أو عجمي. فـ«قروض» حزب الله «الحسنة» تحوّل العملة الوطنية
المُنقرضة حُكماً الى ممارسات أكثر أمانةً وملائةً أُسُسِها العملة الخضراء وذهب
المحتاجين للقروض.</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">والكتاب الثاني الذي
شكّل لنا مدخلاً لكتابة شرارة هو «في تكوين لبنان الطائفي: خط اليمين الجماهيري»،
الذي يربط بين الحروب الملبننة ومسارها التاريخي العثماني ثم الفرنسي والاستقلالي
ضمن سيرورة الطائفة السياسية وتحوُّلها من الملَّة العثمانية، التي استوعبها الغرب
الأوروبي كـ «وطن»، الى مجموعات دينية فردية تتمتع بحقوق قانونية واقتصادية
وسياسية خاصة بها وبتكوينها الداخلي. ويُشكّل التحوّل من الملّة الى الطائفة بداية
نظام المتصرفية في جبل لبنان والتمهيد للإستقلال الجغرافي والسياسي تحت راية نظام
كولونيالي تقاسمته بريطانيا مع فرنسا ضِمن خرائط سايكس وبيكو الشهيرة وتوزيعها
لبلاد الشام مُقايضةً إلى «مناطق» نفوذ تجمع بين الجغرافيا البشرية والملّة
والطائفة. والطوائف المسيحية عموماً، أكانت مارونية – كاثوليكية أو أرثوذكسية
مشرقية، على خلاف مثيلاتها الإسلامية، سنّية أم شيعية، أفقها السياسي هو الدولة
الحديثة بجميع مكوّناتها، كما سيزعم شرارة في دراساته اللاحقة. فلا «خروج عن
الدولة» ومؤسساتها عند الطوائف المسيحية، وأحد العوامل التي أدّت الى «عدم الخروج»
هو «خط اليمين الجماهيري» الذي نتج من تطورات أعطت دوراً بارزاً للكنيسة المارونية
منذ القرن الثامن عشر والتي أرخت سيطرتها على أعيان المقاطعات ومقاطعجيها وتوزيع
الإتاوات وعلاقتهم بالفلاحين. وهي علاقات «التزام» شخصية مغايرة لعلاقات الأعيان
وفلاحيهم التي سيطرت على مدن بلاد الشام وأريافها في القرون العثمانية، وأعطتها
طابعاً سياسياً مميزاً كانت الكنيسة المارونية مصدراً رئيساً له، وساهمت في الهجرة
من الجبل الى المدينة وانفتاح مدن الساحل الى تجارة بحر المتوسط في القرن التاسع
عشر. قد يبدو الانفتاح المسيحي على الغرب بديهياً، وإن أتى متأخراً، ومن عناصر
البداهة عدم تَقيّد المسيحيين بالشريعة الإسلامية رغم مساهمة فقهاء مسيحيين في جبل
لبنان بأمور الفقه والشريعة. إلّا أن الدراسات التاريخية لا ترى فوارق تُذكر في
«الحياة المادية» (وفق تسمية فرنان بروديل) بين المسيحيين والطوائف الإسلامية
الأخرى حتى نهاية القرن الثامن عشر. ومن العوامل التي أسهمت في الانشقاق التاسع
عشري بين المسيحيين والطوائف الأخرى هو توافر عناصر مادية وروحية وذهنية شاركت في
الرضوخ لتجارة الغرب ورأسماليته والانفتاح للقوانين والنُظم الغربية. وربما الأكثر
غموضاً في تبريرات كهذه هو «الروح الرأسمالية» وانصياع بعض الطوائف لها دون
الأخرى. فهل للروح الرأسمالية المُبكرة مساهمة ما لعدم خروج المسيحيين عن أفق
الدولة الحديثة؟ نعود مرة أخرى الى حلقة الاقتصاد السياسي كرابط جوهري للأهليات
المدينية الحديثة وما تفرضه على حروبها الداخلية والخارجية. المشكلة النظرية
والمنهجية الأساسية التي تطرحها مقولة عدم التباين بين الطوائف لقدرة التقيّد
بمسار الدولة الحديثة بمفهومها الغربي، أي الدولة – الأمة، يطرح علامات استفهام
إضافية حول «أصول» هذا التباين، أكانت سياسية أم اقتصادية المنشأ. نود هنا الرجوع
الى مقولة المؤرخ الاقتصادي التركي تيمور كوران حول «الانشقاق (الاقتصادي) الكبير»
بين الغرب الأوروبي والمجتمعات الإسلامية عامة سببه عدم قدرة الشريعة في المُضي
قدماً بإصلاحات جوهرية في تشريعات التعاقد والدَيْن بين الأفراد والشركات
والمؤسسات (نُشر الكتاب عام ٢٠١١ ضمن مجموعة جامعة برينستون)، ناهيك عن قدرة هذه
المجتمعات لإنشاء «ديون عامة» أسسها المالية سندات وأسهم يتم تداولها بين التجار
والعامة والمصارف (وكلها تقنيات مالية أتت متأخرة بطبيعة الحال عند العثمانيين
والقَجَر). نرى من جانبنا أن المشكلة الاقتصادية أعمق بكثير من قدرة الشريعة على
التكيّف والتأقلم بالمعطيات الجديدة لأسواق شرق المتوسط وآسيا عموماً في
رأسماليتها الأولية، أي القرن السادس عشر الطويل، من ١٤٥٠ الى ١٦٠٠، وفق تسمية
فرنان بروديل. فمن هذه الصعوبة (أو المراوغة وعدم القدرة) الاقتصادية يمكننا طرح
مشكلة نمط الدول، بمفهومها الخلدوني، من مملوكية وعثمانية وقجرية، بعلاقاتها
ونسيجها الاجتماعي، وهي علاقات أسسها «خارجية» واستتباعيه من توازن عصبيّات مِلّية
وجمع إتاوات «خَراجية» تفرضها على «رعاياها» و«سكانها». ومع انهيار النظم
الإمبراطورية بعد الحرب الأولى، انتقلت هذه المجتمعات الى أطر أكثر حداثة ومرونة،
أي مفهوم الدولة – الأمة الأوروبي، ضمن «حدود» الأمة (القلقة) التي جرى ترسيمها من
قبل القوى الكولونيالية كاختصار شديد لمسار سياسي كثير التعرّج. فما ينعته وضّاح
شرارة في أعماله المتأخرة بـ «الدولة الملّية الحديثة» هو بالفعل آليات سيطرة دول
حديثة النشأة على مجتمعات «قديمة» بمراتبها وطبقاتها الملّية العثمانية وحديثة
النشأة في آن بطبقاتها الاقتصادية وأطُرها البيروقراطية من مدنية وعسكرية
وميليشياوية. لا داعي هنا، من الناحية المنهجية البحتة، بالتسرُّع بمقارنات غربيّة
توحي بعلاقات «مبتورة» لهذه الدول مع مجتمعاتها. نرى من زاوية علوم الاجتماع ضرورة
وصف آليات التسلّط الخارجية أكانت دينيّة أو عقائدية أو قانونية مع التحكُّم
بالأسس الاقتصادية التي تفرض نظماً داخلية قاسية على آليات التحكُّم. (ومثالاً على
ذلك، في الأسبوع الثالث من شباط ٢٠٢٣، ما سُمّي بـ«فوضى» حسن نصرالله، وتلويح
الأمين العام بها أمام «شعبه» وأعدائه، التي هي في أساسها، وفق بعض الصحف
اللبنانية، «فوضى اقتصادية» مصدرها واشنطن، مقارنة بفوضى جبران باسيل السياسية
والرئاسية. فلا «كلفة» لباسيل تجاه «شعبه» لأن جماهيره تتموّل من مصادر شتى لا
ارتباط مباشر للتيّار بها، وهو جمهور يتفرّد في قراراته، على خلاف جماهير حزب
الله، وهي قرابة الربع مليون فرد، التي تشكّل «كلفة» وعبأً، حسب قول رئيس كتلة
«الوفاء للمقاومة» محمد رعد، قوامها مئتي مليون دولار في «الفترة القليلة الماضية»
(الشهرية؟)، كما ورد في النهار البيروتية في ٧ شباط ٢٠٢٣.)</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">والكتابان («حروب
الاستتباع» و «في تكوين لبنان الطائفي») هما ضمن المسار الأول للكاتب، وهي الفترة
التي سنرمز اليها بمسيرة السبعينيات، بعيد حصول شرارة على الدكتوراه من السوربون
(عن الخطاب السياسي والديني لعبد الرحمن الجبرتي وانقلاب التاريخ الإسلامي
العثماني المملوكي إثر الحملة الاستكشافية الفرنسية)، وبداية تدريسه في قسم علم
الاجتماع في الجامعة اللبنانية (الواقع في شارع عبد الله المشنوق من طرف والوحدة
الوطنية من ذيله الآخر)، ومقالات جريدة النهار البيروتية المخضرمة ومقالات أخرى مُطوّلة
في دراسات عربية الصادرة أيضاً عن دار الطليعة.</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">شكّلت مسيرة
السبعينيات خروجاً عن انتماء الكاتب الحزبي في منظمة العمل الشيوعي (ومنظمات
شيوعية صغيرة أخرى) في الستينات وتدريسه في التعليم الثانوي الرسمي. أثناء دردشة
خاصة وصف لنا شرارة التجربة السياسية على مدى ثلاثة عشرة سنة بانها مَضيعة للوقت
وملهاة وجودية. نرى من جانبنا ان التجربة الشيوعية في إطارها الملبنن طرحت للكاتب
مشكلة تهميش جماعات أهلية معينة لا قدرة لها لأسباب تاريخية خاصة بها الانتماء الى
أهليات ومدنيات أوسع أكانت حزبية أو اجتماعية أو برلمانية. فالشيوعية اللبنانية،
كالأحزاب الأخرى التقدمية وغير الانعزالية (وفق تسمية كمال جنبلاط)، هي خارجة على
الأهل وعلى الدولة معاً. وللخروج الطوباوي مزايا وجودية ونظرية لجيل من الشبّان
والشابّات أتعبهم الانتماء الأهلي ومتطلباته. إذ لا يتطلّب الخروج «معرفة»
بالتكوين الأهلي للمجتمعات ومؤسساتها الحقوقية والقضائية والاقتصادية. فلطوباويته
اكتفاءً ذاتياً ورابطاً بقوى إقليمية وعالمية أسطورية، ومقاومة لليبيرالية
الاقتصادية وسلطتها الكولونيالية المحلية الممثلة بالدولة – الأمة.</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">فمعظم الجماعات
والمنظمات غير البرلمانية أسهمت في الدمج في الشارع ضمن مبادرات وحركات سمّيت
بالجماهيرية (أو حركات الشارع) وحملت في طياتها لغات وإيديولوجيات خارج المركّبات
والمنازعات الأهلية والعشائرية. كما أنها مستبعدة من التمثيل النيابي خاصة عند
السنة والشيعة، ولغاتها هي لغات الخارج الإقليمي الجماهيري والشعبي. "فهي
تكونت حاملة لواء فئات اجتماعية يستبعد النظام النيابي والأهلي تمثيلها، أو
مشاركتها السياسية، على صفتها الاجتماعية والمدنية…" (خروج الأهل على الدولة
١٨٩). وهذا الاستبعاد القسري أسهم تأسيس نواة الجماعات والمنظمات اليسارية في
المرحلة الاستقلالية الأولى، وتطوّرها الى منظمات مسلّحة أغلبها شيعيّة إبان
الحروب الأهلية بين ١٩٧٥ و١٩٩٠.</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">فالتجربة
الشيوعية (وغيرها من بعثية وقومية سورية وناصرية وفلسطينية) تمثّل نمطاً من الخروج
عن متطلبات التمثيل النيابي (أي الالتحاق الضمني بمؤسسات الدولة والاعتراف بتعدد
سلطاتها وهرميتها)، إذ لديها قوة تجريدية عمومية إقليمية وشمولية أكثر من محلية،
وخروجاً آخر عن لغة الأهل والعشيرة والطبقة والمهنة والتعليم وأحياء المدينة.
فحركات وتجمعات الشارع والجماهير، وهي تعمل ضمن هوامش ضيّقة، تنكفئ في محور
"الصورة – اللغة"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>وترضخ
"لتقسيم المجتمع دوائر منفصلة ومغلقة (السياسي، الاجتماعي، المدني، الدولة…)…"
(خروج ١٩٠). والصورة – اللغة تستقطب المستبعدين من الطوائف والأهل كالقادة
المسيحيين الذين تعاقبوا على رأس الحزب الشيوعي اللبناني طوال سبعة عقود. ويصح ذلك
أيضاً في الحزب السوري القومي الاجتماعي (خروج ١٩١ هـ ٨).</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">تبدأ مسيرة
شرارة ما بعد الشيوعية بمفهوم حروب الاستتباع الخلدوني.</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">والاستتباع في
اللغة: واصل الشيء وحافظ على سيرورته، واستمر فيه وحافظ على حسن سياقه.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">وفي معناه
الخلدوني أن تستتبع عصبية مسيطرة عصبية أخرى خاضعة لها دون إلحاقها بها ودمجها وفك
أواصرها، أي دون متطلبات اللُحمة الاجتماعية كما نراها اليوم في النُظم الاجتماعية
والتمثيلية الحديثة. فتبقى العصبية المُستتبعة خاضعة للأقوى منها مع الحفاظ على
بنيتها الداخلية. يمنع الاستتباع « التسلط » الثقافي والطبقي (والديني) وخلق آليات
لُحمة لمجتمعات مدنية، أي نواة للمجتمع المدني، كما رآها أنطونيو غرامشي الإيطالي
والشيوعي.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">ويتوهّم المُستتبَع، كما يزعم ابن خلدون في مقدمته، أنّه انتسب
فقط (أي إنه انتسب الى العصبية الأقوى دون الاندماج بها، أو إنه ينتسب أصلاً الى
عصبيته وأهله دون الإدراك بموجبات الاستتباع ومتطلباته) فيربأ بنفسه عن أهل
عصبيّته ويرى الفضل له عليهم وثوقا بما ربّي فيه من استتباعهم وجهلا بما أوجب ذلك
الاستتباع من الخلال الّتي منها التّواضع لهم والأخذ بمجامع قلوبهم فيحتقرهم بذلك
فينغّصون عليه ويحتقرونه.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">فللاستتباع مستويات متعددة: داخل العصبية نفسها ومن ناحية أخرى
خارجها بين مواقع العصبيات الأخرى.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">لحروب الاستتباع أهمية خاصة خلا عدم التواضع والاحتقار: إذ
تخلو ديناميكية الاستتباع من إمكانية اللُحمة الاجتماعية الشاملة التي تصبو في
مجرى المجتمع المدني وحقوقه السياسية والقانونية في مواجهة سلطة الدولة الأمة
الخارجة عن المذهبية.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">الحلقة الثانية التي تأخذ من حروب الاستتباع ملجأ لها تأتي في
الأعمال الوسطى للكاتب أي فترة التسعينيات، وهو الوقت الذي تعرّف البعض به على
أسلوب وضاح شرارة من مقالات جريدة الحياة التي أصبحت آنذاك بأيدي سعودية، مما أتاح
تمددها الى خارج إطارها اللبناني التقليدي.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">يستوقفنا هنا كتاب صُغيّر نشر عام ١٩٩٩ تحت عنوان "خروج
الأهل على الدولة. ربيع ١٩٧٣: فصل من تأريخ الحروب الملبننة".</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">والكتاب، رغم الفارق الزمني، هو متابعة للسلم الأهلي البارد
الذي نشر عام ١٩٧٩ وهو الأضخم من حيث الحجم والعمل الأرشيفي في الصحافة والمجلس
النيابي اللبنانيين. يأخذنا السلم الأهلي الى المحاولة الشهابية لبناء دولة قومية شاملة
خارج العصبيات الأهلية في سلك مشترك. أما خروج الأهل فهو يردّ التجربة الى ربيع
١٩٧٣ وأزمة المخيمات الفلسطينية ونهاية الشهابية كمقدمة للحروب الملبننة التي
ستدوم طيلة خمسة عشر عاماً.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">يبدو "خروج الأهل على الدولة" للوهلة الأولى من
الأعمال الصغيرة للمؤلّف رغم أنه يحمل في طياته المحور الأساس لكافة أعماله على
مدى نصف قرن ونيّف. وهو يأتي تتويجاً لنضوج في الكتابة (وتعثراً في بعض الأحيان)
اختبر فيه شرارة خطاب الأمة القلة العاملية بين الحربين العالميتين (من أرشيف مجلة
العرفان العاملية) وتجلّي تجربة حزب الله اللبناني إثر تهالك الأطر الشيعية
التمثيلية التقليدية كنتيجة مباشرة للحروب الأهلية وتهميش الجماعات اليسارية من
لبنانية وقومية سورية وفلسطينية. فقلق الأمة العاملية الشيعية مردّه الى تفتُّت
وتخبُّط خطاب ما سمي بـ «عصر النهضة الليبرالي» و«الفكر العربي الحديث» (وفق تسمية
ألبير حوراني التي أصبحت مرجعاً يقتدى به شرقاً وغرباً) الى مجموع خطابات لا قدرة
لها على لُحمة المجتمعات الأهلية بطوائفها ومِللها المتنافرة أصلاً وتحويلها الى
مجتمعات مدنية تسلُّطية. (والتسلُّط المدني أو المديني غير الاستتباع الخلدوني.)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">يتمحور خروج الأهل على الدولة حول ثلاثة مفاهيم مترابطة حُكماً
ولذا لا يمكن التحكُّم بها منفصلة: الخروج، الأهل، والدولة.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">الأهل: رابط الأهل ليس حصراً ما يُعرّف به أنثروبولوجياً
بعلاقات القرابة، أي أنماط الزواج وتوزيع الأملاك والإرث. لا يوجد عند الكاتب
مفهوم للأهل يدور حول ما يسمى بعلاقات القرابة العربية أو الإسلامية عامة أو
الأفضلية لزواج بنت العم والتزاوج الداخلي التي هي الشغل الشاغل لعلم الأناسة. إذ
لا يمكن ردّ الأهل والأهلية الى بنية تحتية موحّدة كالقرابة أو الطبقة. فالأهل
والأهلية من البنى الاجتماعية المتعددة الأطراف تتناول "الحوادث الاجتماعية
على وجه أفعال مركبة ومتنازعة" (بيروت ١٩). كما لا يمكن ردّها الى خطابات
وقيم إيديولوجية عامة تتحكّم بالأهل والطائفة. فللأهلية مستويات متعددة تتحكّم
بالسلوك اليومي للأفراد والجماعات دون بُنى واضحة المعالم. وتخضع هذه البنى
التقليدية والحديثة الى آليات وصف أدبية وأنثروبولوجية وسوسيولوجية متعددة الأطياف
من الكاتب وهي شغله الشاغل في أسلوبه الخاص الخارج عن أعراف علم الاجتماع ولغاته.</span><span dir="LTR" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">نرى هذه الأفعال المركبة في كتاب صدر عام ١٩٨٧ تحت عنوان
"المدينة الموقوفة. بيروت بين القرابة والإقامة"، وهي مبنية في وصفها
للمدينة على أبحاث قام بها طلاب الماجستير في علوم الاجتماع ولم تنشر في معظمها.
الجامع هنا هو أهلية الأحياء البيروتية كأفعال مركبة ومتنازعة، كتأخر سن زواج
البنات، وغلبة المكانة الاجتماعية على تعريف المهنة، وتقدم مرتبة الأولاد على
مرتبة الأهل في بعض الحركات السياسية الدينية، واتصال الهجرة بروايتها المتعددة
المصادر. كلها تصبّ في مجرى "انفكاك الإقامة في المدينة". والانفكاك
ظاهر أكثر في الضواحي الجنوبية الشيعية على وجه التخصيص "من موجبات الإقامة
المفترضة". فالأهل كالـ "فيء" يثبّت مرجعيةً ننو اليها.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">عند صدور المدينة الموقوفة كنت يومها محاضراً في كلية الآداب
والعلوم في الجامعة الأمريكية. زميلان في قسم السيسيولوجيا في مبنى مجاور من هنا
قالوا لي أن الكتاب "تعدٍ على الكار" حسب تعبيرهم. والكار هنا مادة
السيسيولوجيا التي تم الاعتداء عليها عَمداً أي على ما يبدو لم يحترم أعرافها
وسننها. والعمد أقوى من القصد في الجنائيات.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">ملاحظة على أسلوب وضاح شرارة الذي يصفه البعض بالصعب وفي غاية
التعقيد. هنالك تعمداً للخروج والانشقاق من لغات وأعراف متعاهد عليها، كالخروج من
اللغة السيسيولوجية المتعارف عليها، أو الخروج من اللغة الصحافية عند ممارسة
الاستقصاء الصحافي. والخروج أكثر من التعدي على الكار إذ هو أكثر راديكالية. الأسلوب
الأدبي هو خروج الفرد عن الأهل والجماعة والتفرُّد بلغة هدفها وصف الخروجَيْن، أي
خروج الأهل عن الدولة، وخروج الفرد الأدبي عن أهله وأعرافهم لعدم قدرته على
الرضوخ. ثم خَلْق لغة جامعة (أدبية بالدرجة الأولى، مادتها الأدبيات العربية عبر
العصور أكثر من علوم الاجتماع) خارج المهنيات المتعارف عليها. فكل حادثة اجتماعية
تستوي على وجه أفعال مركبة ومتنازعة ولا يمكن تحجيمها وتوزيعها لغات مهنية لإرضاء
أصحاب الكار. المنهج، إذا كان هناك من منهج، هو في آلية الوصف ولغاتها وليس
خارجها. قد يشعر القارئ بإرهاق من النص الذي بين يديه لافتقاره لـ «مرجعية» علمية
واضحة تُحدّد إنتمائاً للمسارين الأدبي والعلمي. نرى هذه المُعضلة في أول عمل
روائي لشرارة، «الأمس اليوم» (نوفل ٢٠٢٢)، حيث الراوي (وضاح شرارة) يفتقد لمرجعية
يُهديها لقارئ اليوم الذي يتتبّع أحاسيس شرارة طفلاً (الأمس) بين بنت جبيل وضواحي
بيروت الجنوبية. فراوي اليوم يترك للقارئ الصبور والمتصبّر خلق مرجعيته الخاصة إن
رغب ذلك لتشفير رموز الأمس ومعانيها.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">في "خروج الأهل على الدولة"، وفي العقد بعد المدينة
الموقوفة، نرى تحفظاً علي الأهلية (١٥٤، هـ ١٠). ومعنى التحفظ على الأهلية أن
الحرب هي حروب كثيرة لم تقع بين "الأهل" اللبنانيين فحسب. "فمعنى
التحفظ هو التنبيه على تضمن ”الأهل“ هؤلاء شطراً راجحاً من غير اللبنانيين
والمواطنين، أفراداً وسياسة. فهم جزء من ”الأهل“ على معنى الرابطة الأهلية
والعصبية العربية والإسلامية؛ وليسوا ”أهلاً“ على معنى الرابطة السياسية
والوطنية…" وهذا مثالاً لتعدد الأهلية نسبة لمرجعية أهلية تقع حصراً على إرهاصات
الرابطة السياسية والوطنية اللبنانية، وأخرى تتعدّاها الى مرجعية أوسع أكانت عربية
أو فلسطينية أو إسلامية وتقوم بدور العاجز على التأقلم محلياً وتستقطب من ليس لهم
مكاناً في الأهلية الأولى. الاّ أن نموذجي الأهلية، إن صحّ التعبير، ليسا منفصلين
عن العصبيات الطائفية المحلية والموزّعة على أحياء المدن وشوارعها وزواريبها.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">يحيا مفهوم الأهل في الحروب الملبننة من خارج عروبي، سياسي
وإداري، وإصرار "الحزب" العروبي والإسلامي على استغراق الأهلية صفة
الحروب اللبنانية من جهة، وعلى داخل أهلي لبناني من جهة أخرى. وللخارج وجوه كثيرة
ومتعددة، من فلسطينية وسورية وعراقية وليبية وإيرانية فقهية واثني عشرية، ومحاربة
الكولونيالية والليبرالية والانضواء تحت مظلة اقتصاد دول الممانعة أو دول أوروبا
الشرقية والاشتراكية سابقاً.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">الاّ أن الحروب الملبننة ليست متساوية أصلاً. فتعدديتها تنجم
من عدم المساوات بين الطوائف ومساراتها التاريخية. ولذلك فخروج الأهل على الدولة
هو حصراً على المسلمين. فالجناح المسيحي، وفق تسمية الكاتب، عصبي طائفي واجتماعي،
معاً. أما الجناح المسلم فعصبي طائفي وحسب، وللوجه الاجتماعي نصاب تمثيل مختلف
ومستقل، أي في تاريخانيته وأصوله العثمانية والسنيّة (ونُظُم الأعيان والعلماء
والمفتين التابعين للخلافة) يبقى خارجاً عن هيكلية الدولة ومؤسستها التمثيلية
والاجتماعية. والجناح المسيحي سلال قيام العامة على الأعيان والأسر، ولبنان الدولة
والوطن أفق سياسته؛ والجناح المسلم يتحدر من الأعيان والأسر، وأفقه السياسي هو أفق
الأهل، عشائر ومسلمين (خروج ١٥٣). وفي تكوين لبنان الطائفي حُدّد مسار الجناح
المسيحي أنه "خط اليمين الجماهيري"، مصدره بنية جبل لبنان الإقطاعية في
القرنين الثامن والتاسع عشر مع تربّع قوة الكنيسة المارونية وسلطتها الريعية على
قمة هرم الأعيان وأصحاب المقاطعات (المقاطعجية) وفلاحيهم. أما في الجناح المسلم
فالأمثلة التاريخية كثيرة بين السنة والشيعة للخروج العلني عن أفق الدولة والأمة
(أو الدولة – الأمة الأوروبية كنموذج سياسي واجتماعي للقرنين الأخيرين)، بداياتها الشروع
في تيارات وقِيَم عروبية وناصرية وحروب تحرير فلسطينية لا نهاية لها تُقزّم الوطن
الأم الى ما هو «أكبر» و«أعمق» منه، وآخرها حروب «الثنائي الشيعي» وتقويضهم لأسس
الدولة اللبنانية واستلحاقها بمشروع الدولة المليّة الحديثة الإقليمي والفارسي.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">فالطوائف اللبنانية ومذاهبها وتوزيعها الجغرافي ليست على مستوى
واحد من التمثيل السياسي بين ما هو «داخل» الدولة (السلطتان التنفيذية والتشريعية
والتمثيل النيابي والأجهزة القضائية) وما هو خارجه (المليشيات المسلحة و«خيار»
المقاومة على صعيد المثال لا الحصر)، كما أن للتمثيل النيابي وأفُق الدولة – الأمة
وشرعية القضاء والاقتصاد الرأسمالي الليبيرالي معانٍ مغايرة بين الطوائف. فالصفة
العامية المسيحية وجذورها التاريخية لها ضمنياً القدرة على استيعاب الخارج
البرلماني بإخضاعها القوى الأهلية والعشائرية لأصول التمثيل البرلماني كطرف جوهري
لأفق الدولة ومؤسساتها الحديثة. وهذا ليس ميسّراً عند الأطراف الأهلية الأخرى.
فللوجه الاجتماعي عند الطوائف الإسلامية تمثيل «سياسي» جماهيري مصدره كتل وجماعات
أهلية خارجة عن التمثيل النيابي الذي تتوق اليه الدولة كمصدر أساسي للُحْمَة
الاجتماعية المتنافرة أصلاً والانخراط في العمل السياسي. باختصار: ليست الطائفية بحد
ذاتها (أكانت سياسية أم غير سياسية) المُعضلة البنيوية في تقويض النظام السياسي
اللبناني وعدم قدرته على الشروع في «توحيد» الاجتماعي، بل تفاوت الطوائف وعصبياتها
في رضوخها لأفق الدولة كمشروع سياسي واقتصادي جامع وقدرتها على استيعاب مشروع
الدولة – الأمة (الأوروبي الأصل) عامةً.</span><span dir="LTR" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">نرى وصفاً لهذا التفاوت في جُلّ ما كتبه وضاح شرارة، وهو ليس
بالقليل أصلاً. وإذا أردنا توجيه بعض النقد لهذه العملية الكتابية الواسعة فهو
حتماً في عدم رؤية التفاوت بشكل مرضي، رغم بعض الإشارات من هنا وهناك، ضمن <span style="background: yellow; color: red; mso-highlight: yellow;">منظور الثيولوجيا
السياسية</span>. فلقد اقتصر شرارة في مجمل ما كتبه على البنى الأهلية للأطراف
المتصارعة، ووصْف هذه الصراعات وأبنيتها التقليدية والحديثة والتفاوت بين الأهل
حسب الطائفة والمنطقة والمدينة شمولي ودقيق في آن. إلاّ أن «الأصل» الثيولوجي لا
يزال مبهماً. و «أصل» الثيولوجيا السياسية المسيحية الشرقية قديمة، ومن الصعب فهم
ما حدث في القرون الأخيرة من تحولات اجتماعية كبيرة دون الرجوع الى أركيولوجيا المصطلحات
الثيولوجية والسياسية ومعانيها. ففي العلوم الاجتماعية الغربية نزاعات طويلة حول
دور المسيحية في بلورة الأفكار الليبيرالية والرأسمالية، ومساهمة «طوائف»
كالبروتستانتية أكثر من غيرها في الرأسمالية الأنجلو – أميركية منذ القرن التاسع
عشر، وتوابعها السياسية كالدور «الاقتصادي» الذي تنمُّ به دولة «الوصاية» الحديثة.</span><span dir="LTR" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">نرى البعض من هذا، وإن بخجل، في عمل متأخر صدر عام ٢٠١٣ تحت
عنوان «طوق العمامة» عن التشيّع السياسي الحديث. فالخروج في التشيّع الامامي طلباً
للمُلك أو العدل أو جهاداً في سبيل الله مردّ هذا الخروج الثيولوجي الى «ما يصنع
النبوّة كحادثة تاريخية» (١٧٧)، وفي الانقطاع عن أمر وطاعة مستتبّين، وفي السعي في
ابتداء امر آخر. واستئناف البدء هو ما يمدّ الخروج بشرعيته التاريخية والأنطولوجية
في آن. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">فالدولة الحديثة، أو الدولة – الأمة بمعناها الأوروبي التاسع
عشري، لا تُشرّع هويتها المعاصرة إلاّ بخروجها عن الدين وإضفاء الصبغة العلمانية
على مؤسساتها السياسية والقانونية والاقتصادية والقضائية. (نميّز بين الخروج عن
الدين والعلمنة كمفهوم ينظّم علاقة الدولة بأفرادها ومنحهم حقوقهم الدينية كأعراف
«خاصة» بهم وبطوائفهم.) ولحداثة الدولة «أصول» أخرى أكثر ترسّخاً. يستوقفنا هنا
بشكل خاص موقف حنّا آرندت عن «بروز المجتمع» في كتابها الفلسفي «وضع الإنسانية» الذي
نشرته جامعة شيكاغو عام ١٩٥٨ إبّان عُزلة الكاتبة في الغربة الأمريكية إثر هروبها
من تعدّيات النازية التوتاليتارية على المجتمعات الأوروبية. يبرز «المجتمع»
الأوروبي في القرون الوسطى بُعيد تراكم قرون من المفاهيم الاقتصادية اليونانية
والرومانية والمسيحية التي تربط «الاقتصاد» بخصوصية الداخل المنزلي وتدبيره من قبل
أفراده دون دخول المدينة (أو المدنية) السياسية كطرف مُنظّم ومُحاور. أما مفهوم
«المجتمع» فيحرر «الاقتصاد» من انغلاقه على الخاص والتدبير المنزلي اليوناني ويرميه
في خضّم صراعات «الحياة العامة» وتنظيمها من قبل الدولة ونُظمها البيروقراطية.
تصبح الدولة وأجهزتها القانونية الحامي الأكبر لكل ما هو خاص، أي بدايةً المُلكية
الخاصة وحقوقها، تحت راية «الثروة العامة». يستوقفنا هنا بشكل خاص ربط آرندت «بروز
المجتمع» بـمفهوم «انحدار العائلة» في الفترات الزمنية الأوروبية نفسها. فكل ما هو
عائلة (أو عائلي، أو عصبيات أهلية، أو أهلي بمفهوم شرارة) تم دمجه واستلحاقه بـ
«مجموعات اجتماعية» أرقى تتوق الى العام والحياة العامة وكل ما هو حماية للخاص في
آن. رأينا في كتابات وضّاح شرارة أهمية بنيوية تاريخية لأهلية المجتمعات المشرقية
أكانت عربية أم إيرانية – فارسية أو إسلامية عموماً. وربما ما هو مُضمر في أهلية
شرارة هو عدم بروز المجتمع تاريخياً عند الملل والطوائف الإسلامية أكانت من أهل
السنة والحديث أو مُتشيّعة. بعض المؤرخين العثمانيين، أمثال شريف مردين، تنبّهوا
الى نقاط الضعف في المجتمعات العثمانية عامة، خاصة انعدام «المدنيّة» التي تُرقي
المِلل الى مستوى مجتمعات سياسية خارجة عن أطرها التقليدية العشائرية. ورغم أن هذه
النقدية التاريخانيّة أصبحت متعاهدة عند البعض من أهل العلم والمعرفة، إلاّ إنها
لا تُدرك تماماً نقاط الترابط التي أدّت الى ولادة أواصر «مدنية» المجتمعات
الأوروبية. وقد يكون الرابط الأول لبروز المجتمع، وفق آرندت، تحوّل الاقتصاد
البيتي (أو المنزلي) الخاص، في مفهومه اليوناني ثم المسيحي، الى اقتصاد عام بحماية
الدولة (حماية الملكية الفردية، أي الأرض والعمل والرأسمال، والملكية الفكرية
لاحقاً). وعلى مستوى آخر، تشكل الأهلية الحديثة (والدولة الملّية الحديثة)
للمجتمعات الإسلامية، وفق مصطلح شرارة، نقاط ضعف محورية لنشوء المجتمع وتحويل
الاقتصاد الأهلي الى اقتصاد عام خاضع لتنظيم الدولة المركزية وقوانينها. إلاّ أن
«نشوء المجتمع»، وأفُقه الدولة والاقتصاد (السياسي) كتدبير للمصلحة العامة، أقلّه
في «مجتمعات» شرق المتوسّط، يأخذ معانٍ متباينة بين العصبيات الأهلية والطائفية
والعشائرية. فاذا قامت الأهليات المسيحية الشرقية على «مجتمعات» أهلية تطمح الى
الدولة ومؤسساتها كطرف ينظّم الاقتصاد والتمثيل السياسي، تتوق الأهليات المسلمة،
أكانت سنيّة أو شيعيّة، الى ما هو خارج الدولة – الأمة في السياسة والاقتصاد معاً،
ناهيك عن كل ما هو «سياسة مالية» ينظّم ما هو معني بسلامة العملة الوطنية. فـ
«اقتصاد الممانعة» على صعيد المثال، كـ «خيار المقاومة» والتحرير إلى أجل غير مسمى،
هدفهم تقويض سياسات الدولة المحلية وربطها بما هو «أكبر» منها في تيارات شعبوية ودول
لا حدود لها، ضمن أسس اجتماعية واقتصادية هشّة لا وطن لها. يأتي هذا التباين بين
الطوائف في ما يخص السياسة والاقتصاد والمالية والقانون من ثيولوجيا سياسية مُضمرة
المعالم والطموحات. ما نريد الإشارة إليه من هذه الملاحظات السريعة والمُقتضبة هو
صعوبة تقصّي تاريخيّة مفاهيم كـ «نشوء المجتمع» والتمايز (أو التباين) بين الثروة
الخاصة المنزلية و«الثروة العامة» التي تؤسس مفهوماً آخر يربط الدولة بالاقتصاد
والسياسة معاً، علماً أن «حماية» الدولة للاقتصاد لا تقتصر على العام بل تتجاوزه
لكل ما هو خاص ومنزلي وفردي من خلال الضرائب التصاعدية على الدَخْل (أفراداً أم
مؤسسات)، ومراقبة الثروة العائلية والمؤسساتية والحسابات المصرفية والأسهم
والسندات (رغم قوانين السرية المصرفية في دول عدة). والصعوبة تنمّ من مسارات
تاريخية أكثر تعرّجاً لمجتمعات شرق المتوسّط مع سيطرة الدولة الملّية الحديثة (وفق
تسمية شرارة)، أو الدولة المستشرقة (أيضاً تسمية أخرى لشرارة)، أي دول خروج الأهل
على الدولة وفرض الأهل أعرافهم وتقاليدهم على كل ما يَمُتّ إلى قوانين مدنية
وجنائية أصلها البعيد الغرب الأوروبي وفلسفة الأنوار وحرية الأفراد. ومن الواضح في
مسار التعرّجات التاريخية أن كل ما هو متأصلاً في الغرب، أكان دولةً أو قانوناً أو
مصرفاً أو مشفىً، يُستورد في مجتمعات أخرى بمفاهيم وتطبيقات مغايرة عن الأصل
الأوروبي. وهنا تكمن صعوبة التأصيل التاريخي لمجتمعات شرق المتوسط، وربط مستويات
سوسيولوجية بعضها ببعض على غرار الحلقات التي تنضج بسوسيولوجياً أعلى منها مكانة.
فحلقة أنثروبولوجيا سوق العمل على صعيد المثال لا تكتمل بما ينعته شرارة بالدولة
الملّية الحديثة التي لا قدرة معرفية اقتصادية لديها أصلاً للتحكّم بسوق كهذه وضبط
قواعد العمل وتحسينها. فسوق العمل والبطالة والتضخّم والضمان الاجتماعي والطبّي
ليست من مقوّمات دولة كهذه ومن مهمّات أجهزة «أمنها» التي توزّع وتفرّق المجتمعات
مللاً وعصبيات وطوائف مهمّشة في صيروراتها التاريخية لتحيا من هذه التجزئة.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">ما هي شخصية الدولة الملية الحديثة في مسار مجتمعات شرق البحر
المتوسط والعربية – الإسلامية عامة الغارقة في الأهلية والعشائرية والمذهبية؟</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">يرى البعض استحالة الدولة الحديثة المشرقية. فسابقاتها
الإمبراطورية من قجرية وعثمانية ترسّخ فيها الرأسمال الديني، أي قوة الدين وصعوبة
الظفر بالمجال السياسي دون التحالف بين الدين والفقه والسياسة. فاستحالة الدولة
الحديثة تنمّ من استحالة إعادة التوازن الثلاثي مع تصدّر السياسي على الديني
والفقهي وعدم إخضاع العلماء والفقهاء والقضاة إلى هرمية الدولة الإدارية. وإن خرجت
الدولة من الديني والفقهي وتفقّهت بقوانين غربية حديثة (نابليونية الأصل والمصدر)
فهي ستفقد بذلك هويتها وقانونيتها وشرعيتها. تفترض هذه المقولة أن «حداثة» الدولة
محصورة بالغرب الأوروبي كمصدر تاريخي لهذه الحداثة ومقوّماتها السياسية
والاقتصادية. نريد أن نقترح مفهوماً للدولة الحديثة يشمل مجتمعات شرق المتوسط
وغربها في آن وغيرها من المجتمعات من باب «الخروج عن الدين» الذي تبلور في الفكر
الغربي التاسع عشري منهياً بذلك «الفكر الكلاسيكي» الثامن عشري، وقد شكّلت الثورة
الفرنسية إرهاصاً لهذا التحول. نرى من جانبنا أن الخروج عن الدين لا يشمل العلمنة
بالضرورة، أو لا يشمل العلمنة كهدف أساسي لهذا التحوّل السياسي والاجتماعي.
فالخروج عن الدين هو في أساسه خروجاً عن أنظمة دينية وخلافية وفقهية كانت تتحكّم
بالسياسي وبرموزه («جَسَدَيْ السلطان» في الثيولوجيا السياسية الأوروبية في القرون
الوسطى، والفصل بين جسد الأمة السياسي والجسد الطبيعي). فالديموقراطيات الغربية،
والأمة – الوطن ودولتها، والفاشية، والتوتاليتارية، والشيوعية، والاشتراكية،
كالليبيرالية الاقتصادية، كلها تشكّل حلولاً ومخارج سياسية حديثة المنشأ للخروج عن
الدين. ومصدرها الفكري واحد رغم زخم التناقضات والصراعات السلمية أو الدامية.
وتسبّب هذا الخروج والانهيار الأرستقراطي في ملكية الأرض وريوعها، وبروز طبقات
جديدة إبان الثورة الصناعية والهجرة المكثّفة الى المدن، في حربين عالميتين وإعادة
خلق توازن جديد بين الغرب الأوروبي وشرقه. والشرق الأوروبي هو بدايةً أوروبا
الشرقية التي شهدت في حربين داميتين تهجيراً كبيراً لسكانها وأرزاقهم لم تشهده
مثيلاتها الغربية التي حافظت على سكانها ومدنها وأريافها رغم الدمار الشامل الذي
عاشته على دفعتين. وإذا كان من دلالة إنثروبولوجية لهذا الفارق الكبير بين شرق
أوروبا وغربها، فمردّه لهشاشة البنى السياسية والاجتماعية الشرقية، وخضوعها
تاريخياً لكبار الملّاك وريوعهم وضعف سياسات البورجوازية وتأخير الصناعات والحركات
والتجمعات المدينية والمدنية. ما نود الإشارة اليه أن الخروج عن الدين فرض نفسه
أيضاً وبقوة على مجتمعات شرق المتوسط. فاستقلالية محمد علي باشا «المصري»
(والألباني الأصل والمنشأ واللغة) عن والي أمره الخليفة العثماني، وخوضه معارك
ضارية ومذلّة ضد الخلافة، ثم الرد العثماني من باب التنظيمات الهميوية لتحديث
الأجهزة البيروقراطية والقضائية وإدخالها بعالم مثيلاتها الغربية، وأخيراً لا
آخراً تقويض سلطة الدولة القجرية ورموزها إبان «الثورة الدستورية» عام ١٩٠٦، وللعلماء
الشيعة دوراً بارزاً في التمرّد على السلطان، كلها تشير بتمايز شديد الى «نهاية»
للأنظمة السياسية القائمة على «توافق» (ضمني أو علني) بين الدين والسياسة وأنظمة
ريوع أراضي الأعيان وكبار مالكيها.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span dir="LTR" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">في أحد أعماله المتأخرة، «طوق العمامة، الدولة الإيرانية
الخمينية في معترك المذاهب والطوائف»، ٢٠١٣، يطرح شرارة سيرورة مغايرة وغير مكتملة
للدولة الخارجة عن المجتمع وطبقاته وفوارقها الاقتصادية والمالية والداخلة في صراعاته
الأهلية والمذهبية في آن. ففي الأعمال المتأخرة نرى أن خروج الأهل على الدولة يشكل
استثناءً في الإطار الخاص للحروب الملبننة. أما إطاره العام فهو سوري وعراقي ومصري
وإيراني خميني حيث التمثيل السياسي، والليبيرالية الاقتصادية الفردية، إن وجدت،
يخضعان لضوابط خانقة. سبق «طوق العمامة» كتاب مفصّل عن حزب الله اللبناني ودولته
الإسلامية في الفترة الإنتاجية المتوسطة، إي التسعينيات، على هامش كتاب آخر عن
التشيع اللبناني وخطاباته تحت عنوان «الملّة القلقة». مهّدت هذه الدراسات المفصّلة
عن التشيُّع في إطاره اللبناني الى التساؤل عن ماهية خارج هذا التشيع وحنينه الى
الأفق الإيراني الخميني والإمبراطوري الفارسي.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">في الأعمال المتأخرة توسيع لأفق خروج الأهل على الدولة عبر
مقارنات وصفية مفصلة بين لبنان، العراق (منذ عهده الملكي إلى عبد الكريم قاسم وبعث
صدام حسين، مروراً بالحزب الشيوعي العراقي وجماهيره العريضة)، وإيران الخمينية.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">يأخذ خروج الأهل على الدولة معانٍ مختلفة بين لبنان والعراق
وإيران الخمينية.</span><span dir="LTR" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span dir="LTR" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">في صدد جريمة بعلبكيه «عائلية» في عام ١٩٩٤ يصف شرارة موقع
الدولة اللبنانية بالمستشرقة نسبة للاستشراق الغربي وعزل الدولة ومؤسساتها
القضائية (أيام القتل العادي ١٥٤). فمع انحسار الشرع بين عناصر حزب الله
والفاعليات والعائلات وقتل الشاب الذي كان يُعتقد أنه الجاني، قال وزير الداخلية
آنذاك بشارة مرهج في حديث إذاعي "إننا نحترم الحل العشائري"، ثم استدرك:
"لكننا جميعاً اتفقنا أن نعيش حيث يسود الدستور والقانون اللبناني"
(١٥٥). مصدر التضارب والتناقض بين الجماهير والعائلات والفعّاليات الدينية
والمدنية والرسميين الإداريين وغيرهم مردّه الى عدم ترسُّخ أفق الدولة الحديثة عند
الجماعات الإسلامية. لم نجد عند شرارة المصطلحات الأركيولوجية بسيرورتها التاريخية
على الأقل في القرنين الماضيين لتتبّع مسار خروج الأهل على الدولة وافتقار التماسك
الاجتماعي الذي يخلق أزمة بهذا الحجم. في كتاب عن جرائم في الشمال السوري بين حلب
وإدلب وقعت تحت سيطرة البيروقراطية البعثية في الثمانيات والتسعينات من القرن
الماضي قمنا بنشره عام ٢٠١٥ («جريمة الكتابة»، المعهد الفرنسي للشرق الأدنى،
بيروت)، رأينا ضعف التواصل، إذا صحّ التعبير، بين النصوص القانونية الجنائية
الغربية الأصل (والتي عُرّبَت في معظمها بدايةً وفق اجتهادات مصرية منذ بداية
القرن الماضي، ثم لبنانية) والتوقّعات والممارسة على الأرض من تحقيقات الشرطة إلى
قاضي الإحالة والمحامين وقضاة المحكمة والنيابة العامة. ويبرز ضعف التواصل خاصة في
الشهادة نفسها ومحاضر الشهود والمتهمين وتدوينها وكتابتها (مباشرة على أوراق مختومة
برموز الدولة السورية في أغلب الأحيان)، أي في ضعف التواصل الاجتماعي واللُحمة
الاجتماعية اللذان يريان النور من الاحتكاك القسري بين سلطة الدولة الخارجة على
المجتمع وتهميش أفرادها وجماعاتها، وكتابة الجريمة الموزّعة بين ممارسات الشرطة
والمحامين والقضاة والنيابة العامة وأطباء وعلماء نفس وغيرهم. إلاّ أن هذه
التعددية في الممارسة الكتابية والقانونية والطبية لا تستوي على أي نوعٍ من
اللُحمة الاجتماعية بحماية الدولة وأجهزتها القضائية العتيدة. إذ تبدو مُجمع
القوانين المدنية والجنائية في وضع «وراثي» من مجتمعات أخرى مع طموحات مختلفة لا
تفي بحاجات اليوم. لا تبدو الدولة ومجتمعاتها وطوائفها «مهدّدة» بجرائم المجتمع
اليومية من سرقة وقتل واحتيال، كم أن فلسفة «الرادع» و«تفصيل الجريمة» و«حِساب
العقاب» بدقّة متناهية وفق أصول العدل والقانون، جميعها مفاهيم طوّرها سيزار
بيكّاريا الإيطالي في أواخر أنوار الثامن عشر وانتشرت بكثافة في عصر الثورة
الصناعية. إلاّ إنها لا تبدو الشغل الشاغل في مجتمعاتنا الشرق أوسطية رغم اعتمادها
كركيزة أساسية لأجهزتنا القضائية. فهل الجريمة «الوعي الجماعي» للمجتمع لخروجها عن
المألوف اليومي؟ وما هي دلالات خروج الجريمة عن رواية الدولة إذا صحّ التعبير؟</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">اختزال
السياسة والاقتصاد.</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">مفهوم «الدولة»
عند وضّاح شرارة وعلاقته بـ «المجتمع»، أكان أهلياً أم طائفياً أم مدنياً، تطوّر
بمراحل ثلاث نود توضيحها واستنباط نظرية للدولة الحديثة من خلالها. فالأهلية
تتركّب بطبيعة الحال حول مقوّمات تتوزع حسب المكان والزمان بين العشيرة والعائلة
والريف والحي والمدينة (الموقوفة) والمهنة والمكانة والمرتبة، مع أحد العناصر الذي
يطغى على العناصر الأخرى في مرحلة تاريخية معينة. لذا تعنّت شرارة ورفضه تأقلم
الأهلية بثوابت معينة، إذ لا أصل لها يتحكّم بالمستويات الأخرى. في أعمال أولى
موثّقة بين مادة أرشيف الصحافة والمجلس النيابي اللبنانيين، كـ «السلم الأهلي
البارد»، تبرز الدولة بإطارها اللبناني الخاص (القاعدة التي تشذّ عن محيطها العربي
والإسلامي وتُثبّته في نفس الوقت) كـ «مُنسلخة» عن المجتمع. و«الإنسلاخ» يجسّدُ
عدم قدرة الدولة – الأمة على «استيعاب» قوى المجتمع ضمن أطرها السياسية والقانونية
والاقتصادية المتعارف عليها وخلق ما يشبه بلُحمة اجتماعية مرجُوّة، مما يفسّر وجود
تمثيل برلماني ديموقراطي له دوراً بارزاً في الحياة السياسية والتشريعية ولكن يفقد
الشمولية المرجوة. ومرد ذلك الى خروج جماعات مُعَيّنة، إسلامية على الأغلب، عن
مؤسسات الدولة التمثيلية، رغم وجود برلمانيين من نفس الطائفة والمنطقة، نحو خارج
سياسي نضالي أكان ناصرياً أو فلسطينياً أو بعثياً أو عجمياً أو إمامياً فارسياً.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">في مرحلة ثانية
تطرقنا اليها سابقاً انتقلت مشكلة «انسلاخ الدولة عن المجتمع» الى مفهوم مرادف هو
«خروج الأهل على الدولة» الذي نراه محورياً عند وضّاح شرارة، مشكلاً بذلك الخيط
الرئيس لجميع أعماله. وفي بعض الأعمال المتأخرة أخذت الدولة صفة «الدولة الملّية
الحديثة» رغم غيابها في تعليق شرارة على عمل حنا بطاطو «العراق مثالاً وحنا بطاطو
دليلاً»، نشرته أشكال ألوان في بيروت عام ٢٠١٨. فطبقات العراق القديمة والحديثة،
من أعيان المدن والأرياف وفلاحيهم وعشائرهم، والأشراف وضباط التنظيمات العثمانية
ومراتبهم، والطبقات الوسطى الحديثة التي خلقتها الهجرة المدينية، والأحزاب القومية
من بعثية وشيوعية، جميعها نظّمها حنا بطاطو بهرم اجتماعي ضمن سياق التاريخ
الاجتماعي، ولملكية الأرض وريعها جانباً أساسياً من الصراعات الاجتماعية
والسياسية. إلاّ أن عمل بطاطو، وإن كان الأكثر توثيقاً وأمانة للعراق الحديث،
ومادته الأساسية الأرشيف البريطاني ومحاورات الكاتب مع قوميين وبعثيين وشيوعيين
قابعين في سجون الدولة بداية الستينات بعيد الانقلاب على عبد الكريم قاسم، يترك
مجالاً كبيراً ومُبهماً حول نمط الدولة التي تناولت تقلبات العراق الحديث من سيطرة
مُلكية فيصل والهاشميين إلى عبد الكريم قاسم («خلوّ العرش») حتى بَعْث أحمد حسن
البكر وصدّام حسين. فهذه «المسافة» أو «الفجوة» بين الدولة (الحديثة وخليفة مِلل
بني عثمان) وطبقاتها القديمة والحديثة تناولها كنعان مكّية في كتاب نشر في
الولايات المتحدة قبيل غزو العراق للكويت صيف ١٩٨٩ تحت عنوان «جمهورية الخوف» وتحت
اسم سمير الخليل المستعار (والخائف). فسبب الخوف هو عدم قدرة الدولة الاضطلاع بدور
المتسلّط بواسطة المؤسسات والأجهزة التقليدية من سياسية وبرلمانية وقضائية وطبّية
وعلمية ثقافية. وعدم القدرة واختزال المؤسسات السلطوية يُحوّل الدولة الى أجهزة
قمعية مباشرة لا صبر لها على الأسس القضائية المدنية والجنائية وروتينها الطويل
والمعقّد. فالعنف المباشر والدور المتعاظم للجيش والأجهزة الأمنية والمخابرات على
مدى عقود مردّه الى اختصار كبير في التاريخ الاجتماعي العراقي وطبقاته التي تحافظ
على هرميّات تخلو من لُحمة اجتماعية جماعية ولا تساهم في تأسيس دولة سلطوية تحترم
حرية الأفراد ومعتقداتهم. والدولة السلطوية تعني تدخّلاً «على الناعِمْ» في حرية
الأفراد ومعتقداتهم، بدايةً في العقود والموجبات التي، وإن هدفها حماية الملكية
الخاصة (والعامة) في نظام تبادل ليبيرالي، تفرض على الأفراد قيود شديدة في التبادل
تتحكّم بها الدولة ومؤسساتها القانونية والقضائية والتشريعية. ونرى أيضاً مطلب
الدولة الى الانضباط في سلوك أفرادها وفرضها أساليب شتى تأديبية ونظامية تُعاقَب
بقوانين جنائية ومؤسسات طبّية وغيرها تأديبية. كما أن الدولة الحديثة تأخذ على
عاتقها الهَمّ الاقتصادي واستواء «الاقتصاد» كمرجع أساسي لنجاح الدولة في تكوين
لُحمة المجتمع رغم الفروقات الطبقية وعدم التوازن في دخل الأفراد وبين جماعاتهم
ومناطقهم وتوزيعهم الجغرافي والسكاني. ولهذا كله، فإن دراسة حنا بطاطو التي تفصّل
الفروقات الطبقية وتوزيع ملكية الأرض بين الأفراد وجماعاتهم من جهة والدولة
(الهاشمية بدايةً) في حفاظها على العام، ليست كافية لتتبُّع تقنيات التسلُّط
الحديثة بين القوانين وتطبيقاتها في اقتصاد الواقع والمؤسسات التأديبية عموماً
أكانت ثقافية أو عسكرية أو طبّية. ينطلق كنعان مكّية ووضّاح شرارة، كلاً على حدة،
مع فارق قرابة الثلاث عقود، من نفس المُعضلة التي تركها إرث حنا بطاطو على تاريخ
العراق الحديث ورواسبه العثمانية والشريفية – الهاشمية. فالطبقات القديمة والحديثة
على السواء ليست بالكافي لتتبُّع عن كثب ما آل اليه مشروع الدولة الحديث في العراق
وجواره العربي والكردي والفارسي. هنالك «فجوة» في المادة والتحليل الاجتماعي يحاول
مكّية وشرارة ضبطها بأساليب مختلفة، وإن طغت السياسة وتوزيع الأدوار بين السياسيين
والحزبيين والجيش والقوات المسلحة الأخرى ضمن حقب مختلفة في التحليل والتبرير. كما
أن ما يخلق المغايرة هو ليس الموضوع بحد ذاته – الطبقات الاجتماعية وملكياتها
وارتباطها بالسياسة والأحزاب أو انعزالها عن الجماعات الأخرى – بل الأسلوب ومنهج
التعامل. إضافة فإننا نفترض أن لغة الدولة السياسية أو الاقتصادية لها استقلال خاص
بها ليس بالضرورة مترابطاً مع المستويات الأخرى الاجتماعية أو الطبقية. وهذا ربما
مأخذ مكّية وشرارة على منهج بطاطو الطبقي: كيف نفهم تكوين الدولة من خلال طبقات
الفلاحين ومالكيهم ومِللهم وأحزابهم وضبّاطهم وانقسامات أهل المدن؟ نرى من ناحية
أخرى قصوراً عند الكاتبين، مكّية وشرارة، المميزين لفهم معضلات الدولة الحديثة، في
بيئتها العربية والإسلامية، ومتطلباتها الاقتصادية والقانونية والتأديبية التي
أشرنا اليها. وربما تكمن المشكلة الكبرى في حركات «الخروج» على كل ما هو تنظيماً
للدولة ومؤسساتها. إذ يفترض مفهوم «الخروج» عند شرارة «عدم قُدرة» الدولة بالتحكّم
بمسؤولياتها تجاه سكّانها وأمنهم وأرزاقهم وأملاكهم. وعند مكّية أيضاً «خروجاً»
غير مُعلن وغير مُنتظم. فهنالك على الدوام جماعات مدنية ومسلّحة تفرض إرادتها
ومشيئتها على تراث الدولة، وهو بطبيعته إرثاً عثمانياً وكولونيالياً، ومزيجاً من
مرجعية الإثنين معاً. وجماعات كهذه هَمُّها الأساسي الاقتصاد أكثر من السياسي
ولُحمة المجتمع وديمومته كوحدة سياسية وقانونية واقتصادية. فهي تساهم في تقويض أسس
الدولة وهيبتها الاقتصادية من باب تبييض الأموال والتهرّب الضرائبي وتهريب البشر
والسلع والأموال عبر الحدود الرسمية (ورسميّة هذه الحدود من آثار السياسات
الاستعمارية السلبيّة وفق الخارجين عن القانون)، ناهيك التعامل مع مؤسسات اجتماعية
ومالية وعسكرية غير مرخّصة من الدولة، قد تكون إضافةً على لوائح عقوبات بين
الإتحاد الأوروبي وأميركا الشمالية. يدل كل ما أشرنا اليه أن مفهوم الخروج يفترض
نمطاً من الدولة الأوروبية تمّ استيراده منذ قرن بعد انهيار السلطنة لحاجات ملحّة
داخلية، ثم تمّ التأقلم معه محلّياً مع مراجعات مكثّفة أدت الى تقويض أسس الدولة.
والتقويض هنا نسبة الى المرجع الأصل الغربي.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">في مرحلته
الثالثة والمتأخرة يختبر وضّاح شرارة مفهوماً، وإن كان جديداً بالتسمية، الاّ إنه
تراكم التعرّجات السابقة، الأولى والثانية، أي مفهوم «الدولة المِلّية الحديثة»
الذي برز في الأعمال الأخيرة، وهو يفترض انسلاخ الدولة على المجتمع، وخروج الأهل
على الدولة كمفاهيم مترادفة ومتكاملة، رغم أن النقد الموجه الى عمل حنا بطاطو، من
باب المحاسبة والمعاتبة، خلا من الإشارة صراحة الى الدولة الملية الحديثة، لكنه
يفترضها في إطارها العراقي الأرستوقراطي والهاشمي وما بعده دون التسمية. ففي
«العراق مثالاً» تبدو الدولة الريعية وحاملة العصبيات الخلدونية والاستتباعية
«المثال» الذي يطمح شرارة الى معالجته. وكلها مفاهيم لم ينطق بها نص بطاطو،
فيستنبطها شرارة محوِّلاً بذلك عمل بطاطو التأريخي الى «نموذج» لعدم الإفصاح
بالمفاهيم الخلدونية. أو قد يكون عمل بطاطو «نموذجاً» لعدم ربط «مثال» العراق
بالدولة الريعية وحاملة العصبيات المتأجّجة. كأن بطاطو لم يكن له القدرة، رغم صبره
لمتابعة صيرورة المجتمعات العراقية على مدى قرن من الزمن، لرؤية الدولة
المخابراتية التي تخنق السياسة وتختزلها الى صراعات خارج مقوّمات التمثيل
البرلماني، والذي بطبيعة الحال هُمّش وفقد قيمته. وبداية التهميش مع نهاية
الهاشميين العراقيين وانقلاب عبد الكريم قاسم ثم انقلاب البعثيين الأول عليه. وما
لم يستوعبه بطاطو أيضاً هو تهميش الشيوعيين، رغم الكثافة الشيوعية في العراق نسبة
الى جيرانه العرب. وتختزل الدولة المِلّية الحديثة السياسة عندما تهمّش الأقليات
في الداخل الوطني والخارج الإقليمي وعندما تُنصّب هيئات أو مراجع غير مُنتخبة فوق
إرادة الناخبين (طوق العمامة، بصدد الدولة الإيرانية الخمينية، ١٠٢).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">كما أن لخروج
الأهل على الدولة وتوظيف الدولة الملية لآلية الخروج وتهميش الأقليات يلغي السياسة
كعمل تاريخي يسعى الى إنشاء أفق مشترك للجسم الاجتماعي. (ما هو « المجتمع » في
المجتمعات الأهلية التي فقدت السياسة؟ وما هو الاقتصاد أو الاقتصاد السياسي مع
غياب الاجتماعي والسياسي معاً؟) فإلغاء السياسة «يخنق العلاقات السياسية الحية
والقابلة للمنازعة المقيدة والمحدودة» (طوق ١٨٤). كما أن العصبيات القبلية القديمة
والمترسّخة لقرون مضت تتفرّغ من علاقاتها مع تبلور عصبيات مذهبية أو أهلية حديثة
مشتركة وجامعة. وهذا ما حدث على صعيد المثال لا الحصر مع الحوثيين الجدد في اليمن
عندما استولت نخب حديثة على الطبقات القديمة (الزيدية) ودمجتها مع عناصر جديدة ضمن
مشترك أهلي حديث (طوق ٣٤٥). مما يوحي أن علاقات القرابة لا تعمل ضمن ثوابت
أنثروبولوجية بنيوية عصبية وقبلية، إذ هي خاضعة باستمرار لإعادة تركيب العصبيات
ضمن مشترك الأهل والأهلية. مما يطرح تساؤلات كثيرة حول غياب السياسة والاجتماع
والاقتصاد أو الاقتصاد السياسي. (من الضرورة طرح ماهية الأفق الثيولوجي – السياسي
إبان العصور الإمبراطورية القجرية والعثمانية ومن ضمنه السياسي والاقتصادي
والاجتماعي ومتابعتها الى كل ما هو حديث ومُحدث.)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">البروز
التاريخي للمجتمع واقتصاده وتفتّته اقتصادات أهلية.</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">طرح البعض فكرة
«الاقتصاد السياسي» للبنان ككل أو لجماعات أو أهليات أو حصراً لحزب الله كمثالاً أو
نموذجاً لسيطرة الأطراف الأهلية على الدولة. (أنظر جوزيف ضاهر، الاقتصاد السياسي
لحزب الله، ٢٠١٦، بالإنجليزية.)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">يعزو جوزيف ضاهر
نشوء الاقتصاد السياسي للحزب اللّهي منذ الثمانيات الى اليوم الى التناغم والتجانس
بين «الاقتصاد» والكدرات الحزبية (ضاهر ٨٨) ونشوء شركات خاصة تمويلية وتجارية
وخدماتية مع تعاطف شبه علني للحزب (ضاهر ٨٧). أما الكدرات الحزبية فانتقلت منذ
تأسيسها عام ١٩٨٥ من الديني الى <span style="color: red;">النيولبرالي</span>. فالمؤسسات
الليبرالية، أكانت حزبية أم مدنية طائفية خاضعة لقانون الجمعيات اللبناني
(والعثماني الأصل من ١٩٠٩، وبدوه الفرنسي الأصل من ١٩٠١)، تحوّل الطقوس والعبادات
الدينية الى مرجعية اقتصادية تُفقدها من زخمها الأساسي أكان كنسياً أو منتمياً الى
الحنفيّة العثمانية او التشيّع الإمبراطوري. أضف الى ذلك تحسّن أوضاع فقراء الشيعة
في جنوب بيروت وجنوب لبنان مقارنة بالسنّة في عكار والمناطق الشمالية عموماً،
واستقرار نسب الفقر عند الشيعة في مختلف المناطق (ضاهر ٧٧). كما لعب الحزب دوراً
أساسياً في استقطاب الثروات في الضاحية الجنوبية لبيروت وخلق مؤسسات وجمعيات «مصرفية»
خارج القطاع المصرفي اللبناني وقوانينه العتيدة كالقرض الحسن، ومسجلّة عند وزارة
الداخلية كجمعيات برّ وإحسان «دون أرباح». الا أن ضاهر لا يشير الى التهميش المالي
الذي يخضع له كبار المتعاطفين مع الحزب وتجارهم ومموليهم وكل من له شبهة في تعاطف
ما وتحت المراقبة الأميركية والمصرفية بتُهم الإرهاب أو تبييض الأموال. ولرئيس
المجلس نبيه بري دوراً بارزاً في الاستقطاب المنظّم لرؤوس أموال الاغتراب الشيعي،
أي البرجوازية الشيعية (الأفريقية خاصةً) الخارجة عن الآلية الداخلية الانتخابية.
كما أن للحزب أو للثنائي الشيعي مواقف نيابية ليبرالية قد تبدو مغايرة لقاعدة
حماية الفقراء وذوي الدخل المحدود التي وضعها الحزب كأحد الأسس الجوهر لتكوينه في
نضاله الداخلي وحروبه الخارجية في آن. على صعيد المثال لا الحصر صوّت النوّاب
الشيعة في نيسان ٢٠١٤ بأغلبية ظاهرة وواضحة على قانون جديد لعقارات السكن يُمدّد
لإيجارات ما قبل ١٩٩٢ (ضمن ما سمي قانون إيجار الاستثمار الحر رقم ١٥٩ لعام ١٩٩٢
الذي شرعن الإيجارات السنوية الغير الثابتة) ما بين تسع الى إثني عشر سنة ضمن
تعاقد جديد بين المالك والمستأجر وبحلّة جديدة. ورغم أن المنطق النضالي يحبّذ بقاء
المستأجرين القدامى على قِدَمِهم، أي على بدلات إيجار طفيفة دون زيادات ريعيّة
تُذكر، نظراً للنظرة السائدة أن المستأجرين القدامى هم عموماً من ذوي الدخل
المحدود، الاّ أن هذا لم يمنع النواب الشيعة من الامتثال للأغلبية النيابية آنذاك.
وقد يكون مرد ذلك لأمرين أساسيين. الأول هو نسبة عالية من التملّك عند طبقات
الشيعة قد تكون أكثر ارتفاعاً من الطوائف الأخرى. والثاني هو الحماية المادية التي
يقدمها الحزب للمستأجرين أكانوا مناصرين له أم لا. فللوهلة الأولى يبدو أن الطوائف
المسيحية التي هي الأكثر ثراءً وتنظيماً هي نفسها التي كانت الأكثر تشدداً مع
قانون إيجار عام ٢٠١٤ (وتعديلاته في ٢٠١٧ بعد الطعن من أغلبية مسيحية برلمانية
أمام المجلس الدستوري، وهو المقام التشريعي الثاني بعد المجلس النيابي). ومرد ذلك
لسببين. الأول هو كثرة المستأجرين القدامى ذوي الدخل الأدنى عند المسيحيين.
فالروابط الخاصة بين ملاكي ومستأجري الطائفة الواحدة ساعد على المحافظة على
التعاقد بين المسيحيين عبر عقود. فارتفاع المستأجرين القدامى مردّه الى ضعف الهجرة
المسيحية الى مناطق وأحياء أكثر تواضعاً. فهجرة الجبل الى المدينة، وهي الهجرة الأولى
الحديثة التي شكّلت مدخلاً سياسياً للبنان الكبير عام ١٩٢٠، بداياتها أيام نظام
المتصرّفية العثماني و الرعاية الأوروبية. والهجرة الثانية أثناء الحروب الأهلية
بين ١٩٧٥ و١٩٩٠ التي أخلت بعض أحياء بيروت الغربية ومناطق أخرى مُختلطة من طابعها
المسيحي (فردان ومار الياس وعين المريسة). أما الأحياء الأخرى ذو الأكثرية
المسيحية التقليدية والشعبية فعاشت على مدى عقود على التكاتف المُضمَر بين
الملاكين والمستأجرين، وحماية المستأجر من التضخُّم وتآكل الدخل. وهذا لم يحصل عند
سنّة بيروت على سبيل المثال حيث الهجرة من الأحياء التقليدية للطائفة الى خارج
بيروت كان كثيفاً وممنهجاً (البسطة وطريق الجديدة والكولا). فما أنقذ المستأجر
المسيحي ليس الطائفة بحد ذاتها، رغم قوّة وفعّالية الأوقاف المسيحية عند الروم
والسريان والأرمن والموارنة، بل العلاقة الفردية والعضوية بين المالك والمستأجر التي
لم تخضع بالضرورة لتنظيم حزبي أو عقائدي. فهنالك استقلالية ذاتية اقتصادية
للمستأجر والمالك المسيحي رغم الوجود العامل الحزبي، والاستقلالية والعلاقة
العضوية اللتان لا تخضعان بالضرورة (أو بالكامل) لأحكام الدولة وقوانينها حافظاً
على مقام المستأجر رغم تحديث بعض القوانين لصالح المالك. أما أهل السنّة فعلاقتهم
مع أوقافهم ومستأجريهم علاقة المستثمر بالسوق الرأسمالية ، وعلاقة الليبرالي
بزبائن خارج الطوائف والطبقات. مما أضعف الأوقاف الإسلامية (وأصلها عثماني) وأدى
الى تصفية بعضها كاملاً، كما أضعف علاقة المستأجر بالمالك وتهجير سكّاني الى أطراف
المدينة وهضباتها (خلدة وعرمون وبشامون). كما أن ضعف الأوقاف الإسلامية، مقارنة
بالمسيحية، مرده الى ضعف استثماراتها في الأسهم والسندات، أي كل ما هو «دَيْناً»
على المسلمين (مثلاً أسهم شركة الإعمار سوليدير في وسط بيروت التي ساهمت فيها
الأوقاف المسيحية بدون عائق ديني مالي يذكر، وبالأسهم التفضيلية للمصارف).
(المصارف الإسلامية، الخاضعة لقوانين الدولة اللبنانية ومُراقبة مصرف لبنان، ظلّت
هامشية حتى يومنا هذا.) وتعاظم التهجير إبّان «زعامة» رفيق الحريري وتولّيه رئاسة
الوزراء في عقد طويل ومُلتبس حتى اغتياله عام ٢٠٠٥.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">لا ينتبه ضاهر
وأمثاله أنه من الصعب «تعميم» تجربة كالقرض الحسن (من بين مؤسسات وجمعيات أخرى
مالية أو تجارية أو خيرية) الى خارج الإطار الشيعي الخاص بالضاحية الجنوبية
وأعرافها (رغم أن زبائنية مؤسسات مالية وتجارية كهذه غير محصورة بالشيعة
والتشيّع). فالقرض الحسن ومؤسسات أخرى مالية أو غير مالية لا «تُعمّم» لأنها
بالدرجة الأولى أهلية (بالمعنى الذي أشرنا اليه سابقاً) ولا تحترم قوانين الدولة
اللبنانية (قانون النقد والتسليف الذي بموجبه تأسس مصرف لبنان عام ١٩٦٣) أو
القوانين الدولية في الشفافية والملاءة والسيولة. فهي مؤسسة ثورية تُدرج نفسها من
ضمن اقتصاد الممانعة. و«نجاحها» قائم على اختصار السيولة بالنقد حصراً، واعتمادها
قروضاً بالدولار الأميركي مقابل «ضمانات» عينيّة بالذهب والمجوهرات بدلاً من عَيْن
العقار على صعيد المثال الذي يتطلّب إدخال الدولة اللبنانية ومؤسساتها كطرف أساسي
في المقايضة والمراقبة القانونية. ونظام القرض الحسن الإسلامي هو بمفهومه الأصلي
(القرآني) قرضاً «بدون فائدة» للمحتاجين، أي إنه لا يعتبر في أساسه قرضاً
استثماريا لجهة المُقرِض. الاّ أن طابعه الاستثماري، إن وجد، يكمن في عدم قدرة بعض
المحتاجين من إيفاء قرضهم الدولاري إما بالكامل أو جزئياً على الأقل عند
الاستحقاق. فخروج «هامشاً» ولو ضئيلاً من المقترضين بالدولار عن سياسة القرض، مهما
كان ضيقاً ومتواضعاً، يشكّل «فائدةً» مُضمرة لأمثال القرض الحسن مرسّخةً بذلك
أسسها الليبيرالية والرأسمالية الغير معلنة. فعدم القدرة على إيفاء القرض من
المقومات الأساسية للرأسمالية الحديثة ورُكن أساسي للمصارف وبطاقات الائتمان التي
تُصدرها. وتكتمل الدورة الرأسمالية بالاستيلاء (وضع اليد) الكلي أو الجزئي على
«ضمانات» القرض من أموال منقولة أو غير منقولة. واختزال السيولة بالنقد هو ما آلت
اليه الدولة اللبنانية والمصارف في آخر المطاف منذ أزمة ٢٠١٩ المالية وربيعها
المُلبنن، ودخولنا جميعاً بنفق مظلم نظراً لتحويل السيولة المجرّدة الى مقايضة
نقدية عينيّة لا تتماشى مع مالية المصارف الحديثة. فأمثال القرض الحسن أسّسوا من
حيث لا يدرون لمسار كهذا لدرجة إننا أصبحنا جميعاً قرضاً حسناً بدون فائدة. وصعوبة
«نَسِخْ» مؤسسات مالية أو تجارية على غرار القرض الحسن للطوائف الأخرى يكمن في أنه
نمطاً مالياً وتجارياً أقل جدارة من النظام المصرفي الحديث القائم على التداول
العالمي والمجرّد (غير العَيْني) للسيولة والدَيْن (دَيْن مالية الدولة بدايةً)،
وسياسته السرّية خارجة عن نُظُم الدولة الرسمية وأعرافها. فسرّية مؤسسات الحزب
الإلهية هي غير السرّية المصرفية للدولة اللبنانية. فهدف السرّية الأولى الحزبية
والأهلية العمل في ظل السرّية الرسمية وقوانينها المحلية والوطنية والدولية
وتهميشها. فهي كالبؤر الحديثة التي لا تستطيع العيش والإنتاج الاّ في ظل نظام
سياسي متعارف عليه وطنياً ودولياً، واقتصاده رأسمالي وليبرالي، فتقوم الأهلية
الحزبية الطُفيلية بدور الخروج لعدم قدرتها الانصياع للسياسة العامة والتعاهد
الدولي.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">يكمن الخطأ
الآخر عند ضاهر في تصويره « اقتصاد » الحزب ضمن « مدنية » وآلية تسلطية خاضعة
لمجالس يتصدّرها مجلس شورى القرار (ضاهر ٩٥) وولاية الفقيه مصدر إلهامه (ضاهر ٩٧).
في نهاية الأمر نظرة ضاهر تغمز في «تفاؤل» غرامشي من حيث لا تدري دون الادراك أن
للشيوعي الإيطالي متطلبات كثيرة ومُرهقة قبل الولوج الى مجتمع مدني يحظى بثقة
العامة.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">تكرّس أهلية
الطائفة (السياسية والاقتصادية معاً) انطواء أفرادها الى قوانين وأعراف الملكية
الخاصة والأموال المنقولة وغير المنقولة وتراكم الرأس المال والثروات والتجارة
الحرة – وكلها تشير حُكماً الى مقولات ليبرالية – لكن ضمن مقولة المصلحة الأهلية.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">فرغم وجود نص
١٩٣٢ عن قانون الموجبات والعقود ونصوص أخرى تحمي حرية التملك والتجارة وتبادل
السلع والسرية المصرفية وحق المودعين مهما كانت أهليتهم، الا أن «ضمانات» كهذه لا
ترمي المنظومات الأهلية ضمن مشروع الدولة، إذ لا تبدو مؤهلة بالقوة الكافية لحماية
الأفراد والمؤسسات من الغَير الأهلي.</span><span dir="LTR" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><b><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">حداثة الدولة
المذهبية؟</span></b><b><span dir="LTR" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";"></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">النمط الأول
للحداثة هو تاريخياً الدولة الوطنية الحديثة الغربية الأوروبية التي تفترض وحدة
الشعب والأراضي والسيادة (طوق ١٥١) والذي ثَبُتَ كمرجعاً عالمياً من الناحية
النظرية والتطبيقية. تطوَّر هذا النمط في أوروبا القرون الوسطى مع قيام الدولة
المتسلطة والموحِّدة للكيان والأرض على ركام التقسيمات الإقطاعية القديمة. تكوّنت
الثقافات الإقطاعية المنقسمة على نفسها في مزيج متنافر من الثقافات والقيم
اليونانية والرومانية والمسيحية. أما القرن التاسع عشر الديموقراطي فقد شكّل
«خروجاً» على الدين والنظم السياسية المبنية على الثيولوجيا المسيحية أكانت
بروتستانتية أم كاثوليكية. والخروج الديني تمحور حول أربع إيديولوجيات أو نظم
تفكير أصبحت العامود الفقري للسياسات الحديثة. في المرتبة الأولى النظم
الديموقراطية المبنية على تمثيل المجالس النيابية في شتى أنواعها للانقسامات
الداخلية للأمة والدولة والمجتمع، وتمحور دور الدولة الحديث حول «الاقتصاد
السياسي» ولاحقاً بعيد الحرب الأولى في الـ«الاقتصاد» الذي افتقد دوره السياسي
البحت وأصبح «تقنية» نمو ورقي وارتقاء بين الأمم وجُمُعاً من التقنيات المالية
والاقتصادية لأجهزة الدولة دوراً بارزاً في إدارتها. أما الأنظمة الاشتراكية فهي
«تعديل» لأصولها الديموقراطية مع دوراً أكثر ظهوراً لتوزيع الثروات العامة والخاصة
وإضفاء العام على الخاص. وكذلك الأمر للإيديولوجيات الأخرى من شيوعية وتوتاليتارية
وفاشية. فجميعها تشكل خروجاً عن الثيولوجيا المسيحية والأنوار الأوروبية وأُسسها
الفكرية واحدة.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">أما الدولة
الملية (أو المذهبية) الحديثة فهي تشكل بدورها خروجاً عن الثيولوجيا السياسية
الإسلامية بشقيها السني – العثماني والشيعي – القجري. فهي كشقيقاتها ورديفتاها
الأوروبية التاسع عشرية «حديثة» بالمعنى ذاته الذي أدخلناه لهذه التسمية. أي أن
الدور المحوري للدولة الملية الحديثة هو الخروج عن الدين دون الولوج ضرورةً بأسس
«علمانية». أي أن الخروج لا يُمهّد بالضرورة لمكوّنات العلمنة الثقافية أو
السياسية. وهذا النمط من الدولة – الأمة حظي بكثير من الانتباه لأنه المرجعية
السياسية في عالمنا المعاصر. وهو المرجع النظري للإخفاق السياسي أيضاً أي للدول
المنسلخة عن أمتها ومرجعياتها التراثية ووحدة الوطن والسكان والمذاهب وعشائرهم. في
المشرق العربي (والفارسي والإسلامي عامة) نحن بصدد مُعضلة خروج الأهل على الدولة
أي الانتقاض على السلطان وتقويض أجهزة الدولة ومؤسساتها في المثال والاستثناء
اللبناني.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">أما المثال
المشرقي – الإسلامي الأكثر عمومية فهو الدولة الملية – المذهبية الحديثة ومسارحها
الأهلية الداخلية وحروبها الإقليمية الخارجية. ويمتاز هذا النمط من الدول (المغاير
للدولة – الأمة) في تسلّل وتسلسل <span style="color: red;">الحروب غير النظامية </span>الى
قلب الدول الوطنية (طوق ١٥٨). الدولة الملية الحديثة ترجّح كفة القوم المركزي
وغلبته على الدولة – الأمة وبذلك لا تترك هامشاً أو متسعاً لكيانات الأقوام الأخرى
الذاتية (طوق ١٥). كما أن الدولة الملية تهمّش الكيانات الهامشية وتجرّدها من
حقوقها ضمن سياسة قمعيّة مباشرة تأخذ أحياناً منحى الاغتيالات والتصفيات الجسدية
الفردية والجماعية (طوق ٥٠).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">فهل من تناقض
نظري بين الدولة المذهبية وحداثتها المفترضة؟</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">ركن الاستثناء
(أو التفرّد) اللبناني الذي أشرنا اليه سابقاً هو استقلالية الدولة (الغير مذهبية)
عن الطوائف والمذاهب والعشائر، وعدم الموازاة لمشروع الدولة بين الطوائف. فخروج
الأهل على الدولة يبقى محصوراً بين الطوائف الغير متأهلة تاريخياً لمشروع الدولة
السياسي رغم وجود «تمثيل» سياسي للطوائف الإسلامية داخل المجلس. إلاّ أن هذه
الطوائف تخضع في نفس الوقت لإطار إقليمي وأطر أوسع من سياستها الداخلية، وهي بذلك
تشكل إرهاقاً سياساً وإقتصادياً للطوائف الأخرى الخاضعة لمشروع الدولة ضمن أفق
الدولة – الأمة. فالطوائف المسلمة تستأنف الأزمات المحلية والوطنية على نطاق
إقليمي ودولي. مما يحصر دور الدولة وسلطاتها التنفيذية والتشريعية والقضائية في
دور المراقب والمُشارك في التوزيعات الطائفية الإدارية في آن واحد. ليست هذه
الدولة بالضرورة «ضعيفة» كما يروّج البعض. تشكو الدولة اللبنانية من استقلال ذاتي
إداري (ورثته من النموذج الفرنسي) قد يصبو أحيناً الى مزيج من الضعف والعجز في أخذ
القرارات والاعتماد على الخبرات. قد يكون عراق ما بعد بعثية (وعبثية) صدام حسين
إستثناءً آخر.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">الاّ أن النمط
الأعم والأكثر شيوعاً هو إسلامية الدولة الخمينية – الفارسية، أي «التباس الدولة
والعصبية» (طوق ٣٦). ففي هذا النموذج الشرقي (المنتشر غرب آسيا) «السياسة الأمنية
والقمعية المباشرة على وجهيها الفارسي والإقوامي سعت في تقويض قوام الجماعات
وتصديع عوامل تماسكها وقطع دابر حركتها السياسية الذاتية» (طوق ٥٠). يرسو هذا
النموذج على «الالتباس».</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">اولاً: التباس
الدولة والعصبية الذي يؤدي الى تهميش كل عصبية خارج الوطن الأم واغتيال علماء
وكادرات المذاهب المغضوب عليها من قبل الأغلبية الحاكمة وجماهيرها الأهلية (طوق
٥١).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">ثانياً: التباس
السياسة كأداة جامعة للوطن من جهة والسياسة الأمنية والقمعية المباشرة من جهة
أخرى.</span><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR" lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";"><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span>
</span><span dir="LTR" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span dir="LTR" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">الالتباس الثالث
يكمن في تداخل الداخل الأهلي مع الخارج الإقليمي وانتهاك الداخل مع انتهاك الخارج
العربي، الكردي، اليهودي، النصراني، أو السني (طوق ٩١).</span><span dir="LTR" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">تتكون الدولة
الملية الحديثة على مُفترض الواحد المتجانس ومُفترق نهاية نظام الإتاوات
الإمبراطوري وتأسيس الدولة الحديثة الكولونيالية والنيوكولونيالية أي الدولة التي
حصدت رصيدها السياسي من الاستعمار الأوروبي. هل يتحوّل مفهوم الدولة الملّية
الحديثة الى مفهوماً آخراً أكثر غناءً وتعقيداً إذا «رُبِطَ» بمفهوم الاقتصاد
السياسي للدولة الحديثة؟</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">ليست بنية الأهل
بدايةً علاقات القرابة كما يفهمها علماء الأناسة رغم أن أول ما يوحي به الأهل هو
القرابة. فقد تكون القرابة «العامل الأول» لا بل الأساس <u>في بعض الظروف</u>.
والمهم هنا تحديد ماهية هذه الظروف أكانت استثنائية أم لا، أي دائمة أو لها قدراً
من الديمومة. وقد تكون الأهلية في ظروف أخرى تحت تأثير ديني أو طائفي ظاهرين
(والطائفية هي سياسة التديُّن، لذا فهي «أضيق» من التدين)، وللقرابة تراجعاً
واضحاً في نفس الظروف.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">رغم ذلك فإن
بقاء الأهلية مفتوحة الآفاق، كمفهوم «الثقافة» الشاملة في الأنثروبولوجيا
الأمريكية، يخلق متاعب أخرى. فللأهل، وفق شرارة، في مواقف وكتابات متناثرة غير
واضحة، لها شبهةً لـ «شمولية» الثقافة الأنثروبولوجية رغم صعوبة «حصرها» في باب
معيّن.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";">إضافةً نرى من
الأفضل تبويب القرابة كعامل أساسي في صُلب بنية الأهلية كمحاولة لحصر الشمولية
وللقدرة التحليلية. يمكننا التساؤل مثلاً هل يوجد نمط من «القرابة العربية» تستوفي
معطياتها من محيطها الجغرافي والتاريخي الخاص بها كالمدينة والريف والزراعة
والعشائرية والتواجد العائلي والطائفي (أو الديني والطقوس الدينية). باستطاعتنا
طرح معطيات كهذه دون تحويل الأهلية كمفهوم شمولي يقوم على أفراد أو جماعات لها
محاور ثابتة. فالأهلية الطائفية على صعيد المثال لا الحصر ليس بإمكانها الولوج
بكمالية وكليّة الطائفة. فالأهلية الطائفية، إن كان لها نوعاً من التجانس بين
أفراد وجماعات الطائفة ومللهم العثمانية، فقدوا قدرة كهذه في عالمنا الحديث. نرغب
في فهم الأهلية، أكانت عقائدية أو طائفية أو عشائرية، من مكونات «اقتصادية» - أو
الاقتصاد السياسي لدولة – أمة ما – كالثروة والدخل والضريبة والإتاوات المحروسة
والأموال والنقود والسيولة.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" dir="RTL" style="direction: rtl; text-align: right; unicode-bidi: embed;"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-family: "Nassim Arabic Pro";"> </span></p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>zouhairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18243592617841882763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6566641959183651307.post-47861222830611703042018-02-25T02:31:00.000+02:002018-02-25T02:31:35.073+02:00iran: a colonial power<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Street protests have erupted in some middle eastern
countries in January of this year, particularly in many Iranian cities, and in
Sudan, Algeria, and Tunisia as well, where the protests have been the longest
and most tenacious thus far. Though the protests were diverse, a common cause
was attributed to the high prices for basic daily-needed commodities (beginning
with bread), unemployment (particularly among the youth), and disappointing
economies stagnating with hyperinflation. However, Iran’s protests, even though
they may not be unique, are special due to the country’s rising political and
military stardom in the region. In the last decade, particularly since the
American withdrawal from Iraq in December 2010, the Arab uprisings in 2011–12,
the Syrian civil war since March 2011, and the failure of the Afghani
government to stop the expansion of the Taliban, have all contributed, among
others, to the rise of Iran’s might in the middle east. From Afghanistan, to Iraq,
Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen, Iran was able to construct a geo-military and
political “alliance” of sorts, one that has made it a mini-colonial power in
the region. It remains to be seen whether such alliance would produce any
economic benefits to the concerned populations, particularly to “middle
classes” that are more tuned to consumerism than political adventurism. In
common jargon, the Iranian geo-military loose “alliance” is described as a
Shiʿi consolidation against the political hegemony of Sunni Islam, one that is
presumably led by the likes of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the former derives its
wealth predominantly from oil rent, while the second is over-populated and
labor abundant. Upon a closer examination, however, what is routinely dubbed as
a “Shiʿi alliance” turns out a vague term for a hodgepodge of “Shiʿisms” that
by and large are historically unrelated and belong to different social and
economic configurations. Iran itself belongs to a majority brand of Shiʿism,
that of the Twelver Imamis, and to a social and economic formation that heavily
depends on oil rent and its distribution among classes and ethnicities. Like
any developing country, Iran is plagued by class inequalities created by rapid
and uneven development, particularly touching on the commercialization of land
and what is left of traditional agriculture, hence the importance of oil rent
in conjunction with political adventurism. Its ethnic composition, by far the
most complex in the region, combines under one state the Farsi Twelver Imami majority
with Arabs, Kurds, Azeris, Armenians, Turkmen, and Baloch. In Iraq by contrast,
the Shiʿi majority, which comes at around 65 percent, and which has been
historically dominated by the Arab Sunni minority (20 percent), has been in
power only recently thanks to the American occupation in 2003–2010. The Syrian
ʿAlawi minority, which has been in power since 1970, could also be looked upon
as another brand of Shiʿism, but its social and economic base is very different
from the other Shiʿisms in the region and along the Eastern Mediterranean. So
is Lebanese Shiʿism, which since the end of the civil war (1975–1990) has been
associated with the radical paramilitary Hezbollah organization, which acts as
a state within a state. In short, the Iranian political genius consists at
bringing different social and economic formations under one informal
geo-strategic alliance. But what for exactly? Perhaps one question that begs
itself in this regard, in particular in light of the January street protests,
is whether the costs of such an Iranian-led informal alliance would pay the
bills.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The last big anti-government protests in Iran came in the
wake of the disputed reelection of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in summer 2009.
According to opposition records, more than 73 people were killed back then and
over 4,000 were arrested. There are a few major differences this time. The
Green Movement in 2009 was led by reform-minded intelligentsia and educated
middle class and was concentrated in the streets of Iran’s capital city. This
one has been led by mostly working-class young men; there are far fewer people
rallying, yet the protests are more widespread across the country. In 2009, the
protests were about empowering the reformists. This time, they look and feel
anti-establishment, hence against the whole Islamic Republic. Somehow the cost
of the informal Shiʿi alliance, constructed in the last decades with
paramilitary civil war strategies that involved the best trained Iranian
special and intelligence military personnel, are turning against the very
foundations of the Islamic Republic itself. What the young men and women were
questioning this time in the streets of many Iranian cities is the “usefulness”
of what their country has been doing inside and outside Iran since the
establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979. Is the sacrifice worth the
economic misery of a large part of the Iranian populace? Should the Republic
maintain its moribund paramilitary alliance while people are suffering at home?
But if the questioning seems radical, it is nevertheless extremely fragile, as
there already are state attempts at the highest level to suffocate it through
the services of the Revolutionary Guard and other special paramilitary forces
which have become the hallmark of the Republic since the Revolution. Iran has
been able to forge its alliance thanks to a country-by-country civil war
strategy, betting on all kinds of structural weaknesses among the rogue
countries, while avoiding civil war at home. Perhaps the time has come to look
inside.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Perhaps the lesson to learn in this regard is that countries
like Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon cannot be “on their own” anymore, as autonomous
political units, assuming they ever did, and that they can only be governed
through the kind of rough “alliance” that the Iranians are proposing, and to
which Russia would serve as a political umbrella. This is a new reshaping of
the middle east, an unexpected outcome of the street revolts, in which everyone
is learning that states cannot be sovereign anymore. The obsession with state
security, which has been nurtured by the likes of Nasser and Saddam Hussein,
and which meant playing on the weaknesses of other states and societies, while
raising the flag of civil war, now gets another turn. Now state security
implies a process of collaboration between states, where a regional power like
Iran would monitor the process on the ground with experts all over but in small
numbers, which makes cost redundant the notion of a full-fledged occupation as
was Iraq and as is Afghanistan now under American occupation. Russians and
Iranians come in small numbers, bring their experts and mercenaries, impose
themselves on the ground, and end up more cost-effective than the traditional
colonial powers which have shaped the future of the middle east since
Sykes–Picot in 1916.</div>
</div>
zouhairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18243592617841882763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6566641959183651307.post-41566480804669590362018-02-25T02:29:00.001+02:002018-02-25T02:29:50.583+02:00afghanistan & iran<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Afghanistan is America’s longest war ever—sixteen years in
the making since the invasion of the country by a US led coalition in 2001–2002
and the help of conspicuous Afghani warlords—an operation whose estimated cost
has neared a trillion dollars, with an annual budget of $40 billion. Originally
designed as an operation that would oust the Taliban and the Qāʿida as
organizations of terror, the Afghani war soon turned into an ambitious “nation-building”
and the restructuring of Afghanistan into a modern state. At the beginning, in
2002–2003, the optimism was fueled by the ousting of the Taliban and the
drafting of a new constitution that would establish a new division of powers
and the eligibility for political representation. As the Bush Administration
declared that the Taliban had been “defeated,” “universal suffrage” was
introduced as the cornerstone of a political system of representation; women
had a right to vote and go to school. But what does “defeat” mean when the
“enemy” has no visible face or hierarchy, and when it is fighting an
asymmetrical war of attrition with no end in sight. Time is one the side of the
Taliban but not in favor of the US and its Kabul sponsored Pashtun-dominated government.
Afghanistan’s problems are numerous, beginning with a strong tribal multi-ethnic
“society” with a poor infrastructure, not to mention the constant intrusions of
neighbors: Pakistan, India, and now Iran. The Taliban gradually took hold of
power and the capital Kabul in the 1990s amid the end of the
guerrilla-cum-tribal war against Soviet occupation in the 1980s. As tribal
factions turn against one another once the war with the external “enemy” is over,
the Taliban came to the rescue as a de facto, if not de jure, organizational
power. Their rule was harsh and unforgivable, as women were taken out of
schools and sanctions were imposed on individual freedoms. But the last ten
years have witnessed a coming back of the Taliban to the point that they are
now controlling many provinces and US and Afghani security forces find
themselves on the defensive. Amid the breakdown of Iraq—another prematurely failed
nation-building project—and the expansion of the Taliban, president Obama
decided to “postpone” the final withdrawal hastily scheduled for 2016.
President Trump will in all likelihood increase US troops by 4,000, but to what
end exactly? The US has developed the habit of coming with grandiose
“democratic” nation-building projects, only to leave them in a state of anxiety
and no return. Other local and regional actors, states or well-grounded
paramilitary groups (the two categories are often blurred), would come to the
rescue. In particular that, as the article below points out, one of
Afghanistan’s most ambitious regional border neighbors, the Islamic Republic of
Iran, has knotted ties with its old foe the Taliban (a group which in itself is
far from homogeneous, but nevertheless manages to control the bulk of opium
trade in the region), in an extremely intrusive and ambitious strategy of
destabilizing the Kabul government and US presence. Iran aims at “ethnic links”
from Lebanon to Syria and Iraq up to Afghanistan. But what is it that hold such
“societies” and “states” together in the first place? Could it be a delusional
“ethnic identity” that would fail where the US and its allies had already
failed? Perhaps president Trump can learn something from the failed legacy of
his predecessor.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The legacy in Afghanistan, like Obama’s foreign policy
record as a whole, was troubled at best. At points he had the elements of the
right approach—more troops, more reconstruction assistance, and a
counterinsurgency strategy—but he never gave them the time and resources to succeed.
<u>Obama came into office rightly arguing that the war was important but had
been sidelined, and promised to set it aright</u>. Yet Obama’s choices since
2009 reflected a more conflicted stance, and it is not clear he ever settled on
a coherent strategy. He deployed more troops than needed for a narrow
counterterrorism operation, but not enough for a broader counterinsurgency
campaign. He initially increased reconstruction funding because he believed,
rightly, that effective Afghan governance was an essential condition for
victory, but quickly second-guessed himself and subsequently reduced civilian
aid every year thereafter. Most damagingly, <u>Obama insisted on the public
issuance of a withdrawal deadline for US troops, undermining his own surge</u>—which
eventually became so obvious that he finally reversed himself. Obama’s belated
decision to sustain a small force of some 5,500 troops in Afghanistan beyond
his term in office is likely to keep the Afghan army in the field and the
Taliban from outright victory—but this is at low bar compared to what Obama
once hoped to achieve there.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Could the new (chaotic) administration do any better?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<b><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 24.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">In Afghanistan, U.S. Exits, and Iran Comes In</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A
version of this article appears in print on August 6, 2017, on Page A1 of the
New York edition of the New York Times with the headline: Iran Flexes in
Afghanistan As U.S. Presence Wanes.</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">FARAH,
Afghanistan — A police officer guarding the outskirts of this city remembers
the call from his commander, warning that hundreds of Taliban fighters were
headed his way.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Within
half an hour, they attacked,” recalled Officer Najibullah Amiri, 35. The
Taliban swarmed the farmlands surrounding his post and seized the western
riverbank here in Farah, the capital of the province by the same name.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It
was the start of a three-week <span style="mso-field-code: " HYPERLINK \0022https\:\/\/www\.nytimes\.com\/2016\/10\/10\/world\/asia\/kunduz-afghanistan-taliban\.html\0022 \\t \0022_blank\0022 ";"><u><span style="color: blue;">siege in October</span></u></span>, and only after American
air support was called in to end it and the smoke cleared did Afghan security
officials realize who was behind the lightning strike: Iran.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Four
senior Iranian commandos were among the scores of dead, Afghan intelligence
officials said, noting their funerals in Iran. Many of the Taliban dead and
wounded were also taken back across the nearby border with Iran, where the
insurgents had been recruited and trained, village elders told Afghan
provincial officials.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
assault, coordinated with attacks on several other cities, was part of the
Taliban’s most ambitious attempt since 2001 to retake power. But it was also a
piece of an accelerating Iranian campaign to step into a vacuum left by
departing American forces — Iran’s biggest push into Afghanistan in decades.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">President
Trump recently <span style="mso-field-code: " HYPERLINK \0022http\:\/\/www\.nbcnews\.com\/news\/us-news\/trump-says-u-s-losing-afghan-war-tense-meeting-generals-n789006\0022 \\t \0022_blank\0022 ";"><u><span style="color: blue;">lamented that the United States was losing its 16-year war
in Afghanistan</span></u></span>, and threatened to fire the American generals
in charge.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There
is no doubt that as the United States winds down the Afghan war — the longest
in American history, and one that has cost half a trillion dollars and more
than 150,000 lives on all sides — regional adversaries are muscling in.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-field-code: " HYPERLINK \0022https\:\/\/www\.nytimes\.com\/2016\/12\/06\/world\/asia\/saudi-arabia-afghanistan\.html?rref=collection%2Fbyline%2Fcarlotta-gall&action=click&contentCollection=undefined&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection&_r=0\0022 \\t \0022_blank\0022 ";"><u><span style="color: blue;">Saudi Arabia</span></u></span> and Pakistan remain the
dominant players. But Iran is also making a bold gambit to shape Afghanistan in
its favor.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Over
the past decade and a half, the United States has taken out Iran’s chief
enemies on two of its borders, the Taliban government in Afghanistan and Saddam
Hussein in Iraq. Iran has used that to its advantage, working quietly and
relentlessly to spread its influence.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In
Iraq, it has exploited a chaotic civil war and the American withdrawal to create
a virtual <span style="mso-field-code: " HYPERLINK \0022https\:\/\/www\.nytimes\.com\/2017\/07\/15\/world\/middleeast\/iran-iraq-iranian-power\.html?rref=collection%2Fbyline%2Ftim-arango&action=click&contentCollection=undefined&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection\0022 \\t \0022_blank\0022 ";"><u><span style="color: blue;">satellite state</span></u></span>. In Afghanistan, Iran aims
to make sure that foreign forces leave eventually, and that any government that
prevails will at least not threaten its interests, and at best be friendly or
aligned with them.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">One
way to do that, Afghans said, is for Iran to aid its onetime enemies, the
Taliban, to ensure a loyal proxy and also to keep the country destabilized,
without tipping it over. That is especially true along their shared border of
more than 500 miles.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But
fielding an insurgent force to seize control of a province shows a significant
— and risky — escalation in Iran’s effort.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Iran
does not want stability here,” Naser Herati, one of the police officers
guarding the post outside Farah, said angrily. “People here hate the Iranian
flag. They would burn it.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Iran
has conducted an intensifying covert intervention, much of which is only now
coming to light. It is providing local Taliban insurgents with weapons, money
and training. It has offered Taliban commanders sanctuary and fuel for their
trucks. It has padded Taliban ranks by recruiting among Afghan Sunni refugees
in Iran, according to Afghan and Western officials.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“The
regional politics have changed,” said Mohammed Arif Shah Jehan, a senior
intelligence official who recently took over as the governor of Farah Province.
“The strongest Taliban here are Iranian Taliban.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Iran
and the Taliban — longtime rivals, one Shiite and the other Sunni — would seem
to be unlikely bedfellows.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Iran
nearly went to war with the Taliban when their militias notoriously <span style="mso-field-code: " HYPERLINK \0022http\:\/\/www\.nytimes\.com\/1998\/09\/11\/world\/iran-holds-taliban-responsible-for-9-diplomats-deaths\.html\0022 \\t \0022_blank\0022 ";"><u><span style="color: blue;">killed 11 Iranian diplomats</span></u></span> and an Iranian
government journalist in fighting in 1998.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">After
that, Iran supported the anti-Taliban opposition — and it initially cooperated
with the American intervention in Afghanistan that drove the Taliban from
power.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But
as the NATO mission in Afghanistan expanded, the Iranians quietly began
supporting the Taliban to bleed the Americans and their allies by raising the
cost of the intervention so that they would leave.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Iran
has come to see the Taliban not only as the lesser of its enemies but also as a
useful proxy force. The more recent introduction of <span style="mso-field-code: " HYPERLINK \0022https\:\/\/www\.nytimes\.com\/2017\/06\/07\/world\/middleeast\/iran-parliament-attack-khomeini-mausoleum\.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FIran&action=click&contentCollection=world&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=35&pgtype=collection\0022 \\t \0022_blank\0022 ";"><u><span style="color: blue;">the Islamic State</span></u></span>, which carried out a
terrorist attack on Iran’s parliament this year, into Afghanistan has only
added to the Taliban’s appeal.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In
the empty marble halls of the Iranian Embassy in Kabul, Mohammad Reza Bahrami,
the ambassador, denied that Iran was supporting the Taliban, and emphasized the
more than $400 million Iran has invested to help Afghanistan access ports on
the Persian Gulf.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“We
are responsible,” he said in an interview last year. “A strong accountable
government in Afghanistan has more advantages for strengthening our relations
than anything.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But
Iran’s Foreign Ministry and its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps act as
complementary arms of policy — the first openly sowing economic and cultural
influence, and the second aggressively exerting subversive force behind the
scenes.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Iran
has sent squads of assassins, secretly nurtured spies and infiltrated police
ranks and government departments, especially in western provinces, Afghan
officials say.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Even
NATO’s top commander in Afghanistan at the time, Gen. Sir David Richards of
Britain, discovered that Iran had recruited his interpreter, Cpl. Daniel James,
a British-Iranian citizen. <span style="mso-field-code: " HYPERLINK \0022http\:\/\/news\.bbc\.co\.uk\/2\/hi\/uk_news\/7754981\.stm\0022 \\t \0022_blank\0022 ";"><u><span style="color: blue;">Corporal James was </span></u></span><span style="mso-field-code: " HYPERLINK \0022http\:\/\/news\.bbc\.co\.uk\/2\/hi\/uk_news\/7754981\.stm\0022 \\t \0022_blank\0022 ";"><u><span style="color: blue;">sentenced to 10 years in prison</span></u></span> for
sending coded messages to the Iranian military attaché in Kabul during a tour
of duty in 2006.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">More
recently, Iran has moved so aggressively in bulking up the Taliban insurgency
that American forces rushed to Farah Province a second time in January to stave
off a Taliban attack.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“The
Iranian game is very complicated,” said Javed Kohistani, a military analyst
based in Kabul.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Having
American forces fight long and costly wars that unseated Iran’s primary enemies
has served Tehran’s interests just fine. But by now, the Americans and their
allies have outlasted their usefulness, and Iran is pursuing a strategy of
death by a thousand cuts “to drain them and cost them a lot.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 4;">
<b><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">An Ambitious
Expansion</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
depth of Iran’s ties to the Taliban burst unexpectedly into view last year. An
American drone struck a taxi on a desert road in southwestern Pakistan, killing
the driver and his single customer.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
passenger was none other than the leader of the Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad
Mansour. A wanted terrorist with an American bounty on his head who had been on
the United Nations sanctions list since before 2001, Mullah Mansour was
traveling without guards or weapons, confident and quite at home in Pakistan.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
strike exposed for the second time since the discovery of Osama bin Laden in
the Pakistani hill town of Abbottabad the level of Pakistan’s complicity with
wanted terrorists. It was the first time the United States had conducted a
drone attack in Pakistan’s Baluchistan Province, a longtime sanctuary for the
Taliban but until then off limits for American drones because of Pakistani
protests.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Yet
even more momentous was that Mullah Mansour was returning from a trip to Iran,
where he had been meeting Iranian security officials and, through Iran, with
Russian officials.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Afghan
officials, Western diplomats and security analysts, and a former Taliban
commander familiar with Mullah Mansour’s inner circle confirmed details of the
meetings.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Both
Russia and Iran have acknowledged that they have held meetings with the Taliban
but maintain that they are only for information purposes.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">That
the Taliban leader was personally developing ties with both Iran and Russia
signaled a stunning shift in alliance for the fundamentalist Taliban movement,
which had always been supported by the Sunni powers among the Arab gulf states
and Pakistan.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But
times were changing with the American drawdown in Afghanistan, and Mullah
Mansour had been seeking to diversify his sources of money and weapons since
taking over the Taliban leadership in 2013. He had made 13 trips to Dubai,
United Arab Emirates, and one to Bahrain, his passport showed, but also at least
two visits to Iran.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Set
on expanding the Taliban’s sway in Afghanistan, he was also preparing to
negotiate an end to the war, playing all sides on his terms, according to both
Afghan officials with close knowledge of the Taliban and the former Taliban
commander close to Mullah Mansour’s inner circle.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It
was that ambitious expansionism that probably got him killed, they said.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Mansour
was a shrewd politician and businessman and had a broader ambition to widen his
appeal to other countries,” said Timor Sharan, a former senior analyst of the
International Crisis Group in Afghanistan who has since joined the Afghan
government.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Mullah
Mansour had been tight with the Iranians since his time in the Taliban
government in the 1990s, according to Mr. Kohistani, the military analyst.
Their interests, he and other analysts and Afghan officials say, overlapped in
opium. Afghanistan is the world’s largest source of the drug, and Iran the main
conduit to get it out.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Iran’s
border guards have long fought drug traffickers crossing from Afghanistan, but
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and the Taliban have both benefited from the
illicit trade, exacting dues from traffickers.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
main purpose of Mullah Mansour’s trips to Iran was tactical coordination,
according to Bruce Riedel, a former C.I.A. analyst and fellow at the Brookings
Institution in Washington. At the time, in 2016, the Taliban were gearing up
for offensives across eight Afghan provinces. Farah was seen as particularly
ripe fruit.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Iran
facilitated a meeting between Mullah Mansour and Russian officials, Afghan
officials said, securing funds and weapons from Moscow for the insurgents.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Mullah
Mansour’s cultivation of Iran for weapons was done with the full knowledge of
Pakistan, said the former Taliban commander, who did not want to be identified
since he had recently defected from the Taliban.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“He
convinced the Pakistanis that he wanted to go there and get weapons, but he
convinced the Pakistanis that he would not come under their influence and
accept their orders,” he said.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Pakistan
had also been eager to spread the political and financial burden of supporting
the Taliban and had encouraged the Taliban’s ties with Iran, said Haji Agha
Lalai, a presidential adviser and the deputy governor of Kandahar Province.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">On
his last visit, Mullah Mansour traveled to the Iranian capital, Tehran, to meet
someone very important — possibly Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, said the former Taliban commander, who said he had gleaned the
information from members of Mullah Mansour’s inner circle.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Mullah
Mansour stayed for a week, also meeting with a senior Russian official in the
town of Zahedan, said Mr. Lalai, who spoke with relatives of the Taliban
leader.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">He
was almost certainly negotiating an escalation in Iranian and Russian
assistance before his death, Mr. Lalai and other Afghan officials said,
pointing to the increase in Iranian support for the Taliban during his
leadership and since.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But
the meeting with the Russians was apparently a step too far, Afghan officials say.
His relations with Iran and Russia had expanded to the point that they
threatened Pakistan’s control over the insurgency.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
United States had been aware of Mullah Mansour’s movements, including his
ventures into Iran, for some time before the strike and had been sharing
information with Pakistan, said Seth G. Jones, associate director at the RAND
Corporation. Pakistan had also provided helpful information, he added. “They
were partly supportive of targeting Mansour.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Gen.
John Nicholson, the United States commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan,
said President Barack Obama had approved the strike after Mullah Mansour failed
to join peace talks being organized in Pakistan.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Col.
Ahmad Muslem Hayat, a former Afghan military attaché in London, said he
believed that the American military had been making a point by striking Mullah
Mansour on his return from Iran.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“When
they target people like this, they follow them for months,” he said. “It was
smart to do it to cast suspicions on Iran. They were trying to create a gap
between Iran and the Taliban.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But
if that was the intention, Mr. Lalai said, it has not succeeded, judging by the
way the new Taliban leader, Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada, has picked up his
predecessor’s work.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“I
don’t think the contact is broken,” he said. “Haibatullah is still reaching out
to Iran. They are desperately looking for more money if they want to extend the
fight.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 4;">
<b><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Intrigue in ‘Little
Iran’</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There
is no place in Afghanistan where Iran’s influence is more deeply felt than the
western city of Herat, nearly in sight of the Iranian border.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Two
million Afghans took refuge in Iran during the Soviet invasion in the 1980s.
Three million live and work in Iran today. Herat, sometimes called “Little
Iran,” is their main gateway between the countries.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">People
in Herat speak with Iranian accents. Iranian schools, colleges and bookshops
line the streets. Women wear the head-to-foot black <span style="mso-field-code: " HYPERLINK \0022https\:\/\/www\.nytimes\.com\/2016\/05\/04\/world\/what-in-the-world\/burqa-hijab-abaya-chador\.html?_r=0\0022 \\t \0022_blank\0022 ";"><u><span style="color: blue;">chador</span></u></span> favored in Iran. Shops are full of
Iranian sweets and produce.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But
even as the city is one of Afghanistan’s most decorous and peaceful, an air of
intrigue infuses Herat.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
city is filled with Iranian spies, secret agents and hit squads, local
officials say, and it has been plagued by multiple assassinations and
kidnappings in recent years. The police say Iran is funding militant groups and
criminal gangs. A former mayor says it is sponsoring terrorism.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Iran
is constantly working in the shadows. The goal, Afghan officials say, is to
stoke and tip local power struggles in its favor, whether through bribery,
infiltration or violence.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">One
day in January, Herat’s counterterrorism police deployed undercover officers to
stake out the house of one of their own men. Two strangers on a motorbike
seemed to be spying on the house, so secret agents were sent out to spy on the
spies.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Within
hours, the police had detained the men and blown their cover: They were Iranian
assassins, according to the Afghans. The passenger was armed with two pistols.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Forensics
tests later found that one of the guns had been used in the murder of an
Iranian citizen in Herat 10 months earlier, police officials said.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
two Iranians are still in Afghan custody and have yet to be charged. They have
become a source of contention between Iran and Afghanistan.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Iran
disowned them, pointing to their Afghan identity cards, but Afghan officials
paraded them on television, saying they were carrying false papers and had
admitted to being sent by Iran as a hit squad.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
Afghan police say they have arrested 2,000 people in counterterrorism
operations in Herat over the last three years. Many of them, they say, are
armed insurgents and criminals who reside with their families in Iran and enter
Afghanistan to conduct dozens of attacks on police or government officials.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Iran
is set on undermining the Afghan government and its security forces, and the
entire United States mission, and maintaining leverage over Afghanistan by
making it weak and dependent, Afghan officials say.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“We
caught a terrorist who killed five people with an I.E.D.,” a senior police
officer said, referring to a roadside bomb. “We released a boy who was
kidnapped. We defused an I.E.D. in the city.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Flicking
through photographs on his phone, he pointed to one of a man in a mauve shirt.
“He was convicted of kidnapping five people.” Much of the kidnapping is
criminal, for ransom, but at least some of it is politically motivated, he
added.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
33-year-old, English-speaking Farhad Niayesh, a former mayor of Herat, is even
more blunt, and exasperated. He says the Iranians use their consulate in the
city as a base for propaganda and “devising terrorist activities.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Iran
has an important role in terrorist attacks in Herat,” Mr. Niayesh said. “Three
or four Iranians were captured. They had a plan against government officials
who were not working in their interest.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Members
of Parliament and security officials say Iran bribes local and central
government officials to work for it, offering them 10 to 15 Iranian visas per
week to give to friends and associates. Afghans visit to conduct business,
receive medical care and see family.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
Afghan police have uncovered cases of even deeper infiltration, too. A female
member of the Afghan police service was sentenced to death, accused of being a
secret Iranian agent, after fatally shooting an American trainer in the Kabul
Police Headquarters in 2012.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Our
western neighbor is working very seriously,” said the senior Afghan police
official in Herat who requested anonymity because of the nature of his work. “
We have even found heavy artillery to be used against the city.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Iran
is supporting multiple anti-government militant groups in half a dozen western
provinces, he said. The Afghan police, despite a lack of resources, are working
to dismantle them.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“The
same sort of people are still in the city,” he added. “They are doing their
work, and we are doing our work.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 4;">
<b><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Double-Edged Soft
Power</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Afghans
dream of restoring their landlocked, war-torn country to the rich trading
center it was in days of old, when caravans carried goods along the Silk Road
from China to Europe, and people and ideas traveled along the same route.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">If
Tehran has its way, the modern Silk Road will once again run across Afghanistan’s
western border, and proceed through Iran. At least that is the ambition.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">On
one side of the Afghan border, India has been building a road through
southwestern Afghanistan to allow traders to bypass Pakistan, which has long
restricted the transit of Afghan goods.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Tehran’s
goal is to join that route on the Iranian side of the border with road and rail
links ending at the port of Chabahar on the Persian Gulf.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“We
said that Afghanistan would not be landlocked anymore and we would be at
Afghanistan’s disposal,” said Mr. Bahrami, the Iranian ambassador in Kabul,
stressing that Iran’s contribution to the Afghan road was not stalled even by
its economic difficulties under sanctions.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But
Iran’s economic leverage comes at a price.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Afghan
officials say Iran’s support of the Taliban is aimed in part at disrupting
development projects that might threaten its dominance. The Iranian goal, they
contend, is to keep Afghanistan supplicant.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
biggest competition is for water, and Afghans have every suspicion that Iran is
working to subvert plans in Afghanistan for upstream dams that could threaten
its water supply.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Iran
has raised the issue of the dams in bilateral meetings, and President Hassan
Rouhani recently criticized the projects as damaging to the environment.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">With
the upheaval of 40 years of coups and wars in Afghanistan, large-scale
development plans, like hydroelectric projects, have largely been stalled since
the 1970s. Even after international assistance poured into Afghanistan after
2001, internal and external politics often got in the way.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But
President Ashraf Ghani, determined to generate economic growth, made a priority
of completing the Salma dam in Herat Province, and has ordered work on another
dam at Bakhshabad, to irrigate the vast western province of Farah.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In
Farah, despite the two calamitous Taliban offensives on the provincial capital
in October and January, the Bakhshabad dam is the first thing everyone
mentions.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“We
don’t want help from nongovernmental organizations or from the government,”
said Mohammed Amin, who owns a flourishing vegetable farm, growing cucumbers
and tomatoes under rows of plastic greenhouses. “We in Farah don’t want
anything. Just Bakhshabad.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Afghanistan’s
lack of irrigation makes it impossible to compete with Iranian produce prices,
something Bakhshabad could solve, he said.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
project is still only in the planning stage. But the dam, with its promise of
irrigation and hydroelectricity for a population lacking both, is a powerful
dream — if Iran does not thwart it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“The
most important issue is water,” Mr. Lalai, the presidential adviser, said of
relations with Iran. “Most of our water goes to our neighbors. If we are
prosperous, we might give them less.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 4;">
<b><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Peace or Proxy War?</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
death of Mullah Mansour removed Iran’s crucial link to the Taliban. But it has
also fractured the Taliban, spurring a number of high-level defections and
opening opportunities for others, including Iran, to meddle.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">An
overwhelming majority of Taliban blame Pakistan for Mullah Mansour’s death. The
strike deepened disillusionment with their longtime Pakistani sponsors.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">About
two dozen Taliban commanders, among them senior leaders who had been close to
Mullah Mansour, have since left their former bases in Pakistan.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">They
have moved quietly into southern Afghanistan, settling back in their home
villages, under protection of local Afghan security officials who hope to
encourage a larger shift by insurgents to reconcile with the government.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Those
with family still in Pakistan live under close surveillance and control by
Pakistani intelligence, said the former Taliban commander, who recently
abandoned the fight and moved his family into Afghanistan to escape reprisals.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">He
said he had become increasingly disaffected by Pakistan’s highhanded direction
of the war. “We all know this is Pakistan’s war, not Afghanistan’s war,” he
said. “Pakistan never wanted Afghanistan to be at peace.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
question now: Does Iran?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Citing
the threat from the Islamic State as an excuse, Iran may choose, with Russian
help, to deepen a proxy war in Afghanistan that could undermine an already
struggling unity government.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Or
it could encourage peace, as it did in the first years after 2001, for the sake
of stability on at least one of its borders, prospering with Afghanistan.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">For
now, Iran and Russia have found common cause similar to their partnership in
Syria, senior Afghan officials and others warn.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Emboldened
by their experience in Syria, they seem to be building on their partnership to
hurt America in Afghanistan, cautioned the political analyst Mr. Sharan.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As
American forces draw down in Afghanistan, jockeying for influence over the
Taliban is only intensifying.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Pakistan
is helping the Taliban straightforwardly,” said Mr. Jehan, the former Afghan
intelligence official who is now governor of Farah. “Russia and Iran are
indirectly helping the Taliban. We might come to the point that they interfere
overtly.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“I
think we should not give them this chance,” he added. “Otherwise, Afghanistan
will be given up to the open rivalry of these countries.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
former Afghan foreign minister, Rangin Dadfar Spanta, warned that the country
risked being pulled into the larger struggle between Sunni powers from the
Persian Gulf and Shiite Iran.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Afghanistan
should keep out the rivalry of the regional powers,” he said. “We are
vulnerable.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Some
officials are optimistic that Iran is not an enemy of Afghanistan, but the
outlook is mixed.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“There
is a good level of understanding,” Abdullah Abdullah, the Afghan government’s
chief executive, said of relations with Iran.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“What
we hear is that contacts with the Taliban are to encourage them to pursue peace
rather than military activities,” he said.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Mohammad
Asif Rahimi, the governor of Herat, warned that if Farah had fallen to the
Taliban, the entire western region would have been laid open for the
insurgents.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Iran’s
meddling has now grown to the extent that it puts the whole country at risk of
a Taliban takeover, not just his province, he said.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But
it could have been prevented, in the view of Mr. Sharan.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“The
fact is that America created this void,” he said. “This vacuum encouraged
countries to get involved. The Syria issue gave confidence to Iran and Russia,
and now that confidence is playing out in Afghanistan.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Ruhullah
Khapalwak contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A
version of this article appears in print on August 6, 2017, on Page A1 of the
New York edition with the headline: Iran Flexes in Afghanistan As U.S. Presence
Wanes.</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
zouhairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18243592617841882763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6566641959183651307.post-56640849938689242972018-01-12T18:18:00.001+02:002018-01-28T19:12:49.957+02:00letter to a bureaucrat<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Professor,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is ironic that I receive your end-of-year comments on my
“performance” at the same time that I received a 25-year service thank-you note
from Loyola, with a Seiko watch as present. I thank you and the administration
for the 100-dollar Seiko watch (Amazon's price).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You really think that you’ll “improve” my “performance” by
letting me teach five days a week at 8:00 and by having “colleagues” attend my
courses? You’ve already unfairly increased my load, rejected my promotion, and
froze my salary to an associate professor level. Why not treat people with
dignity, and tell them we don’t want you with us anymore? Why this stupid game
of forcing someone to quit by pushing him to unbearable working conditions? You
call that a “plan”? Let’s think of it as a deathtrap.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You must be thinking that people have no dignity, that they
could be pushed around and humiliated no matter what their core beliefs are.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My core beliefs have been clearly stated since I joined
Loyola 25 years ago in every page that I’ve written for my students and to the
outside world, and in every photograph that I did. I received my tenure in 1998
based on those principles.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I wonder whether Loyola has core beliefs that it is
defending. If a university respects itself it will not appoint a professor on
tenure when he is unable to teach, write, and publish. Moreover, the university
only insults itself when it tells that same professor, a couple of years before
retirement, that you cannot teach, write, and publish, and your colleagues will
teach you. A university must be clueless when it tells a professor right before
retirement that we’ll teach you how to teach, and that your students will tell
you how to teach, and whether you teach well. Have you thought of grade
inflation before you get me into one of your sinister “plans”? Maybe this
professor has become the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">objet petit a</i>
of the university, or its dark consciousness. You’ll have to convince a judge
in a court of law that, <i>mutatis mutandis,</i> you’ve kept a professor for 25 years in service “in
spite” of poor performance. Or maybe <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">because</i>
of it? Maybe the judge will tell you that it must be the
university’s performance that has been going downhill! The Wall Street Journal
had us ranked at 194 in 2017. We’ve <i>always</i> been low, but not <i>that</i> low!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The department must have a copy of every syllabus I taught
since 1992. Read them and let me know if my teaching has degraded. Samples of
those syllabi are posted on my private website and are available for the world at
large. I do not usually receive from readers comments on “incompetence,” but
more of the kind, I’m surprised you can do all this in a university like that!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If I cannot “do all this” anymore it’s because the working
conditions at Loyola have degraded, at least since 2013. It has become
difficult to even get the minimum required enrollment of 12 for most of those
syllabi. Out of the five yearly courses, four are core, and the core is not a
core anymore—more like a Persian bazaar with a hodgepodge of incompatible
courses. Even a bazaar has more coherence, personality, and decency than
anything we call core at Loyola. We’ve never had the luxury conditions of our
friends in Hyde Park, but at least the room was open for experimentation. We’re
now into a sinister machinery called the Core—with a capital C! I’m sure Loyola
is making more pennies, and the WSJ will have us lower in 2018!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I find it wicked that you’re trying to “improve” my
performance by assigning me five times a week at 8:00—when I expressly told you
and David that I cannot teach that early, because never in 25 years did I teach
that early, and because I work late at night and suffer from certain health
conditions, which is not unusual at my age.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With the Syrian wars, I am under lots of pressure. I want to
produce a book that matches the gravity of the conflict. Thank you for worrying
about my Regenstein hours, but I need something more than your prayers: a good
night sleep, the ability to work and concentrate, and days where I stay at home to write.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Rather than give me lessons of “ethics,” I want you to
question your ethical line, assuming you have one: Are the 8:00am assignments
really there to “improve” my teaching, or are they an overt attempt to make my
working conditions unbearable? Is there any consciousness left in you?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So let’s come to business, which is what Loyola likes doing most, albeit clumsily.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I cannot accept any 8:00am assignments. You can do whatever
you want with the two h104 sections, but I won’t be able to teach them myself. Let’s
not waste time on this. Unless I’m brought back to the fall MWF 2017 schedule, I
will only attend the course on the modern middle east in fall 2018.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I only accept my students to attend my courses, and will not approve anyone else attending, certainly not Stasi "agents" planted by the department to write dubious spying "reports." Let them work on improving their own courses. My syllabi are public on my personal website, and
anyone can comment. Syllabi are too important to be disparaged by the macabre reclusiveness of academics.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My conditions are final and nonnegotiable. You can do
whatever you want with me—that’s the sinister aspect of clueless
bureaucracies—but you won’t be able to harm my dignity.</div>
</div>
zouhairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18243592617841882763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6566641959183651307.post-63233332736316424712017-08-29T21:15:00.000+03:002017-08-29T21:15:32.797+03:00sharīʿa scripts<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Brink Messick’s long-awaited <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sharīʿa Scripts</i> is finally out at Columbia University Press:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/sharia-scripts/9780231178747">https://cup.columbia.edu/book/sharia-scripts/9780231178747</a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Multi-century approaches of the sharīʿa have regrettably
transformed law into a banal history of ideas without much connection to
practice. Messick’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sharīʿa Scripts</i>
takes the sharīʿa right from the economy of the local, that of central Yemen,
and places research at a micro level. Historical anthropology makes possible
the tracing of genealogical lines of power relations, and the depiction of
narratives and discourses in relation to local practices. This book, which
takes the logic of texts and their practices to new heights, stands out as a
masterful contribution to sharīʿa studies worldwide.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Brink Messick’s book-manuscript on sharia discourses in
modern Yemen comes as a welcome change to a literature predominated by studies
of long durations of “Islamic law” and the sharia. Messick’s main contention
that the sharia is only meaningful as a “local enterprise” (212) in the space
and time of a particular territory and political economy is a major endeavor to
understand the sharia in all its concreteness as a discursive reality within a
régime of truth. Thanks to Columbia University Press for publishing the
manuscript in its integrity, without major cuts or changes. This is a much
needed book that will open sharia studies to new horizons, and would serve as
reference for scholars and students. Even though Messick’s preoccupation
centers on “legal” practices and discourses, the book could nevertheless serve
as a template for an understanding of Islamicate societies in terms of micro-discursive
genealogies of power and régimes of truth.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For years I have been using Messick’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Calligraphic State</i> in my seminars as a must-read reference to
understand how sharia texts in all their diversity are constructed in a space
and time of competing discourses—Bakhtin’s chronotope model of a space-time
configuration of competing pretenders. Messick’s present book provides an even
more refined optic for reading texts as x-rays of the power-relations in the
archival layers of historical formations to which they belong. This new optic of
reading texts in their space and time dimensions demands refined
micro-hermeneutical techniques for the power relations to come fully to light,
as neither space nor time as categories of knowledge are privileged, since they
are utterly interdependent.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Most studies of Islamic law take as their point of departure
the postulate that the sharia binds together fifteen centuries of rules and
regulations for the societies that are governed under such precepts. In this
multi-century approach what is favored, besides the overall coherence of the
enterprise of the fiqh (the interpretations of the sharia, which are
distributed into a multitude of madhāhib, or law schools), is discourse over
practice, or theory over the contingencies of the terrains that are governed by
sharia law. Such approaches, which predominate the research in Arab and
Islamicate societies and in the West as well, leave us with all kinds of
problems and unsolved issues. First of all, they assume that our understanding
of sharia law is limited to (or predominated by) the doctrinal level, that is,
the discourses that are generated in the libraries of the fiqh manuals across
centuries, which in their totality have a level of coherence that cannot be
achieved in practice. Second of all, the archival material, whenever available
(in particular for the Ottoman centuries), is supposed to be an application of
the grand theory as generated by the various madhāhib. There is thus undeniably
a “precedence” of the doctrinal over the archival, in the same way that there
is a “precedence” of the written text over the oral, or what is said over the
seen.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Brink Messick’s book on Yemen in its pre-Republican period
comes as a much needed enterprise that challenges the precedence of the
doctrinal over the archival, or the library of the fiqh over the archive, or
the universal concept over the regional. This is a rare and sophisticated
endeavor which points at how much work and patience are needed once we move from
the macro to the micro-historical in all its textual complexities (322).
Messick has already outlined his method in his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Calligraphic State,</i> published in 1993, and if the present
manuscript on sharia scripts in Yemen took so much time to materialize it is
because micro analysis is more demanding in its execution than anything that
the multi-century approach would dare to accomplish.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To begin with, Messick operates within a broad division that
places the fiqh manuals in a “library” framework, which stands on its own in
the face of the various “archival” materials. The latter are comprised for the
most part of the texts produced by the sharia courts and what the parties in
conflict or in a notarial act keep in private in the sanctity of their own
homes as evidence that a transaction has been accomplished. Such documents
therefore “register” the contractual act that the parties must attend to.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
However, Messick is not satisfied with such broad division
of “library” and “archive” on its own. Following Mikhail Bakhtin he
conceptualizes three levels of textual practices (or discursive practices).
There is one that is “primary” and which consists of all those document-texts
that are kept in the “privacy” of their holders, followed by the “secondary”
material of the sharia courts and other “public” instances, and, finally, the
“tertiary” level (sphere) of the fiqh manuals in their various genres (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tafsīr, shurūṭ,</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fatāwa</i>). Those various levels are obviously not separate, they are
mutually interdependent, and rely on each other’s existence for their overall
organization. Thus, the “library” is the “tertiary” sphere following Bakhtin’s
classification, while the “archive” is formed by the “primary” and “secondary”
texts, or the “private” and “public,” following a modern civil-law
classification. There is no “primacy,” however, of one level over the other.
Thus, if the fiqh happens to be the “tertiary” textual discursive level (312),
the implication here is that it does not necessarily feeds itself on the
practices of the courts, nor are the courts obligated to use the “upper”
doctrinal corpus as their framework of reference; what they in fact do in most
instances is allude to the doctrinal works rather than cite them directly, even
though this possibility is, of course, not to be excluded. For example, when it
comes to the practice of writing fatwas, which is commonly assumed to be the
most “practical” aspect of sharia law, “there is no such direct connection
between local fatwā-giving and court processes” (159). Yet, the fatwas are
somehow “needed,” a need that remains elusive at best, particularly in
pre-Republican imamic Yemen where the presence of an interpreting imam roots
the fatwa in a régime of truth—and provides it with a much needed legitimacy—though
of a much higher symbolic authority than that of the mufti in Sunni Islam.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Because in the interplay between writing and the oral and
aural, there is no primacy or formal hierarchy (hence an absence of
logocentrism which would have pleased Jacques Derrida), “documentary evidence
does not stand by itself” (134). Presenting a document as evidence is a complex
program of “inscribed writing” (144), which goes through the various stages of
dictation (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">imlāʾ</i>), witnessing, oral
reading, prior to creating an authoritative form of oral and aural transmission
(130). For instance, dictation involves on its own, first, a retention of the
dictated text in memory, and, second, the inscription of a transformed version
in writing, both of which constitute a form of “knowledge.” What is therefore
at stake in oral reading and dictation is memory, the material trace, and
expression (133). I look at the latter as various topoi of practice, which
bypass the rigidity of formal hierarchies, and which make the analysis of
discourse possible. The traditional macro studies of the fiqh corpuses, which tend
to bracket practice (which by definition operates at a micro level in relation
to a territory and political economy), are unable to analyze the fiqh texts as
discourses—the latter would eo ipso assume their operation only in relation to
certain practices.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We thus have a multitude of juxtaposed texts and archival
formats operating at different discursive levels with no primacy as such, which
makes Bakhtin’s classification of primary, secondary, and tertiary, which in
this instance translates as notarial documents, courts processes, and fiqh
doctrinal corpus, a bit problematic, even though it serves at delineating
discursive series that could be viewed as autonomous in their own right. What
in effect Messick is attempting is a direct immersion in practice, without the
need to make false delineations like theory versus practice, or the doctrinal
versus the court practices. For example, when in Chapter 10 contracts are
examined, the question of contact-law versus contract is not portrayed as operating
within a formal hierarchy, say, that a contract drafted in court must obey
clauses of contract-law. The reason for this absence of a formal hierarchy is
that once we establish practice—hence discursive practices—as our main entry
into the system, the traditional hierarchies, which generations of scholars
have been operating with, receive a new meaning, if at all. We may also not
need them at all. For example, when it comes to contracts and the laws derived
from the fiqh, Messick avoids the rigid dualism and operates instead in terms
of composition, modeling, and models (340). Practice here means “understanding
the textual properties” (299) of a text which could be a document emanating
from a sharia court, a Zaydī fiqh manual, or an official bureaucratic document.
Moreover, this approach has to account for evidential texts that could be
written or spoken. What is crucial here, when it comes to the written and
spoken, is, again, there is no primacy of one over the other. The same could be
said about the spoken and the seen: the say is not to see, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">parler n’est pas voir,</i> as Foucault would say, following Maurice
Blanchot.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By taking practices and their discourses as his entry point,
Messick is able to extract from the various discursive layers under analysis themes
(or topoi) that may not have been apparent at face value. Of particular
importance in this regard is the theme of custom (understood as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ʿāda</i> or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ʿurf</i>), which traditionally receives the treatment of an “outside”
to written law, that is to say, how much of the latter has been “affected” by,
or acknowledged as, custom or customary law? What kind of margin does written
law tolerate within its corpus as far as custom is concerned? Messick’s
approach in contrast looks at the place of custom “not outside, but inside such
textual formation” (240), which implies an attentiveness to the “internal
duration to the act” of drafting documents. To elaborate, in the grand division
between the abstract non-historical “model” texts which serve as ready-made templates,
on the one hand, and the historical documents which have been drafted by
notaries, judges and their scribes on the other, it is indeed custom that plays
on that internal duration to the act of writing (which in turn is an outcome of
the oral and aural); hence it is custom that configures the historicity of a
document (361).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The immersion into practice is demanding, first of all
because it operates primarily and makes sense at a micro-level, and second,
because a genealogy of texts is necessary. In other words, unlike the
multi-century-macro approach which is historicist, in the sense that it is a
general history of ideas that sees each text the product of its own period
(even though the roots to this period in relation to practice remains by and
large unexplored), genealogy in contrast goes further than that, as it looks at
texts as operating in clusters. In the case of the Zaydī fiqh, for example, the
late fourteenth-century <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Book of Flowers</i>
was still operative in the pre-Republican period, thanks in part to the
interpretations and commentaries in the 1930s and 1940s, of what became <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Gilded Crown,</i> with the
nineteenth-century interlude of the predominantly critical work of the “Sunni”
Shawkānī in between the original <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">matn</i>
text (which represented the condensation of the views of the five early imams)
and the subsequent <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tafsīr</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sharḥ.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What is crucial here is the awareness that a
twentieth-century work like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Gilded
Crown</i> is itself a work of previous centuries—a product of archeological
layers under different historical formations. The other side of genealogy is an
attention to the author–writer paradigm, which Messick borrows from Foucault.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
14–15: Where library discourse
embodied a set of culturally and historically specific “<span style="background: lime; mso-highlight: lime;">author-functions</span>,” archival discourse, in
contrast, comprised distinct <span style="background: lime; mso-highlight: lime;">writer-functions</span>.
I adopt the plural both for Foucault’s well-known term and for my proposed
archival counterpart to account for the distinct genres that existed within
both the library and the archive. Following Foucault, both conceptions should
be understood as defining functions that provide a basis for what he termed “<span style="background: lime; mso-highlight: lime;">a typology of discourse</span>.” In
this discursive sense, but in different genres, it was possible for the same
individual to be both an author and a writer.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I want to question the author-function which is attributed
to the library discourse (the fiqh doctrinal manuals). The assumption here is that
both library and archive are practices and discourses (or discursive
practices): should we then limit the archive to a writer-function, while the
library is endowed with the “privilege” of the author?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are all kinds of writing roles in those texts, the
library and archival material: that of author, writer, editor, narrator,
signatory, but they are not all present in one text. For example, a contract
has a guarantor, but not an author; a letter has a signatory, but not
necessarily an author. But a letter drafted by a Zaydī imam has an author,
because it could be inscribed within a broader corpus, hence could be
disseminated and quoted on the basis of its authorship, due to the status that
this particular imam enjoys within the community of scholars. The idea here is
that for a text to have an author it must be inscribed within a broader corpus,
say, the œuvre of a particular author as the totality of his works. A court
verdict signed and sealed by a judge has a writer but does not have an author
on the basis that the judge cannot attach his text to a broader “work” of his
own making. In Islamic courts verdicts do not serve as precedent as they do in
common law, hence a decision by a judge remains localized without authorship. Doctrinal
texts in contrast have that authorial quality, because each work is attributed
to an author who is more than the writer of the text. Moreover, besides being
attached to an author, say, a Zaydī imam, a fiqh manual is part of a larger
ensemble of texts belonging to tradition. Messick is right when he traces the
genealogy of the “texts that matter” in pre-Republican Yemen to their
fourteenth- and nineteenth-century roots: it is such genealogy that makes both
discourse and authorship possible. What is probably unique about this kind of
authorship where the “school” (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">madhhab</i>)
is predominant is the system of cross-referencing among the “authorities” of
the madhhab which spans across many centuries. In the scientific and literary
European genealogies analyzed by Foucault, the discovery of common discursive
layers is much harder, due primarily to an absence of direct cross-referencing.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I find a limit to this argument, in particular when it comes
to the “library” of doctrinal texts. Not that there is anything wrong with
attaching authors to such texts, but I question whether the fiqh manuals are
intended to be referred to specific authors in the first place. Let us recall
the tripartite division which is borrowed from Bakhtin, where “primary” and
“secondary” coincide with the archival materials used by individuals and courts
alike. Besides that such “archival” material is timely, it operates only by
attaching names, signatures, and seals to a document. Moreover, the concerned
parties and their witnesses are the names that matter, not the writer of the
document. The library texts—the tertiary level—share an a-temporality which
dissociates the text from its nominal writer-author.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
15: <span style="color: red;">Such
usage separates a named author or writer from a discursive function</span>,
historical agency from textual form. For library texts,
this is to distinguish attributions to (and also in-text citations of) specific
authors from the patterned avoidance of the proper name. By the same token, the
possibility of dating a book or an opinion is distinct from the a-temporal
nature of its textual discourse. Among archival texts, in contrast, we enter a
realm defined by identified handwriting and the signed name of the court or
notarial writer and, in certain periods, a personal seal. Yet <span style="background: lime; mso-highlight: lime;">the discourse of the proper name
that was characteristic of an archival text</span> pertained not to such
third-party secretaries or notaries, who in fact wrote and signed, but rather
to the principal parties, the individuals who entered litigation or a
contractual undertaking but who (usually) did not sign the resulting
documentation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What I find of value in this claim is the “separation”
between author and discourse for the library doctrinal texts, but we need to
find out why this is the case. The other matter of contention is whether
between library and archive there is another “separation” regarding the proper
name attached to the text.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Messick follows a close reading of Foucault on the notion of
the author, but he misses a distinction that could be useful between statement
(<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">énoncé</i>) and sentence (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">phrase</i>). A text is obviously composed of
sentences which refer explicitly or implicitly to a grammatical “I,” even if
the text is drafted in a third-person mode. This “I” which stands on behalf of
the writer, and could as well refer to an author, is what brings the text
together. When a series of texts are juxtaposed together as belonging to a
school of thought or way of thinking it is by virtue of their homogeneous
nature. Because anyone can attach the grammatical “I” to a sentence, the
claimed authorship is an external variable.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Foucault’s main contention is that statements are different
in this regard. First of all, statements are rare because they straddle between
several heterogeneous discursive layers. Statements make discourse possible
precisely because they are based on intrinsic variables. If the phrase derives
from a subject of enunciation (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sujet
d’énonciation</i>), the subject that pronounces it, the statement by contrast
does not derive from its subject: it is indeed the place of the subject that
derives from the statement (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">le sujet de
l’énoncé</i>). The place of the subject is in turn an anonymous “we” (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">le “on” anonyme</i>). In sum, we need to
distinguish between a subject of enunciation for sentences and phrases, and a subject
of the statement, which tends to be anonymous.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Which brings us back to the doctrinal fiqh manuals. There is
a common perception that the fiqh manuals are only nominally authored, since
they represent “compilations” (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tajmīʿ</i>)
of well-known opinions from previous generations of scholars. Each generation
compiles and re-arranges according to the relevant criteria of the period: one
has to be faithful to the tradition of the madhhab, but at the same time one
has to adapt to new situations, as new problems arise which would trigger the
hermeneutical circle. The author-faqīh becomes therefore a “compiler” who
re-interprets and re-organizes the old texts, which become “his” own, as well
as belonging to the madhhab, based on the criteria needed for his period. The
notion of “compilation” is at times looked upon condescendingly, as if it is
uncreative, lacks authorship, leading to an infernal repetition of the same, hence
to a disconnect with the social and economic reality of the time. This is
particularly true, we are told, of the Ottoman period, as researchers typically
shun the doctrinal manuals in favor of the more “real” sharia courts and other
bureaucratic documents.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Messick’s book is a direct response to such condescending
views: all discursive levels have realities of their own, and those realities
overlap and share languages and grammars, albeit they play different roles.
However, in light of the above proposals, we can reframe our take on the
various discursive levels a bit differently. Compilations do not in their
essence refer to an author or a subject of enunciation (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sujet d’énonciation</i>), but to a position of the subject (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sujet de l’énoncé</i>). They are therefore,
together with the primary and secondary levels, embedded into an archive within
a particular historical formation. The latter is inscribed within a diagram of
power-relations which produces the institutional apparatuses of knowledge.
Strictly speaking, therefore, I would argue that the primary, secondary, and
tertiary discursive levels, in their institutionalized organization between
library and archive, are all “archival,” whereby the “archive” is inscribed
with stratified historical formations. They are all discursive practices with
nominal authors and a collective “we” as reference.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Which brings me to my last point, regarding the presence (or
lack) of a third-party adjudication in the Zaydī system and in the fiqh at
large. By this I mean the presence of a universal process that would
accommodate <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">any</i> person as member of
the community (or “nation”) irrespective of religion, rank, and status. When
the delivery of truth by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">any</i> member
of the community is accepted for what it is, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">seeing</i> becomes of primordial importance in the process of
verification and validation of witnessing. That’s the kind of transition that
Yemen went through—a process that is by far from over—when the Zaydī imamate,
as a polity, was over in 1962 and the country became a civil-law republic. In a
civil-law political economy, where the reference to imamic traditions is not
anymore the norm, labor becomes finite, as its reference is a competitive
market economy where the traditional notions of equity and fairness are not
normative, at least not predominantly so. The modes of truth that produce
knowledge are based on a process of verification where the market economy
serves a reference.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Even though Messick’s book is mostly devoted to
pre-Republican Yemen, it nonetheless prepares us well for the transition that
Yemen has been going through since the Zaydī imamate was lost. To wit, a hidden
key notion in Messick’s analysis is the concept of governmentality, or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">gouvernementalité,</i> understood as the
“mindset” (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mentalité</i>) of “government”—not
government in the strict Anglo–American sense of the term, but as the
management of relations of truth and verification, and the power relations that
they generate in the space of a political economy. Under the Zaydī imamate, and
in contrast to the land tenure systems of the Ottomans, land was mostly private
(<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">milk</i>), and the document of
sale-purchase, known as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">baṣīra,</i> was
predominant (345). The wager here is to follow up such contracts under civil
law when the régimes of truth and governmentality are altered. Maybe this could
be the topic for another book which is already implied in this one.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Zouhair Ghazzal</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Professor of history and social sciences</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Loyola University, Chicago</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="mailto:zghazza@luc.edu">zghazza@luc.edu</a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
zouhairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18243592617841882763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6566641959183651307.post-8221518290579870232016-11-13T02:28:00.000+02:002016-11-13T02:28:28.965+02:00from sykes-picot to civil war<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<u><span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">From Sykes–Picot
to civil war: the delusions of American power</span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">There are various
ways of doing a history of the present, or a history that follows the tracks of
a theme of relevance to the present. In the short time that I have I want to
trace the genealogy/archeology of the theme of the middle eastern nation-state,
as it has emerged in the space of a century in US domestic and foreign policy
since the dismemberment/demise of the Ottoman Empire, up to the present. I want
to argue that the nation-state has become <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the</i>
forgotten concept, having been replaced by national security and the constant
threat of terrorism and the fear of terrorist groups in particular in Islamic societies.
Defeating so-called terrorist groups has given precedence over concerns as to
what stands as a modern nation-state in those disturbing and disturbed times.
But what if defeating jihadic groups is the biggest fallacy of all times? I
want to narrow down that line of reasoning to specifically presidential
campaigns in particular in the aftermath of September 11.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">The failure of the
middle eastern nation-state and the rise of jihadic groups represent a case of
historical and material restrictions on what is said and in their relations
with the exercise of power, which goes beyond the classical divisions of left
versus right, democrat versus republican. I am interested in what is said, how
what is said is framed within a discursive reality at a specific historical
juncture. We want to examine <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">things that
are said,</i> how they were said, and the occasion that made such statements
possible. There were rules or “regularities” in what is said at a given time
and place, and that these rules govern not just the kind of things that are
talked about, but also the roles and positions of those talking about them.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">This summer we’ve
celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Sykes–Picot agreement which divided
what is now the East of Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan between
British and French zones of influence, versus zones of direct control, colored
on the map as zones A and B respectively. Sykes–Picot is usually read in terms
of the borders that were imposed, not so much the borders of the 1916
agreement, but the actual borders of the 1920s, which turned out very different
from those anticipated barely a decade earlier. There has been so much in the
century since Sykes–Picot on the “fairness” of the borders, and whether they
made sense, or whether they were justified at all.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">What I want to
propose in my brief intervention is that it is not so much how the borders were
mapped, but to question the genealogy of the nation-state. I want to argue that
various administrations, in particular in the aftermath of WWII, have erred
from placing a priority on the nation-state, and the difficulty of such requirement.
What has replaced the nation-state are concerns regarding security and US or
NATO interests, where the fight against terrorist jihadic groups took
precedence.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">The American
response to Sykes–Picot came rather rapidly within the framework of the
King–Crane Commission in 1919, in the aftermath of WWI and the Paris Versailles
peace conference attended by Woodrow Wilson.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">In his
fourteen-point address to Congress in January 1918 Wilson promoted
self-determination. The twelfth point concerned the Ottoman Empire:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Turkish portions
of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the
other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an
undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of
autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a
free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international
guarantees.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What matters in such
statement, notwithstanding “secure sovereignty,” is the concept of “nationality.”
What does this mean?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When it comes to
“Syria” and the “Syrian people” the King–Crane Commission spoke of a Mandatory
Administration that would take hold of the newly formed territory for the sake
of a “democratic state,” and “the development of a sound national spirit.” And
the text adds: “This systematic cultivation of national spirit is particularly
required in a country like Syria, which has only recently come to
self-consciousness.” Self-consciousness is what would ultimately lead to
self-government (p. 21 in The Israel–Arab Reader, fifth edition).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What we can retain
thus far from the awareness of the Commission apropos the uniqueness of a
historical situation of the formation of “nationalisms” that have only recently
come to self-consciousness is that the newly formed nation-states are fragile
and always in danger. The process of their coming into being could be aborted
for the simple reason that they are “imagined communities,” as Benedict
Anderson would say, which implies the formation of a vernacular culture in
support of nationalism.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What happened in the
decades following the demise of the Ottoman Empire and the end of colonial rule
is the establishment of nation-states that for the most part are autocratic at
best. How to deal with troubled nation-states—or the existence of states with
“nations” divided among many ethnic lines and loyalties—is what has preoccupied
US foreign policy since WWII and without much success. The problem has only
gotten worse with “states” and “nations” falling apart since the Arab revolts
in 2011–12. Not only the nation-state has become an impossibility, but the
hyphen between “nation” and “state” seems irreversibly lost. The situation is
new, but also as old as the problems that have emerged with the fall of the
Ottomans and colonialism.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There are several
chapters that are worth exploring in this regard, beginning with Israel’s
declaration of independence in May 1948; the Free Officers’ revolution in Egypt
in 1952; the overthrow of Moṣaddegh in 1953; the nationalization of the Suez
canal and the tripartite war against Egypt in 1956; the Iranian revolution and
the hostage crisis at the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979–1980. One could add
other episodes, in particular the coming of the Baath in Syria and Iraq in
1963.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In the 1950s as the
United Kingdom was reluctantly acknowledging the end of empire, the US was
filling the vacuum in the Middle East. But while the British had an 80,000-man
garrison in Suez, the American method of influence was no troops on the ground.
More importantly, the US supported any ruler that could bring order at home,
leaders as diverse as the Shah of Iran, Nasser, Saddam Hussein, or Syria’s
Asad. There was that attitude of accommodating oneself to such leaders, as long
as they were not overtly hostile to US interests, in an era when terrorism was
not there yet. There was no concern at the time, nor is there any concern in
the present, as to what kind of nation-state was in the process of formation.
As the concept of Realpolitik became fashionable in the 1970s, dictatorships
could be “authorized” as long as they kept order and civil peace inside. Nor
was the existence of the Israeli “model” of nation-state, which stood
side-by-side to other hostile state formations, scrutinized in terms of its
originally western political roots: it was rather a fait accompli that could be
useful for the stability of the region. The US became distracted by the issue
of the “fairness” and legitimacy of Israeli existence, and the parallel issue
of Palestinian rights, both of which were projections from neighboring Arab
states. With the stability of the region perceived in relation to “full”
Palestinian rights for an autonomous state, if not the right of full return,
the US took it for granted that a stable peace means overall stability.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But now, with the
excitement of the Arab Spring behind us, such concerns seem not only out of
hand, but we’re back to where we had originated with the fall of the Ottomans,
namely, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">question</i> of the
nation-state. It is impossible to understand the “success” of the Israeli state
since its inception without looking at how the ideology of “Jewish labor” was
formulated in the 1880s and later at the turn of the century.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In the last century,
since Sykes–Picot and the King–Crane Commission, we can detect the following
discursive formations in US foreign policy towards the middle east. I
understand discursive formation in relation of what things could be stated
under specific circumstances. Discourse is a space that organizes language at a
historical juncture. It tells us how things are linguistically structured, and
how such structures have been historically shifting.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In US middle eastern
foreign policy several topoi have emerged since WWI:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Self-determination
and the emerging nationalisms have become prominent with the dismemberment and
demise of the Ottomans. The coming of nationalisms assumes autonomous
nationhood and statehood, jointly understood as the formation of an autonomous
nation-state. Autonomous in the aftermath of WWI means that the nascent
nation-state should be free of western (or other) “tutelage” or colonialism or
imperialism. The King–Crane Commission for one forcefully argued that in the
transition from Ottoman rule to autonomous nationalism there should be a
Mandate and a Mandatory power that would ease the process of self-determination
(which should be taken in relation to an international right of national
existence). What remains uncertain was the concept of “nationalism,” used in
the context of “Syria” in its plurality as “nationalisms,” without any further
elaboration as to what stands as “nationalism” in a context of multiple
ethno–nationalisms, as we refer to them today. Should the Kurds, Armenians,
Christians, Druze, Alawis, etc., be considered different brands of
“nationalisms” that should “melt” into some kind of political “Syrian” entity?
[Careful examination of the text of the King–Crane Commission versus Arab
texts: the Syrian delegation in Paris.] Self-determination is the discourse
espoused by Woodrow Wilson and his administration: it simply states the
melting-pot of empires has ceased to exist and that nationhood has emerged all
over the world and is not anymore the privilege of the rich and the powerful.
Beyond that, self-determination is remarkably deficient at elaborating on
transitions—from empire to nation-state—and even more so on the melting of
“nationalisms”—or ethno-nationalisms—into one coherent nation-state. This was a
question that was a left-over, and over which British and French had to
struggle with in their respective Mandates over Iraq, Palestine, Transjordan,
Syria, and Lebanon.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">That was the kind of
discourse maintained by the US until WWII. By that time, the above countries
had gained their independence, and new problems began to emerge. When the
Truman administration recognized the state of Israel in 1948, as the former
Soviet Union did, US foreign-policy discourse was still operating under the
banner of self-determination, but with a twist: the western and eastern Jews
which constituted the bulk of the population of the newly formed Jewish state
were not for the most part an outcome of the demise of the Ottoman political
framework. As they “competed” for nationhood with the “native” “Palestinians,”
they were able to formulate their own Jewish nation-state. With the Truman
administration, therefore, the novelty consisted at giving “privileges” to a
particular nation-state: one that was to be democratic and prosperous, and western
friendly. [cf. Balfour declaration]</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The real challenge,
however, was not placed in the Israel’s declaration of independence, nor in the
Israeli–Palestinian–Arab conflict for that matter. What in the Woodrow Wilson
era was aptly labeled “national self-determination” became more of a reality in
the 1950s with post-colonialism and the end of the British empire. Neither
Eisenhower nor his fervently anti-communist secretary of state, John Foster
Dulles, understood this transition from British to American hegemony in
strictly geopolitical terms. However, national self-determination was the
beginning of a long and confusing line of biased politics. It took several
decades, with the Camp David agreements, to finally acknowledge <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">some</i> form of national self-determination
for the Palestinians. The US successfully plotted in 1953 to overthrow the
democratically elected Muhammad Moṣaddegh in Iran who was undermining the
shah’s authority; yet at the same time it saw credibility in Nasser’s emerging
pan-Arab nationalism.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The roots of America’s
Mideast delusion are not so much in having taken sides by recognizing the
existence of Israel under the Truman administration, but at an inability to see
what the likes of Nasser were fermenting across the region. Nasser’s politics
consisted at capitalizing on the logic of civil war in countries that were weak
on the rule of law and civil society, and where social networks, which were kin
based, were meant to protect “society” from an obtrusive state. It was not the
logic of pan-Arabism that Nasser was asserting as norm, but rather a hegemonic
rule where weak states were held hostage to more assertive ones. In the
ill-fated Union with Syria, for example, what became the “northern province”
under the Union saw its political and military infrastructures undermined in
favor of the “southern Egyptian province.” By bargaining on civil war and weak
states, Nasser created the practice of ruling by weakening the adversary. The
real opponent wasn’t so much the state of Israel as the other Arab states, in
their failed attempts to create normative post-Ottoman and post-colonial
polities.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">At first sight, it
seems incomprehensible that the US would undermine the authority of Moṣaddegh
in Iran, while favoring Nasser as a hero of self-determination. The truth
dawned—but slowly. When Nasser executed his master stroke, nationalizing the
Suez Canal in July 1956—Egypt’s declaration of independence—Britain demanded
that Washington join it and France in what became the tripartite Suez war
against Egypt. Eisenhower demurred, thinking that he would alienate Arab public
“street” opinion, only to realize that Nasser was the big beneficiary of the
war, and began purchasing weapons from the Russians.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Nasser episode,
his so-called pan-Arabism, nationalism, and self-determination, the fiasco of
the Suez war, not to mention the “restitution” of the shah’s authority over
that of Moṣaddegh, would in toto point to the imbroglio that American foreign
policy would find itself into up to presidents Bush and Obama. With nationalism
and self-determination waning in the background, the US would stand with the
“strong man,” even if that implies inconsistent policies.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Other episodes come
to light here: the six-day war; the Iranian revolution; Lebanon’s civil war and
Israel’s intervention in 1982; the Camp–David agreements and Sadat’s
assassination; etc. Perhaps it is too easy to speak of inconsistencies. In all
those chapters (failed or successful) US intervention, whatever its merits or
failures, was done off-hand from a distance. That is the major change with
Afghanistan and Iraq.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I want to explore
such inconsistencies in the chapter on Afghanistan, which is the forgotten
episode of the current presidential election.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u><span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Let us divide US
foreign policy into four periods based on the economic performance of the US.</span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Gentium Plus"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Gentium Plus";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">from Sykes–Picot and King–Krane to WWII
and the recognition of the state of Israel in 1948.</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Gentium Plus"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Gentium Plus";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">from WWII to 1973 and the Yom Kippur war.
This is the 30-year period which for the US and Europe and probably the world
at large has witnessed the ultimate economic prosperity fuelled by rebuilding
economies after the massive war destruction. The changes were infrastructural
due to a redirecting to the war industries to civilian ones.</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Gentium Plus"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Gentium Plus";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">from 1973 and the Iranian revolution up to
9/11.</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Gentium Plus"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Gentium Plus";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">from 9/11 and the occupation of Afghanistan
and Iraq, the Arab uprisings, and the coming of the Islamic State in Iraq and
Syria.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">What are the
advantages of a periodization that looks at US foreign policy in the middle
east (and the world at large) in relation to US internal growth (development)
and economic performance?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">The first period
witnessed a collapse of the financial and monetary system and the recession of
the 1930s which saw the coming of the new-deal. It was WWII that finally turned
the economy over. This was the aftermath of Sykes–Picot, when British and
French created the borders of the middle east and the emerging economies of the
nation-states. Like all emerging economies it was a period of robust growth in
spite of the recession in the US and Europe, which was propelled by
urbanization and the growth of public services. Middle Eastern societies would
remain however by and large overwhelmingly agrarian, with all kind of
industrial plans that will have a hard time to take off. With British and
French colonization, the US had little to propose politically and economically.
The recognition of the state of Israel in 1948 should not be overestimated and
looked upon as ushering a new era in foreign policy. It rather comes as an
attempt to fill out the vacuum left over by the British in the aftermath of
their withdrawal in 1947.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">The second period
is more interesting politically and the most prosperous economically, but it
also marks all the impasses and accusations of American-centrism, racism, and
colonialism that US foreign policy has stepped into. That’s when the US finally
takes over from British and French colonialism and establishes itself as a
world power in the cold war era. Unprecedented productivity growth around the
world made the Golden Age possible. In the 25 years that ended in 1973, the
amount produced in an hour of work roughly doubled in the US and Canada,
tripled in Europe and quintupled in Japan. Unemployment in industrial countries
was unknown.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">It was in this
period of prosperity that confronted middle eastern countries in their
postcolonial experience. Postcolonialism is more than a time frame denoting
national independence, as the national élites were still operating within the
framework of colonialism, of societies that were hostile to the emerging
states, of economies that were subdued to the world order, and of stumbling
industrialization plans. The stability and prosperity of the industrialized
world is faced with turmoil on the eastern Mediterranean and the middle east.
This is the era where the colonial national élites were to be run over by
military dictatorships, beginning with the free officers in Egypt in 1953; Iraq
in 1958; Syria in 1963; Libya in 1969; and the Iran in the aftermath of the
revolution of 1978–79. Not to mention the Yom Kippur in 1973 which marks the
end of three decades of western prosperity. Both the Iranian revolution and Yom
Kippur went “unforeseen” by the CIA and other intelligence agencies.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">The US took side
with the shah of Iran against the democratically elected Moṣaddegh. It then
forced its hand on the shah in 1963 in what became known as the “white
revolution,” whereby the long awaited agrarian reforms meant distributing land
to lower classes and peasants from the small group of large landowners. Such
reforms were already under way since the late 1950s in Egypt, Iraq, and Syria.
The militarization of the régimes in such societies did not seem to have much
troubled the US. Indeed, there are many that the US “encouraged,” if not fully
supported, the first military coup in Syria in 1949; that it saw in Nasser a
populist “national” much better rooted than the defunct monarchy that he
overthrew; that even the pro-British Hashemite monarchy in Iraq did not merit
much praise. What has emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, the first two decades of
American power, is probably not much different from the kind of discourse that
became predominant in Latin America in the same period and later: namely, there
was that submission to right-wing military “populist” dictatorships, on the
basis that they would stop any possible communist threat; maintain a neoliberal
economy; and fully open up to the industrial west. More specifically, in the
case of Arab countries bordering Israel, populist military régimes would also
accept the existence of the Jewish state. Such beliefs, however, would not
stand for a long time. Nasser for one was staunchly anti-communist (even in his
brief tenure on Syria under the Union), but this did not prevent him to buy
arms from the former Soviet bloc and become one of their many allies. From
Nasser to Saddam Hussein the US has learned how to be disillusioned: those were
dictators that were neither popular nor western friendly, nor did they
implement liberal strategies. They were simply good survivors, who locked all
communists and other activists at home, but nevertheless bought all their
weapons from the former Soviet Bloc. Needless to say, it is the collapse of
such order, which the US did not create, but which it de facto accepted, that
sits at the heart of the current uprisings.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">Nasser had duped
Eisenhower. “Nasser proved to be a complete stumbling block,” Eisenhower
confided to his diary as his Arab–Israeli peace efforts failed. “He is
apparently seeking to be acknowledged as the political leader of the Arab world.”
He has concluded “he should just make speeches, all of which breathe defiance
of Israel.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">Herein lies one of
the biggest misplaced fallacies of American politics, namely, the thought,
which comes from Arab leaders and their militarized régimes in the first place,
that the Arab–Palestinian–Israeli problem constitutes the prime conundrum in
middle eastern politics; finding a solution to the “Palestinian state” would
undermine all kinds of hurdles in the Arab world, perhaps bring social welfare
and equity at a larger scale on the long run. By the time the second Bush was
president, and in the wake of 9/11, such “optimism” gave way to something much
more radical. The problem is not the absence of a Palestinian state (its very
existence could pose more problems), nor is it Islam, but nation-building,
failed economies, and the radicalization of Islam for specific purposes.
Nations have to be built from the bottom up, with their social institutions
carefully monitored for the sake of more egalitarian political institutions.
The financing of the new wars, in their military and civil portfolios, is an
offshoot of the transformation of the international financial system in 1971
when overseas military spending forced the US dollar off gold. US Treasury
bonds had become a proxy for gold, which were supplied by the US economy
running a balance-of-payments deficit.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">The 1973 oil crisis
meant more than just gasoline lines and lower thermostats. It shocked the world
economy. But it wasn’t the price of gasoline that brought the long run of
global prosperity to an end. It just diverted attention from a more fundamental
problem: Productivity growth had slowed sharply. The economic crisis of the
industrial world has opened up national frontiers to globalization. The cultured
financial and industrial élites would seek projects beyond their national and
nationalistic borders in favor of capital accumulation worldwide. This
non-commitment at the national level would institute an inside rift between a
populist streak at home and successful international business. Right-wing
movements (some of which are plainly xenophobic) which have become more common
in Europe in the last decade and in the US as well, are hangovers from the
1980s decline. Neither Carter’s pessimism not Reagan’s optimistic supply-side
tax cuts will bring post-war productivity levels. It is such atmosphere of
great depression that the US will live the Iranian debacle, Lebanon’s civil
war, the unpopularity of the Camp David agreements, and, last but not least,
September 11.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">In spite of the
dot.com boom of the 1990s, George W. Bush became president at a time when
neoliberalism was experimenting in various ways to catch up with post-war productivity,
while deregulation, privatization, lower tax rates, balanced budgets and rigid
rules for monetary policy, have become normative for the industrialized nations
and the world at large, imposed by the likes of the IMF and the World Bank as
the sine qua non for international loans and to indebted nations.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">It was in such atmosphere
of strained productivity and growth that president Bush would risk two major
wars abroad. Even though Bush Sr. had already broken the golden rule of a
hands-off approach towards the middle east in the liberation of Kuwait, it was
indeed the younger Bush that will usher a new ground with the full occupation
of two sovereign countries.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u><span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">Obama’s failed
legacy in Afghanistan</span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">With the emergence
of ISIS and the battle of Mosul (and possibly Raqqa) in the foreground, not to
mention the Syrian wars, Afghanistan is hardly mentioned these days—not even in
the presidential campaign. Even “smaller wars” like Yemen and Libya have
eclipsed the American involvement in Afghanistan to the point that what is
going on over there, after over a decade of investment, hardly matters at all.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">The legacy in
Afghanistan, like Obama’s foreign policy record as a whole, is troubled at
best. At points he had the elements of the right approach—more troops, more
reconstruction assistance, and a counterinsurgency strategy—but he never gave
them the time and resources to succeed. <u>Obama came into office rightly
arguing that the war was important but had been sidelined, and promised to set
it aright</u>. Yet Obama’s choices since 2009 reflect a more conflicted stance,
and it is not clear he ever settled on a coherent strategy. He deployed more
troops than needed for a narrow counterterrorism operation, but not enough for
a broader counterinsurgency campaign. He initially increased reconstruction
funding because he believed, rightly, that effective Afghan governance was an
essential condition for victory, but quickly second-guessed himself and
subsequently reduced civilian aid every year thereafter. Most damagingly, <u>Obama
insisted on the public issuance of a withdrawal deadline for US troops, undermining
his own surge</u>—which eventually became so obvious that he finally reversed
himself. Obama’s belated decision to sustain a small force of some 5,500 troops
in Afghanistan beyond his term in office is likely to keep the Afghan army in
the field and the Taliban from outright victory—but this is at low bar compared
to what Obama once hoped to achieve there.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u><span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">The good war:
2007–09</span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">Before leaving
office president Bush argued in a favor of a report for a more
counterinsurgency effort, including more troops and civilian resources.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">The report found a
receptive audience because Obama had been making the same case from the
earliest days of his campaign. He wrote in Foreign Affairs in 2007, “We must
refocus our efforts on Afghanistan and Pakistan—the central front in our war
against al Qaeda—so that we are confronting terrorists where their roots run
deepest.” In July 2008, in a major speech on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
he rightly noted the situation in Afghanistan as “deteriorating” and
“unacceptable.” He promised, “As president, I will make the fight against al
Qaeda and the Taliban the top priority that it should be. This is a war that we
have to win.” He pledged to deploy at least two additional brigades and spend
an additional $1 billion in civilian assistance every year.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">It is no surprise
therefore than when he took office Obama pledged in March 2009 “to disrupt,
dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda and its safe havens in Pakistan, and to prevent
their return to Pakistan or Afghanistan.” His policy explicitly committed the
US to “promoting a more capable, accountable, and effective government in
Afghanistan,” which required “executing and resourcing an integrated
civilian-military counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.” In light of this,
he ordered 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan, quadrupled the number of US
diplomats and aid workers, and increased civilian assistance by an impressive
$2 billion from 2009 to 2010.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u><span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">The turn: 2009</span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">In summer 2009
violence worsened dramatically, as insurgent attacks increased by a staggering
65 percent compared to the previous summer, and that year 355 US soldiers were
killed in Afghanistan, more than double the previous year. Add to this the
mistrust and disrespect that the Obama administration nurtured towards Afghani
president Hamid Karzai.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">But the event that
had the most dramatic impact on the new Administration’s view of the war was
the initial assessment of the new Commander of the International Security
Assistance Force (ISAF), General Stanley McChrystal, in August 2009. He warned
that the current situation will undermine US credibility and embolden the
insurgents. He called for 80,000 more troops to maximize chances of success; or
40,000, with medium risk. He also developed a third option: deploying just
20,000 more troops and abandoning counterinsurgency in favor of a leaner
counterterrorism mission with high risk.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">McChrystal’s
report, his request for more troops, and the cost of the war appalled the Obama
Administration and triggered a major reassessment. But it is unclear why Obama
reacted the way he did. The crises of 2009 would not have unsettled a more
experienced Administration.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">Obama’s attempt was
only to compromise, which only led to strategic incoherence. First, he ordered
another surge, this time of 30,000 troops, bringing the total to more than <u>100,000
by mid-2010</u>—far more than required for a narrow counterterrorism operation.
Afghanistan, the third-largest military operation since Vietnam, had definitely
become Obama’s war. But Obama deployed far fewer troops than McChrystal
recommended for a counterinsurgency campaign. <u>In contrast to his campaign
rhetoric, Obama spent the rest of his presidency carefully avoiding saying that
the US aimed to “defeat” the Taliban or “win” the war</u>. The aim was narrower
than resourced counterinsurgency or nation building. It wasn’t until May 2014
that Obama finally set a deadline—by the end of 2016—to withdraw all US forces
from Afghanistan. According to an account by Bob Woodward, Obama stated in an
internal deliberation that “<u>I can’t lose all the Democratic Party… And
people at home don’t want to hear we’re going to be there for ten years… We
can’t sustain support at home and with allies without having some explanation
that involves timelines</u>.” Obama was right about one thing: <u>The
Democratic Party solidly opposed the surge and supported the deadline</u>. By
2011 Obama decided to exit even if the job was far from complete, even if there
was no guarantee that gains made in the past decade could last.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">The surge worked. <u>Fatalities
of US troops began to decline in 2011, and the number of Afghan civilians
killed in the war declined in 2012 for the first time</u>. Poppy cultivation
appeared to be holding steady well below its 2007, while opium production plummeted
in 2012. However, by the be beginning of 2013, the withdrawal was well
underway: There were 65,000 US troops in Afghanistan at the start of 2013;
40,000 in 2014; and just 9,800 in 2015.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u><span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">We will take out
ISIS</span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">Iraq represents
another one of those missed opportunities, even more aggravating than that of
Afghanistan. This is a country with more resources than Afghanistan, with an
oil wealth and an urban and educated population. Women are an important part of
the labor force, and have more freedom in public. Yet, it is very much divided
along sectarian and religious and regional lines. American occupation, like
that of Afghanistan, involved the ambitious operation of nation-building. But
to keep up with his campaign promises, and in order not to alienate the
Democratic Party any further, Obama withdrew all US troops by December 2011.
With the surge of ISIS in 2014–15 and its control of Mosul, Iraq’s second
largest city, American special operation forces are back as “partners” to the
Iraqi army, police, and security forces. The number could be around 5,000.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">There is a reason
why the Afghani war, and the advances of the Taliban, have no place in the
current presidential campaign. We’ve seen Obama avoiding in his two-term as
president the language of “winning” a war against the Taliban, not to mention
nation building, which has dropped from usage in the Obama administration.
Instead we have a more diffuse language of a <u>status quo ante</u>, of simply
letting the survival of the Afghani régime, its army, police, and security
apparatuses as they are. Nothing more, nothing less.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">When it comes to
Iraq in the grammars of the current presidential campaign, the language now is
to “win” the war against ISIS, but nonetheless without much deployment of US
troops there.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">Watch Hillary
Clinton discuss her plan for Iraq in the aftermath of the Paris terrorist
attacks in November 2015.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Mrs.
Clinton said that “to be successful, airstrikes will have to be combined with
ground forces actually taking back more territory from ISIS.” But, mindful that
her 2002 vote to authorize force in Iraq largely contributed to her loss in the
2008 Democratic primary, she was quick to say these should be local Sunni
troops, and “we cannot substitute for them.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Like
President Obama, <u>I do not believe that we should again have 100,000 American
troops in combat in the Middle East,</u>” she said.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Similarly,
she called for more air power, but only in cooperation with Persian Gulf
allies. And she acknowledged in a question-and-answer session that Saudi Arabia
and the United Arab Emirates had halted their air attacks on the Islamic State
to focus instead in Yemen.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">The 100,000 figure
seems revealing: that was the number in troops in Afghanistan by mid-2010, and
Obama began their withdrawal in 2013. Clinton not only seems to be in line with
Obama on possible troop deployment, but she also consolidates a dogma of the DP
on the mission of Americans abroad. There is a war to be “won”—a vocabulary
that was dropped regarding the Taliban—and this could be done through
“partnership” with the Iraqi, Iranians, Russians, and whoever wants to join
in—as long as there is this <u>common enemy</u> called ISIS. The unsaid has
more importance than what is actually said: no one knows for sure how the
“liberated” territories will be “governed” once the war is “won.” How can a
“coalition” of “partners” with different agendas and economies form a system of
“governance” in the aftermath of ISIS. But a more intriguing question is, Will
there be an aftermath to ISIS? There could be a linguistic rollover from the
Taliban to ISIS: sooner rather than later we could witness a wavering to the
claim of “winning” over ISIS. If ISIS is not simply an organization of terror,
but a dense nexus of social relations, can ISIS be “defeated”?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">Does the expression
“defeating ISIS” means anything?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u><span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">The debate we
are not having in the campaign, we will continue not to have, how to foster a
modern state that doesn’t metastasize corruption, cronyism, élites helping
themselves?</span></u><span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";"> That would
bring us away from defeating presumed “enemies.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">The debate on the
Iraqi disaster usually lingers on that other disaster—Syria. Iraq and Syria now
look “connected” for no other reason but their common Islamic State rule. But
here the Obama’s presidency is total passivity. Since the early years of the
war, particularly in 2012–13 when the Asad régime began using an air-technology
known as explosive barrels, various opposition groups and humanitarian agencies
have requested that the US and NATO begin implementing a no-fly zone at least
in the north, in the Idlib and Aleppo provinces.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u><span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">Clinton in
November 2015, based on the NYT</span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Expanding
on her previous call for a no-fly zone, Mrs. Clinton said it should be limited
to northern Syria, where Turkey has proposed a buffer zone to protect
civilians, and enforced by many countries. That, she said, “will confront a lot
of our partners in the region and beyond about what they are going to do.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">She
took a particularly hard line against Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations who
she said had been complicit in the rise of the Islamic State. “Once and for
all, the Saudis, the Qataris and others need to stop their citizens from
directly funding extremist organizations,” Mrs. Clinton said.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
core of Mrs. Clinton’s argument for a faster, more aggressive military
operation was her contention that it would reinforce Secretary of State John
Kerry’s diplomatic effort to negotiate a cease-fire, and ultimately a political
solution, in Syria. Administration officials said it closely resembled the
arguments Mr. Kerry has made to Mr. Obama — but Mr. Kerry has not yet persuaded
the president, who remains hesitant about the risk of being sucked into a
ground war.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Asked
whether Mr. Obama had underestimated the Islamic State when he referred to the
group as the “J.V. team,” Mrs. Clinton said, “I don’t think it’s useful to go
back and replow old ground.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But
in a new break with the administration’s stated policy, Mrs. Clinton declared
what some White House officials have privately said for months: <u>that the
fight in Syria is no longer about ousting President Bashar al-Assad</u>.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“We
had an opportunity, perhaps,” for a <u>regime change</u>, Mrs. Clinton said.
But given the current circumstances, she added, “We need to get people to turn
against the common enemy of ISIS.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In
saying so, Mrs. Clinton seemed to align her strategic approach more closely
with those of Russia and Iran, who are backing Mr. Assad, though she criticized
both nations in her speech Thursday.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">Let us note a
couple of things in this regard. First of all, in what seemed back then in
November 2015, in the wake of the Paris attacks, like a campaign promise to get
tougher on Syria, is already obsolete. Back then the Russian involvement was
only a few months old and aimed at “maintaining the Asad régime,” as the reference
to the “Syrian state” goes. But since then the Russian (not to mention Iranian)
involvement has gotten much deeper to the point that eastern Aleppo has been
annihilated, and the small Russian naval base in the Mediterranean city of Tarṭūs
is being expanded into a permanent base. So, ironically, for the Russians too
it is not longer a question of ousting Asad or maintaining him—that’s the
common ground with the Americans—but it’s about Russian power in Syria and the
middle east at large. US passiveness was a conduit to Russian expansiveness.
The fact that ISIS is our common enemy and that Russians and Iranians are with
us on this one is pure nonsense. What is never enunciated is what kind of state
and society are at work in those civil war countries.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u><span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">In the second
presidential debate Clinton reiterated her position.</span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";">We’re making
progress. Our military is assisting in Iraq. And we’re hoping that within the
year we’ll be able to push ISIS out of Iraq and then, you know, really squeeze
them in Syria.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";">But we have to
be cognizant of the fact that they’ve had foreign fighters coming to volunteer
for them, foreign money, foreign weapons, so we have to make this the top
priority.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";">And I would
also do everything possible to <u>take out their leadership</u>. I was involved
in a number of efforts to take out Al Qaida leadership when I was secretary of
state, including, of course, taking out bin Laden. And I think we need to go
after Baghdadi, as well, make that one of our organizing principles. Because
we’ve got to defeat ISIS, and we’ve got to do everything we can to disrupt
their propaganda efforts online.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">The entire logic
when it comes to ISIS and al-Qaʿida, and previously the Taliban, is that
they’re presented as a cancer that metastases “outside” society, so that we can
killed them and kill their leadership too. But that’s the kind of language that
was adopted for the Taliban and then was dropped under Obama. Will ISIS follow?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u><span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">In the same
debate Trump responded the following.</span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";">Well, first I
have to say one thing, very important. Secretary Clinton is talking about
taking out ISIS. “<u>We will take out ISIS</u>.” Well, President Obama and
Secretary Clinton created a vacuum the way they got out of Iraq, because they
got out — what, they shouldn’t have been in, but once they got in, <u>the way
they got out was a disaster</u>. And ISIS was formed.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";">So she talks
about taking them out. She’s been doing it a long time. She’s been trying to
take them out for a long time. But they wouldn’t have even been formed if they
left some troops behind, like 10,000 or maybe something more than that. And
then you wouldn’t have had them.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";">Or, as I’ve
been saying for a long time, and I think you’ll agree, because I said it to you
once, had we taken the oil — and we should have taken the oil — ISIS would not
have been able to form either, because the oil was their primary source of
income. And now they have the oil all over the place, including the oil — a lot
of the oil in Libya, which was another one of her disasters.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">Trump’s strength is
on the “getting out” of Iraq, but to do this, he’ll have to constantly deny
that he ever requested any US involvement in Iraq, in spite to contrary
evidence. But the whole debate on whether either candidate endorsed the
occupation in 2002–03 or later is a misplaced argument. What matters is that
the withdrawal in December 2011 should not have happened at all, in spite of
the fact that staying in Iraq would have been unpopular for both Democrats and
Republicans.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Gentium Plus";">Notice here for
both candidates the “taking out” of ISIS and their leadership (and also the
Qaʿida and Taliban). The logic of the bipartisan discourse of “taking out”
so-called terrorist groups, be it the Islamic State, the Qaʿida, and the
Taliban (in their distinct metamorphoses between Afghanistan and Pakistan),
which has the power image of a surgical operation which can separate cancerous
cells from their healthy background, does in fact suggest that terrorist groups
can be indeed separated from their background. Such discourse tends to isolate,
in the case of ISIS, for example, how the group came into being in Iraq (before
expanding to Syria) in the middle of a failed and struggling US occupation of
the country, when the Iraqi army and its intelligence services have been
totally disbanded in order to reshape all security apparatuses into something
more robust and cohesive, something that would make more sense for a modern
state. In short, is it possible to understand the likes of the Islamic State
without going over the troubled history of Iraq from the end of Ottoman rule,
to the Hashemite dynasty, and the various military coups from 1958 and on that
undid whatever the monarchy attended to do. What is crucial for our purposes
here is the suppression of Shiʿa politics and political parties under the
Baath, and then the coming of the groups from their exiles once the Americans
occupied the country. It is not enough to claim, however, that the coming of
the likes of Zarqāwī and Baghdādī was an “outcome” of the disbandment of the
Iraqi army and its intelligence apparatuses. The claim that “the Americans made
the Islamic State possible” comes with own pretensions and fallacies. What
needs to be examined is the infrastructure of the Iraqi state under the Baath
in relation to the (predominantly) Sunni groups that it had fostered and others
it had suppressed, Sunni opposition, Kurds, Shiʿa, or otherwise.</span></div>
</div>
zouhairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18243592617841882763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6566641959183651307.post-8671861865748861362016-01-07T17:47:00.002+02:002016-01-07T17:47:47.951+02:00the real in montage<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";">We want for our
purposes to distinguish between three periods in the evolution of cinema as art
in relation to what constitutes the “real” in the process of montage.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";">The first
period is that of silent (speechless) cinema, when sound was not there yet: the
1920s and 1930s. Germans and Russians and Americans had made great contributions
before the addition of sound effects. The Russian Sergei Eisenstein and the
American Griffith come to mind here. In the case of Sergei Mikhailovich
Eisenstein (1898–1948), he became known for his montage techniques in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Battleship Potemkin</i> (1925), a
commemoration of the Russian Revolution of 1905, which is celebrated for its
pioneering use of montage. To think of montage is to think of cinema in
relation to images and imagery. In silent movies language is introduced through
frame-captions which carries dialogue, monologue, descriptions, or the
ruminations of a chorus-narrator.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";">The second
period—the 1940s—when sound cinema becomes the norm. Montage is not enough;
narrative becomes predominant; but such predominance is only achieved through
the work of the camera: reality appears as such in the way it is framed. Hence
rather than pure imagery we’re into realism, or the absorption of reality into
the work of the camera. This is the period that stretches from Orson Welles’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Citizen Kane,</i> and the adoption of the
depth-of-field, to that of Italian neorealism. The 1940s and 1950s witness a
rapid maturation of the realist style.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";">Claims of
various New Waves in particular among the French (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nouvelle vague</i>) and the Germans has proven a bit premature, as
there is no radical break between what the 1960s have achieved and the previous
decades when sound was introduced in the 1930s and 1940s. We’ll therefore
contextualize the new waves in terms of continuities rather discontinuities.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";">The third
period has to be postponed to the 1970s. The irreversible death of Italian
neorealism (marked by the premature death of Pasolini in 1975) which comes
hand-in-hand with the predominance of a Hollywood revamped style of narration
in the likes of Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, The
Conversation), Martin Scorsese, and George Lukas (the Star Wars series). This
comes in conjunction with the eclosion of artistic filmmaking beyond its
traditional niches in Europe (Italy, France, Germany), Russia, and the United
States of America. Filmmaking would expand to developing countries like Iran,
Romania, Thailand, Turkey, Argentina, Korea, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, and
Portugal. There is therefore a universalization of film-as-art far beyond its
traditional restricted European and American frontiers. Indeed, as European
cinema has become provincialized, the American cinema has maintained its world
hegemony, only to be challenged by marginal styles of resistance from Korea to
Iran and beyond.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";">Since its inception,
cinema works with images. An image represents things—a reality—in a
two-dimensional pane (in the last decade a three-dimensional perspective has
been added). But the image itself is not a representation per se: the image is
the representation that has been added to the represented thing. The
represented object (being) is represented in a particular manner through
framing, depth of field (or lack thereof), the distribution of light, color (or
lack thereof: black-and-white photography), the décor and the makeup and dress
outfits of the actors (whether professional or not). We’ll refer to all this as
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">plasticity of the image,</i> by which
is meant the power of the image to represent things through a system of
representations that holds representation in relation to the represented being.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";">Besides the
image, the second element that makes a film possible is the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">montage.</i> By this we mean the
organization of the imagery, as defined above, within time-space sequences. It
is such time-space organization that creates <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">meaning</i> for the spectator: the spectator <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">reads</i> a film through its montage; whereby she would discover
meaning in montage itself. In the same way that the novel as a literary device
is organized around plots, characters, and one or more narrators that would
shape its general narrative and sub-narratives, the narrative of film (a film’s
narrative) comes to light through montage.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";">A film
typically consists of frame-sequences, which could be short (just few seconds
long), or long (long takes that could last for minutes without a single forced
cut), and the montage is precisely the very organization of those
frame-sequences into something meaningful. It is such organization that creates
meaning for the spectator. The spectator-as-subject discovers his subjectivity in
the very act of creating meaning from the process of montage. What is at stake
here is the subjectivity of the spectator: how such subjectivity affirms itself
through the process of montage. How the spectator reads certain scenes individually,
assembles them into a bigger meaning: a process of power-knowledge unfolds;
knowledge consists of discourses that document <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">how</i> things are done, and the subjects who do them. The film-montage
assumes a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">place (space) for the subject;</i>
the subject whose capacity is to read the montage and find meaning. The ability
to read, to discover and create meaning, is like other artworks (the closest of
which is undeniably the novel), an infinite process which is rooted in the
subjectivity of the spectator. The spectator, however, is enmeshed in
power-knowledge relations; relations that are mediated by discourses and
discursive formations. The spectator finds himself as subject through such
discursive formations. The latter do not necessarily emanate from a subject, but
create a space (location) for the subject-as-spectator.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";">How does the
spectator read? In the fragmentation of time-sequences, the only purpose is to
create meaning from the materiality of the image, its logic, and dramatis
personae of the characters. The image does not show the event; it is only
pointed at, or at best alluded to. Meaning is not created from an objective
content (assuming such a thing does exist), but from the organization of the
elements-events, which are only alluded to in the first place. The meaning is
not inside (within) the image, but in what is done to the image, that is to
say, the process of montage. What is important in the image is not what it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">adds</i> to reality, but what is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">revealed</i> through montage. Each frame is
constructed through a narrative-discursive hub: from the basic framing, the
depth-of-field, the light, the actors, to elaborate narratives. The key point
is to understand the construction of imagery and montage through the
narrative-discursive complex and the place of the subject in interpretation
(hermeneutics of the self).</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";">In sum, we want
to explore montage as a discursive and non-discursive practice. There are
several practices at stake here, all of which constituted within the political
web of power and knowledge. To look at montage as practice means that we are
looking at montage as politically constructed: how montage is made in the
process of working with images. It is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">how</i>
the work of images is concretely practiced that reveals the political edge of
montage as a web of power and knowledge relations and as a mode of
subjectivation and form of governmentality.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";">By the time
sound comes into the picture silent cinema had already matured into an nascent
young art, as it had already mastered the combination of working with imagery
and montage. The period between 1930 and 1940 will for its part witness the
first wave of mature sound movies in particular in the USA, France, and
Germany, followed by a second wave in the 1940s and 1950s. What is of interest
to us in this regard is a new look at reality, in particular in Italian
neorealism as pioneered by the likes of Vittorio de Sica and Roberto
Rossellini.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";">The 1940s and
50s have undeniably witnessed another age of maturity in filmmaking, not only
in relation to the silent era but also from the perspective of the 1930s. We
want to examine one style in particular which evolved in postwar Italy known as
“neo-realism.” What is the “real” in neo-realism, and how does that real
introduce new elements of construction in the art of montage and imagery?</span></div>
<div class="italics">
<br /></div>
<div class="italics">
<span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";">The real in
Middle Eastern Cinéma</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";">Documentary
vs. fiction.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";"> The
Iranian films have blurred the classical distinction between “documentary” and
“fiction.” The post-Fascist era of Italian neorealism, beginning with Rossellini’s
<i>Rome Open City,</i> has famously introduced “documentary”-style shooting in
scenes incorporated within larger fictional narratives. The so-called
“documentary” style consisted on a reliance on non-professional actors, genuine
locations (e.g. street scenes), and long takes with fixed or hand-held cameras.
It also implied, albeit very partially, the non-existence of a fully developed scripted
narrative. Either narratives would be very sketchy, or else “action” per se and
the chronology of events would be relegated to a secondary role. But by the
time neorealism had matured, it had everything into it but the “documentary”
claim. Thus, both Antonioni’s “existential” ennui style, and Pasolini’s
thematic abstractionism, had foregone much of the documentary aspect of
neorealism. It is well known that Antonioni, who had in the past filmed
documentaries, repeatedly stated his sense of the inadequacy of such formal
structure in its neorealistic vision, which in Italy had found in Rossellini
its most inventive representative. The reason why I bring the dilemmas of
Italian neorealism in relation to contemporary Iranian cinema is because of
similarities in the documentary versus fiction paradigm. On one hand, Iranian
cinema introduced long shots (often with digital hand-held cameras) that look
like mini-documentaries within broader fictional accounts. The street-based
long-camera takes are in particular notoriously hard to embrace, as they cannot
be cut and edited—they have to be repeated rather than edited (e.g. Panahi’s opening
in the <i>Circle</i>). Herein lies their force: because they cannot be the
subject of a traditional cut-and-paste editing, they place the spectator in an
uncomfortable position of different expectations, while they breathe a fresh
air into film. On the other hand, those mini-documentaries are not as
“improvised” as it might first appear. As Kiarostami’s <i>10</i> shows, they
could be as well crafted as films within traditional narratives and could even
require more off-stage lengthy preparations with actors and camera equipment.
In the final analysis, the major breakthrough might not be the “documentary”
versus “fiction” dilemma, as much as a new way to practice montage. As the
French critic André Bazin had already noted, the failure of montage lies in its
decision to pre-interpret, through the syntagmatic order it elaborates, every
narrative fiction. In other words, the essence lies in changing the rules of
montage, and providing a fresh alternative to classical editing, while forcing
the viewer to look differently (e.g. a long uninterrupted take, or when two
people talk, the camera would hesitate to directly frame them, but frame
something else—<i>hors champs</i>).</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";">At a deeper
level, some of these films (Kiarostami’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ABC
Africa</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Wind Will Carry Us</i>)
recapitulate aspects of questioning the relationships that the filmmaker
nurtures with his material, in particular the portrayed characters or the
issues at stake (AIDS, suicide, the status of women). There is a moral, if not
ethical and political, tension in some of these films between what <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ought</i> to be shown, and what is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">expected</i> to be depicted within the
frame. For example, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Wind Will Carry
Us</i> portrays media people from the city arriving in a remote and
impoverished village to wait for villagers to die. The moral dilemma, if any,
of the main protagonist-cum-engineer in terms of what to show, what to conceal,
what we can or cannot understand of the Other, are simultaneously those of the
filmmaker himself who nurtures similar doubts as to the “viability” of his own
enterprise—the very possibility of making a film about people he knows nothing
about, and whose life style is so different from his own. Indeed, such
questioning is not portrayed abstractly, as if could be read within the
boundaries of each frame: what is inside the frame, and what remains excluded,
concealed, hors-champs. There is that nagging feeling that it’s pornographic to
show too much of whatever does not need to be shown, namely, that showing “too
much” human suffering for the sake of it could imply gratuitous voyeurism. What
is therefore at stake here is that the narrative process incessantly questions
itself, and its own right of existence as narrative, from the inside. To
elaborate, at times it is the very breakdown of the narrative into a non-narrative
which provides a fresh opportunity for the viewer to question the possibility
of narration as a linear coexistence of incompatible elements—to question what
we see, and how we see. Says Kiarostami in relation to his minimalist approach
in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">10</i>: “There are basically two kinds
of storytelling. One’s direct, very eventful, like a serial. The other’s about
looking at something and finding something in it for yourself…not a story, but
something more…” (quoted in Geoff Andrew, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">10,</i>
London: BFI, 2005, 57). Ultimately, the aim would be to think this film through
the image—how the image works; how the film writes itself through the
image—rather than through narrative and discourse. The critical tools, whereby
the filmmaker distances himself from his work, are set within that work through
the image, rather than in the narration itself. What is more than the story
line, except for the writing of the image?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";">Narratives
and micro-histories.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";"> The
issue of “narratives” (or lack thereof) hence turns into a crucial topoi in
conjunction with the documentary/fiction issue: Do Iranian films, as pioneered for
instance by the likes of Kiarostami and Panahi, have any “narratives,” or are
they constructed on other types of narratives? (The same questions could be
raised in relation to the Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan, in particular <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Distant</i> [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Uzak,</i> 2002].) I think that the issue of narrative may be as
misleading as that of the documentary-style montage. In effect, the strength of
Iranian films lies less in the structure of their narratives, or their presumed
documentary style, than in the <i>montage</i> itself. It is, indeed, the
montage that would promote particular scenes within a syntactic arrangement.
For example, Jafar Panahi’s <i>White Balloon</i> is entirely constructed from
the time framework of a small girl who is completely focused on recovering the
object that she had lost that same day. In this case, the novelty is that the
time of the movie coincides with the action’s <i>real</i> time—a couple of
hours within the consciousness of a small girl. As everything is constructed
from the eyes of a single protagonist, the spectator is left with no other
perspective but that of the girl herself, which requires perhaps a different
level of concentration and focus. Reliance on non-professional actors, in
conjunction with a quasi-documentary style, improvisation and hand-held
(digital) camera techniques, all give that whimsical impression that there is
no constructed narrative. But that’s, I think, an illusion of montage.
Actually, as witnessed in Kiarostami’s <i>And the Wind Will Carry Us,</i> and <i>10,</i>
there’s a great deal of formalisms deployed in the combination of narrative
structure, acting, framing, and editing, all of which point to more
premeditated than improvised techniques.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";">Political
and social prohibitions.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";">
It is well known that since the 1978 revolution the Iranian cinema has operated
within all sorts of constraints: women must wear a scarf or chador (“veil”),
intimate/sexual scenes are forbidden, and the heritage of the Islamic
revolution cannot be critiqued. Yet, in spite of all such political and social
constraints, there is a great deal of freedom and experimentation in Iranian films.
What is more paradoxical is that, by all accounts, the Iranian cinema has witnessed
a golden era in comparison to the 1950s and 1960s first New Wave when Iran was
under the “secular” régime of the Pahlavis. It seems therefore that Iranian
cinema managed to operate even better—if not more freely—within its more
“natural” setting of Shi‘i Islam. In other words, it is precisely the
prohibitions imposed by an authoritarian Islamic régime that transformed
Iranian cinema into a critical apparatus, far more trenchant in its
observations than its more liberal Turkish or Israeli counterparts.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
zouhairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18243592617841882763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6566641959183651307.post-59152940970602540242014-08-07T12:42:00.000+03:002014-08-07T12:42:23.553+03:00lebanon's new 2014 law on low rents<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Low rents in Lebanon, in light of the new 2014 law</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Zouhair Ghazzal</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Loyola University Chicago</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="mailto:zghazza@luc.edu">zghazza@luc.edu</a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Concepts of property and contractual obligations in
contemporary Lebanon, as for the rest of eastern Mediterranean societies, have
been marked by a paradigmatic shift whose time framework coincided with the
dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of new nation-states by
the French and British colonial powers. Even though the land law of 1858
required the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">registration</i> in newly
designed <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ṭāpū</i> registers of all
agrarian properties that were taxed, there were no cadastral registers per se
in the Ottoman Empire, nor did the law admit “ownership” to the concerned
parties. The prime reason for such a lack was indeed the non-existence of
proper modern cadastral methods for delineating the space of a property. In
effect, in Ottoman times, as witnessed in sharia court records, properties were
delineated through their adjacent properties, in their north, south, east and
west directions, hence the system lacked proper measurements and modern
topographic tools. It was only in 1926, when Syria and Lebanon were under the
French mandate, that a cadastral register, known as the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sijill ᶜaqārī,</i> was finally institutionalized. From now on each
property would have a cadastral “record” of its own, known as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ṣaḥīfa ᶜaqāriyya,</i> and which consists of
the totality of documents that would mark the property as unique in terms of
location, topography, modifications, clearances, sale or tenancy contracts,
lawsuits and so on, as set within a specific region, be it a village or town or
city.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[1]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
The prime purpose behind such renovation was obviously to delimit properties
and register them based on a scientific method to make visible the surface area,
value, and ownership of land for legal and taxation purposes, or else to
receive a permit of construction. But the other aspect of such rationalization
was to render such knowledge “public” (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ᶜalanī</i>),
that is, not simply to the state and tax authorities, but also to common
individuals.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[2]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
Thus, if I decide to sell one of my properties to an unknown individual, and if
I feel uncertain as to whether he or she would be able to deliver, one way to
solve such dilemma would be to request their <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ṣaḥīfa ᶜaqāriyya,</i> which is available for public viewing to private
individuals like myself. The latter behaves like a U.S. “credit report,” which
would mark a borrower as legible for further borrowing. The main difference,
however, between a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ṣaḥīfa ᶜaqāriyya</i>
and a credit report is that the former is solely based on the property as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ᶜayn,</i> that is, as the tangible object
ready for exchange as commodity (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">res in
commercio</i>), while the latter is based on the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">performance</i> of the debtor and his or her success at servicing their
debt (bank accounts, mortgages, loans, credit cards, and bills). Perceiving an
individual owner solely in terms of his or her ownership of tangible properties
rather than debt points to a worldview where what matters is what the
individual fully possesses (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">māl</i>),
which in itself acts as a source for capital. As we will see in the second
section below, things have not changed much since the mandate, considering that
it is still the tangible object as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ʿayn</i>
that matters: to win a lawsuit of property recuperation, I must prove against
my opponent-tenant that I do not own anything <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in full</i> but the leased property; hence the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">necessity</i> (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ḍarūra</i>) for
recuperating the property for my personal (family) use is a must from a legal
perspective; the only other necessity in the eyes of the law is that of
demolition (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hadm</i>) either for safety
reasons, or else for the purpose of a new project.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Unsurprisingly, the law that organizes property as such came
four years later in 1930; that is to say: first the properties had to be demarcated
in a cadastral register, then the law at <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">defining</i>
property was promulgated. Besides distinguishing between movable and immovable
properties, another category is that of “incorporeal properties,” that is, all
the rights, obligations, insurances, and lawsuits concerning a tangible
property. But the surprising element in these new regulations was that when it
came to the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">categories</i> of properties
the mandate did not differ much from its Ottoman predecessor in acknowledging
the three broad categories of mīrī, milk, and waqf. Acknowledging the mīrī was
indeed a bit of an anachronism, considering that mīrī state-owned lands
historically served as tax prebends for an urban élite serving an imperial
state. Now that they are defined as “those properties whose <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">raqaba</i> (“neck”) is for the state, but
whose usufruct (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">taṣarruf</i>) goes for
individuals,”<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[3]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
what purpose does the mīrī has still to offer in a world devoid of sultanic
power? In a country like Syria, where large ownership was and still is
predominant, and where the Ottoman ex-élite “old classes,” which survived out
of state prebends, de facto “inherited” their prebends, the mīrī–milk
opposition only created a gross confusion which still survives until this day
(but more so in Syria than in Lebanon, where the mīrī category proves
superfluous at best). Suffice it to say for our purposes here that the Ottoman mīrī
became de facto (private or public state-owned) milk under the mandate, even
though still legally inscribed as mīrī, which nonetheless enjoyed inheritance rules
different from sharia law: men and women would in this instance inherit
equally. Therein lies the true aim of the new 1930 law: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to demarcate mīrī lands as a category that would not follow the
precepts of sharia law of unequal inheritance.</i> By contrast neighboring
Lebanon, which since late Ottoman times had a more aggressive mercantile and
liberal culture than Syria, the mīrī–milk distinction did not matter that much,
as properties were either de jure private, or else they were state-owned and
public.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By the time the Second World War was nearing its end and the
French had granted Lebanon and Syria their independence in 1943, the economies
of both countries were, by eastern Mediterranean standards, quite good, which
led to an abundance of a much needed cheap labor for the cities. That was
probably even more so in Lebanon than Syria, considering how much the potential
for agriculture was reduced. By 1943–46 the surplus of agrarian labor migrated
to the coastal cities in flocks (the second such wave, following the great
migration from the mountains to the cities in the late Ottoman period),
creating a need for leased apartments at affordable prices, in particular for
the capital Beirut. In an attempt to create a local industry, new manufacturing
plants were established in the suburbs of the capital, thus areas like Dekwāneh
and Shuwayfāt which were traditionally satellite villages with large property
holdings became epicenters of manufacturing plants which were serviced by labor
migrating from the north, east and south of the country. When the new tenancy
laws were therefore promulgated in the post-mandate period, it was precisely
this new labor force, seeking affordable rents over long periods, that jurists
and lawmakers had in mind. (In the U.S. similar laws were enacted by the
Supreme Court during World War II, what ultimately became known as “rent
control,” to serve the state bureaucracy contributing in the nascent war effort
and its massive industrial and military projects; and in spite of lawsuits
initiated until this day by private individuals arguing that “rent control” is
nothing but a “seizure of private property under a different name,” the low
rents still survive in certain crowded and expensive areas, such as the San
Francisco Bay Area and Manhattan in New York.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The majority of tenancy contracts in the world are normally
set for a specific time period, usually for one year, with a clause permitting
the tenant for a renewal for an additional year, but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">only if the landlord wishes to do so.</i> That is to say, the landlord
would not need to provide any excuse, personal or otherwise, to reject the
one-year renewal offer by his or her tenant. Such <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">limited</i> renewals share many benefits, irrespective of the society
or the time period in question. First of all, the market would not get clogged
with old rents, which would have to be renewed on special terms, forcing for
new legislation every once and a while to fix the rent value and update it on
inflation. Second, the lease market would remain competitive, as landlords
would not live in fear of having their properties occupied on long terms, if
not permanently, creating a shadow-landlord in the name of a quasi-permanent
tenant. Third, rents would receive an automatic yearly update that would mark
them in par with the current inflation rate. One could add that when the lease
market does not get clogged with old rents, the parallel sale of properties
would not get artificially inflated either; nor would there be pressures on
landlords to pay monetary “compensations” for tenants who decided to leave on
their own amid a prolonged lease.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Lebanese market would have been in that category of open
competitive leases were it not for the tenancy law of 1944 which
institutionalized the distinction between leases that were “renewed” (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tajdīd</i>) amid an explicit joint willingness
from both landlord and tenant, on the one hand, and others that were
“prolonged” (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tamdīd</i>) beyond what the
contract had originally stipulated, which is usually one year, on the other.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[4]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
It is indeed that kind of opening towards a legalized “prolongation” that would
ultimately spell the well known crisis of low rents, but only at the beginning of
the 1980s, once the lira fell apart, amid the Israeli occupation of Lebanon in
1982 and the expulsion of the Palestine Liberation Organization to Tunis; hence
even in the early stages of the civil war in 1975–76 “prolongation” of
contractual leases did not seem to have created the much anticipated widespread
shortages on the market. What Lebanese legislation harnessed on in three
decades, in the 1944–74 interim, was precisely the kind of link between
“renewal” and “prolongation,” providing ample reasons to go for the latter. In
those prosperous decades, up to the early 1980s, the economy was doing reasonably
well with acceptable inflation, low unemployment, cheap and abundant local
labor, affordable housing, and a strong lira in respect to the dollar and other
robust currencies. So why not opt for yearly tenancy contracts? Why legalize
“prolongation”? It is usually assumed that with the end of the French mandate,
a larger than expected rural or mountainous population moved to the cities, in
particular Beirut, which formed the backbone of manufacturing and industries.
Being unfamiliar with city life and its risks, the law sought to mitigate that
uncertainty by legalizing the prolongation of contracts whenever the tenant
felt legible to do so. At the time neither landlords nor tenants had much to
complain about, considering the economy’s good standing.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To see what had happened in the interim, one need go no further
than the tenancy law of 1974, which was the outcome of small incremental
modifications and amendments to the original 1944 text, and which unwittingly
served as the adopted blueprint text for the yet to come 15-year civil war
(1975–1990). The broad rule established invariably in the texts of 1944–1974 is
that “the end of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">period</i> of the
lease contract would not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ipso facto</i>
imply that the tenancy is over and done with,” which means that the tenant has
every right to renew, if he or she wishes to do so. A corollary rule which was
also a norm on the eve of the civil war was that prolongation was not solely
the tenant’s right, but also, in case of his or her death, that of the spouse
and their children. Moreover, even “relatives” who were “associated” with the
deceased and were occupying the property had their rights maintained in case
they opted for prolongation. Hence the “family” spectrum was fairly broad as to
who enjoyed that right of prolongation: what legislators had in mind was not to
reduce tenants to the one person who signed the lease, but expand it to all
family members who were <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">simultaneously</i>
occupying the property; hence to protect them in their totality from the risks
of the market. Prolongation prompted legislators to regularly update the tenancy
laws every few years, as they had to adjust old rents to inflation. The other
side effect of prolongation is that the law stipulated that proprietors have
the right to “recuperate” (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">istirdād</i>)
their leased properties whenever there is an urgent need to do so, and in such
instances the tenant would have to be “compensated” (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">taᶜwīḍ</i>) for having all of a sudden lost his or her contract.
Lawsuits became therefore normative whenever the proprietor would demand his
property back from his tenant on the basis of an absolute necessity, and if
successful thanks to a judge’s ruling, as was the case in the recent litigation
that we’ll document below, then the court would summon the landlord-plaintiff
to “indemnify” his tenant for a cash payment in installments agreed upon in
court. (Over the years, different methods of calculation were adopted to assess
the value of the property, its rent, and the compensation itself, which we need
not get into here, but which will be addressed shortly in relation to the
recuperation-compensation scheme below.) Lawyers tend to agree that it is
indeed such lawsuits, whose numbers have dramatically sprawled since the sudden
end of the civil war in the early 1990s, which have contributed to the overall
decline of old rents from their 50 percent highs in the 1980s to their current
25–30 percent rate.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[5]</span></span></span></span></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What is of interest to us is the notion of recuperation (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">istirdād</i>) and the lawsuit that would be
needed to recuperate a property from the tenant. In effect, even though the property-owner
and tenant may amiably settle without court action, the majority of proprietors
would only settle in court. Post-mandate tenancy laws have regularly appended stipulations
that would render recuperation approved by a judge with the proviso that a
compensation would be paid to the tenant. Chief among such conditions is the
notion of “family necessity” (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ḍarūra ᶜāᵓiliyya</i>).
The landlord must successfully argue that he needs his property back because he
has no other place to go, that is, he possesses no other property but the one
under litigation as his own place of residency. For example, he may argue that
he has been for years living in a rented apartment, paid hefty rents, and that
it’s now time to recuperate his own apartment, considering that its rent is
running low, much lower than the cost of his rented apartment; or that he has
been living with his parents since he graduated from college, and now that he
got his first full-time job he needs to be on his own; or that as an outcome of
the civil war he has lived abroad for many years, and he badly needs to get
back home; or that he is now a married man with a family, and his apartment
fits better with his current needs. Several factors could be at play here:
anything from the respective ages of the proprietor and tenant; their
employment status; whether they have families; whether they live in Lebanon or
abroad; and if they do, how often do they come back to Lebanon. As is fairly
obvious, a lot is left to the judge’s discretionary powers, beginning with that
ability to discern individual situations, favoring one variable against
another. For example, it could be hard for a landlord who is young, single, and
a college graduate who just landed on his first job, and lives with his parents
to save money, to displace a tenant who is much older and a father of four.
Considering how much kinship is important in such societies, it is customary
for young men and women to live with their parents even after graduating from
college; since a bachelor is not considered someone responsible of a family,
there is no urgency for single people to live on their own. As all such family
matters are factored by the judge in his verdict, what remains in the final
analysis is that notion of “necessity”: is it that indispensable for the
landlord to evict his tenant, even in the aftermath of an equitable indemnification?
What presumably plays a preponderant role in such litigations is nothing else
but the “cadastral record” (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ṣaḥīfa ᶜaqāriyya</i>)
which respectively lists all the properties owned by landlord and tenant.
Considering that the “cadastral record” plays the role of a U.S. “credit
report”—even though the two are essentially dissimilar (the former is rooted in
tangible properties, while the latter is into credit and debt)—what would tilt
the verdict in favor of either proprietor or tenant is whether any of them has
a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">single </i>property <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">owned in toto</i>. The cadastral report is
open for inspection and made public for any person who wishes to do so: if I
need to inquire about my tenant’s properties, all I have to do is request his
personal report at the General Directorate of Cadastral Affairs for a minimal
fee. The report would list all my tenant’s properties (at times the confusion
of names and birth dates brings more properties than needed which are later
corrected and dropped), their number, location, and the percentage of the owned
shares (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ashum; </i>s. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sahm</i>). The latter would prove the
crucial denominator in a lawsuit: as the totality of a property constitutes
2,400 shares, if either landlord or tenant possess <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">any</i> property in toto, they may lose the verdict. Obviously, the
nature of the property is of prime importance: if I am suing to recuperate an
apartment that I own, and my cadastral report indicates that I also own a 100
percent share in a land in the same city which is used as a parking lot and out
of which I am generating profit, the two properties that I own in toto are so
dissimilar that one would not compensate for the other. Put simply, I won’t be
able to live in a parking lot, and that’s enough evidence that I badly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">need</i> my apartment, assuming that other
prerequisites set by the court are met. In sum, a lot is at stake regarding
both the landlord and tenant “needs,” “necessities,” and “familial
obligations,” in conjunction with what they fully or partially own on the
market. The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">partiality</i> of ownership
is a common trait in middle eastern and Islamicate societies, considering how
much the Islamic rules of inheritance are adamant at dividing properties among
male and female heirs (wills that would favor an heir over another are not
permitted). Hence it is not that uncommon to find proprietors and tenants with
dozens of properties listed in their records but without a single one fully
owned. Obviously, in preparation for the lawsuit, both sides might artificially
work out a reshuffling of their properties among family members: I register <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">part</i> of a property that I fully own
under my wife’s or daughter’s name to avoid a negative verdict. As such
practices are fairly common, councils and judges tend to look closely at the
cadastral report in search of faked fragmentations, potential inconsistencies, or
last-moment shuffles, even though such tasks are no easy matter.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Besides “familial obligations” which remains the most lucrative
feature in the recuperation lawsuits, owners could bring other matters to the
court: the right to recuperate a property that is adjacent to another owned by
the same owner; the owner’s desire to tear down the property in question for
the sake of a new construction project; the tenant has failed to pay his rent
for at least two months; and so on. Once the court approves the recuperation,
the tenant is given a grace period of 2 to 6 months to vacate the property; but
the owner has no right, once the vacation is complete either to sell or sell
the property for a three-year period, during which he must only use it for his
personal matters, as he indicated in his lawsuit (if he does not follow the
court order, the tenant may come back to him and request more compensations).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For those familiar with Beirut’s topography, the sight of
dilapidated buildings, elevators that don’t work, tenants at war with one
another, and building committees that only make decisions on paper without any
follow up, have become all too familiar, all of which are the outcome of low
rent policies which have accumulated and been protected by law since the 1940s,
only to reach their climax in the 1980s. It was indeed the sudden fall of the
lira in 1982, amid the Israeli occupation of the South, the Sabra–Shatila
massacres, and the bombing of the Marines compound and the building housing the
U.S. embassy in Beirut, which made all of a sudden the old rents look really
low in value, with losses exceeding the 100 percent margin for the owners. Needless
to say, such scenarios have become so common that the press devotes weekly
interviews with disenchanted proprietors and tenants, while the parliament has
for more than a decade attempted to draft a new law that would be generally
consensual, to no avail. The only breakthrough came in 1992 with the Free
Contract Law.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn6;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[6]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
Article 1 of the new Law revokes art. 543 of the Law of Contracts and Obligations
(which stands as the Civil Code in Lebanon) which stipulated that “if the
period of lease is more than 3 years, it cannot be beneficial for a third
person unless the lease contract has been registered in the cadastral register.
The renewal would assume the same rule.”<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftn7" name="_ftnref7" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn7;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[7]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
The ability to renew beyond the initial 3 years, which became normative since
1944, has been withdrawn in favor of “open contracts,” albeit still assuming 3
years of lease (at least at the signing of the new lease) rather than one or two
only, hence the law is not that far from the one-year leases common in many
countries.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftn8" name="_ftnref8" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn8;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[8]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
The 1992 law constitutes therefore a bold attempt to regain the confidence of owners
which in the 1980s have shied away from either investing in residential or commercial
properties (unless the intention is forthrightly to sell), or else have sought
for their residential properties non-Lebanese tenants, or tenants that are
known “not to last that long.” That said, the Law would not solve the problem
of leased properties prior to 1992, whose “real rents,” once inflation and the
value of the lira have been factored off, are at dismal lows. (A Law approved
by parliament in 2014, which we’ll discuss below, forcefully addresses the
issue of low rents.) Moreover, there seems to be a contradiction between “the
freedom to contract” (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ḥurriyat al-taᶜāqud</i>)
and forcing landlords to de facto approve 3 years for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">any</i> lease, residential or otherwise, stipulating that even if
contracts were initially set for one year only, they must nonetheless be
approved for up to 3 years, if the tenant wishes to go that long; there is even
no requirement that the value of the rent should be readjusted in those 3
years, or that the landlord has any right to recuperate his or her property,
whatever the “necessity” may be.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftn9" name="_ftnref9" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn9;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[9]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
The law has nonetheless been extolled, in particular by landowners and venture
capitalists, for limiting post-1992 leases to 3 years.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We are now ready to proceed with a prototype of a
recuperation lawsuit. The four-bedroom apartment, located in an upper middle
class neighborhood in west Beirut, was originally leased in 1971 upon the
completion of the building for L.P.11,860 ($4,000) a year.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftn10" name="_ftnref10" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn10;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[10]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
By 2007, on the eve of the lawsuit, the lease amounted to no more than
L.P.1,929,585 ($1,282),<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftn11" name="_ftnref11" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn11;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[11]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
which besides the obvious loss vis-à-vis the dollar does not account for
inflation and for how much valuable $4,000-a-year could do at the time in the
1970s. When the 2011 verdict came through, denying the defendant-tenant any
right to renew the contract, the latter received as indemnity a large cash sum
(more on that later), but he also <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">privately</i>
settled with the proprietor for a one-year extension of his lease as an “open
contract,” that is to say, based <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">indirectly</i>
on the 1992 Law discussed above. Strictly speaking, the old pre-1992 laws
require that if the verdict summons the tenant to vacate the premises within
2–3 months, he may request, at the landlord’s discretion, an extension, which
remains undefined by the law. Moreover, the landlord has no right to make use
of the property except for his own personal use for 3 years, after which he may
lease or sell it or continue using it. Nonetheless, legalities aside, with the
excuse that “I need some time to settle in my new apartment,” which the tenant
alleged he had already purchased but still needed a lot of work (even though he
provided no evidence of that), the tenant went for the price of $32,000-a-year,
which is fair to say represents the “real price” as evidenced by the apartment
right below his which carried the same new price tag. In other words, the proprietor
was with the “old rent” renting his property at a price 25 times below its
“real” current market value. It is indeed such discrepancies between old and
new that make owners eager for a new law that would accommodate their wishes,
to say the least.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The special arrangement between owner (lessor) and tenant
(lessee) is now (summer 2014) in its third year. Initially based on the court
ruling in 2011, the tenant was supposed to vacate the property in February 2012,
once the compensation payment would have been fully completed. The special
arrangement gave him an additional two years of lease, which he <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">indirectly </i>paid through the indemnity:
that is to say, the new $32,000 annual rent was deducted on two counts from the
compensation that the owner owed him. It was, indeed, only in the third year of
the specially extended rent, since February 2014, that the tenant began monthly
payments (rent and assessments) outside the compensation. He even requested
that, starting 2014, all leases be subjected to the 1992 law of “open
contracts.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the first year of the extension, 2012–13, the ruling of
11 February 2011 was acknowledged by both parties, on the proviso that the
owner would pay his tenant an indemnity worth $355,250, which roughly amounts
to one-third of the apartment’s value, as estimated by the court’s expert.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoTableGrid" style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-padding-alt: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-yfti-tbllook: 1184;">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
2011 original compensation</div>
</td>
<td style="border-left: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 221.4pt;" valign="top" width="221">
<div class="MsoNormal">
$355,250</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 1;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 221.4pt;" valign="top" width="221">
<div class="MsoNormal">
2011 adjusted compensation</div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 221.4pt;" valign="top" width="221">
<div class="MsoNormal">
$375,000</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 2;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 221.4pt;" valign="top" width="221">
<div class="MsoNormal">
18 July 2011 signature of the agreement</div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 221.4pt;" valign="top" width="221">
<div class="MsoNormal">
$200,000 paid</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 3;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 221.4pt;" valign="top" width="221">
<div class="MsoNormal">
18 August 2011</div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 221.4pt;" valign="top" width="221">
<div class="MsoNormal">
$100,000</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 4;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 221.4pt;" valign="top" width="221">
<div class="MsoNormal">
remaining sum to be paid upon the delivery of the
apartment on 28 February 2012</div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 221.4pt;" valign="top" width="221">
<div class="MsoNormal">
$75,000</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 5;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 221.4pt;" valign="top" width="221">
<div class="MsoNormal">
$32,000 deducted as “new special lease” for one year only,
ending effectively on February 2013</div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 221.4pt;" valign="top" width="221">
<div class="MsoNormal">
$43,000</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 6; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 221.4pt;" valign="top" width="221">
<div class="MsoNormal">
$32,000 deducted for a second special lease, until
February 2014</div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 221.4pt;" valign="top" width="221">
<div class="MsoNormal">
$11,000</div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Originally the compensation, as required by the judge’s
ruling, was set at $355,250. However, the landlord, acting on his own behalf in
order to avoid the routinized process of appeals and counter-appeals, proposed
to his tenant a minimal “raise” in the compensation, up to $375,000. The agreement
between the two, signed in Beirut at the tenant’s office on 18 July 2011,
admitted that kind of quid pro quo: “The two parties have agreed that the
leased property should be vacated on time and given to the owner without going
through the specialized tribunals in order to present an appeal to the judge’s
ruling, and without vacating the property through the auspices of Bureau of
Execution in Beirut (Dāʾirat al-Tanfīdh).”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As the date of delivery was set for 28 February 2012, extra
late days would be penalized for $300 each. The tenant agreed not to request
for renewal anymore.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The following document was signed on 27 February 2012, just
when the lease was over, amid the tenant’s demand for a “special extension.”
The owner still owed his tenant $75,000 as the final installment of the
compensation package, as required by the July 2011 agreement. Obviously, in
order to avoid legal hassles that would look in violation of the July 2011
agreement, the new agreement was signed as “a modification of a previous
contract.” The new arrangement stipulates that considering that the tenant had
encountered difficulties at vacating his apartment at the requested time, a
special one-year extension was accorded by the owner until the 3rd of March
2013. The amount would be deducted from the remaining $75,000 that the owner
owes his tenant as part of the settlement-compensation. Interestingly, no
specific sum was mentioned as value for the “new rent”—the document even avoids
all such overt language. Instead, a close notes that what is left of the
indemnity—$43,000—would be delivered by the owner once the tenant vacates on
March 2013. A second special agreement was signed then, claiming this time that
the final installment of $11,000 would be delivered on March 2014. Since then
the two parties have opted for an official lease, in conformity with Law 160/1992.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Strictly speaking, from a legal point of view, and in light
of the court ruling in 2011, what owner and tenant indulged into in the last
couple of years, is “illegal.” What does that mean? The whole court
proceedings, initiated by the owner in 2007, when the lawsuit was filed, were
conducted on the basis that the owner <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">urgently</i>
needed his apartment for the “family reasons” that he pleaded for (more on that
below). Suffice it to say that, in light of the special arrangements between
owner and tenant, such pleas de facto, if not de jure, become “bogus,” as they
lose all their rationale, with a tenant that still occupies the same apartment
but with a much higher rent at the established competitive street price.
However, the “illegality” in this instance proves meaningless as owner and
tenant are indulging into a consensual arrangement that fits them both.
Moreover, such arrangement would not need <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">stricto
sensu</i> any court endorsement. To wit, the court <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">may</i> declare it “illegal” only if it becomes “informed” of the
modalities of the special arrangement. But who is going to “inform” the court,
and on which basis exactly? Certainly not the owner–lessor: there is nothing to
gain on his part through another court action. The only party that may indulge
at informing the court of the “illegality” of the special arrangement is
certainly the tenant. He may, for instance, argue that he “tricked” his
landlord into that kind of arrangement to “prove” to the court that there was
no “family necessity,” as was initially claimed by the owner.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here comes the rub. Both owner and tenant take the risk
regarding the “illegal” side of things simply because it is worth taking, and,
more importantly, the special arrangement fits them both. On the side of the
tenant, it is true that he is given a new lease with a price tag much higher
than the old one he had been accustomed to, but then, price notwithstanding, he
likes where he is, and he seems to find the arrangement “fair” enough for his
purposes; and obviously he can afford the new revamped rent; he probably looked
for other alternatives, but found the new modern apartments out of reach. On
the owner’s side, had he requested the immediate vacation of the property in
February 2012, as required by the ruling, he would have had—a basic law
requirement—to occupy it himself for at least three years. That would have
constituted in itself the “proof” that he “badly” needed it for the most urgent
“family necessity” that he claimed for when he filed for the lawsuit. So, in
short, what were the benefits for going “illegal”? Without indulging into much
unwarranted speculation, the owner, as he informed me in summer 2014, had not
much interest in occupying his own apartment back in 2012. First of all, he
would have incurred the price of renovating an apartment that had been occupied
since the early 1970s, a price that he estimated at nearly $50,000. Second of
all, he would have had lost two years of rent, at $32,000 each. In sum, the
three-year court requirement, in addition to the renovation, would have
amounted to a hefty $150,000. He therefore opted for the “risk” of going
“illegal” by granting his tenant a special treatment, on the near-certainty
that he would not betray him through another round of court action. To be sure,
the tenant could have tricked his landlord into another court procedure. He
could, for instance, claim that, contrary to what the owner had argued for in
his initial suit, he only renovated and furnished the apartment, but,
otherwise, he was still living abroad for most of the year. But why would he do
so, considering that he “benefited,” as his landowner did, from the
two-year-plus extension?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It goes without saying that the arrangement between the
landowner and his tenant is based on a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mutual
risk:</i> either one knows damn well that they could be harmed by the other
party going to court and risking a lawsuit that would place the opponent in an
uncomfortable situation, where more claims for compensation would be at stake.
What is really at stake in such situation are indeed the transaction costs,
whether landowner and tenant accept their new mutual arrangement for the years
to come, or whether one of them decides that it time to break up the entente.
Herein lies the “successes” of such ententes: the court system is used in phase
one, whereby landowner and tenant ferociously fought in court their respective
viewpoints. Pre-trial negotiations did not work all too well at this stage, as
both parties surmised that the court ruling would be beneficial to them. It was
only once the court ruling finally materialized in 2011 that owner and tenant
negotiated <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">at the margins of the law,</i>
and, one should add, by bypassing what the law explicitly states. Once the
verdict was enunciated, the tenant took note of the fact that vacating a
property that he has been occupying for decades became all of a sudden a
certainty, to be reckoned with. He realized that it would be perhaps more
affordable, and more realistic, to indulge into an extension of the same rent, albeit
at a more competitive price, than shopping for a new apartment. He therefore
approached his landlord for a solution to their problems in that direction:
let’s renew the lease, but with a price tag that you determine. The owner could
have refused the offer, but refrained from doing so: it was for him, like for
his tenant, a question of transaction costs. Sure, the court verdict was what
he exactly expected and wanted, but it was also costly: it required him to
occupy the vacated apartment for three years, before deciding on any further
action. On both sides, therefore, there are incurring costs for breaking the
current status quo, which has been at works since the early 1970s. They’ve both
opted to persevere with the status quo, with all the legal risks that such
measure would entail, in order to minimize all transaction costs.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When in 2008 the counsel of the plaintiff-owner pleaded in
court on behalf of his client, he wrote to the district judge that “even though
the plaintiff currently resides in the United States, he nonetheless has plans
to return permanently to Lebanon and find work in his home country. Moreover,
whenever he returns home he is forced to stay with his parents, which are kind
enough to accommodate him with all his belongings; not to mention his personal
library, composed of thousands of books, since my client is a professional
writer and academic with many published books and articles on record. In spite
of his parents’ generosity, my client does not feel anymore at home in such
constrained space. Considering that my client needs a space of his own, so that
he can create and produce by his own standards, we accordingly request the full
recuperation of the apartment that is solely his.” The counsel quotes a section
of Law 160/1992, which even though is restricted to “free contracts,”
nonetheless reiterates the same rules as previous pre-1992 laws on
recuperation: “The proprietor has the right to recuperate his property either
for his own use or the use of one of his children for a family necessity, on
the proviso that he does not own anything else that would be valid for
residential occupation…We therefore demand that the apartment be recuperated
due to a family necessity…”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The defense obviously rebuffed such claims, alleging that
“the plaintiff only expressed his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">desire</i>
to return to Lebanon from the United States, where he currently holds a
full-time position at an institution of higher learning, which is different
from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">actually</i> settling here. The mere
desire to return is thus no evidence of a family necessity…” The counsel’s
second target were the plaintiff’s properties. He argued that the proprietor
did own three other apartments in the same building, albeit as the judge would
later point out in his ruling, none of which were <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fully</i> owned; none even had a 50 percent ownership. In his verdict
in mid-2011 the judge noted that the crux of the matter from a legal standpoint
is the notion of “family necessity,” which is not “hooked to everlasting
notions,” “but it rather gives privilege for someone to use his rights in a
natural and customary way without harming anyone else…” He thus rebuffed the
defense claims of differences between the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">desire</i>
to return versus the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">act</i> of returning
to Lebanon from the U.S., adding that the plaintiff has every right to return,
having expressed his desire to do so, but considering that none of the
properties listed by the defense represent more than a 50-percent share, the
plaintiff has no other option under such conditions but to stay with his parents.
At this point, having been in favor of the plaintiff, the judge proceeded with
an estimation of the value of the property in consideration for the indemnity
to be paid to the tenant. The court expert had placed the value at $3,500 per
square-meter in conformity with the prices in the neighborhood which he had
examined in 2010, in disagreement with what the plaintiff’s counsel had
estimated, namely $2,000 per square-meter. The judge, demanding the immediate
evacuation of the property, once the lease is over, thus calculated that the
property’s price tag was $1,015,000 (for 290 square-meters), placing the
compensation at 35 percent of the total value for a price tag of $355,250.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftn12" name="_ftnref12" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn12;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[12]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
Even though not a law requirement per se, but more of a practice than an official
theory, the indexing of the compensation as one-third of the property’s value
seems to be the adopted rule of thumb.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Even though it took three more years for the verdict to
materialize, the structure of the case is fairly simple, and is representative
of such lawsuits. It consists of the two counsels’ reports; the court expert
who investigated the property, building, and neighborhood, setting a price
based on the municipality’s estimates (which it routinely does for taxation
purposes), and on interviews with neighbors and proprietors in the
neighborhood; and the verdict, which took Law 160/92 as reference. The crux of
the matter amounted at dissecting where “family necessity” lies: was there an
absolute necessity for the owner to reclaim his property? And if so, on which
grounds exactly? Did the owner own at least one other property that would have been
suitable for his living conditions? The two conditions are fairly flexible, in
particular the notion of “family necessity,” which evolves in time. In this
case, the plaintiff was a mid-aged <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bachelor</i>,
a fact that was not even mentioned by the two counsels, and for good reason:
not a long time ago, the defense counsel would have made a fuss about it; but
the post-civil war mores of Lebanese society are moving slowly toward
recognizing individual over family rights, hence everyone has a right to settle
in his or her own property, assuming that the plaintiff only fully owns the one
property under litigation. For that very reason owners tend to spread the ownership
of properties among family members, at least until they settle through court
action. With this in mind, Law 160/1992 proves a great breakthrough, albeit it
left unresolved a 25–30 margin of low-rented properties, which the newly passed
2014 law may finally put at rest (see the following section); but it played
favorably at encouraging proprietors to reclaim their properties through court
action, even if that entails paying hefty compensations to tenants, which some have
judged totally unjustified and uncompetitive for a liberal economy.
Notwithstanding such grievances, coming from owners and their tenants, the Law
has managed to reduce by a wide margin the crippling effects of low rents,
first by opening the clause of “free” three-year non-renewable leases, and
second, by promptly processing suits in favor of owners who wish to recuperate
their properties.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="italics">
What the new 2014 revamped law would bring, if approved</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The text of the new rental law that was passed in parliament
only recently, in April 2014, and which in principle should put permanently at
rest the episode of old rents by 2025 at the latest, has been under the hood
for many years, receiving many revisions prior to its publication in the
Official Journal in early May 2014. But even though there is a constitutional
probation period of six months, prior to the enactment of the law, which makes
it eligible to be revoked by parliamentarians and Cabinet ministers, or the
house speaker and president of the republic, the published text is worth our attention
for its own sake, considering how much controversy it has already stirred.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftn13" name="_ftnref13" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn13;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[13]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
For one thing, it highlights the problems that we have been addressing thus far
regarding the differences in value between the old rents and their current
street value. For another, even if the law would not make it to its final ultimate
test, the text itself is serious enough in addressing the compelling issue of
those old tenants who would not be able to afford the new competitive rents.
Already the mixed reaction of the media points to the difficulties of such
legal endeavor: on one side, the argument is that this is too little, too late;
that the property owners, having been subjected to years of losses from rents
far below their street value, have now to willy-nilly accommodate their tenants
for nine more years, prior to breaking free the lease, if they wish to do so.
On the other side, however, the alternative argument is that many of the old
tenants would not afford the new rents, in particular past the nine-year period;
to which some have already responded that such tenants have become over the
years a tiny minority, whose issues need to be addressed separately (for
instance through special funds) rather than to be limited to legal procedural matters.
Well-to-do tenants, those same sources argue, represent another hefty minority,
at least as important as struggling tenants from the lower classes. What is
certain, however, is that assuming the rental law passes the “constitutional” (and
political) test, rent control would finally become a thing of the past.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftn14" name="_ftnref14" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn14;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[14]</span></span></span></span></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What is new in the new law approved by parliament in April
2014 is article 15 which gives the possibility for the landowner to “win back”
his property within a 9-year period, a strategy that would prove an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">alternate</i> scenario from the one that we
have explored above, in particular for owners who would be unable to afford the
hefty compensation on behalf of their tenants. Each strategy comes with its own
risks, perils, and costs. To wit, the strategy explored above, which generally
requires court action, unless owner and tenant consensually agree on a
compensation scheme, would normally take four years, from the filing of the
suit to the verdict, but, due to the required compensation, the cost could be
higher for the owner than what the new 2014 law would propose in this regard.
For the tenants, however, the 2014 law is definitely a much better endeavor, as
it gives them nine years to work out a new lease, either with the same owner or
a different one, albeit the tenant would experience a progressive, but
significant, rent increase in those 9 years. A special state-managed fund, with
all kinds of demanding stipulations, is meant to assist tenants with low
income. No accurate data on the number of needy tenants, nor on the size of the
fund or how it will be funded are provided.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The tenant would pay the new full rent’s value, known as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">qīmat badal al-mithl,</i> gradually over a
six-year period; but only by the sixth year would the rent become complete, as
a new rent which has been adjusted to the current configuration of rents,
taking into consideration inflation and the competitiveness of the market. The
legislation thus progressively increases pre-1992 rents over six years and
eventually gives free access to property owners by the ninth year. Moreover,
the value of the new rent should not exceed 5 percent of the value of the
property itself “in its current condition,” once vacated. Needless to say, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">badal al-mithl</i> is the key component of
the new law, as everything else gravitates around the value of this new rent,
from the gradual yearly increase, to the indemnity to be accorded to the tenant
in case the owner wishes to reclaim his or her property for a “family
necessity.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
How is the “new rent value” to be addressed? Article 18
states that the “new rent” must be bargained either consensually or in court, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">raḍāʾ-an aw qaḍāʾ-an:</i> that is to say,
either tenant and landlord consensually agree on the new rent, or else they
would seek court arbitration. Once the new rent has been agreed upon, it would
be instated only gradually, within a six-year tenancy period, when it should
reach its full value. In the sixth, seventh, and eighth years, therefore, the
tenant would pay the new rent in full, which would have been agreed upon in
year 1 (consensually or otherwise), and by the ninth year the contract would
become “open” for the first time, as it would become subject to an open “free”
negotiation for a new value, or else the owner may request from his tenant to
vacate the premises, on the basis that he or she has opted for a non-renewal
(no need to provide for any formal reason or excuse, familial necessity, demolition,
new project, or otherwise). By the ninth year, the owner has a right not to
renew the lease which had been imposed on him or her for decades.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Considering that the tenant has been sitting for decades—at
the very least prior to 1992—on an old rent system, protected by the law, which
is far below the current market value, how would then tenant and proprietor
come to agree on the new rent? Suppose a tenant who is renting for $2,000 a
year for a three-bedroom apartment in an upscale middle-class residential area
of Beirut, which if it were to be competitively open would be worth no less
than $30,000, based, say, on a new rent in the same residential complex. How
would then the two agree on a new price in order to proceed with a lease based
on the new law?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Article 15 makes possible the extension (renewal) of the old
pre-1992 lease contracts for another 9 years on the proviso that the tenant
would pay the so-called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">badal al-mithl</i>
with an incremental increase so as to reach no more than five percent of the
property’s value, considered as the fair lease price, as follows:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
15 percent for the first year;</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
30 percent for the second;</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
45 percent for the third;</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
60 percent for the fourth;</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
80 percent for the fifth;</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
100 percent—fair price—for the
sixth;</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
100 percent for the seventh;</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
100 percent for the eighth.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The lease would then be open to negotiation in the ninth
year, with the possibility of a closure or non-renewal. Only poor households would
be able to extend their stay for 12 years.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftn15" name="_ftnref15" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn15;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[15]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
So, suppose I am a tenant in an old pre-1992 lease which is worth $2,000
annually, what would the new law do to my lease, and in what way would it
benefit me and my landlord? Either the “new updated rent” is assessed on the
old existing one—$,2000—which means that six years from now it would reach its
full “street value”—$4,000—a 100 percent increase; or else, the new value has
nothing to do with the old one, hence must be assessed independently, and only
then, the above percentages would become operative.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The first possibility seems a bit absurd, at least for the owners,
considering that many of the old rents are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">now</i>
well worth above the $10,000 mark. In all likelihood, therefore, the second
solution seems a bit more realistic: the value of the new rent is unrelated to
the old, as its value would be marked on the most recent street price, to be
jointly decided by landlord and tenant.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In this instance, a question begs itself: how would tenant
and landlord “agree” on a new price? What if they disagree? What has the new
law to say on this matter? Who is going to arbitrate in case of conflict, which
would seem very much likely, considering the circumstances? What would the
procedures of arbitration look like considering the circumstances?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If as an owner I have an apartment that is available, I
would freely negotiate the rent with any potential tenant. The law would not
impose any “market price” on us. The same would apply if the apartment is under
a new post-1992 rent, which gives me the right either to not renew or else to
negotiate for a new price past an initial three-year tenancy contract. A
disagreement on price or on other matters would simply entail that the tenant
would have to shop elsewhere.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If that scenario proves correct, and assuming that both owner
and tenant agree on the new price (it remains to be seen what happens if they
don’t), then proprietors, in addition to all the “losses” they would have
incurred over the years, would still “subsidize” their tenants for six more
years, until a “market price” becomes a reality. They would only be able to
totally “free” their property—either for their own private use, or for a new
tenant, or a new project—only in three more years—nine years after the new law
of 2014 would have passed, assuming it would receive the final legal (and
legalized) approval, which it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">partially</i>
did on August 6, 2014, when the Constitutional Council approved the law, safe
for the articles that address the issue of the committee that would handle the
value of the “new rent.” The parliament should therefore revise those articles,
prior to the law becoming effective on 28 December 2014. Otherwise, the law
would become inoperative, and proprietors and their tenants would have to
litigate based on the more “general” law of contracts and obligations, which
stands as Lebanon’s civil code.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At present, in summer 2014, the law has been published as a
“special appendix” to the Journal Officiel on 8 May 2014, and then for a second
time, because the Constitutional Council deemed the first publication
unconstitutional. The then-president of the republic, Michel Suleiman, had
opted for his constitutional rights in not appending his signature to the law,
but also in not sending it back to parliament for review. There is nevertheless
a period of appeal that in principle is 15 days from the date of publication:
the president himself, the house speaker, ministers, and at least 10
parliamentarians could pose a challenge to the new law within the 15-day
probation period from the date of publication. Otherwise the law would become
operative six months as of its publication. There are, however, conflicting
legal opinions as to what the Constitutional Council would consider as
“probation period,” with some interpretations stretching it up to six months.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftn16" name="_ftnref16" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn16;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[16]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
However, whatever the fate of the law, the preparatory work itself, not to
mention the proposed text of the law, and the reverberations across the media
(we’re turning old needy tenants into homeless people!) point towards a common
no-nonsense mindset of issues regarding property.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftn17" name="_ftnref17" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn17;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[17]</span></span></span></span></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Article 18, whose section B–4 has been revoked by the
Constitutional Council,<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftn18" name="_ftnref18" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn18;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[18]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
solves the mystery as to how the new rent (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">badal
al-mithl</i>) would be negotiated. It would be in principle “consensually” settled
between tenant and landowner. In case of conflict, within three months of the
law’s publication, the lessor should seek the expertise of two professionals
accredited by the courts, which would help in determining the new rent. Once
notified, if the lessee is unsatisfied of the proposal, he or she may in turn
seek the appointment of two legal experts. If the two reports, the one
initiated by the landowner and the other by the tenant, prove to be
incompatible, then landlord and tenant could seek the expertise of the
committee appointed for the muḥāfaẓa where the lease is at stake. Article 19
details how expertise reports should be drafted and the kind of information
that ought to be detailed. (Notice that the expenses of the expertise reports
are on the owner and/or tenant, whoever triggers the demand first.) <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The lease would be in the 5 percent of the
value of the property <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in its current
state</i>, if empty (article 20).</b> This article therefore plainly throws all
evaluations on the value of the property itself in its current condition, that
is, in light of having been used for many years, if not decades, without much
renovation or repairs. This could be looked upon as a clause of unfairness for
the landlord, considering that he could easily invest in the property, once
empty, adding both to its value and to its rent.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Article 22 states that in case the owner would like to recollect
his or her property for a family necessity (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ḍarūra
ʿāʾiliyya</i>) or demolition (other excuses could also be valid, if
appropriate) in the first year of the special nine-year extension period, then
the tenant would receive a compensation valued at a four-year rent for the
family necessity excuse, based on the new street-based value of the tenancy
contract; if, however, the property is reclaimed within the nine-year period
for the purpose of demolition or whatever other reason, the indemnity should be
calculated on the basis of a six-year rent (as calculated in article 15). However,
whatever the case, if the tenants wish to leave after the seventh year, they
will not be entitled to any indemnity. In our case history above, we’ve noted
that the compensation was estimated at roughly one-third of the property’s
value, as determined by the court’s expert. If the value of the new lease, in
the 2014 law, is estimated at 5 percent of the value of the property in its
current state, if empty, then a compensation worth a four-year rent would be at
best in the range of 20 percent, while a six-year rent would be close to 30
percent, which is roughly similar to what the old law unofficially stipulates. That
said, our landlord above would have probably saved 10 to 15 percent or more to reclaim
his property under the family necessity rubric, assuming he sues immediately from
the first year once the law became applicable, in order to avoid another
five-year “loss” as outlined below. The law assumes that the reclaim could
either happen consensually, or else through the court channels; as this
possibility remains open in every settlement, it is difficult to assess whether
the settlement outlined above in our large-compensation case history would in
all certainty be better off in the new system.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In effect, once the new rent is set, the subvention plan, on
behalf’s of the property’s owner, which translates as another five years of low
payments, would run as follows, in reverse order than the tenant’s new mode of
payment:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
85 percent for the first year;</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
70 percent for the second year;</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
55 percent for the third year;</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
40 percent for the fourth year;</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
20 percent for the fifth year;</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
zero percent in the sixth year.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At the end of the sixth year the rent would become free,
meaning open for negotiation at a new price, based on law 160 in 1992.
Moreover, the owner would have to wait nine years to free the lease. In the
meantime, he or she would be responsible for the maintenance and safety of the
property (building, apartment, shop, or otherwise).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Article 3 claims that a credit fund (referred to as the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ṣundūq</i>)<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftn19" name="_ftnref19" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn19;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[19]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
that manages rents for disfavored lessees would be set to help the tenants
whose income is less than three times the minimum monthly salary (currently
$450, based on a decree from 2012 that regulates salary scales for public
institutions and minimum wages in general). In case the tenants’ income is less
than two times the minimum wage, the fund will pay on their behalf the
difference between old and new rent. If the income is between two and three
times the minimum wage ($900 to $1,350), the fund will cover the difference
between the new rent and 30 percent of the income. But then nothing is
envisaged to help property owners which have suffered from low rents for
decades, as if they’re “wealthy” by definition. Moreover, article 8 gives the
tenant the right to request a special aid from the account set for that
purpose, which means that the rent increase is “frozen” until the committee
decides on the request. No time framework is given as to how long that would
take, although the tenant must pursue his request in the first year (out of
nine) of the special “extension” within two months after a decision has been
made on the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">badal al-mithl.</i> Thus as
soon as the value of the new rent has been agreed upon, either consensually or
through court action, the tenant, if he wishes to do so, and assuming he is
eligible, should apply to the credit fund within two months. He should pursue
the same application, if he wishes, for every year of the nine years of
“extension.” If approved, the fund would then subsidize the yearly increase
that the tenant has been subjected to as detailed in the above table. To wit,
the fund would pay the rent hike, recommended by the law, so that the tenant
would still occupy the property with the same price. That could go on for nine
years, after which he’ll have to debate a new rent with the landlord, without,
however, any state assistance.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Article 10 states that the owner cannot use what is due from
the credit fund as part of the rent that is due from his tenant. Since the fund
would have to deliver the subsidy directly to the lessor, the latter has no
right to claim the subsidy as an “unpaid due” on the part of the lessee. In
short, the lessor would receive the “new rent” from two sources: the “original”
rent would be delivered by his tenant as usual, as if nothing happened (say, on
a monthly or bi-monthly basis), while the 15 to 20 percent yearly increase
would be delivered by the fund. Besides the fact that the lessor would have to
deal from now on with two different sources, delays created by state
bureaucratic routine are another matter altogether.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Article 29 states that if the tenant dies, or leaves the
leased property, the spouse or other relatives that may have lived with him may
take over within the nine-year extension period, then negotiate a new lease
after that, if both landowner and tenant desire so.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some have argued that the whole “crisis” of low rents, which
has preoccupied parliament since the end of the civil war in the 1990s, is
overblown, hence does not merit the attention that is normally accorded to it.
On the one hand, the argument goes, the 1992 Law of open contracts has de facto
encouraged negotiations between landlords and tenants, whereby compensations
were consensually agreed upon. For others, the road was open for court action,
as was the case for our landlord above. On the other hand, and with the end of
the civil war, between the sprawling of newly built apartment complexes, and
the demolition of old ones that were too old or defective, the portion of old
rents has been considerably marginalized, considering that new leases would be
subject to the 1992 Law. Moreover, as the unofficial figures below from 2011
point out, even within the already marginalized sector of old rents, the
tenants in dire conditions would not exceed an estimated 13,000 out of a total
of 81,500:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
13,000 of which are foreigners;</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
3,000 are considered wealthy;</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
5,000 are tenants are landowners at
the same time;</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
18,000 are in the hostelries and
tourist businesses;</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
6,000 are independent professionals;</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
13,000 are workers from the lower
classes, the only category that needs to be subsidized under a new law.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It has been further estimated that by the end of 2011
Lebanon had a grand total of at least 422,000 built properties,<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftn20" name="_ftnref20" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn20;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[20]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
based on a work published by the Central Bureau of Statistics, and funded by
the European Union. This is an increase of 13,485 units from 2004, when the
built properties totaled 408,515. It is also estimated that 20,000 new
apartments are completed each year, with an average of 10 apartments per
building, which means on average 2,000 new buildings a year. That said, 21
percent of the buildings were completed after 1990, when the civil war was
technically over; while 57 percent go back to the 1955–1989 period; and 22
percent are pre-1955. More specifically, in Beirut, 45 percent of the buildings
are pre-1954; 38 percent were constructed between 1955 and 1987; 17 percent are
post-1987; 11 percent in the 1990s, and only 6 percent are post-2000. There are
therefore lots of old buildings in Beirut which the so-called “landed lobby”
attempts to “systematically” erase by various legal or illegal means (the
“protection” of “historical” buildings is practically non-existent).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For Joseph Zougheib, Chairman of the Syndicate of Owners of
Leased Property, once the new law is approved, “There will be a cash flow
injected into the economic cycle. The State will also make more money out of
the taxes it will acquire from transactions, new rents, registrations for more
residential units that were blocked before.” Some buildings will be demolished
and replaced by new ones. “Many of the tenants who cash in their compensations
might pay them as a down payment for owning a new apartment.” This would
activate demand on residential units which is ailing nowadays. One of the
advantages of this new law is that it liberates thousands of blocked
properties. Owners can rehabilitate the property, if they have the means to do
so. The Syndicate of Owners has based its numbers on a study conducted by the
Ministry of Social Affairs, which showed that pre-1992 owners total 80,000, but
with no further breakdown as to income.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftn21" name="_ftnref21" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn21;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[21]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
Moreover, with the old rents becoming inoperative since 2012, and yet no new
law in operation, some proprietors have initiated lawsuits based on the more
general law of contracts and obligations, which stands as the country’s civil
code. However, to my knowledge, such suits are still pending, probably with the
hope that the new law would become operative by August 2014.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Moreover, in the confusion that reigned in summer 2014, amid
the law’s approval by parliament and its publication twice on purely procedural
matters, and in the long wait for the Constitutional Council to say its final
word by August 11, it became clear that a “confessional” division is at works.
First of all, Christian parliamentarians from the Phalanges Party, the Free
Nationals (Dory Chamoun), and the National Free Movement (Michel Aoun) were at
best hesitant about the law, if not totally opposed. By contrast, the
Hezbollah, Amal, and Mustaqbal Movement have adopted a hands-off approach (in
spite of all their political divergences), supportive for the most part,
leaving it open for individual decisions, with a tiny minority voting against
the law. Which undeniably points to the fact that Christian constituencies in
Beirut and elsewhere have benefited more than others from old rent practices,
while in other neighborhoods this has been less the case. Surely, however, this
is no indication that Christian neighborhoods and towns are poorer; quite the
contrary. There is undeniably a tenaciousness, or a sense of solidarity and
community, among the upper and lower Christian middle classes which makes it
harder to vacate a tenant for the usual excuses (family necessity or
demolition). It does seem, however, that in the other neighborhoods and towns
where Christians do not form an absolute majority there is that tendency to act
against “unprotected” tenants, hence many of the old rents in such areas have
dissipated in the last 20 years either consensually or through lawsuits that
would require indemnities. In the absence of detailed statistics, however, once
can surmise that in such neighborhoods and towns, the number of old-rent
tenants <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">may</i> still be high, but the
relation of “solidarity” with their landlords <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">may</i> be absent here.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ottoman and post-Ottoman societies are known for their
suspicion towards a “culture of the self” when it comes to the possession of
property under <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">individual</i> holdings.
Thus, with the importance of kinship, and communal property in small localities
in its various forms, known invariably as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">shuyūʿ</i>
or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mushāʿ</i>; not to mention the most
venerable “family” institution of all, the waqf; the primacy was—and still is
in many regards—of the group over the individual. To wit, Ottoman, colonial,
and postwar systems, gave precedence to the “survival” of the group over the
individual, which, when it came to property, it was not the “individual
inalienable right” that mattered. This was fairly clear, for example, in the
Syrian legislation of the mandate, the bulk of which was inherited from the
Ottomans of the Tanzimat, and which, in particular since the takeover of the
Baath in the mid-1960s, has, by and large, disfavored private ownership.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftn22" name="_ftnref22" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn22;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[22]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
Strangely, however, Syria “solved” the issue of low rents, at least for
residential properties, at least a decade before Lebanon did, while at the same
time disfavoring private property ownership, at least the landed ones, for
instance, by strongly limiting the purchase of land and property transfers, and
through cheap confiscation of land for the purpose of the public good.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Lebanon’s laissez-faire liberalism implies that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">all</i> properties, urban or rural, would be
treated on an equal footing. Moreover, as agriculture does not constitute a
prime sector of the economy, much less important than tourism, banking, and
services in general, there is therefore no urgency to limit landowners, farmers
and tenants with special legislation and regulations. When it comes to rent
control, our sketch of its history points to the fact that there was no <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">deliberate</i> policy at harming either owners
or tenants. As an unexpected outcome of the fifteen-year old civil war, the
sudden and sharp decline of the lira in the early to mid 1980s has rendered the
value of rents nearly worthless, creating that category of “old rents” which
was more an outcome of unfortunate circumstances than of legislation. With the
end of the civil war in the early 1990s, the state, overburdened by political
and economic pressures, was unable to catch up. Ultimately, the “old rents” as
a category, amid the freeing of rents thanks to the 1992 law, became gradually
marginalized, once attempts of owners to “redeem” their properties through
court action became more and more promising; not to mention the construction of
new buildings and apartments and the demolition of units that were seen
unworthy or unfit for safety reasons. It remains to be seen whether the new
2014 law would pass the final constitutional test by the end of the summer, and
whether it would permanently close the chapter of rent control.</div>
<div style="mso-element: footnote-list;">
<br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<div id="ftn1" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[1]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
Wasīm Ḥasan Wehbeh, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Qawānīn al-ᶜaqārāt
wa-l-mabānī,</i> Beirut: Manshūrāt Zayn al-Ḥuqūqiyya, 2011, 59–99.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn2" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[2]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Qawānīn,</i> 61ff.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn3" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[3]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Qawānīn,</i> 170.</div>
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<div id="ftn4" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[4]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
Farid Joseph Ḥaddād, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Majmūᶜat qawānīn
al-ījārāt, 1944–1982,</i> Beirut, 1982.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn5" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[5]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
My special thanks to judge ʿAfif Shamsuddin, in our numerous conversations in
Beirut in July 2012, in helping me sort out such complex social, economic, and
legal issues, which by and large have remained undocumented, even though
Lebanese newspapers are regularly filled with accounts of dissatisfied tenants
and landlords, amid the new tenancy laws which are routinely discussed in
parliament. As usual, however, there is no convincing narrative that would
historically account for the gross failure of the system.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn6" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftnref6" name="_ftn6" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn6;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[6]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
ʿAfif Shamsuddin, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Qānūn al-ījārāt bayna
al-aṣl wa-l-taᶜdīl,</i> Beirut, 1994, which thoroughly documents Law 160/92.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn7" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftnref7" name="_ftn7" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn7;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[7]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
Shamsuddin, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Qānūn,</i> 265.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn8" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftnref8" name="_ftn8" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn8;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[8]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
It goes without saying that a tenant may opt for 1–2 years only.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn9" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftnref9" name="_ftn9" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn9;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[9]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
Shamsuddin, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Qānūn,</i> 267–8.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn10" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftnref10" name="_ftn10" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn10;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[10]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
In the 1970s the dollar was three liras, a rate that would be maintained until
1982.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn11" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftnref11" name="_ftn11" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn11;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[11]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
For a rate of 1,505 liras to the dollar, which is still the current rate.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn12" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftnref12" name="_ftn12" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn12;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[12]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
All amounts were in dollars in the original, in spite of the fact that the lira
has been pretty much stable since the 1990s.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn13" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftnref13" name="_ftn13" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn13;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[13]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
“Qānūn al-ʾījārāt fi Lubnān,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Al-Shahriyya,</i>
Beirut, 127 (May 2014), 4–7: “the rental law is a new gate to waste public
money.”</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn14" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftnref14" name="_ftn14" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn14;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[14]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
The association of “Lebanese Landlords” has expressed fears and concerns on its
website at <a href="http://www.almalikoon.net/">http://www.almalikoon.net/</a>.
A letter to Kofi Anan was addressed to him on behalf of the association when he
was secretary general of the United Nations, urging for the “freedom of
contract” in Lebanon, which is protected by the more general law of “contracts
and obligations,” which stands as the civil code of the country.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn15" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftnref15" name="_ftn15" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn15;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[15]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
Yassmine Alieh, “New rental law passed by Parliament,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lebanon Opportunities,</i> May 2014, 74–77.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn16" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftnref16" name="_ftn16" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn16;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[16]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">An-Nahār,</i> Beirut, 10 May 2014.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn17" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftnref17" name="_ftn17" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn17;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[17]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
As Michel Suleiman’s presidency was in its final week (May 25, 2014), with no
successor in sight yet, the sitting president decided, based on article 19 of
the constitution, to summon the Constitutional Court regarding the
constitutionality of the new rental law approved by parliament and published on
May 8th. For its part, the union of leased properties summoned all officials
not to revoke the text of the new law, so as not to further extend the plight
they’ve been going through for forty years: “We’ve been informed that 6 members
of parliament have signed a petition on a memo that pretends to represent the
interests of the tenants in order to revoke the new law… Such names would be
for ever in the consciousness of the old landlords, and the memory of their
sons and families, simply because such revocation, if applied, would constitute
a serious attempt at confirming the illegalities of the illegitimate takeover
of the old tenants of the properties of their landowners, so that they would be
inherited by their grandsons and granddaughters…” (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">An-Nahār,</i> Beirut, 20 May 2014).</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn18" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftnref18" name="_ftn18" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn18;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[18]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
In its August 1st, 2014 meeting, in a 7 to 3 majority vote, as well as articles
7 and 13, which address the constitutionality of the committee that should
revise the “new rent” in case of conflict between owner and tenant, see, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">An-Nahār,</i> Beirut, August 7, 2014.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn19" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftnref19" name="_ftn19" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn19;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[19]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
The fund intended to assist the tenants with “limited income.”</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn20" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftnref20" name="_ftn20" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn20;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[20]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Al-Akhbār,</i> Beirut, 16 May 2012.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn21" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftnref21" name="_ftn21" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn21;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[21]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
“New rental law,” 77; some of the figures come from the Central Administration
of Statistics.</div>
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<div id="ftn22" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftnref22" name="_ftn22" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn22;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[22]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
Zouhair Ghazzal, <span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;">“Droit et société,”
in Baudouin Dupret and Zouhair Ghazzal, eds., <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La Syrie au présent,</i> Paris: Actes Sud, 2007, 625–660.</span></div>
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zouhairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18243592617841882763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6566641959183651307.post-76360804145884584572014-07-13T19:34:00.002+03:002014-07-15T12:43:15.245+03:00dominance without hegemony<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Syrian wars of domination without hegemony<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[1]</span></span></span></span></span></a></div>
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The Islamic State in Iraq and Sham<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[2]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
began as the Iraqi affiliate of al-Qaida during the American occupation of the
country (2003–2011), then managed to expand in the Syrian north and east since
2012. It split off with the other “Islamist” (predominantly Syrian) groups, in
particular its chief rival the Nusra Front, when Isis leader, operating under
the nom de guerre of Abu Bakr Baghdadi, demanded in summer 2013 the bayʿa from
Nusra’s chief Abu Muhammad Jūlānī, another one of those war-machines
pseudonyms. Had Jūlānī given his bayʿa (“endorsement”) it would have meant the
end of the Nusra as an autonomous military unit; but having refused “endorsing”
his rival, Isis marginalized itself, in one of its rare military setbacks, in
the Aleppo region. There was a time until the end of 2013 when Isis controlled
even some of the northern predominantly Kurdish neighborhoods in Aleppo (e.g.
Bustān al-Bāsha), and the crucial “gateway” (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mamarr</i>) of Bustān al-Qaṣr, but ultimately withdrew when facing
mounting pressures. Unconfirmed press reports claim that Isis has become a
“wealthy revolution,” with tons of cash at its disposal, operating with a
monthly budget of $50 million, and paying its militiamen, which happen to be
from very diverse nationalities (including Europeans), a hefty $400 a month,
which is at least twice what the others are paying. Here the “other” could mean
anything from the Nusra Front, the main rival, or other Islamist groups, or the
Free Syrian Army (FSA) for that matter. But while the latter, in all their
conflicting configurations, religious or secular, are mostly Syrian, in the
sense that were born and raised on Syrian territory, with a wide majority of
Syrians into them, Isis by contrast saw its inception in Iraq during the
American occupation, and Baghdadi himself was in jail until probably 2010. Its
“Syrian” component is barely half of its military force. When Baghdadi declared
the caliphate in the first day of Ramadan in early July 2014, he appointed
himself as caliph Ibrahim, gave a public sermon in a prestigious Mosul mosque
in a defiant gesture to the world-at-large, which marked his first public
appearance ever (previous unconfirmed photographs of him during his captivity
years were circulated by Iraqi intelligence; the Americans have set a $10-million
reward over his head). A week later, as the head of the new “Islamic State,” which
is now a “territorial reality,” in addition to being an act of the “imagination,”
Baghdadi appointed “governors” (wulāt; s. wālī) over the newly gained ghanīmas
(“booty”) of the central “Iraqi provinces.” What is striking here is that he
proceeded with appointments that were not “local,” that is to say, were not
“Iraqi,” as if the new “caliphate” has a de facto pan-Arab if not “universal” pan-Islamic
mission. For example, the Libyan Abu Usama al-Miṣrāṭa (from Miṣrāṭ, Qadhdhāfi’s
hometown and tribal area) was appointed as “governor” (wālī) to the Iraqi nāḥiya
of Saʿdiyya in the province of Diyāla. But he was ambushed and killed four days
later when his convoy was hit by a side bomb in Saʿdiyya, which has been under
Isis’s rule for a month. The incident has probably to do with the refusal of
the other Sunni militias, which have benefited from Isis’s expansion in June from
giving their bayʿa to the self-appointed caliph. Among those groups are “the
Naqshabandi group” of ʿIzzat al-Dūrī, who was Saddam’s ex-vice president, and
which the Americans had failed to capture; in addition the Army of Anṣār
al-Sunna; and the Islamic Army (al-Hayat, Beirut, 10 July 2014). (It was known
that the Ottomans appointed administrators and governors in provinces that were
not those of their origins, shifting them every few years, in an attempt not to
have those governors intermingle more than they should with the local populace.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What is important here, in the newly established caliphate
whose territory stretches over northern Syria and central Iraq, is how a group
like Isis, not to mention the other groups which are not to be reduced to their
“Islamist” components, “govern” the populations, neighborhoods, towns,
villages, tribal areas, which they seem to have “seized” “with ease.” The
seizure of entire territories in central “Sunni” Iraq on June 10th comes to
mind first in this respect: is such seizure an outcome of military prowess, the
tactics of “guerilla” war which faces a much more equipped and organized army
than its own (be it Iraqi, Syrian, or American), or has it more to do with a
populace which initially suffers from poor systems of representations, has been
ruled by “external” forces, including the “national state,” hence is not even a
“society” in the first place.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To elaborate, what needs to be questioned is the ability of
small militarized groups (experts assume that Isis controls parts of Syria and
Iraq with no more than 10,000 to 15,000 well-trained but modestly armed men) to
“govern” and “subdue” populations and territories (including tribal areas)
which could be even “alien” to them, and with a minimal force which would be no
more than 2 to 5 percent of the populations of the conquered territories. This
is, in our view, the fundamental aspect of the Syrian wars, which have become
since June joined Iraqi–Syrian wars led by militias whose organization is not
much in sync with the populations.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Large portions of Syria and Iraq are now controlled by
heterogeneous military groups, which in sheer number and equipment seem far
below what the Syrian and Iraqi “national” armies have now or had for decades.
Such groups come in sorts: some claim to be liberal democratic, like the Free
Syrian Army, while the majority are jihadic, with Isis pioneering in this
regard. For the most part, however, they do not seem to have anything that even
comes close to a political or social “program” to “govern” the territories,
tribes, villages, towns, cities and neighborhoods under their control. Their
tactics are rather one of pure survival. First of all, in the conquest,
withdrawal, and re-conquest, they would never adopt a style of frontal attacks,
as regular armies would normally do. (T.E. Lawrence’s art of guerilla tactics
against the Turkish soldiers and garrisons in the Hijaz come to mind here as a
source of inspiration for understanding such methods; but also the “failures”
of the Americans in Vietnam and later in Iraq to “subdue” or “kill” guerilla
groups, from the Vietcong to the jihadists.) Second of all, once an area is
conquered, they may or may not adopt a harsh style (arrest and torture of
“opponents”), but even if they do they tend to be “friendly” with the
population at large, not requesting much, as the sources of income tend often,
though not always, to originate “from elsewhere.” That’s an important point:
controlling a territory which would not de facto generate much income to the
conquering group, at least not in the early phase. Thus, some of the resources
used in Syria, say, in the northern-central areas of Minbij and Raqqa may come
from other regions, for instance, the oil-wealthy region of Dayr al-Zor, or,
indeed, from neighboring Iraq (the take over of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest
city, was particularly lucrative, bringing close to $500 million in a single
day from the city’s banks).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thirdly, we need to compare and contrast modes of
“domination,” “governance,” control—in short, governmentality—between “the
state” and “the rebel militias.” What stands as “the state” has been a steady
evolution of modes of dominance, at least since the 1960s, which initially
consisted of a takeover of the resources of the state by force. At the time,
Syria, in spite of a brief but unfortunate union with Egypt, “society” was
still fairly liberal and democratic, hence the forced seizure of power by the
Baath has ended decades of liberalism. In Iraq, the liberal bourgeois state of
the old classes went down with the coup of Abdul-Karim Qasim in 1958, hence the
Baath brought a permanent, if not everlasting blow, to that liberalism.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now that Isis is gone from Aleppo since January 2014, the
“opposition” has come under a conglomerate of groups known as the Islamic Front,
a rebel coalition dominant in the city and much of northern Syria. The Islamic
Front is a fierce and effective opponent of Isis but also, in its Islamist
platform and indirect connections with al-Qaida is a different beast than the
Free Syrian Army. The FSA, surrendered as it is now in the southern
neighborhoods of Salah-u-ddin and Sukkari and Sayf al-Dawla, among others,
which had inaugurated the battle for Aleppo back in July 2012 (in the first
year of the insurgency, the city remained totally “silent,” as it did in the
“great revolt” of 1925), without water, food, and ammunition, is allegedly
negotiating with the Asad régime its surrender and withdrawal à la Hama (May
2014), that is, without punishment or retribution. We’ll come later for an
explanation as to why the city was taken over by “outside” elements, which
negotiated their way by force through the southern neighborhoods, prior to
moving east. It remains uncertain how much “local” elements of the popular
neighborhoods have “contributed” to the uprising, which adds to that
problematic that we have been following regarding the lack of “political
autonomy.” I want, for now at least, to underscore that element of
“externality” in the war process, and pose the question as to how “local”
elements “articulate” with “external” ones coming from the “outside.” Let’s
assume for now that, as we’ve witnessed it until the winter of 2011, there were
more or less peaceful movements (from Damascus to Hims and Hama) which, facing
the military brutality of the state apparatuses, were hijacked by militarized
elements outside them, some of which, like Isis, were not even Syrian.
Moreover, those peaceful demonstrations, which at some point in summer 2011 in
Hama reached the million mark, had no particular organization. Their aim was
punctual in the sense that they vaguely aimed at the presidency, even though
the popular motto was no less than a “régime change.” For this very reason, the
“opposition”-held areas in Aleppo and elsewhere cannot be said to be “opposed”
to “the state” as such. There is an ambiguity to those militarized
“oppositions” in their relations to the neighborhoods and the other localities
which they have seized by force, on the one hand, and their relation to the
state on the other; an ambiguity that we need to keep track of in its
unraveling.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Isis’s abandoned headquarters in Aleppo are just across from
another large building that serves as the base for Tawhid Brigade, one of the
largest of the seven rebel groups that joined ranks together in November to
form the Islamic Front. Isis had been present in opposition-held Aleppo since
the beginning of 2013, but by the end of the year tensions with rebel groups
had reached a crisis. Considering itself a sovereign state, Isis was refusing
to accept meditation for any dispute, and it had taken to kidnapping those it
considered to be critics or enemies, including people who worked with foreign
journalists. Reporters found in its Aleppo abandoned building signs of
prisoners being tortured and summarily executed (Matthieu Aikins, The
International New York Times, July 8, 2014).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On January 7, Isis carried out a surprise attack on Tawhid
Brigade’s headquarters. It was held off. The next day, Tawhid Brigade forces
from around the city counterattacked and surrounded the hospital. “We cut them
off and prevented them from bringing any support,” said the commander who led
the offensive and who goes by the nom de guerre of Abu Assad.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At around 3 a.m., the Isis fighters trapped inside the
hospital asked to be allowed to leave the city, and Abu Assad, not wanting
further bloodshed, agreed. When he and his men searched the hospital at first
light, they discovered that Isis had massacred its captives. “We found a group
of bodies every ten meters,” said Abu Assad. Most of them had been shot in the
head while bound. Not long after the battle, the rebels had recorded a footage
of the liberation of the hospital and its aftermath which was posted on
YouTube.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The battle against Isis in Aleppo is part of a larger
conflict that started at the beginning of this year, as rebel groups across the
northern provinces of Idlib and Aleppo—including the powerful Syrian al-Qaida
affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra—fought a pitched battle to expel Isis. The face-off
left the Islamic Front pre-eminent. It controls the key border crossing with
Turkey at Azaz and, with its estimated 50,000 to 60,000 fighters, is thought to
be the largest and most potent rebel alliance in Syria.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Islamic Front is entirely Syrian in leadership, and its
central goal is to overthrow the Asad régime. Many of the group’s most powerful
members—including the Tawhid Brigade and one of the largest factions fighting
in the Damascus suburbs, Jaysh al-Islam—are not particularly ideological, and
were once allied with the Western-backed Free Syrian Army.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But they are far from secular. The Islamic Front draws on
support from pre-war Islamist resistance networks, including wealthy, religious
donors across the Muslim world and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, and exiled
Islamist group, who turned underground in 1982, amid the massacres and
destruction of Hama, which pitted at the time the régime of Asad-père against
the Brotherhood. (The mini-civil war was initiated in 1979 when allegedly members
of the Brotherhood killed dozens of Alawi officers at the Artillery School in
Aleppo, turning many of the city’s popular neighborhoods unsafe in their fight
against the régime.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of the coalition’s key members, Aḥrār al-Shām, has links
to al-Qaida’s core leadership, and the Islamic Front as a whole closely
coordinates operations with Jabhat al-Nusra.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By the summer of 2014, the Islamic Front, together with
Jabhat al-Nusra, and the FSA, are fighting a battle of survival in Aleppo,
which has been cleared out of Isis. The régime’s armed forces, which look more
and more like a popular militia, with 10,000 plus Lebanese Hezbollah militiamen
on their side, not to mention Iranian military “experts,” Russian support and
so on, are preparing for a major offensive against Aleppo this winter. That
would entail a complete takeover of the eastern and southern popular
neighborhoods, and the expulsion of the Islamist militias. Already, we are told,
the FSA, which controls its own neighborhoods in the south, where the battle
has originally started in 2012, is in negotiation mode with the régime: to
surrender with our lives and equipment intact. If such an offensive turns out a
“success,” the régime will be left with Isis in the east, its main opponent,
and various rebel groups in the Idlib and Hama provinces, not to mention the
Damascus–Hims countryside, and the border with Israel.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For its part Isis controls territories in the central north
and the north-east, which since June it has “opened” to Iraq by seizing most of
the Iraqi border crossings. What is important for our purposes, from the
perspective we have been following, is to document <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">how</i> Isis has tightened its grip on the territories it has
controlled in the Syrian north and east: what are the procedures, and how this
control is negotiated on the ground with tribes, villages, neighborhoods and
cities. A Lebanese reporter,
writing from Amman, Jordan, has noted that Isis uses different modes of
domination between Syria and Iraq, where the movement had originated during the
American occupation. In Iraq negotiations with the tribes and the underground
Sunni militias are more “subtle,” in the sense that they take into
consideration the latter’s “interests,” not to mention the Sunni–Shiʿi divide
which is inexistent in Syria. Thus, the Iraqi Isis takes the others as
“partners,” while managing the overall operation. It has adopted, in some ways,
the policies that Saddam Hussein, the Americans, and the government of Nuri
al-Maliki had opted with those same groups.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In Syria things are a bit different. In light of its June
successes at expanding in central “Sunni” Iraq, Isis (now “the Islamic State”
pure and simple since the first day of Ramadan) decided to tighten its grip on
the Dayr al-Zor region (which has been renamed “wilāyat al-khayr,” the province
of goodness, upon the declaration of the caliphate on the first of Ramadan).
For one thing, the region is the only oil-producing area in Syria, and Isis
managed to control the majority of the oil wells for at least a year, even
selling its services to the Asad régime. For another, it wants to establish in
every locality a long-term mode of domination: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">how</i> that is achieved is our concern in this section.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The eastern town of al-Shaḥīl is mostly tribal in its
composition, known to have been a stronghold of the Nusra front, for the simple
reason that its leader Abu Muhammad Jūlānī comes from there, hence his nom de
guerre is supposed to divert attention, while manifesting sympathy for the
occupied Golan Heights. In July 2014 Isis forced more than 30,000 inhabitants
of Shaḥīl to leave their homes, having already tortured and mutilated Kurdish
fighters in the north, and executed opponents in those same areas (al-Hayat,
Beirut, July 7, 2014). The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights,
the only agency to have documented such executions and the forcing out of
populations since 2011, claimed that an additional 30,000 were forced to leave
(hijra) in the area of Dayr al-Zor in the towns of Khushām (at least 15,500
inhabitants) and Ṭābiyeh (15,000). Many of the Islamist groups mentioned above
gave their bayʿa to “caliph Ibrahim” in the first week of Ramadan upon the
latter declaring himself the amīr al muʾminīn, as did the two towns in the
second of July. But Isis would nevertheless not permit the inhabitants back
until they’ve been “forgiven” (tawbah) for what they did, that is, for having
sided with Nusra and fought the Islamic State. To the inhabitants the sine qua
non condition of “forgiveness” is only an excuse for a permanent hijra.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On the other hand, having seized all oil fields in Day
al-Zor, except for the one located at Ward, which has only one well producing
200 barrels a day, Isis began selling crude oil for SP2,000 a barrel or $12,
but it forces those same merchants for selling it at no more than $18 in order
to accommodate more popular support in its own areas. However, such prices are
much lower than when the oil fields were controlled by various Islamic
militias, including Isis, at which time, back in 2013, the militants used to
sell the oil at the high price of $30 to $50 a barrel. Isis is also planning to
sell gas demijohns in the areas under its control, sprawling from Dayr al-Zor
to the eastern suburbs of Aleppo, the Turkish–Syrian frontier, and ʿAyn
al-ʿArab, with the exception of areas under Kurdish domination, in addition to
the eastern countryside of Hims and Hama, and other areas, the total of which
(excluding Iraq) is five times the Republic of Lebanon.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Nor is the management of crony capitalism the only talent
that Isis has developed in the larges stretches that it has seized between
Syria and Iraq. In early July, in the south of Hasakeh, a city in the
north-east with a majority of Kurdish population (together with Assyrians and
other Christian minorities), Isis fighters have mutilated the bodies of Kurdish
militiamen from “the Units for the protection of the Kurdish people” which were
killed in action when Isis attacked villages in the area west of ʿAyn al-ʿArab.
The bodies were hanged in public on podiums in the presence of small kids,
after exposing the bodies in the Jrāblus area.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A pattern has therefore emerged which consists in the
following: (1) seizure of a territory by force through military might; (2) the
territory could be as small as a single neighborhood, a village, a town, a
countryside, or as big as Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city; (3) the technique
of warfare consists of guerrilla warfare in small numbers, not frontal attacks
(cf. T.E. Lawrence on guerrilla warfare against the Turkish army in the Hijaz);
(4) Isis would “share” those conquered territorial units with its “opponents”
(Kurds, Nusra Front, FSA, the Islamic Front, all of which have shared
territories against their absolute enemy, the Asad régime; however, allegations
that Isis is an “offshoot” of the Asad régime seem unfounded; the régime, until
recently, with Isis’s expansion in central Iraq has been more “lenient” with
the Islamic State, probably because it served as a tool to simultaneously weaken
the FSA and Islamic Front; Jūlānī has been released from the jail of Ṣadnāyā at
the end of 2011, so that the régime would point fingers at “Islamic terrorism”
among opposition ranks) but only if it finds itself in a “weak” position, that
is, unable to dominate the others; (5) Isis is more at ease when it is in full
control of a territory, rather than sharing it; (6) when it is in a
full-control mode, Isis would accept no less than the full “subjugation” of the
populations under its control; if the latter had fought against Isis they
should ask for repentance (tawbah) and openly give their mubāyaʿa or bayʿa to
the new caliph (and the institution of the caliphate); (7) Isis would then
establish an “economy of war” in the conquered territories, whereby it would
control the most lucrative resources available, beginning with the oil fields,
trade routes and businesses. Isis would impose itself as a complete monopoly in
a “marginal” capitalist economy where the common people would not be allowed to
compete with the master. It would allow anything that would give it the income
it needs (its estimated budget allegedly stands at $50 million a month). For
example, a member of the Majādhmah tribe in the Minbij area told me that a
Turkish cell company decided to plant a reception tower near their village,
considering that the only two Syrian cell companies have been for the most part
cut off in the north. Isis agrees, only because it receives commissions from
the Turks, and the more Syrian consumers buy minutes from the Turkish cell
company, the better.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The main point is this: the mode of “domination” remains
fairly superficial—at the surface—which only involves “allegiance,” but no new
social bonds, no hegemony, class alliances and the like. In short, it is
dominance by force but without hegemony. We need to question whether such mode
of dominance is in any way different from that that has been instituted by the
Baathist state for over half a century, or whether there is anything unique to
it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Let us take as example of the process of negotiation and the
economy of war in the province of Dayr al-Zor which is almost fully under
Isis’s control.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In early July the people of the town of al-Qūriyyah took to
the streets at night to demonstrate their unwillingness to let Isis rule their
small town (al-Hayat, 9 July 2014). As reported in al-Hayat, from the
London-based Marṣad of Human Rights, negotiations were soon initiated between
the elders of the tribes of the western countryside (Khaṭṭ al-Shāmiyyah), and
the leaders of the Islamic Brigades, on the one hand, with Isis on the other
side. The purpose was to achieve an end to war and settle peace between all
parties.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What is interesting here were the conditions (shurūṭ) set by
the tribes and the Islamic Brigades—as a single party—for a settlement.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span>The
Islamic Brigades would keep their infrastructure intact in all the western
countryside of Dayr al-Zor, but would nevertheless declare their bayʿa to Isis
and uphold its banner (rāyah).</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span>The
Brigades would not deliver their armaments, heavy or small, to Isis.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span>Isis
would only enter the western countryside in small numbers, to be limited to the
“<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">immigrants</b>” (muhājirīn) only, that
is to say, from non-Syrian citizenships; thus, Syrian citizens are not welcomed
at all.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span>No
one that Isis has on its lists of wanted persons would be arrested.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span>All
parties would agree to fight the [Asad] régime.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">6.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span>The
formation of a sharʿi board (hayʾa sharʿiyya) that would be common to Isis and
the other parties.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Marṣad’s “witness” on the ground added that Isis’s prime
response was that “there is no negotiation unless the other parties give up all
their arms.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Whatever the outcome of such negotiations, what is
interesting here are the conditions set by the tribes and their militias on the
ground, that is, the original populations of the western countryside in Dayr
al-Zor. What is revealing in the list of the six “conditions” above is that the
tribes and their affiliated militias would declare the bayʿa on the proviso
that they keep their arms and military infrastructure intact. The bayʿa
therefore seems like a minor event, which could be negotiated and exchanged at
face value, practically bearing no importance in relation to any essence, which
is the military economy of those tribes and their sense of autonomy. Moreover,
the insistence on “immigrants”—that is, strangers, which could be Arab,
African, Asians, or Europeans—over Syrians points to the fact that the main
problem resides in the allocation of power relations among “Syrian” tribes. The
bayʿa, therefore, provides that institutional umbrella through which the likes
of Isis operate: subjugate groups to Isis’s dominance by giving them rewards
which were initially withdrawn from them. In some ways, Isis’s “politics”
borrows similar mottos from the Baathist state, not to mention French colonial
rule or the Ottomans.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The bayʿa is a sign of loyalty that takes place on a
one-to-one basis: not only a specific tribe, but every faction of the tribe (ʿashīra)
must <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">specifically</i> declare its
loyalty; and so would each faction of the fighting brigades. Which makes the
bayʿa a quintessential <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">speech act:</i> an
act of declaration where the loyalty of the tribe and its affiliated brigade is
openly declared in public. Thus, based on the above report (al-Hayat, 9 July
2014), the “majority” of the “forces on the ground” have openly declared “their
bayʿa to the Islamic State and the caliph of all Muslims Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
[a.k.a. Khalifa Ibrahim].” Those “powers” (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">jihāt,</i>
“directive forces”) on the ground are then enumerated one-by-one: the people of
the town of Ṣubaykhān, Dablān, Ghuraybah, al-Kashmah, Duwayr; then follows the
enumeration of the Jund al-Sham Brigades, a total of 12, whose names include
common male or female heroic personalities in Islamic history, locations, or
metaphors: al-Muʿtaṣim bi-l-llāh, Nūr al-Islām, Jund Allāh, al-Ḥārith, Khālid
ibn al-Walīd, ʿAysha umm al-Muʾminīn, etc. The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">naming</i> is here important because it is inscribed within the logic
of speech act: the point of honor of the party that declares the bayʿa to the
caliph and caliphate—and to itself—and that would do everything that it takes
to remain “loyal.” But then the bayʿa is characterized by a logic of domination
which practically leaves intact the structure of the groups that have
“subjugated” themselves to the conquering group, or other tribes or tribal
factions, or “the state” for that matter, or in the not-so-remote-past local
“administrations” which worked on behalf of the far away Ottoman state.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One should note here that if the tribes and tribal factions
(ʿashāyir) have manifested <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">some</i>
resistance to Isis, setting at times conditions for their “surrender,” it is
because the tribes of the east are better structured and “harder” than the ones
in the central-north in the region of Raqqa, which has become Isis’s official
headquarters since 2013. In this instance, the fragility and tenuousness of
tribal structures makes them vulnerable to the likes of Isis (and to the other
Islamic Brigades as well), a vulnerability that was already manifest under the
Baathist state for over half a century.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mustafa al-Burayji, an astute observer located in the city
of Raqqa, told al-Hayat (July 11, 2014): “Once Isis has entered the city as a
faction, it rushed at finding a partner (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">rāfid</i>)
among the society of tribes in the province, in which it found an easy prey,
considering the fragility and tenuousness of those tribes. Which gave the
latter the opportunity to look for easy money and status. Isis was in the
meantime using a combination of force and promises through its armed men which
were kidnapping (abducting) and beheading their opponents at the sight of the
shaykhs of the tribes, helped in this by young members of the tribe of Burayj
which had given their bayʿa to the organization. That was the beginning of a
bayʿa process that took one tribe after another, beginning with Burayj and
ending with ʿUjayl, Bu Jāber, Subkhah, ʿAfādilah, Bu ʿAssāf, Hunādah, al-Shibl,
al-Sakhānī, al-Ḥuwaywāt, and Zurashmar… That was completed with the tribes east
of Aleppo, represented by the Bubnah in Minbij, and the Khaffājah in Maskanah,
in addition to the tribal factions of al-Barri, the Ḥadīdiyyīn, and the
Nuʿaymāt… The leaders of those tribes and tribal factions were led in the past
to manifest their loyalty to then-president Hafiz al-Asad for the sake of some
money and racketeering (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ṣuṭwa</i>) which his
Baathist governments<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[3]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
had deprived them of.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Note how an observer who is resident of the city knows for
sure how to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">name</i> the tribes <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">one by one</i> (the naming of their
“affiliated” brigades, however, is quite different), because naming in relation
to the bayʿa only happens on a one-to-one basis. That is to say: tribes would
not give their “allegiance” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">collectively,</i>
that would be a meaningless act pure and simple. To understand why this is the
case, we need to understand that for each bayʿa with one of the tribes or the
tribal factions (ʿashāyir) comes an individual “reward” for the tribe in
question. The “reward” would invariably give the tribe “privileges” over an
area, like the collection of fees, dues, and racketeering schemes. Such
“privileges” would be “on behalf” of Isis, or any other group. But what
distinguishes Isis from the other military groups is their systematic
requirement of the bayʿa, as the sine qua non condition for the survival of the
organization in its newly conquered milieus.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Considering that the tribes and tribal factions have not for
the most part invested themselves in men and equipment in the civil war, the
bayʿa comes as the closest “investment” in the war effort. However, the bayʿa
would neither entail much submission to the “strong” party, nor an
“ideological” commitment of sorts. In effect, the bayʿa entails submission to
the party which happens to have controlled the area in question, which in this
instance is no one else but Isis; other areas which are controlled by the Nuṣra
Front manifest their allegiance to al-Qaida’s leader Ẓawāhiri and his
“affiliate” Jūlānī (the latter had already given his bayʿa to the former). In
all such instances, however, there is no ideological commitment, but only an
organization of power relations whereby the “subjugated” party would receive a
modicum of “economic” privileges, but not much in the order of the political
and ideological. All of this does not so much point in the direction of Isis’s
strength, but more in the direction of the fragmentation of tribal formations,
in particular in the central north of the country, more specifically, the
territories located between the east of Aleppo up to ʿAyn al-ʿArab. But even
where the tribes are stronger, as in the Dayr al-Zor region, along the border
with Iraq, the process is in the final analysis not much different. For their
part, the likes of Isis and Nuṣra behave as if the tribal structure would not
matter much to their own internal organizations, as they approach them from the
“outside”—domination without hegemony. To wit, whenever Isis imposes its well
famed “Islamic norms,” based on its own self-appointed marjaʿiyya, on a
territory, such “norms” leave intact tribal structure, neighborhoods, towns and
villages. In short, there is no attempt to “integrate” through newly imposed
norms: they only are imposed norms without processes of normalization. Thus,
for example, because in the process of the bayʿa what matters first and
foremost are the “trusted authorities” (al-thiqāt), Isis has set in Dayr al-Zor
an office which is presided by a man from the Burayj tribal faction, which
handles more security issues rather than administrative ones.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At times, a tribe’s “strength” might give it additional
privileges. For example, the bādiya of Dayr al-Zor hosts some of the most
powerful tribes, such as the ʿUqaydāt and Baqqārah, which in turn are composed
of several tribal factions (ʿashāyir), and which have not “urbanized” as the
Raqqa tribes did. Thus, the “integrity” of the ʿUqaydāt has pushed the
Asad-père régime to strengthen its ties with it for 40 years, to the point that
the eastern town of al-Muḥsin became known as “the treasury of the officers of
the Syrian army.” For his part, Asad-père had crowned his associations with the
eastern tribes by marrying his son Maher to the daughter of the chief of the
tribal faction of al-Judʿān.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The various bayʿas and counter-bayʿas to either Isis or the
Nuṣra did not quell the competition among tribes and their factions, in
particular in the presence of oil in the eastern regions, and the advantage that
Isis has manifested in its thorough organization across “national” territories
and in its control of the Iraqi–Syrian border on both sides. As the tribal
chief of the Bū Sarāya noted, “Isis knows how to give the best offer when it
comes to oil, which drives competition and fitna among the tribes, which in
turn drives some tribes outside the competition because they bear no interest
on the matter, such as ours” (al-Hayat, July 11, 2014).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Such “allocations” of revenues, oil or otherwise, which are
the property of the Syrian state in the first place, could turn violent. The
Dayr al-Zor region thus enflamed when Amer Rafdan, a leading tribesman from the
ʿUqaydāt, was shot to death, having turned against Jūlānī for the sake of
Baghdādī, endorsing the latter with his full bayʿa. The leader of Isis had in
effect approached Rafdan with a lucrative deal apropos oil revenues. The new
deal—and bayʿa—gave Isis unprecedented control over the oil wells of Jafrah,
Koniko, Khashshām and Jadīd ʿUqaydāt, while leaving tribal equilibrium in
limbo, with continuous warfare between the Bū Jāmel, on the Nuṣra side, and the
Bakīr, on the Isis side. The “deal” seems to work, therefore, on both sides.
Isis (or the Nuṣra for that matter) is unable to exploit the oil resources on
its own, without the protection that the tribes could furnish to the wells, and
the latter have proven unable to organize on their own to exploit the oil
wells.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Such divisions came in conjunction with rifts within the
ranks of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) whose Dayr al-Zor military decided to give
its bayʿa to Isis, which led the latter to take more oil wells in addition to
gas pipelines worth billions of dollars, leading also, out of fear, to more
bayʿa among tribes that have thus far been “neutral,” such as the Bū ʿIzz
al-Dīn and the Baqqārah. In sum, Isis is now in nearly full control of Dayr
al-Zor, its countryside and desert, having subdued to it the Nuṣra, the FSA,
and the tribal factions, all through lucrative oil and gas deal, which involve
protection of the well and pipelines on one side, and the commercialization of
the products on the other. However, with all kind of rifts among the tribes and
the militias, and the oil wells nearby, the “eternal peace” is not there yet.</div>
<div style="mso-element: footnote-list;">
<br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<div id="ftn1" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[1]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
The title borrows from Ranajit Guha’s concepts of “domination” and “hegemony.”</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn2" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[2]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
Both the terms of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, or the Islamic State in
Iraq and Syria, are inappropriate, as both the Levant and Syria denote meanings
that are incongruent with what Sham implies for the purported <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dawla islāmiyya:</i> the Levant would look
like a colonial reality in line with Sykes-Picot, which means “artificial”
borders created from the “outside,” through colonial administrators in Paris,
London, and elsewhere; while Syria gives the impression of a postcolonial
“national” state. Al-Sham by contrast should be understood in its “prophetic”
meaning: that of a religious territory which is not fragmented along clearly
demarcated borderlines, and which comes “next” to the holy Ḥijāz area. Isis is
known as “Dāʿish” in Arabic, for the acronym of al-Dawla al-Islāmiyya
fi-l-ʿIrāq wa-l-Shām, but if an unfortunate would utter such a word in public
in an Isis-controlled area, he could be punished with 80 whips.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn3" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[3]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
Of the so-called “corrective movement,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ḥaraka
taṣḥīḥiyya,</i> which “corrected” and acted upon the early Baath of the 1960s.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
zouhairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18243592617841882763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6566641959183651307.post-37226836322371287552014-07-13T19:26:00.001+03:002014-07-13T19:26:19.774+03:00le "monde" méditerranéen<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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This year my birthday happily coincided with the end of
Ramadan and the coming of the Fitr. Otherwise, it’s Hiroshima as usual, one
more time, like a burden. I will miss Ramadan, which, like Christmas, has
something secular into it. That it shifts two weeks backwards every year makes
it even better, as it desperately associates itself with the four seasons. In
Beirut, a lousy city in every respect, streets are quiet by 7:00 in the
evening, which is one of Ramadan’s blessings for a city filled with noise, extra
noise, more noise for nothing, noise like garbage. I’ve developed so much
hatred to this place that I’m beginning to think that my liking it in the last
few years must be related to teaching: I hate teaching more than I hate Beirut,
therefore I tolerate this damned city. On the positive side, I need castration
to work, hence the toleration. The real pleasure is at the beach, with a nearly
empty swimming pool all for myself in Ramadan. What would happen to me when in
few years Ramadan shifts back to winter? But the real blessing is this deep
blue Mediterranean, and all those young women tanning themselves endlessly, who
seem “possessed” for life by men who are notoriously absent, as if they’re
having their moment of “fun” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">elsewhere</i>.
(Freud would say there’s no “sexual liberation,” because it’s all in that
damned oedipal unconscious; hence we repeat ourselves indefinitely; we score
well or poorly; at best there’s pleasure, if we can find it, but no <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">jouissance.</i>) It’s those couple of hours
every afternoon at the beach that I’ll miss once in Chicago—moments of
relaxation and serenity which have no equivalent elsewhere—certainly not on “Lake
Eerie”—or its cozy apartment. I can forget myself and my failures: something uncanny
in the heat of a Mediterranean sun that would urge such forgetting. I am by temperament
not much of a social animal, hence the solitude of loneliness is all what it
takes to get hold of that elusive “self.” At least it gives me the energy to
write few hours a day, with that feeling of accumulation and achievement, in
spite of all failures. Writing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">about</i>
the eastern Mediterranean, this world where I grew up, is a frustrating
experience, as there is so little that “comes together” through the symbolisms
of language. As I read Foucault’s lectures at the Collège de France, with his
elaborate genealogies that connect socio-historical layers of discourses and
practices, I realize that all my life I’ve been struggling precisely with that
desire of continuity, of things and phenomena connecting together through their
most obscure layers. I then decided to drop every “about” I could think of: not
to write about an about is a great blessing; not to write with a thesis in mind
and proofs for that damned thesis; hence all writing and teaching became more
confusing, for the better. Difficult not to think of Fernand Braudel’s
Mediterranean “world” and its three archeological cultural layers: the
Greco-Roman and Latin Christianity, the Islamicate, and the Greek-Orthodox, in
relation to their temporalities. There is a layer, says Braudel, that never
moves, completely immobile, like those mountains on the Mediterranean; on the
top of it sits the layer of institutions, which are slow moving; still on the
top is what we are instinctively attracted to: the events on the surface which
give us that wonderful illusion that so much is happening, so much is going on,
to the point that change is all over the place. Yet, we remain the same, no
matter what. Had you known me at twenty, you would have realized that “I” was
back then exactly as “I” am now, at fifty-seven, but with less gray hair. Time
and age only bring forth that element of consciousness that was not present
before: I know <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">now</i> why I made such a
decision at twenty. Only time brings that satisfaction: I haven’t changed
because that’s how I always wanted to be in the first place; but I only
understand it now. Freud used to compare the unconscious to archeological
layers, deep down into our consciousness, which we know nothing about (that is,
“it” cannot be formulated in the symbolisms of language; hence the “violence”
“it” inevitably holds from within our libidinal impulses) until a contingent
event accidentally hits on one of those layers. The event which looks like an
innocuous accident would be perceived through the lens of analysis and therapy
as situated within a broader traumatic structure, which could be discovered by
connecting what seems at face value disconnected events. For Freud Rome was the
quintessential metaphor of the unconscious, sitting as it has been for
thousands of years on archeological layers, some of which are visible <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">all at once </i>at its center—the Forum. The
Mediterranean is just like that—unconscious archeological layers which are open
to be associated with one another into infinite temporalities. Like any
unconscious, it is neither egalitarian, nor democratic, nor ready to be
reeducated. That’s my fate and destiny. That’s why I find myself useless as a
teacher—and lover. Needless to say, I’ve got no urge for icy Chicago!</div>
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<br /></div>
</div>
zouhairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18243592617841882763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6566641959183651307.post-4153088323794749712014-07-04T12:20:00.000+03:002014-07-13T19:28:18.195+03:00egyptian secularism?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Agrama, Hussein Ali. <i>Questioning Secularism: Islam,
Sovereignty, and the Rule of Law in Modern Egypt</i>. University of Chicago
Press, 2012. ISBN 0226010694. $27.50.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Asad, Talal. <i>Formations of the Secular: Christianity,
Islam, Modernity</i>. Stanford University Press, 2003.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Asad, Talal, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, and Saba Mahmood. <i>Is
Critique Secular?: Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech</i>. 2nd Revised edition.
Fordham University Press, 2013.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Yavuz, M. Hakan. <i>Islamic Political Identity in Turkey</i>.
Oxford University Press, 2005.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Article 2 of the
Egyptian constitution states that “Islam is the religion of the State, Arabic
is its official language, and the principles of the Islamic sharia are the main
source of law.” The Syrian constitution carries a similar clause, except that the
sharia is substituted for fiqh, the various law schools (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">madhāhib</i>) which represent different interpretations of the holy
sharia, based on the Qur’an and hadith (the sayings and doings of the Prophet
Muhammad). The clause in the Syrian constitution on the sources of law may be
historically and hermeneutically more accurate, as we are dealing more with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">interpretations</i> of the sharia than with
the holy law itself, which stands as divine, hence could only be approached
hermeneutically: the corpus of the fiqh, in its various Sunni and Shi‘i law
schools, does indeed assume a principle of contingency, as each interpretation
would be contingent on both the school that carries it and the jurist that has
propounded it.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The question,
however, as raised by Hussein Ali Agrama’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Questioning
Secularism,</i> is, would such constitutional clauses make a country like Egypt
more “religious” than “secular”? Does Egypt have a “secular” future? The
anthropologist Talal Asad, Agrama’s mentor, has differentiated between the
concepts of the “secular” and “secularism,” tracing the genealogy of the former
to medieval Christianity, in its attempt to delineate a “profane” discursive
field that would stand outside religion proper, while the latter is a
nineteenth-century phenomenon on a par with nationalism and the nation-state,
both of which require an ideology of integration into a “society” of autonomous
individuals. Various European nations could thus be described as having gone
through a process of secularization, which would imply implementing the
doctrine of secularism as a discursive practice that would separate the domain
of the modern state from that of the religious proper. For example, a newly
formed nation like Turkey, which, in the wake of the dismemberment of the
Ottoman Empire after the First World War, proclaimed the secular nature of its
state apparatuses since its 1923–27 constitution, had to go through a process
of secularization whereby the Turkish élite, under the leadership of Mustafa
Kemal Atatürk, disbanded many of the most famed religious institutions of Sunni
Islam, beginning with the venerable caliphate and the position of Shaykh ul-Islam.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Agrama is frank
that when he started his research on the Egyptian judiciary in the 1990s, he
wasn’t much interested in secularism per se. What seems to have changed his
mind was the Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd case, the University of Cairo professor who
was accused of apostasy in his views regarding the interpretation of the Qur’an
and scriptures, and was ultimately forced to divorce his Muslim wife through an
order that originated from a personal status court. When the Cairo Appeals
Court declared Abu Zayd an apostate, it wrote in its judgment that</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="quote">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Court notes that
there is a difference between apostasy, which is a material action with its
basic elements and conditions…and belief (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">i‘tiqād</i>).
Apostasy is necessarily comprised of <span style="background: aqua; mso-highlight: aqua;">material acts that have an external being</span>. Such acts must make
manifest, in a manner undeniable and without dissent, that one has called God
Most High a liar, and the Prophet, peace be upon him, a liar by denying what he
has brought to Islam….Belief, however, differs clearly from apostasy. For
apostasy is a crime whose <span style="background: aqua; mso-highlight: aqua;">basic
material elements are presented before a judge</span> to decide whether it
exists or not…but belief concerns what is in the <span style="background: aqua; mso-highlight: aqua;">interior of a human’s being self</span>, belonging to his
domain of secrecy. (Agrama 50)</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Here Agrama
seems to be missing the point in his rush to interpret the Court’s judgment:</span></div>
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<div class="quote">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Thus freedom of
belief was not defined as freedom to believe what one wants; it was not solely
a matter of being able to choose one’s own opinion or views. Rather, freedom of
belief also consisted in a protection from those actions and practices that
would corrupt religious belief and obstruct the conditions needed for its
proper maintenance and practice. Belief therefore required investigation when
obstructions to it were manifest. (Agrama 51)</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Agrama’s
interpretation misses completely the distinction, clearly demarcated by the
Court, between the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">internality</i> of
belief, on the one hand, and the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">externality</i>
of apostasy on the other. It is therefore not (at least primarily) a question
of “freedom” to believe or not believe for the subject, but in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">externalization</i> of acts (including
speech) which may or may not signal and internal belief. What the Court clearly
stated was that as long as belief, being a purely internal phenomenon without
any external manifestation, it has no legal consequence. No judge could judge
me on my belief for the simple reason that it is internal, hence invisible in
the eyes of justice and other mortals. I could get in trouble for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">stating</i>—which in itself is an act of
externalization related to speech—a religious opinion, not because it
necessarily reflects an internal belief of mine, but simply because it is, in
the language of the Court, a “material act” or an “external being,” which could
be the subject of a counter-opinion, a judgment, or a lawsuit. In other words,
the Court would not care less about my internal beliefs, and whether there is a
“correlation” between my core beliefs and my external acts, for the simple
reason that we only have knowledge of and can only judge the latter. Put
simply, the expression “freedom of belief” is meaningless, as belief is
internal, and there is no one to judge me on it. It is therefore neither free nor
restricted.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The problem,
however, in the Abu Zayd case, is not simply that he did externalize—in the
form of written texts—what he may or may not have believed in regarding his
interpretations of the Qur’an and scriptures. Abu Zayd could have made the
rightful claim for his right of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ijtihād,</i>
that of personal interpretation and reasoning, but, here again, the Court of
Cassation, which has sustained the decision of the lower Appeals Court, made it
clear that the entire text of the Qur’an is not to be subjected to personal
reasoning, except for verses that are not straight-forward and clear enough, or
have no other verses to support them (Agrama 52). So, once more, the crucial
matter, in the case of apostasy, is not one of “freedom of belief,” but its
externalization in an act (speech act or otherwise) that could be assessed and
judged. Once externalized in publications, as Abu Zayd did in his numerous
academic writings, the various courts found it legitimate to intervene, not,
however, on the basis of freedom of belief. Belief is simply, for those
secular-religious courts, the noumenal unknown, about which nothing could be
stated, and regarding which the courts have nothing to say or judge.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Here we need to
address a couple of related issues. First of all, where does this separation
between the internality of belief and externalization of apostasy come from? Is
it Islamic (established in the fiqh, philosophy, or theology)? Or is it
unrelated to Islam? What are its repercussions on the debate between religion
and secularism? In my view, the importance of this matter stems from the fact
that such position would point at broader differences with Christianity, and
for that very reason, the religious–secularist debate cannot be solely
addressed in terms of a contextualization of a particular religion based on its
practices, for instance, court practices. What needs to be addressed are the
broader issues of truth, belief, and the externalization of belief across
religious experiences.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Talal Asad, an
astute genealogist in line with the likes of Nietzsche and Foucault, and
Agrama’s mentor, noted the following regarding the Abu Zayd case:</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="quote">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Disbelief incurs no
legal punishment; even the Qur’an stipulates no worldly punishment for
disbelief. In the classical law, punishment for apostasy is justified on the
grounds of its political and social consequences, not of entertaining false
doctrine itself. Put another way, insofar as the law concerns itself with
disbelief, it is not a matter of its propositional untruth but of a solemn
social relationship being openly repudiated (“being unfaithful”). Legally,
apostasy (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ridda, kufr</i>) can therefore
be established only on the basis of the functioning of external signs
(including public speech or writing, publicly visible behavior), never on the
basis of <span style="background: aqua; mso-highlight: aqua;">inferred or forcibly
extracted internal belief.</span> (Asad et al. 36–7)</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">From Max Weber
to Marcel Gauchet, up to Asad’s own <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Genealogies
of Religion,</i> it has often been pointed out that since medieval Christendom
it has become customary to question this internal invisible motivation
precisely “on the basis of inferred or forcibly extracted internal belief.” In
his groundbreaking <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Genealogies,</i> Asad
documents at great length how in medieval Christendom pain and truth came
hand-in-hand in the inquisitorial institution of judicial torture in order to
extract a truthful confession. What this means is that, unlike in Islamdom, it
mattered to know what the internal motivations and beliefs of a subject <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">were.</i> They had to be extracted by force
and externalized. Which to put it bluntly, Christianity demarcates itself from
Islam and other systems of belief in placing the burden of proof and
socialization on the individual and his or her individual consciousness. Which
makes Christianity more universal in that the requirements for social and
religious requirements into the community (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">communitas</i>)
are more demanding to say the least. The difference between the secular and
sacred, since medieval Christianity, may be seen in the notion of a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">communitas</i> whereby there is an intense
community spirit propelled by a common ritual, the feeling of great social
equality, solidarity, and togetherness. Communitas is therefore the experience
of people experiencing liminality together. The secular by contrast focuses
more on structure, on what needs to be done together for the sake of the
survival of the community. When Europe moved to modernity, this common
structure implied the nation, nationalism, and the nation-state. What is
important for our purposes, however, is that this transition from the religious
to the secular not only needs to be historically contextualized, but more
importantly, it is itself set within religious parameters which are determined
by the essence of the system of religious beliefs to which a community belongs.
In short, an Islamicate society like Egypt, in process of secularization, would
experience the spirit of a secular community differently from any European
community, due precisely to Islamicate principles.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">This internality–subjectivity
of belief versus the externality–objectivity of a religious behavior (e.g.
blasphemy) operates perfectly well even within the strict confines of a
secularist space of an Islamicate society like Turkey. Turkey went secular in
1924 during the formative period of the Turkish Republic, modeling its “laic”
law, which separated state institutions from various religious powers, more
after French <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">laïcité</i> (officially
established in the 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and the
State) than American secularism per se. If <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">laïque</i>
in its original Greek meaning is that which “belongs to the people,” hence, in
its later post-Revolution meaning, would refer to that common political good,
the body politic of the nation which should not be monopolized by clerical
power, then to “laicize” would entail more radical measures than secularization
proper. In effect, to laicize would not be limited to the removal of clerical
power and symbols only, or the secularization of the state, as it would be more
radical than that: namely, the banning of religious symbols (and symbolisms)
from public institutions and public life. Hence a cross, which would symbolize
Christian values, would be banned from the person who is wearing it in public,
or at least within the confines of a public institution that preaches <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">laïcité.</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The point here,
at least in relation to Egyptian secularism, is what happens when the political
space of a modern nation-state officially declared secular, or better still, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">laïque,</i> with all the French connotations
of that term, which the Turkish Kemalist Republican élite had wholeheartedly
assumed and staunchly protected (even if that implied in the post-World War II
era one military coup after another in order to protect Turkish Kemalist
secularism). Does such a situation imply a complete reversal to Egyptian
secularism, which is not openly declared, but only negotiated piecemeal on every
occasion, whether implying a judicial verdict or not?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Consider, for
example, what happened in Turkey in 1998, amid the 1997 military coup that
banned “Islamist” parties of the likes of the Refah and Fazilet, which brought
down the successful government of the Refah leader Necmettin Erbakan. In 1998
the Constitutional Court (CC) took aim at redefining secularism in theory and
practice in light of what it saw as “serious transgressions” from the
practitioners of the banned Islamist parties. Before handing down its decision,
the CC redefined secularism as “the way of life,” as the only officially
sanctioned “regulator of political, social and cultural life of the society.”
The central goal of Kemalism was defined as being a political, social, and
cultural system “free of any religious influence or presence. Religion, for the
CC, only can be tolerated in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the private
conscience of an individual,</i> and any <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">externalization
or reflection of religiosity in the public domain</i> is defined as an
antisecular act against the principles of Kemalist secularism. The CC decision
also alludes to “the different nature of secularism in Turkey on the basis of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the unique characteristics of Islam</i> and
the sociohistorical context of Turkey.” Indeed, the court defines religion in
opposition to secularism and argues that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“religion
regulates the inner aspect of the individual</i> whereas <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">secularism regulates the outer aspect of the individual.”</i> (Yavuz
247)</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">What is
remarkable here is that between Egypt which would not adopt an open secularist
stance, and Turkey where secularism is staunchly protected in the constitution,
there is that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">common</i> view that belief
in Islam rests on the duality between an internalized–subjective attitude which
could always be tolerated as such by the official state authorities—precisely
because it remains a Kantian noumenal invisible—versus a parallel attitude of
belief which is externalized and rendered <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">visible</i>
by the practicers themselves. As belief remains subjective and internalized,
hence unknown to state and judicial authorities, as long as the
actor-individual-subject would not publicly externalize it, the externalization
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">religious</i> belief, however, once
open to the public, could be subjected to state and judicial scrutiny. That’s
at least the logic behind the decisions taken by both the Egyptian supreme
court in the case of Abu Zayd’s alleged apostasy, and, roughly the same time,
in the late 1990s, by the Turkish CC regarding the practices of members of
Islamist parties. What is remarkable in both instances is, whether the system
is openly based on sharia law or secularist, it still operates within the
duality of internality and externality of belief. As the likes of Talal Asad,
Michel Foucault, and Marcel Gauchet have argued, such an attitude is not that
of Christianity, which beginning in medieval times, extracted and objectified
internal belief, even if that meant judicial torture. One could argue in favor
of a principle of universality in Christianity in that the practices of
integration achieve a disciplinary status, whereby the individual is integrated
within the community of believers based on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">internal</i>
acceptance of the faith, which runs deep and is not to be limited to
externalized rituals of admission or otherwise. In Islamdom by contrast, allegiance
to the faith and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">umma</i> is left to the
observance of externalized rituals, which, if not in conformity to the
principles of Islam, could be subject to punishment and persecution. Thus, when
the Turkish CC claims that “religion regulates the inner aspect of the
individual,” one should cautiously add as a remainder that for a religion like
Christianity such regulation of the inner life <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">must be externalized, controlled, and disciplined,</i> otherwise
adherence to the faith would be meaningless. And when the same CC adds that
“secularism regulates the outer aspect of the individual,” it is Islamdom that
regulates faith in terms of an internality that cannot be monitored and an
externality that could be subject to judicial sanctions. As such, Turkish
secularism is an outcome of Islamic belief in the way it demarcates the
internal from the external.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Which leads us
to an uncanny position when it comes to comparing Egyptian with Turkish
secularism. In both instances, Islamic faith has to be externalized in order to
be subject to judicial consequences. Without that awry process of
externalization, the judiciary would be at a loss, as it would be unable to
“read” what is in the mind of the believer. A case in point was when the CC
used statements by the Refah Party as examples of antisecular activities: “the
headscarf must be free in the universities” and “the right to choose your own
legal system, including the sharia,” as examples set to deconstruct the true
nature of Kemalist secularism. (Yavuz 247)</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">How do we then
study secularism when, as is the case in Egypt, not only it is not overtly
declared as a state policy, but the Constitution openly acknowledges its debt to
sharia law? Should we read secularism in between the lines, pretending that we
see it operating under certain circumstances—e.g. the Abu Zayd case—even though
it remains without official declaration? Agrama’s solution to this
methodological impasse is to object to any reading that would place Egypt
either on one side or the other. His stance is that, of course, Egypt is a
modern nation-state, which means subjecting individual citizens to an
allegiance to political power on a national scale, and to disciplinary
normative power. Does it therefore make sense to declare Egypt religious simply
on the basis that its constitution openly declares the sharia as the source for
modern law? Agrama’s démarche, by refusing to take a stance on this, seems set
within a modernist paradigm that modernization is no simple matter and that
“things are not what they appear on the surface.” He therefore misses the
opportunity to explore the difference between an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">open</i> declaration of secularism, as is the case in Turkey, and one
where it is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> openly declared,
leaving sharia law—at least in principle—the source of all law. Here it is not
enough, as Agrama does, to claim that even though sharia law remains the
source, Egyptian law is by and large historically Napoleonic, and that even
sharia law must subject itself to secularism. Such claim would, indeed, not
free us from raising the issue as to why Egypt did not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">openly</i> adopt secularism as Turkey did. And would that have made any
difference in the practices of law? To wit, if secularism is such an important
component of the modern nation-state, why isn’t openly declared and practiced
as such?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Maybe what is
needed here is more than a smart postmodernist playfulness. Class configuration
and antagonism, the possibility of a hegemonic élite (in the sense of Gramsci)
that governs civil society, and the stability of the hegemonic formation, are
all factors that would play in favor of secularism. Thus, in the case of Turkey
for example, what became the Turkish Republic in the wake of dismantlement of
the Ottoman Empire was composed of an élitist configuration, composed of men in
the military, landowners, industrialists and financiers, intellectuals and
independents, with much stronger ties than any other country on the eastern
Mediterranean. Moreover, the Turkish élite was beefed up by all kinds of
officials, civil or military, who had to abandon their posts in the multi-ethnic
peripheries to join the new Republic upon the Empire’s demise. The point here
is that what ultimately became “Turkey” as nation-state was already in the very
heart of the Mediterranean as the Empire’s center. The Turkish élites were for
centuries debating major issues on the future of their Empire, and that pattern
was inherited when the Republic came into being. The Kemalist hegemonic ruling
group was composed, in its early phase, of militaries, intellectuals,
landowners, industrialists and financiers. As such, it was not limited to a
single dominating class or group, but it was an assortment of groups (or
fractions of classes) and individuals that made their domination over civil
society possible. Here the ideology of secularism was primarily destined to
weaken the bonds between the religious establishment and society, attempting to
render them obsolete by neutralizing them through a secularist public space,
which precisely would not have been possible were it not for the hegemonic
structure.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Egypt, by
contrast, lacked such hegemonic structure. Historically, the Wafd party,
instituted in 1919 in the wake of the Versailles Peace Conference, created a
“corporatist” culture that would absorb diverse groups, including
representatives of the working class and trade unions. The corporatist culture
implied a loose assortment of societal elements that would weaken even further
with the British gradual withdrawal from the political scene. That was already
visible amid the Anglo-Egyptian treaty in 1936, and by the 1940s the old establishment
was in full crisis mode, divided between a weakened Wafd, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>workers and trade unionists attempting to
create their own autonomous working class system of representation, and an
unpopular monarchy. The 1952 Free Officers’ revolution only capitalized on such
crisis by instituting its own corporatist and populist political space, which
is still present, in spite of the fall of the Mubarak régime in early 2011. In
sum, at no point in Egyptian history of the last century was there a stable
class configuration that would have opted for secularism as an official state
policy. Unstable class configurations in Europe and developing countries would
invariably lead to a mixture of corporatism, populism, and fascism, which tend
to harness on the existing cultures rather than challenge them with anything
“alien.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">As Agrama seems
uninterested in raising the issue as to why Egypt opted for a “bargaining with
secularism” rather than secularism as an official policy, his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Questioning Secularism</i> hinges on a
defensive apologetic mode of reasoning whenever the Islamists seem on the lead.
Take for example the Abu Zayd case, which, simply on procedural matters, would
have been unthinkable in Turkey. The principle that the petitioners had employed
was dubbed as the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ḥisba,</i> defined
within Islam as “the commanding of the good when it is manifestly neglected,
and the forbidding of the evil when its practice is manifest.” It goes without
saying that the principle of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ḥisba</i> is
historically determined, and when used in different historical contexts, could
lead to a variation of meanings and interpretations based on how the users at a
specific juncture want to operate with such principle. In the context of modern
Egypt, therefore, Agrama argues, “the principle and practice of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ḥisba</i> acquires a distinctive thrust and
import through and within the Egyptian law. While <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ḥisba,</i> in its classical sharia elaborations, was part of a form of
reasoning and practice connected to the <span style="background: aqua; mso-highlight: aqua;">cultivation of selves</span>, in the courts it became
focused on the maintenance and defense of interests aimed at <span style="background: aqua; mso-highlight: aqua;">protecting public order</span>.”
(Agrama 20) So in order to bypass the manifest contradictions between secular
law and sharia, Agrama’s argument “liberalizes” the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ḥisba</i> in the context of Egyptian liberalism and secularism. The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ḥisba</i> is no more an “irrational
aberration” (Agrama 19) that would not match with its classical Islamic
precepts. Instead, it becomes an operative concept in relation to Egyptian
secular law. The truth, however, is no matter how we contextualize <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ḥisba,</i> the fact remains that a professor
at Cairo University in the 1990s has been declared apostate by the Appeals
Court, estranging him from his wife, declaring his marriage null and void, and
wrecking apart his private and public life. First of all, Agrama is here wrong
at characterizing the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ḥisba</i> in its
classical premodern connotations as a “cultivation of the self,” which
genealogically is more a medieval Christian concept that involves an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">interiorizing</i> of belief than an Islamic
one, while in modern times it is meant at “protecting the public order.” In
both instances, the classical and modern interpretations of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ḥisba,</i> both operate, as the higher court
argued, on the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">externalization</i> of
belief as manifested in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">visible</i> acts.
In both instances, therefore, the judicial authorities were concerned at
“protecting public order.” What is at stake here is that a classical Islamic
concept, even when interpreted in the liberal context of a modern nation-state,
still operates under the assumption of externalization of belief in relation to
a statist public order that needs to be protected. Without such externalization
there would be no perjury, no court decision.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The second
aspect of the debate concerns the “What if?” question: What if Egypt’s
constitution had been fully secular? Obviously, the whole logic of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ḥisba</i> logic would have been inoperative.
The point not to be missed here is that the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ḥisba</i>
logic would not ascribe itself as a Universal in Egyptian law, as it remains a
Particular that the petitioners employed—as a legal procedure of its moment—in
order to prosecute Abu Zayd. Agrama’s interpretation of the case would not even
offer the possibility that it could be routinized for uses in other
circumstances. That is to say, it remains a Particular that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">works for a particular case,</i> but which,
to use a Hegelian jargon, cannot be “sublated” for a higher more abstract
Universal. Secularism as a Universal that applies itself under all conditions
would have by contrast rendered such particular cases inoperative.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
modernization of Egyptian law, which begins in earnest under Mehmed Ali in the
early nineteenth century, implied the introduction of Napoleonic codes in
civil, penal, and commercial laws. The Ottomans did something similar with the
Tanzimat once the nizami courts became operative; the new courts, following a
Napoleonic model, introduced a diversity and identical hierarchy for all courts
with the right to appeal to a higher court. The new Tanzimat system, both the
Egyptian and Ottoman, instituted a split between modern secular codes and
courts, on the one hand, and the sharia based courts of personal status on the
other, a split that is still operative in the majority of Arab countries. The
wager here is that the sharia courts themselves have become since the nizami
courts a member of the court hierarchy, that is to say, having lost their prime
role as the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">only</i> operative courts
that would handle anything from contracts and obligations, up to tort and
crime, the sharia courts have been relegated to personal status only, operating
within a hierarchy of courts. They thus have de facto been liberalized, in
congruence with modern civil law. The Egyptians for their part integrated the
personal status courts within the civil system in 1954, though the entire legal
system takes the sharia as its “source,” as required by the constitution. But
even the personal status code and courts, which would apply the sharia in
matters of “obligations” (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">farā ͗iḍ</i>),
have implemented a liberalized version of the sharia, one that reasons in terms
of secular codes, whereby the various religious groups would keep their own
obligations operative in matters of marriage, divorce, and inheritance. That
this blurs the lines between the religious and secular is fairly obvious,
though this should not prevent us as to why secularism was never adopted as an
ideological and juridical stance in the first place.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
Besides that Agrama fails to question seriously the
possibility of an “openly stated” secularism, one that would have to be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">explicitly</i> stated in the constitution,
he also fails to acknowledge how such “lack” of an explicit secularism is
probably linked to a military–one–party “corporatist” dominance without
hegemony, as Ranajit Guha would say. For example, on p. 221, a claim is made
that “Egypt is often described as a repressive, authoritarian state, and many
studies of it proceeded on that premise. Its extended space of emergency,
numerous presidential decrees, apparent abuses of constitutional powers, use of
torture, and flouting of international conventions are all seen to provide
ample evidence for this… And yet there is now a large body of literature, some
of it decades old, that documents how Western democratic states have
increasingly relied on emergency powers to conduct their affairs even since
before World War II. Western European states used emergency powers for state
reconstruction and the maintenance of colonial control. In the United States
emergency powers began to be increasingly invoked since Roosevelt’s attempts to
counter the Great Depression of the 1930s. Since a long time, according to this
literature, the exception has become the norm.” First of all, let’s note here
that “the state of exception,” following Carl Schmitt, is the very condition of
the existence of law, hence of the state as such. That is to say, state-law
only validates itself through itself as the exception to all norms pervading in
society (Derrida’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">force du droit</i>).
Second of all, beyond the fact that “the state of exception” is validated
differently from one society to another and under different historical
junctures, there is a big difference between liberal laissez-faire societies
and authoritarian states like Egypt. For one thing, authoritarian states reason
in terms of the Party that defeats the adversary, the enemy-figure, maintains
the route to socialism, thus providing with a Grand Narrative that the liberal
state clearly fails to provide. In the latter, abusive situations, such as
torture, are secretly managed for narrow purposes, which remain “loose” on
their own, outside a grand narrative.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">In its stead,
Agrama pursues “Egyptian secularism” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">as
if</i> it is already there, that is, explicitly stated in some constitutional
text: “How then does secularism, as a form of power, work? And what work does
it do upon the behaviors, attitudes, and ways of knowing that constitute our
ways of life?” (p. 2)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Can we pose such
questions in the context of societies which are Islamic but with no historical
tradition of secularism? One can here allude directly to a decision of the
Turkish Constitutional Court (CC) in January 1998, amid a decision to outlaw
“Islamist” parties, regarding “the different nature of secularism in Turkey on
the basis of the unique characteristics of Islam and the sociohistorical
context of Turkey” (Yavuz 247). Indeed, the court confines religion in
opposition to secularism and argues that “religion regulates the inner aspect
of the individual whereas secularism regulates the outer aspect of the
individual.” Thus, Turkish secularism can be seen as different from democratic
forms of secularism in terms of its “Jacobin,” “militant and militarized,” and
“antireligious” features that impose a top-down Western lifestyle. Secularism
in the Turkish context is a state ideology and an instrument of othering and
criminalizing opposition. (ibid.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Hence the
special nature of Turkish society, which historically was an Empire-driven
Islam, where qānūn-mindedness (not the sharia per se) was the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">political</i> norm (Marshall Hodgson, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Venture of Islam,</i> v. 3), implied,
upon the formation of the Turkish Republic in 1923–27, an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">explicit</i> policy of adopting “secularism,” understood as a top-down
“Jacobin” approach to society, whereby the state would take a militant and
militarized, if not antireligious, attitude, openly declaring “Islam” as “unfit”
as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">religion of the state;</i> even “unfit,”
in some respects, as religion “of the people.” The point here is that the newly
born republican state took an aggressive stance, much more than French laicism
on the eve of the First World War, to “fashion” a secular state and society.
That is to say: considering that secularism did not historically grow as
discourse and practice within the Empire, it was an outcome of the new policies
of the nation-state. The latter, however, is not, at least for colonial
societies, a “prime representation,” but a representation of a representation;
a representation that emanates from the prime representation that the west made
of the nation-state for itself. The beginning is therefore the nation-state
itself, which prompted a policy of secularism as a concept, and secularization
as a practice. Which is precisely the problem: the nation-state in this
instance is a western representation, which historically evolved out of the
European history of the Renaissance and Enlightenment. The “secular” was
already a doctrine of the middle ages whose purpose was to separate the profane
from the religious. Secularism comes through as a nineteenth-century representation
of the secular within the context of the nation-state. The nation-state
primarily implies an “imagined community” whose roots emanate from a
print-capitalism of the vernacular; which implies centuries of “coming
together” for religious beliefs, regional differences, groups and ethnicities;
it implies a “society of the individuals” who come together not simply endowed
with political and civil rights, but of common forms of life (Wittgenstein).
When a newly founded society like “Turkey” adopts secularism in conjunction
with the nation-state, one must remember here that it is always the
nation-state that comes first as a historical necessity, because Empire as a
form of polity is obsolete; secularism is a byproduct of the nation-state, a second
necessity out of the first. But, in the Turkish case, the nation-state did not
mature out of the history of Empire; it was rather a bastard byproduct (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">opération césarienne</i>) which was imposed
by colonialism and whose concepts were borrowed from Europe. Consequently, the
parts that make this nation-state are only parts; they’re a non-All, whose
Oneness and Wholeness remains imaginary. In Europe, critical literature
deconstructs the nation-state as a non-All which fails meeting its ideal of
democracy, fairness, and cohesiveness. Such non-All deconstructionism, however,
always assumes the overbearing existence of the nation-state as historical
reality whose evolution was witnessed in Europe itself. Deconstructionism
therefore primarily aims at a deepening of democracy, which always hides
exclusionist policies of the non-All: to accept <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">l’étranger, l’intrus,</i> in me, not as alien foreigner, but as an
other.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">What happens in
states like Egypt where there is no open declaration for secularism? The book
tackles the “blurs” in Egyptian law and society between the religious and the
secular. In the end, it keeps telling us that things are so blurred that Egypt
cannot be described as a religious state, in spite of the constitution naming
the sharia as the main source of law. For example, the sources of Egyptian
civil law are French, hence “many fundamental provisions of the sharia are
patently ignored and unimplemented” (2). The lesson here is that many things
exist formally on paper, which in principle would prescribe religious law, but
in practice have no value. But then, if that’s the case, then why doesn’t Egypt
officially declare secularism? And would that make any difference? Was the
Turkish declaration of secularism only in relation to an open-minded élite, or
was it fostered through a particular combination of class hegemony? In any
case, the non-declaration of secularism is in itself revealing, even if de
facto <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">most</i> of Egyptian civil,
commercial, penal laws are indeed secular, unaffected by the precepts of the sharia
and fiqh. Moreover, the fact that personal status law regulates kinship,
marriage, divorce, alimony, and inheritance, means that it controls significant
chunks of social relations, even for non-Muslims. Finally, the absence of
official secularism means that “minorities” are treated as minorities, as
dhimmis, rather than as citizens under a universal civil law. To wit, the
status of dhimmis, in particular the Copts, is not limited to personal status,
as it affects their religious and political rights. In this regard, even
Turkish secularism is “incomplete,” as it forbids “minorities” to form
political parties, build religious sites, places of worship and cemeteries. In
sum, whether secularism is officially declared as policy or not, there are
always “hidden” and overt attitudes towards the religious that regulate that
dividing line between the declared and undeclared. The question then becomes
not so much whether Egypt is religious or secular (Agrama 3), but the declared
versus the undeclared: each enunciation opens up for the graded areas of
language.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Considering that
every religious phenomenon, be it legal, ritualistic, political, is inscribed
into the modernity of civil law, capitalism, the nation-state, the mass-media,
and receives its raison d’être from such institutions, it is then fairly
obvious that borderlines between the religious and the secular are fairly
blurred. What then is the point of asking what is religious and what is
secular? What we can do, as historians, sociologists, and anthropologists is
document how such transformations take place; how in the inscription of
traditional non-modern non-western phenomena in modern lifeworlds specific to
them, they receive new meanings. The meanings could be varied: the personal in
relation to the collective (community, society, state, mass-media); the
inscription into modernity; the structure of labor and capital in society.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Agrama
distinguishes between a modern state and a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">modernizing</i>
state (p. 5). The distinction stems from the difficulty of categorizing Egypt
in terms of oppositions: modern versus non-modern, religious versus secular.
Still, there is a problem: “It doesn’t tell us how we define and distinguish
fully secular states from incomplete ones; it doesn’t tell us about the
processes by which secularism is implemented; it doesn’t tell us how practices
of defining full from incomplete secularity might be an integral part of these
very processes. Such reasoning therefore begs the question not only of Egypt’s
secularity or religiosity but also of secularity and religiosity more
generally.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Do we need,
however, to make such rigid distinction? Doesn’t such line of questioning fall
in the same trap that it pretends to avoid? The book is full of events and
practices of the religious being inscribed in the modern meanings of civil law,
the nation-state, capitalism, and the mass-media. (The book addresses in
particular two sets of records: the al-Azhar Mosque Fatwa Council, and the
personal status court records.) If the secular is the universal, then
particulars receive their particular meanings from the lifeworlds they are
inscribed into from the universal. (In the same way that universal capitalist
labor, based on profit and capital accumulation, inscribes itself in Egyptian labor
based on small family enterprise, and corrupt crony capitalism. The point here
is not to declare that the case of Egyptian labor would not fit with the
universal, because it is “incomplete” capitalist labor, etc. Universal labor
itself, as analyzed by Marx, only makes sense as universal in the particular
concrete situations of lifeworlds labors, which vary in time and space. In sum,
when it comes to universal entities like the state, the secular, law, labor and
capital, which receive their universal meanings from European history, they
produce concrete meanings out of the concrete situations they are inscribed
into.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Consider, for
example, the institution of the fatwa to which the author devotes a chapter
(“What is a Fatwa?”). The fatwa is surprisingly conceptualized under the
Foucauldian notion of “the care of the self” as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">souci de soi,</i> which Foucault in his late years, within his
multi-volume <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Histoire de la sexualité,</i>
had worked out for the Greeks and Romans: “I suggest that the practice of the
fatwa be understood as a mode of the care of the self, as a practice by which
selves, in the multiplicity of their affairs, are maintained and advanced as
part of Islamic tradition. In this, the authority of the mufti is that of a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">guide.</i>” (Agrama 180) Besides the fact
that this is a farfetched “care of the self,” the fatwa, even if mufti and
questioner are into uncertainties, remains a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">submission</i> to an external judicial authority; in many respects, it
is not that dissimilar to a judge’s authority (which may rely on that of the
mufti) in that the applicant to a fatwa or legal case only <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">obeys</i>. Muftis, judges, administrative and upper courts, do not even
have to demonstrate their line of reasoning. That is to say: their enunciations
are meant to be performative, to be obeyed and followed. To elaborate, there is
no mode of subjectivation per se for the simple reason that the questioner is
there only to follow, not to argue. Moreover, the questioner is invariably
restrained by the legal language and its procedures.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Although the
personal status courts and the Fatwa Council are both outcomes of modern
reform, and thus represent entirely modern possibilities, their structures of
authority could not be more different.” (Agrama 184) They are, indeed,
different, but it is also a question of whether such differences matter to the
point that the fatwa could be associated with the notion of “the care of the
self.” A social actor may endlessly debate things with a mufti or judge, but in
the final analysis, in both instances, she is submitting herself to a judicial
authority. The care of the self assumes processes of subjectivization which
legal systems cannot accommodate.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">One of the
virtues of postmodernity, assuming there is one, is that there is not only one
modernity; even European modernity has become one among several, or has been
“provincialized,” though it assumes the role of a privileged universal
modernity, out of which the other modernities and postmodernities have erupted.
Which means that every modernity, be it Egyptian, Indian, Chinese, is relative
to the culture that produced it. Each modernity borrows from and adapts from
others. Besides that each culture and civilization proceeds with its modernity
operating with restrictions from its own past, present, and future. The wager
for Islam is not simply its politicization, as the modernization of Islam
touches on every aspect of the lifeworld. For example, when it comes to the
family, sexuality, privacy, and personal status, it is difficult to picture an
American court ordering a university professor to divorce his wife on the
accusation of blasphemy. And the wager here is not to be limited to religion
and secularism, as it touches on all kinds of sensibilities related to the
“social.” So when an Egyptian court, based on an archaic reinterpreted (if not
over-interpreted) notion of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ḥisba,</i>
commands Abu Zayd to divorce his wife, this in itself is a form of “modernity”
related specifically to Egypt; other courts in the Islamic world may, indeed,
“borrow” from the Egyptian interpretation, or take the Abu Zayd case as
precedent; but even in such instances, we are not “outside” the modernities of
the modern.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">But then within
this postmodernist relativism western civilization has its special status: it
is the civilization, which since the Greeks, Romans, and Christians, has
provided the roots of modernity for the world at large. When Agrama states that issues of family, marriage, divorce, sexuality,
personal status, are problematic in Egypt as they are in western societies (Agrama
184–5), he forgets to mention that in the secular west such problematizations
become normative for the word at large, that is, they become the universal, “sublating”
the particulars of other civilizations. The error would be to portray Egypt in
a situation of “catch up” with the west and the rest, as it is difficult to
argue in terms of a “stageable” historicism, an evolutionist history across
societies and civilizations where certain prerequisites must be met, prior to
more mature ones eventually showing up.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Zouhair Ghazzal</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Professor of
historical and social sciences</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Loyola
University, Chicago</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="mailto:zghazza@luc.edu">zghazza@luc.edu</a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
zouhairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18243592617841882763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6566641959183651307.post-91091115461739822692014-06-29T19:36:00.000+03:002014-07-03T20:40:51.399+03:00the bogus of enrollments<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">Institutions
are in their very essence hypocritical about their aims, methods, and
practices, a fortiori when an institution of “higher learning” claims that its
“high” aim is nothing but “knowledge,” the common good, or “Jesuit education”
and the goodness of the world.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">So it was no
surprise to detect that level hypocrisy in a letter from the Chair of our
department addressed to me in late January apropos my “low” enrollments. (Full
text below, letter #1) (A letter always reaches its destination, says Jacques
Lacan.)</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">Even though
the letter seems to be written in a “consensual” “friendly” tone, albeit with
cowardly undertones, that “friendliness” is precisely the problem. Thus, while
placing “loyalty” in the institution of higher learning that employs us both as
tenured professors for over 20 years, what the letter lacks is that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">institutional objectivity:</i> the simple
fact that if my enrollments have been lower than they should in the past couple
of years, it is for no other reason due to objective institutional changes
which have nothing to do with me (nor with the Chair for that matter) as an
individual.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">Yet the whole
tone of the letter is individualistic, addressing enrollement as if it is “my”
problem, while maintaining that bogus institutional loyalty as the bearer of
“higher principles” of learning (Jesuit and Catholic education and all that
crap). Universities are known to thrive on the non-said, which is a general <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">non-dit</i> policy down to the most mundane
memos.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">From the
beginning, the letter comes directly to the point, addressing the problem of
“my” low enrollments in fours seminars in Fall 2013 and Spring 2014.
Considering that the Chair and myself both work in the History department (with
a big H), two semesters do not seem much of a time framework either
historically or statistically for that matter. So why did the Chair, who seems
to appreciate historical time in his research (on the British monarchy), not
check my enrollments in the last five years (at least since my return from the
Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in 2009), comparing them with broader
institutional patters.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">As the
letter de facto criminalizes me for my low enrollments, making me responsible
for what happened (again, without explicitly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">naming</i> the criminal act(s), for being, say, “hard” on students, “irresponsible,”
élitist, and so on), it fails to mention the essential, namely, that
enrollments have shifted due to strategic changes in the core requirements,
which, in turn, have prompted changes in the departmental requirements.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">To solve the
mystery problem of low enrollments, the letter engages in a vicious circle: to
reach a “decent” enrollment, which is set at 100 for a 2:2 load like mine (“research
intensive,” another one of those bogus terms), I must teach 3 courses in the
Fall 2014 on a 3:2 load, but now the minimum enrollment should be in the order
of 125. The Russian roulette continues until we reach the maximum 4:4 load for
a 200 minimum. To reach such “demanding” numbers, the only solution is to load
one’s schedule with tons of useless core courses. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Adieu à la liberté, bonjour tristesse, vive la fraternité! Adieu au
langage,</i> as Jean-Luc Godard would say.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">Loyola has
been toying with the cash-machine of the “core” since eternity, but it was only
in 2003–05 that this Jesuit (and Catholic) institution of higher learning (and
knowledge) finally found its Eureka moment: to transform the “core” into a
capitalist enterprise one must include <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">every</i>
possible subject on the planet, from western and non-western civilizations to
terrorism and Boko Haram. In other words, the “core” became truly “Boko.” We
should name it the Boko-core. Moreover, departments, in light of the new core,
started changing their own requirements accordingly. For example, a “world
history” course, history 299, which was a requirement for “international
studies” students, was no more required since 2012–13. Instead of the 35 students
I would normally get, I had only two in Spring 2014.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">At the time,
when Loyola made its great discovery on über-capitalism (a.k.a. Jesuit
education), I was a visiting professor at Aleppo University, the major industrial
city in the Syrian north. The then Chair sent me a “good news” letter informing
me that “Islam” (whatever thay may mean) is now part of the core, and that I
could, if I wanted to, offer “Islam” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">within</i>
the core. I’ve responded that the “good news” must coincide with the end of the
core-as-core, as it had lost, through extensive inclusion of non-western
societies and civilizations, and various topoi, its heart and soul, becoming
more of a shopping mall and a supermarket of ideas. Equally important, I
predicted, the “special topics” seminars would lose both their status and momentum;
indeed, I thought that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">all</i> 300-level
courses would be affected. That’s particularly true of someone like yours truly
living from a “minor” field, whose courses are not “required,” and with no
openings to graduate studies and upper-level dissertations. Needless to say, it
looks pretty much clear in hindsight that the killing of the 300-level seminars
was pretty much a deliberate institutional policy, as those courses look less “profitable”
than the fully capped core courses. (See letter #2 below)</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">When I
returned to Chicago in Fall 2005, after a two-year absence, we developed with
colleagues working on Islam, the Near and Middle East, North Africa, and east
and central Asia, a “minor” that we decided to call “Islamic World Studies”
(IWS). Our main aim was precisely to counter the “crisis” of the lack of
variety in the 300-level special-topics offerings for “minor” areas like ours. We
naïvely reasoned that if we could sign in 50 to 80 students into the IWS minor,
we would not be cursed forever with low-enrollments at the 300-level. By
2006–07 we had 60 students joining in, which enabled me to offer topoi like
“the middle east on film,” “Iran,” Egypt,” “Turkey” and “the Arab uprisings,”
with 20 students on average. We got $3,000–$5,000 grants on newly designed
seminars from the Department of Education in D.C. to promote novel ideas and
expose students to new topics.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">In 2009–10,
upon my return from Princeton, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">my</i>
enrollments were at their highest, so were they in 2010–11. The decline in
numbers started in earnest in 2011–12, albeit modestly, as an outcome of the
“reforms” that were worked out in 2003–05, and they accelerated further in the
following year, until we reached a low point in 2013–14. The IWS has now only
20 students, and a seminar on the “Ottoman Empire,” scheduled for Spring 2014,
had to be cancelled because it had “only” 8 students by Christmas. The lucky 8
students received their providential cancellation Christmas time. No one has
offered such a seminar in 20 years, and possibly throughout the university’s
long history.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">Nor is this cowardly cancellation of courses limited to history. A friend of mine got his "philosophy of religion" seminar canceled in November 2013 for no other reason than it had missed the 10-student mark a couple of months before the beginning of the new semester in mid-January. Instead, he had to teach four identical "ethics" core courses, capped at 35 each: some will die teaching the core, the same way some die from eating too much chocolate. Needless to say, it has become impossible to plan for a more coherent thematic approach in teaching and writing in such an environment.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">It does not
require a rocket scientist to realize that the problem of enrollment is
institutional. The university has spent in the last decade close to $500
million (and counting) on projects to “renovate” its various campuses, making them
more agreeable to the body and soul, hence, it goes without saying that it
needs the cashing-machine of the core to service its debt. In other words, it
operates like a banana republic economy which is grossly indebted to hungry investors
and banks, while surviving annually only by servicing its mounting debt. Debt
aside, Loyola faces another crucial problem, namely, the fact that no more than
half of the students are able to make it in four years for graduation, compared
to 86 percent for our neighbor Northwestern, which fairs poorly for the
university in its “national ratings.” So all this shuffle between core and
requirements has no other purpose but to give students a college degree without
much work.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">Which is
precisely the problem in American higher education in the last decades.
Colleges and Universities of sorts attempt to become lucrative not by improving
content and knowledge, but by opening up to entertainment, at least for the
arts and humanities and social sciences. It’s a live or die situation where the
high expenses of learning could only be met if the institution transforms
itself into a machinery for promoting investment capital.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">letter #1</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">Dear
Zouhair,</span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;"></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">I am sorry
that we have not had a chance to speak since I became chair. I write
to you now on a matter of some seriousness.</span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;"></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">As you may
know, I am required to monitor the enrollments of all faculty in the
Department. According to the latest figures, your two courses for this
term, Hist 300E-001 and Hist 299E-001 have enrolled five
and two students, respectively. This comes after a Fall semester that saw
13 students take your Hist 322-001 and 5 take your Hist 299E-00. In
addition, you supervised a Provost Fellow in HIST 399, for a total across the academic
year of 26 students. </span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;"></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">Unfortunately,
those numbers are not appropriate or financially sustainable for a faculty
member with a 2-2 teaching load in the College. According to the <b>Department
of History Standards for Research-Intensive and Research-Active Faculty</b> (adopted
by the department and approved by the Dean in the Fall of 2010):</span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;"></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">As a general
rule, faculty should average approximately 25 students per
class. Research-intensive faculty with a 2-2 load should teach at least
100 students per year; research-active faculty with a 3-2 load should
teach at least 125 students per year. Faculty with 3-3 teaching loads
should teach at least 150 students per year; those with 4-4 loads, 200 students
per year. Exceptions are granted with the approval of the chair
and/or dean. </span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">In addition,
the <b>Principles and Normative Guidelines on Faculty Instructional
Responsibilities, </b>approved by President on October 20, 2009<b> (</b>available
on the Academic Affairs web-site as the<b> Loyola University Chicago
Faculty Instructional Responsibilities: <a href="http://www.luc.edu/academicaffairs/pdfs/Faculty_Instructional_Responsibilities_2009__rev_3-11.pdf"><span style="color: #0563c1;">http://www.luc.edu/academicaffairs/pdfs/Faculty_Instructional_Responsibilities_2009__rev_3-11.pdf</span></a>) </b>indicate
that "Undergraduate courses that enroll under 10 students do not
generally qualify as fulfilling this course load, except with permission of the
Dean as may be necessary to delivery of a particular program." </span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">As a result,
after consultation with the Dean, it has been determined that your total
enrollment of seven students this semester cannot count for two courses.
Though it does not reach the threshold of one course, we have decided to
count it as one. In order to fulfill your commitment to the College as a
research intensive faculty member (2-2 load), you will be required to teach
three courses next semester (Fall 2014). In order to approximate the
required number of students, we will ask you to teach at least one section of
Core (History 104 or, if you prefer, History 101) and possibly two, in addition
to one or two upper division courses (your choice of Hist 312, 313 or 322) for
a combined total of three.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">I cannot
imagine that this E Mail will be welcome to you. Please understand that
it is not intended to be punitive and I take no pleasure in having to write it.
As you may recall, I have read your work, Zouhair. It addresses
many subjects, but one of the most important is that of institutions. As
we would both agree, institutions have shared cultures and specific requirements
of their members. This initiative is intended to help you to justify the
salary paid you by the institution that granted you tenure, as well as to
assist you to participate more fully and rewardingly in its life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">If you wish
to discuss this in person, I am in the chair's office most afternoons. In any
case, I look forward to your response. </span></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_MailAutoSig"><span style="color: #101010; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">Yours sincerely,</span></a><span style="mso-bookmark: _MailAutoSig;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: _MailAutoSig;"><span style="color: #101010; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">Bob</span></span><span style="mso-bookmark: _MailAutoSig;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bookmark: _MailAutoSig;"><span style="color: #101010; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">Robert Bucholz, D.Phil.;
F.R.Hist.S.</span></span><span style="mso-bookmark: _MailAutoSig;"></span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;"></span></div>
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<span style="color: #101010; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">Professor and Chair</span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;"></span></div>
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<span style="color: #101010; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">Department of History</span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;"></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">Loyola
University, Chicago</span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;"></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">1032 N.
Sheridan Road</span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;"></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">Chicago, IL 60660</span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;"></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">773-508-2594</span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;"></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;"><a href="mailto:rbuchol@luc.edu">rbuchol@luc.edu</a></span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;"></span></div>
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<span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">letter #2</span></div>
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<span style="mso-no-proof: yes;">Marcia Hermansen on 11/19/13:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">HI and
thanks for supporting the program. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">I will be
happy to help you promote classes to get more enrollments. 300
enrollments are also down in Theology.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">Due to
changes in core beyond my control--the IWS program now has only 20 Minors
rather than 60--this may also be a factor so plan for less interest from that
quarter in 300 courses in future semesters.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">Best wishes,</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">Marcia</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: widow-orphan;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: widow-orphan;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">Marcia
Hermansen</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: widow-orphan;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">Director,
Islamic World Studies Program</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: widow-orphan;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">Theology
Department</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: widow-orphan;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">Loyola
University Chicago</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: widow-orphan;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">1032
W. Sheridan Road,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: widow-orphan;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">Chicago,
Il 60660</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: widow-orphan;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;">773-508-2345
(office)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: widow-orphan;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 9.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes;"><a href="mailto:mherman@luc.edu">mherman@luc.edu</a></span></div>
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<br /></div>
</div>
zouhairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18243592617841882763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6566641959183651307.post-28327951604938546252014-06-29T19:33:00.000+03:002014-06-29T19:33:41.912+03:00faire une pipe<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">A while ago I received a message from the Chair of our department with the
title “your webpage.” (See <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">infra</i> for
the full text.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">What’s wrong with my webpage <<a href="http://zouhairghazzal.com/">zouhairghazzal.com</a>>?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Loyola had at the time accepted that my webpage be directly linked to the
departmental webpage, that is, my name links me directly to my personal page
which carries my own domain-name, hence contrary to what the Chair’s email
falsely claims, this is not “your LUC webpage”: I’ve designed it myself over 10
years ago, and it does not sit on the Loyola servers in Chicago. In fact, it is
hosted by the Yahoo Small Business unit.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">When I did the initial design once I moved to Rome for a year in 2001–02,
the year the Manhattan Twin Towers went down, Loyola did at the time host my
webpage, and I used to update it regularly, that is, until 2006–07 when
updating became a real annoyance: every once and a while the page was “locked”
under an administrator’s name, and it had to be “unlocked” simply to add a
photo or a text. When I thought that enough is enough (I disliked also that the
“address” was too long, ugly, and could not be easily memorized), I created the
above domain-name and moved everything to the new website.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">The point here is that Loyola has nothing whatsoever to do with this
personal webpage of mine. So why was the Chair frustrated? Because “someone”
from the “Loyola community” got “offended” that on my Flickr portfolio <<u style="text-underline: #0F4298;"><span style="color: #0f4298;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/zghazzal/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/zghazzal/</a></span></u>>
there is (female) nudity. Actually, to be specific, the message below did <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> specify what the “problem” really
was with the “four images” “in the vicinity” of the link below—nudity (male or
female) or otherwise. One has to go to the link to see what the “problem” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">might</i> be: nudity, indecency, sexual intercourse,
penetration (or lack thereof), blow-jobs, and so on. The fact that the
“problem” is unnamed but only alluded to is a fundamental aspect of the
accusation by this or those anonymous person or persons from the so-called “Loyola
community.” Forget about freedom of speech, the first amendment, and academic
freedom, you only feel within a “community” once you’re accused of a felony or
crime. We’ve known for some time that institutions of higher learning in the
United States are Foucauldian in their essence, with a high degree of
scrutinization, and with a lot of empty homogeneous time and resources at their
disposal. Thus the dumb hypocritical bureaucracy must be running mad in its
paper work, servers, viruses and malware, and paranoia, fearing that it would lose
its grip on its “audience,” “community,” and “Jesuit education.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Notice here that my Flickr account is unrelated to Loyola, and that on my
webpage there is a link to Flickr only under “photography”; to repeat, both
webpages are not hosted by Loyola, but by Yahoo.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">“The ones who have generated complaints,” as the text below says, did not
generate their complaints to me personally—say, be email—but to the Chair. Not
only such decent people prefer to remain unnamed and anonymous, but their
complaints only <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">point</i> to an image,
which we’ll have to assume “contains” something “indecent” into it, to the
point that it must be permanently “deleted,” as the text urges me to do, so that
the unnamed “problem” would not reach the ears of the higher officials at
Loyola.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">The image to which the link below refers to is composed of frames within
frames, which are framed with a single “final” frame—that of my camera’s
viewfinder. There is the frame of a cheap reproduction of a painting by the
Belgian René Magritte. The painting is quite well known and world famous, “Ceci
n’est pas une pipe,” This is not a pipe, to which Michel Foucault had devoted a
small penetrating book on the ambiguities of language. The painting is indeed a
meditation on language: “this is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i>
a pipe” is technically correct because what we see is a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">painting</i> that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">represents</i>
a pipe, hence as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">representation of a pipe </i>“is” not<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> a pipe—per se.</i> The being-of-a-pipe
should be taken strongly as one of existence-of-a-thing, its being what it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i>. But then we know damn well that this
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> a pipe in the sense that the
representation of the pipe still makes it a pipe, that we can all acknowledge
it as such without problem. Notice, however, how in the title, “this is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> a pipe,” the “not” negates the “is,”
as if in an act of defiance to the very existence of the object—and to being
and time in general. Moreover, it is the very <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">juxtaposition</i> of the representation-as-image with language which,
in the final instance, negates the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">existence</i>
of the represented object, leaving it to an object-of-representation that marks
the sublime beauty of this unique work of art of the twentieth century.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Magritte seems to have been under the influence of the Swiss linguist
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) whose view of language operated under the
separation of the signifier from the signified. If the signifier is the
“sign”—the linguistic word—which designates a “content,” the signified object,
then the relation between signifier and signified remains problematic. For
example, if I say “tree”—acting as signifier—the signified in this instance is
nothing else but the “image” of a “tree” that I have in mind at the moment—not
the “real tree.” I can, of course, designate a “real tree” out there to show to
my hearer what a “tree” “is.” But the way we generally (unconsciously) use
language is through abstract associations and representations. Every word
“makes sense” not by designating a concrete object, but by “defining” it
through other words and designated objects. Which renders any “tight
association” between signifier and signified a bit problematic, to say the
least.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">This is precisely what, for example, American abstractionism of the first
few decades of the twentieth century has perfectly seized. Artists like Marc
Rothco and Jackson Pollock have seized the moment of the “separation” of
signified and signifier to declare the non-necessity of figurative art, an art
that paints something that is out there, and hence transforms it into a mere
object of representation. Abstractionist paintings do not “represent” anything
in particular anymore. The representation, if any, must be thought of
abstractly or conceptually.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">That’s—briefly—regarding the first “frame” in my photograph. The second
“frame” consists of a still from a film running on a TV-monitor, presumably
from a DVD machine, and what we see—at face value—is a woman giving a blow-job
to a man. We only see the face of the woman but not that of the man, whose only
erect penis is within the frame. What’s interesting here is that the wo(man) is
gazing at the man’s invisible gaze, which, being excluded from the frame we can
only imagine—the spectator filling the gap.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">The film clip is from a short by Argentinian director Gaspar Noé who became
well known with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Irréversible.</i> It is
its “juxtaposition” with Magritte’s painting that gives it resonance. The
frames within frames. Magritte’s painting is only a cheap reproduction of the
original, covered in glass with a black frame. Nöé’s film clip by contrast is
framed within a monitor, and the two frames have been framed through a camera’s
viewfinder and presented as such to the spectator.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Does the title-caption give any clues? The French “faire un pipe,” to do a
pipe, simply means in common jargon “blow-job” (léchouille). I leave it to your
imagination to decide.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Zouhair:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">It has been brought to my attention that some of the images connected to
your LUC webpage are objectionable to some in the university community.
Would it be possible for you to remove them?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">The relevant images are on page 5-6 of the Flickr page. There may be
others, but those are the ones that have generated complaints to me. The
four images in the vicinity of the link below are most relevant.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/zghazzal/5659574189/in/photostream"><span style="color: #0f4298;">http://www.flickr.com/photos/zghazzal/5659574189/in/photostream</span></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">If the photos are not removed and complaints are made to higher officials
in the university, your page may be removed from the university site.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Thanks.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Tim</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Timothy J. Gilfoyle</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Professor and Chair of History, Loyola University Chicago</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Associate Editor, Journal of Urban History</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Tahoma; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"><a href="mailto:tgilfoy@luc.edu"><span style="color: #0f4298;">tgilfoy@luc.edu</span></a></span></div>
</div>
zouhairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18243592617841882763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6566641959183651307.post-49813890971309427502014-06-28T19:16:00.001+03:002014-06-29T19:31:25.157+03:00truth claims, avowal, and evidence<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Truth claims, avowal, auto-biography, and madness in the
construction of criminality in contemporary Syria</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Zouhair Ghazzal</div>
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Loyola University Chicago</div>
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<a href="mailto:zghazza@luc.edu">zghazza@luc.edu</a></div>
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<br /></div>
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In the Syrian penal system, which closely follows the French
model of evidence, a judge constructs evidence based on forensic reports,
interviews of and statements delivered by suspects and witnesses, and memos
drafted by judges, lawyers, doctors, and other professionals appointed by the
court in the course of the investigation; all of which constitute truth claims,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> as constructed by the judge from the
vintage viewpoint of his or her own narrative.</i> In other words, statements
taken individually would be problematic in terms of receiving their validity
through factual evidence alone. If they do not stand on their own, it is
because their validity would only be established through the judge’s narrative.</div>
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<br /></div>
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There is, however, another twist to the matter, as judges
would be unable—or at the very least, feel embarrassed—to deliver their verdict
without the accused openly making an avowal: I did what you have suspected me
of doing, and that is the truth of the matter. That kind of avowal
(confession?), in its religious Christian underpinnings, becomes normative in the
secular European penal systems of the nineteenth century. The avowal opens that
unavoidable gap in our understanding of the act and the subject behind the act,
an attitude that led to the outsourcing of juridical opinions in the direction
of doctors and psychiatrists. Tell me who you are, and why you did it, became
the motto of judges towards their suspects and accused. Because such calls to
truth could not be answered once and for all, judges had to give up some of
their authority in favor of opinions delivered by doctors and psychiatrists. A
declaration of insanity was good enough to halt the verdict, as required by law
(again, following precepts adopted by the French Code pénal since 1832),
whereby the accused would be sent to a psychiatric institution rather than be
incarcerated in a prison cell.</div>
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<br /></div>
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One could argue, by tracing the discursive archeology and
genealogy of the penitentiary to its European nineteenth-century roots, that
the transformation of the avowal as the sine qua non of evidence prior to
verdict was probably related to the association of penance to the prison
system. It was not enough to incarcerate people for wrongdoing, as the prison
experience must carry with it the weight of rehabilitation: We have to know the
subject, who he is, for the rehabilitation process to be successful. Penance,
in its Christian medieval underpinnings, assumes a process of voluntary
self-punishment inflicted as an outward expression of repentance for having
done wrong: the prison would then become that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">public</i> penance for having done wrong. But it was not enough,
however, for “society,” as represented by the judge, to know who did commit the
hideous act: the avowal of the culprit became normative across the penal
system.</div>
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<br /></div>
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What is striking here is the parallelism to be drawn between
the juridical and the medical. “I am mad”: The avowal becomes the key component
in the psychiatric process, without which there would be no contract between
the patient and medical authorities. Hence the patient must himself seal the conditions
of his incarceration in a medical institution. In similar vein, a suspect,
prior to becoming an accused, must declare that “I did commit the crime that I
was accused of.” In both instances, the act creates the contract, while in
civil law the contract establishes an obligation that is consensual.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Behind such exigencies, from both the juridical and medical
instances, lies a long history of avowal, one that is associated with “telling
the truth” (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dire vrai</i>) in general,
and, more specifically, “telling the truth of oneself” (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dire vrai sur soi-même</i>), both of which could be traced back to
their Greek, Roman, and Christian origins. With all the exigencies towards
“objectivism” to be found in both the juridical and medical science, what
brings them together is that strange requirement of the discourse of the
culprit/patient on him(her)self. Hence between the judge and the culprit lies
the discourse of the culprit, the knowledge that the latter has on
him(her)self. Similarly, between doctor and patient lies the truth that the
patient would reveal on him(her)self. The declaration itself could be
understood as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">speech act,</i> but it
exceeds it in the sense that, at least in penal proceedings, it could
constitute the tragic climax of court hearings. Avowal is by definition
associated with “telling the truth,” as it does not make much sense to declare
that what I’m telling you is not the truth. The question then becomes to
understand the implications behind such practice of telling the truth, and how
it paves the way towards the penitentiary, as opposed to the mere experience of
the prison. The broader implication is that of governmentality, that is, the
political control of society as a whole.</div>
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To wit, an avowal is a “total” contractual obligation
between speaker and hearer, in the sense that it is the entire “culture” of a
society that is at stake. How people speak to one another, how they make a
confession, how they deny a previous statement, are not simply a product of a
“situated encounter,” but transcend it to what the archeology of knowledge in a
certain culture has produced over its long history.</div>
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In Arabic, avowal usually stands for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">iʿtirāf,</i> whose root is the verb <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">iʿtarafa,</i>
to avow, to confess (which tends to be the former in a secular setting like a
court hearing). The other parallel term is that of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">iqrār,</i> from the root verb of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">aqarra,</i>
to acknowledge, to declare. However, even though the two terms of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">iʿtirāf</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">iqrār</i> seem to be (wrongly) used interchangeably in the court
literature, even by judges themselves, they should not be confused. In effect,
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">iʿtirāf</i> carries that strong sense
of “telling the truth” in an exercise of self-revelation; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">iqrār</i> by contrast is an act of acknowledging which could be “read”
or “interpreted” as such by a judge from a series of statements delivered by a
suspect or witness. It hence lacks that direct self-avowal.</div>
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It is beyond our purposes to trace back the genealogical
connotations of such concepts throughout the history of Arab and Islamicate
societies and civilizations. What we can do for our purposes here is to see how
such notions operate in the context of the contemporary Syrian courts, that is
to say, how they have been transplanted, adopted, and assimilated in order to
understand their juridical and political connotations in a developing state
like Syria. (One could indeed argue that practices of self-examination, whereby
an internalized belief must be externalized in relation to an authority that
would provide its “approval,” is indeed absent in Islam; or for that matter a
“hermeneutics of the self” is absent altogether.</div>
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A judge in the city of Idlib (north of Syria) made the
following remarks in a memo he drafted regarding a woman who was accused of
killing her husband (allegedly helped by her brother) in the late 1980s, problematizing
“avowal” into six broad categories.</div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span>A
judicial avowal must be descriptive, personal, frank, and emanating from a <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">free will</b>, while at the same time <span style="color: red;">in accordance with reality</span>.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span>When
there is a denial to the original avowal, as was the case here with both prime
suspects, having denied in the presence of a military prosecutor most of what
they had stated earlier, the earlier avowal could still stand as valid, in
particular <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">if the denial would create an
implausible reality,</i> that is, a “view contrary to the accepted reality (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">khilāf li-l-ḥaqīqa al-rāsikha</i>).” In our
case here, it would have been <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">implausible</b>
that the victim would have died either in an act of suicide or targeted by
assassins other than the two suspects.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span>An
avowal must be <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">devoid of confusions</b>,
ambiguities, contradictions, and in no need of manipulated interpretations to
become intelligible down to its finest particulars (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">juzʾiyyāt</i>).</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span>An
avowal could also be implicit (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">iʿtirāf ḍimnī</i>)
in the sense that the suspect avoided any direct acknowledgment of a truth, but
nevertheless her statements, when interpreted in conjunction with other
statements, either by the same suspect or by another witness, could bear the
light of a hidden acknowledgment.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span>In
all the above instances, it would be therefore <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">up to the judge</b> to decipher a genuine confession from a faked one,
or perceive an acknowledgment in the process of an interview or a police
report, and contrary to what the defense attorney in our case here had
repeatedly stated, denying an avowal (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">rujūʿ
ʿan iʿtirāf</i>) is not enough for the judge to drop the confession in
question, as the <span style="color: red;">denial itself could be devoid of any
truth</span>.</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">6.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span>Finally,
the aim of all this tedious but essential work in sorting out avowals and
acknowledgments would be to determine for each homicidal case “the cause of the
killing (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">al-bāʿith fi-l-qatl</i>),”
considering that “each criminal act is in need of a motive (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dāfiʿ</i>).”</div>
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<br /></div>
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Even though taken out of context from the factualities of
the crime in question, such assertions are nonetheless normative enough to
reveal the discourse that stands in Syrian courts when it comes to avowal, and
more broadly, evidence.</div>
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<br /></div>
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What does it mean that an avowal must be frank and emanating
from a free will? One obvious interpretation is that an avowal must not be
delivered under duress, otherwise “telling the truth” would become meaningless.
But, a more deeper explanation would look in relation to the revelation of the
self, the fact that what is revealed in an avowal is that inner self, or as the
judge stated in item 6 above, the fact that every crime has a “motive” or
“cause”: identifying the killer is not enough, if the motive is not there yet.
What else would provide us with the motive but the avowal from the one who
presumably committed the act of killing? We therefore need to understand why
the discourse of the accused must, in the last resource, come at the rescue of
the objectivity of the juridical discourse; and why, at times, when the
defendant is unable to fill that gap, psychiatric and medical discourse is
there to fill that silence. Moreover, defendants, at times, in the solitary
confinement of their prison cell, draft “letters” on their own, addressed to
family members, friends, confidants, or even counsels and judges, which on
their own pose additional problems at identifying the meaning of avowals as
speech acts. Where do auto-biographical statements fit? What role should we
accord to them?</div>
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But then all those truth-claims need to be detected by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">someone,</i> hence the importance of the
judge’s discretionary powers; or, as item 5 above states, it is “up to the
judge” to make distinctions, to decipher a genuine confession from a faked one,
or an implicit avowal from one that seems more straightforward, or whether a
denial should be accepted as such. More importantly, it is up to the judge to
construct the “motive” of the crime, as without this <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dāfiʿ</i> the judicial process would be devoid of its substance. In all
this, therefore, the judge acts as a “hearer” in the face of a suspect-speaker
of sorts, a suspect who at the end of a hearing may have said very little, or
nothing at all. To relieve himself from such deadlock, the judge may at the end
seek psychiatric help for his suspect, but, whatever the outcome, all discretionary
powers are in his hands.</div>
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At times avowals could be frank and startling, as if there
is too much into them in a very little space:</div>
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<br /></div>
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I confess of having committed the
crime of killing my mother. The reason was that my mother kept interfering with
my marital life, forbidding me from filing for a divorce from my husband. I was
also aware that my mother and sisters were having sex with my husband. I
reiterate all previous statements [to the police and public prosecution].</div>
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<br /></div>
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This was a woman speaking to an investigating judge in his
office at Aleppo’s Palace of Justice in 1996. She will also inform him that
prior to killing her mother she had burned her own home, then went to her
mother’s house to spend the night, woke up early in the morning, took a hammer
from the kitchen and killed her mother in her sleep by smashing her skull.</div>
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Notwithstanding the horror of such scenes, the young woman,
Fatima, a mother of a teenage boy, drafted a letter to a family member while
serving in her prison cell.</div>
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<div class="quote">
To my paternal cousin Muhammad ‘Ali Shawwa Abu ‘Abdo,<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[1]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
hoping that when you’ll receive this missive you’ll be in good health, as God
wishes. In case you’d care to ask, I’m doing well, and the only thing that I
miss is seeing my dear son Sami Shawwa.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[2]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
I also want you to talk to my brothers so that they would drop their lawsuit
against me, and to get me out of my prison. I can’t take it anymore, as I’m on
the verge of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">committing another crime</b>
in prison. I’m unable to live here far away from my son Sami, as I’m unable to
adapt to this situation in such circumstances. Tell them that if they don’t
drop their lawsuit against me so that I get out of here, I’ll arrange for them
seas of blood—not a single sea only—and I can do that from my prison, and not
only in talk.</div>
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Besides the fact that such gruesome passages look startling,
if not embarrassing, it is not clear what judges do with them. The above
passage is taken from a long letter that the accused had drafted to her cousin
while in prison, a copy of which was in the dossier that was used by the judge
for his verdict. The discretionary powers of the judge were here, as they
always are, enormous. The judge could have, for instance, asked for psychiatric
evaluation, but he did not, probably because neither prosecution nor defense
pushed for such request. More importantly, however, was what he precisely did
with such written “testimony,” as there was no indication that he effectively <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">used</i> it in his verdict; but then it
could have had impacted him without openly addressing the issue. The point here
is that such “testimonies” which play the role of “avowals” even more strongly
than “normal avowals” would do, may, in the final analysis, not receive even a
casual mention in the verdict. Even by law, the question of their <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">inclusion</i> remains indeed problematic, as
these are statements delivered in writing but only in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">privacy</i> of the culprit, hence nothing was uttered in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">public,</i> within the format of the usual
line of questioning. Which begs the question, why are they then included in the
dossier? What difference would that make?</div>
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<br /></div>
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What such question reveal is the fundamental problematic
that we have posed at the beginning of this survey, namely, that the avowal has
become in nineteenth-century Europe the centerpiece of the criminal dossier, in
that “telling the truth,” the discourse of the culprit, must come from the
subject him(her)self. In sum, the discourse of judges and doctors, though
necessary, is not enough. What we need to question, therefore, is, through an
analysis of dossiers, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">how</i> the avowal
has become the centerpiece of evidence, what role does it serve, and the
deadlocks that the system has placed upon itself with such requirement.</div>
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<div class="italic">
References</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Abi Samra,
Muḥammad, <i>Mawt al-abad al-sūrī. Shahādāt jīl al-ṣamt wa-l-thawra [The Death
of Syria’s Eternity. Testimonies of the Silence and Revolution Generation]</i>,
Beirut: Riad el-Rayyes Books, 2012.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">ʿAwwā, Muḥammad
Salim al-, <i>Fi uṣūl al-niẓām al-jinā’i al-Islāmi</i>, 2nd. ed., Cairo: Dar
al-Maʿārif, 1983 [1979].</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Dulong, Renaud, ed., <i>L’aveu.
Histoire, sociologie, philosophie</i>, Paris: Presses Universitaires de</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"> France, 2001.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Fahmy,
Khaled, "The Anatomy of Justice: Forensic medicine and criminal law in nineteenth-century
Egypt," <i>Islamic Law and Society </i>6, no. 2 (1999): 224-71.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 35.55pt; text-indent: -35.55pt;">
Foucault,
Michel, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mal faire, dire vrai. Fonction de
l’aveu en justice,</i> Presses Universitaires de Louvain, 2012.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 35.55pt; text-indent: -35.55pt;">
Foucault,
Michel, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La société punitive. Cours au
Collège de France, 1972–1973,</i> Paris: EHESS–Gallimard–Seuil, 2013.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Garapon, Antoine, <i>Bien juger.
Essai sur le rituel judiciaire</i>, Paris: Éditions Odile Jacob, 1997.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ghazzal, Zouhair, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Grammars of Adjudication, </i>Beirut: Ifpo, 2007.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ghazzal, Zouhair, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Crime of Writing,</i> Beirut: Ifpo, 2015, forthcoming.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: JA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">ʿUṭrī,
Mamdūḥ, <i>Qānūn al-ʿuqūbāt</i>, Damascus: Muʾassasat al-Nuri, 1993.</span></div>
<div style="mso-element: footnote-list;">
<br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<div id="ftn1" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[1]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
Muhammad ‘Ali was the brother of Fatima’s husband, hence her brother-in-law.
If, as she claims, he was her “paternal cousin,” then Fatima and husband must
have also been paternal cousins. There is a possibility, however, that they
were “cousins” only in the figurative sense of the term, that is, not as a real
blood relationship.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn2" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6566641959183651307#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 9.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[2]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
Referring to both son and cousin by their full names has something impersonal
about it, diminishing its intimacy, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">as if</i>
the letter was meant to be read not by the recipient himself, but by some
anonymous judicial authority.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
zouhairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18243592617841882763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6566641959183651307.post-44350906141066515452014-06-27T21:33:00.000+03:002014-07-15T12:45:00.809+03:00dept. of education<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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</style><span style="font-family: "Minion Pro";">Chicago, 5 April 2013</span><br />
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Minion Pro";">Dear Dean Reinhard
Andress,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Minion Pro";">Thank you for
receiving me in your office in mid-March, and I apologize for the delay in
responding to your email.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Minion Pro";">During our conversation,
I made it clear that a major reason for my reluctance to submit my annual
assessment form to the Chair of the History Department since January 2010 was
the unwillingness of our department to make public the relevant data that would
correlate teaching evaluations with grading and other matters.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Minion Pro";">In the last few
years, beginning with the departmental committee report that evaluated my
request for promotion to the rank of professor, and further assessments by the
Chair, the students’ evaluations have become the most contentious issue. In our
meeting last month, you read to me what you perceived as “negative comments” by
the students, and in your letter you mention that “</span><span style="font-family: "Minion Pro"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">your teaching is problematical because
of a significant number of negative comments by students.” And you add that “I
see you as not fully complying with your teaching responsibilities.” First
of all, I don’t know what “significant” means here, since the department has
failed to provide us with any relevant figures that would correlate
evaluations, grading, and the quality of teaching. In effect, since the
students’ evaluations have become computerized around 2005–06 through a new
system, I’ve requested from the Chairs of our department to provide us with
relevant data that would situate the evaluations for each professor in relation
to his or her colleagues. Such data would include at the very minimum the class
average for grading and assessment; the standard deviation for each
course/seminar and the overall average; the correlation between each
professor’s performance and that of the department; and the distribution of
grades for individual courses and seminars and the department as a whole.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Minion Pro"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">To wit, there is a
national problem of grade inflation, well documented in the academic and journalistic
literatures, and to which the department and university are willingly not
paying much attention. Consequently, those of us who have our courses and
seminars structured on rigorous readings and grading of papers and assignments
are punished for not fitting with the mysterious and unpublicized “general
curve” of grading and behaving. It is no secret, however, notwithstanding absent
data about grading and the performance of students and their professors, that
50 percent of Loyola’s students fail to receive their bachelor degrees within
the four-year period normally assigned to them, and that this may in turn point
to a major structural weakness in the performance of students, in spite of
Loyola’s lenient requirements.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Minion Pro"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Should professors
like myself, who have been at the service of the university for 20 years, be
punished just few years before their retirement, simply for assigning
first-class readings, and for providing rigorous comments and grading to their
students’ papers? During our conversation in your office, you have quoted what
you perceive as so-called “negative comments” by some of my students, which
were randomly accumulated by the departmental Chair. Besides the fact that such
statements would only produce circumstantial and anecdotal evidence at best,
they should not be used for purposes of tenure/promotion and the renewal of
contracts, unless, of course, they are substantiated by statistical evidence
for the totality of courses and seminars offered by the department in a
semester. Moreover, the so-called “negative comments” are taken for granted for
what is perceived as negative. When, for example, a student claims that “the
professor’s lectures are too long and incomprehensible,” shouldn’t we inquire
further and check whether this student has read the assignment, cares about the
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">content</i> of the assignment (the
assigned book), and if so, whether his/her dissatisfaction stems from any
differences of interpretation, or is indicative of something else? Or when a
student claims that “the essay’s prompt is vague, if not incomprehensible,” shouldn’t
we pursue the question further and ask her whether she has read the texts upon
which the prompt was based? And if so, does she <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">care</i> about the texts she has read? Do they mean anything to her?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Minion Pro"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Why are you
confronting me only with the negatives? Why not look at what “positive”
comments have to say, and, again, confront such comments with a rigorous test
of quality in order to see what they have in turn to say about what Loyola has
to offer—or what it fails to offer?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Minion Pro"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There is the desire
of a consumer society to avoid learning curves. This tends to result in
dumbed-down products that are easily started but compromised in value and
application. Shouldn’t we contrast this with teaching experiences that do have
learning curves, but pay off well and allow students and teachers to become well
versed in reading and writing? For over 20 years I’ve committed myself to
demanding learning curves in my writing and teaching, and I want to pursue
along that path.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Minion Pro"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-themecolor: text1;">Sincerely,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Minion Pro"; mso-no-proof: yes;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "Minion Pro";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Minion Pro"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-themecolor: text1;">Zouhair Ghazzal</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Minion Pro"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-themecolor: text1;">Professor of
historical and social sciences</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Minion Pro"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-themecolor: text1;">Department of
History</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Minion Pro"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt; mso-themecolor: text1;">zghazza@luc.edu</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Minion Pro";">Post-Scriptum:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Minion Pro";">Regarding my writing
and research, I prefer to be read rather than simply graded. For that purpose I
made public all my contributions since 2009–10:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://luc.academia.edu/ZouhairGhazzal"><span style="font-family: "Minion Pro";">http://luc.academia.edu/ZouhairGhazzal</span></a><span style="font-family: "Minion Pro";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Minion Pro";">Additional material
is available here:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://zouhairghazzal.com/"><span style="font-family: "Minion Pro";">http://zouhairghazzal.com/</span></a><span style="font-family: "Minion Pro";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
zouhairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18243592617841882763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6566641959183651307.post-68891547158842624912014-06-27T21:31:00.000+03:002014-06-27T21:31:27.192+03:00femmes<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Baskerville;">Beirut, the week
before the new year</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Baskerville;">I did not write in the
first place. I was not (into) writing at all. I could not do it, nor commit to
it. I was not reading much either. Not until I went to college, and it was that
complete fiasco of entering into college as a bio-chemistry (premed) major that
forced me into excessive reading, then, much later, into wanting to be a
writer. The disconnection with society and the world-at-large could not be
anymore concealed. Rather it is, indeed, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sine qua non</i> of my shattered existence, or of my <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">parlêtre,</i> as Lacan would say, meaning
that being-into-language. What I like about Lacan is that he does not conceive
language as a “tool” for “communication,” but as an entity <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">inscribed</i> within the body, without which the body would be
shapeless and motionless. That it hasn’t been revealed earlier, in my teens, is
a constant source of regret. Was I too docile back then, wearing a
mask-of-satisfaction, like a protective shell, that I did not believe in? Is it
a character flaw? But even the disaster of the college experience—from its
first weeks—did not propel that urge to write. With the urge to read there was
no urge to write yet. That damn sense of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">urgency,</i>
that writing should matter more than oxygen, was not there. We tend to think <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">modern</i> Arabic through a détour—that we
learn “it,” we learn its potentials, by going through the other major Latin
languages: French, English, and to some, German. We learn modernity from the
potentials of the likes of French and English; then come back to Arabic as a
language of “lacks” of sorts, assuming we ever come back to it. Maybe we’ve
abandoned it in the first place, with no desire to learn it, to be-with-Arabic.
If language is the house of being, as Heidegger has claimed, then we’re into an
orphaned culture without language. This Arabic which has stubbornly maintained
itself for more than fifteen centuries, beginning with the notorious poetic and
pre-Islamic seven <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mu</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">ᶜ</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville;">allaq</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">ā</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville;">t,</span></i><span style="font-family: Baskerville;"> gives us that feeling of inaccessibility. The
J</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">ā</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville;">hiliyya of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mu</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">ᶜ</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville;">allaq</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">ā</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville;">t</span></i><span style="font-family: Baskerville;"> had at least a sense of community, because
some of the best poems of the time were “hanged” on the Ka</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">ᶜ</span><span style="font-family: Baskerville;">ba,
which was allegedly a pagan monument, prior to passing to the prophetic hands.
I should have done the same since high school, with an urgent sense to write
for a (virtual) community. I’ve learned since then to procrastinate and defer
endlessly—defer the writing process. When I did my first book, I wrote it in
French, but I was ill at ease in the whole process. Not much of a jouissance,
not even the modicum of pleasure. I had the writing of the likes of Foucault
and Braudel in mind, but had no idea where to situate my first serious project
on the political economy of Damascus. Which is precisely the cultural and
political problem of the eastern Mediterranean: the absence of a viable
narrative, something that would make sense at least for the last couple
centuries. I want a prose that makes me feel “one” with the city; I want to
feel that I belong to it; and that she belongs to me. Instead, I happen to come
and go like a stranger. There is a notion of stranger that I do not mind,
propounded by the German sociologist Georg Simmel: a stranger is not only
someone who must learn the shared codes of society, but, more importantly, he
is seen by others as having “not yet” learned those norms, that he is not one
of us, and will never be. But then no one would take you seriously if you
simply learn the norms, adapt, and behave well. The stranger must reveal the
insidiousness of those norms, how treacherous and uncanny they are.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Baskerville;">Hence this whole
theory of my hands tied by divine ordinance, parental repression, fatherly
superego which forbids jouissance, all of this does not make sense. I was not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">into</i> writing to begin with, and this has
been an agony ever since I’ve realized the importance of writing, of believing in
it, of investing into and being committed into it. It’s like being in love: to
give what we don’t have to someone who does not want it. Because such a mindset
was not there to begin with, say, as a teenager, where it should have all
begun, it has always been an agony. Going public has also been another of those
agonizing experiences. Instead of repression pure and simple, we should think
in terms of shame, anxiety, castration of the body.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Baskerville;">Think of photography
in terms of the relationship between the object produced by the photograph and
the reality of the setting. Ultimately, there is no reality outside the artifact
of the object. Likewise, the signifier does not represent a trace of reality,
but represents a subject which makes its apparition into the real, by effacing
the original trace, while substituting itself into the infinite chain of
signifiers that make reality possible—comprehensible by being discursive.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Baskerville;">At a downtown
bookstore my eyes caught the title of a just published French novel: “the
artist of sex.” In one passage picked at random, the mother tells her daughter
that men are miles away from women, will never figure out how to bring them to
sexual jouissance—not even pleasure. Forget therefore about the missionary
position and its affiliates (so-called oral and anal sex, no such terms exist
in French), as they won’t even bring even a modicum of pleasure. And the mother
raves on: men would do better masturbating on their own, but they need the
woman to exhort their masculinity and honor games. Ultimately, the daughter
went for the artistry of sado-masochism, though it remains unclear if such move
was at the mother’s exhortation. We see her commanding and receiving pain,
though it could be only one way: I like receiving pain but not giving it, or
vice versa. The woman as dominatrix, subjugating men to her desire—would that
bring the much heralded jouissance of the flesh? Which reminds me of Talal Asad
on judicial torture in the late middle ages, perhaps a transformation in the
12th and 13th centuries, if not earlier. Medieval Christian torture became a
doctrinal necessity to “see” what was “inside” the flesh and soul, as if it was
not enough to simply claim belief (as is the case in Islam), as the latter
could not be externalized and offered for evaluation by the Other. The body is
therefore subject to torture with the hope that it would deliver a certain
truth, hence a system of symbolic utterances called knowledge of the soul (or
self). Foucault who was into S&M himself wanted his sexual practices for
the sheer pleasure of the flesh: but is that possible? Can sexuality be
conceptualized outside discourse?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Baskerville;">An Indian critic à la
Chakrabarty, Aijaz Ahmad, notes how much Said’s Orientalism owes to the
Foucauldian topology of epistemic systems, that of the “order of things,”
whereby an epistemic structure is valid for a particular time-space framework.
My problem with all this Orientalism saga is that it is not even concerned with
the massive work that is needed to recover the essence of the third-world
texts. Only when such work is done, only when such texts are taken seriously
for their own sake, can we speak of a recovered modest dignity.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Baskerville;">The smells of this
city. Nothing like Damascus or Aleppo, the quintessential city of smells.
Everything is more modest here. On a warm Saturday afternoon I took it to the
back streets. Many shops had their electricity out, part of the daily
three-hour-minimum rationing. That smell of being old: shops that belong to the
1950s and 1960s, simply because they are benefiting from the old-rent law. The
oldness is a far cry from Aleppo, which still smells the Ottoman centuries. With
my narcissistic psyche, I kept pondering, Why did I leave? Why did I go west?
Too late perhaps, now that I’m “enjoying” the city—the jouissance of the
pervert. What is it that I know now that I did not know then? Is it a question
of knowledge? We do not progress as individuals; what time and duration bring
to us is that “insertion” of present knowledge into a past where supposedly it
was “not there” “yet.” But it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">was</i>
there—in an embryonic form—and that’s precisely what we appreciate: I love my
fate, because it was all there from day one; I can now better appreciate why I
did what I did. No regrets; only one failure after another. A friend of mine
once gave me the greatest reward: </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="FR" style="font-family: Baskerville; mso-ansi-language: FR;">Tu réussis tous
tes échecs</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville;">;</span></i><span style="font-family: Baskerville;">
you’re so damn good at succeeding in all your failures. So fucking French
erotic!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Baskerville;">On the long run we’ll
all be dead. On the short run, however, even if we indulge into serious
relationships, even if we’re committed, we’re at the end of the day alone. Yet,
being alone-alone is not like being alone-in-a-relationship. The latter poses
the fundamental question, What is it being-with-an-Other?, which the
alone-alone would not even dare to question. How to “be” “with” that Other,
whether another being, or non-being, remains the fundamental dilemma of our
times.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Baskerville;">I did not buy this
story of the Wall Street broker who all of a sudden turns as photographer of
prostitutes and drug users in the larger New York area in order to “discover”
the existence of God in himself, like a medieval sufi, leaving behind all
speculative wealth—and atheism. It seems that in both instances—from Wall
Street to the drug addicts and the prostitutes—there is a jouissance of excess:
from the excesses of speculative capital to those of the deterioration of body
and soul. In both instances, however, there is that jouissance that emerges
from the deterioration-as-excess. It could be reformulated as the “quest for
excitement,” to use Norbert Elias’ formulation of sports in general. As to the
photography on Flickr, it has a blatant voyeuristic element into it which could
be termed “enjoying the pain of others.” The top photographers of the last
century have come to realize that what remains outside the frame, and which is
left at the viewer’s discretion, is equally important, if not more crucial, than
what we see on the “screen” in front of us. In the photography depicting drug
addicts and prostitutes in the New York area, we’re told in every frame that
“there must be something important to see,” which is right in front of us, and,
frankly, as a viewer, I find myself deprived of my imaginative powers, like
bombarded with pornographic images. How is this related to God’s existence and
religion? The thesis that there is an atheistic rupture between Wall Street and
God neither makes sense historically nor sociologically. Max Weber has amply
demonstrated the correlations between the Protestant ethic and capitalism. More
importantly, the entire history of capitalism, since its inception in the
Italian city-states in the 13th and 14th centuries points to a process of
“accommodation” between the Church and capitalism, so that, for example, usury
is “approved” in spite of earlier prohibitions in both Christianity and
Judaism. So let’s not think even for a moment that our financial markets are
godless! It is precisely because God is dead, that prohibitions are all over
the place, that nothing is permitted. Because religion cannot serve anymore as
that grandiose framework that encompasses all aspects of life, God must be
exhausted at the sight of all those folks who turn towards him for help, like
our broker-cum-photographer: God is in deep pain, not at the sight of drug
addicts and prostitutes (he is not into social security), however, but at all
those morons who “discover” him all of a sudden—asking for help, because they
lost faith in the financial markets!</span></div>
</div>
zouhairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18243592617841882763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6566641959183651307.post-566873148884228262012-12-15T01:23:00.000+02:002012-12-15T01:23:28.892+02:00the syrian civil war<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";">Is the current
violence in Syria a revolt of “society” against an oppressive state, or should
it be read more meaningfully as a full fledged civil war? If we assume the
perspective of civil war, then the “state” and its various apparatuses would stand
as just one “civil party” among others, protective of its own social and
political interests, while revealing the multi-layered relations of power in
Syrian society which cannot be solely attributed to a dysfunctional state–society
relation. That is to say, even though the violence was originally meant to displace
the apparatuses of the state, it has since then sprawled in different
directions, not to be restricted to the problems of legitimacy that an
authoritarian state has engulfed itself into since the Baathist revolution in
the 1960s. It is such hypothesis that we want to explore, first, by
contextualizing the antinomies of the Syrian nation-state in historical
perspective, since its inception from the remnants of the Ottoman Empire and
the French colonial state. Second, through a combination of sociological and
anthropological approaches, we want to analyze the contradictions that the
Baathist state has set itself into once it has opted for a hegemonic takeover
of civil society, in particular in the 1970s, with Asad’s “corrective movement”
and its aftermath, which led to a massive expansion of the state apparatuses.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";">The collapse of
the old Ottoman order, both in its political and cultural connotations,
established, amid the Sykes–Picot agreements in 1916, a British–French colonial
order, which implied moving, quite abruptly, from Empire to nation-state. New
states with colonial “borders” (“lines in the sand”) were thus formed, such as
Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine and Kuwait, whose territories were
previously set within the “frontiers” of a multi-ethnic empire. The
post-Ottoman colonial order was therefore the first attempt to create a modern nation-state
with that awkward combination of a sovereign state, supported by a national
bourgeoisie of rentiers, manufacturers and financiers (the ex-Ottoman urban
notables), which inevitably dominated politics and government. This colonial liberal
order, which coopted the nascent national bourgeoisie into its ranks,
persevered until the Second World War. The first indication of the displacement
of such political and economic order was, indeed, the free officers revolution
in Egypt in 1952, which other countries have replicated. With that single event
the social roots of a would-be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">second</i>
political and economic order, which still dominates the region until now, and
which apparently the current revolts are attempting to displace, was already
there.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";">But are we
ready for a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">third</i> order? With Gamal
Abdul Nasser coming to power in 1952, Egypt would opt for a series of statist
measures that would ultimately establish themselves as a blueprint for the Arab
world at large: the undermining of the power of the colonial bourgeoisie through
methods of confiscation or nationalization of rural, urban, manufacturing,
financial and educational assets. Which led to a state-controlled economy, where
the state’s security is monopolized by an ever growing army, paramilitary
groups, and intelligence services.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";">The
dismantlement of the colonial liberal order was therefore quick to happen, and
in Egypt that order was already fully reversed by the mid-1950s: by then Egypt,
the most populous Arab country, was running under a massive civil and military
bureaucracy where the role of the military (as epitomized by Nasser himself) and
intelligence services had become paramount; where education and the economy
were fully dominated by the statist bureaucracy; and where the peasantry,
looked upon as suspicious for its conservatism and subjection to old landlord
families, was subject to constant political mobilization. Such drastic processes,
irreversibly anti-liberal, would serve as blueprint for the rest of the Arab
world, and by the late 1950s other Arab countries would follow suit. In 1958
the coup of Abdul-Karim Qasim, another disgruntled officer, has put a sudden and
bloody end to the rule of the Hashimite monarchy which had been ruling Iraq
since the 1920s. In 1963 the Baath Party came to power in both Iraq and Syria,
whose rule has been further brutally consolidated in the 1970s with Hafiz
al-Asad in Syria and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. In 1969, a coup led by an unknown
and young officer under the name of Mu‘ammar al-Gadhafi, damaged the long and
stable rule of the Idrissi monarchy in Libya. By 1978–79 this “second political
and economic order” was locked and further consolidated thanks to the Iranian
revolution, which undermined the Pahlavi dynasty, and a tradition of Shi‘i
monarchism since the early sixteenth century, instituting an Islamic Republic
for the first time in the Middle East and West Asia.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";">This brief
recapitulation of events should remind us of the frailty of the colonial
bourgeois order that was established in the wake of the dismantlement of the
Ottoman Empire: if that order has been reversed all too easily, in a series of
coups d’états across the region, and through blunt statist measures intended to
weaken the private economies, it was only because of the puniness of that
order, which could be attributed to Ottoman times, and to the way the old
élites, appended with new professional groups, were integrated into the
colonial economy. To begin with, the Ottoman political patrimonial order
implied maintaining a close hand on the prebendal urban élite (the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a‘yān</i>) through stipends in the form of
land rents. But even though the ownership was formally to the sultan and the
state, the notables enjoyed de facto full possession, giving them that special
status of a group (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Stände</i>) of
rentiers without, however, much competition from any local or regional economic
group. Even though some of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a‘yān</i>
invested in other activities than land, such as trade and manufacturing, land
was their prime resource. More importantly, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a‘yān</i> as the prime status group in society was neither an
“aristocracy” per se nor assigned any <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">political</i>
role within their community, beginning with the city which they were supposed
to “represent.” Indeed, Ottoman absolutism precluded the formation of local
aristocracies, leaving all “political representation” to the center.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";">With the
colonial nation-state now a reality, that old order was not completely
dislodged, but was rather beefed up with all kinds of new forces and realities.
To begin with, land rent now intermixed with manufacturing, trade and finance,
as the old rentiers have learned how not to make land their sole asset.
Secondly, new middle class professional groups, not to mention the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nouveaux riches,</i> all of which benefited
from the openings of colonialism, and the special attention that the latter
accorded to “minorities” (Christians, Armenians, Jews, Kurds and Alawis), were
now sharing the benefits of the commercial and manufacturing wealth of the
mandate period. Thirdly, the old élites, in conjunction with new
entrepreneurial groups, formed political parties, participating in all
governmental activities, from the presidency, parliament, and cabinet
positions. As a newly formed nation-state, Syria now thought of itself as a
territory with internationally acknowledged borders, rather than as a
“province” appended to a multi-ethnic empire. But this also implied seeking for
a certain degree of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">homogeneity,</i>
which was not there in the world of Empire. The heterogeneous nature of Syrian
society was marked by a couple of incongruities. Firstly, the mandate inherited
the Ottoman <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">millet</i> system, whereby
“communities” lived on their own, in specific neighborhoods of the city, with
their own schools, businesses, and “representatives” protecting their rights.
Secondly, the nation-state implied the formation of a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">single</i> political territory, which de facto entailed a minimum
degree of cohesiveness among regions. In the Ottoman system, the central axis
of the four major predominantly Sunni cities of Damascus, Hims, Hama, and
Aleppo, was the one that consolidated the core of the traditional rentier
class, the manufacturing of the craft guilds, linking the trade routes and
their merchant classes from Jerusalem to Baghdad. With the newly formed
nation-state that core economic axis was shared with two additional ones: the
western Mediterranean one of Banyas, Jableh, Tartus and Latakia (the
predominantly Alawi mountainous and coastal regions), and the northern-eastern one
of Hasakeh, Qamishli and Dayr al-Zor. It is safe to say that Syria’s modern
history hinges, on the one hand, on the relations between the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">operational</i> economic hegemony of Sunni
and Christian manufacturing and business families, and, on the other, on the
imbalance between the central axis of the four major cities and the two
regional axes subserved to them.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";">In a
predominantly agrarian society there is that lingering problem of mostly
landless peasants, of big “absentee” landlords who invest the bulk of their
rents in the city, of lack of adequate infrastructural resources (roads,
schools, water and electricity), of peasants being “represented” by their
abusive landlords. To elaborate, the power relations are always in favor of the
urban areas, but even further, there is that persistent imbalance between the
urban axes—the core one of the four major cities, and the ones attached to it
by the mandate—which doubles the urban–rural imbalance into one with
underdeveloped urban axes.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";">To proceed a
bit rapidly, it is no secret that the structure of the paramilitary factions
that downsized the traditional political and economic groups since the 1963 Baath
coup, were small to middle class landowners from rural areas. Indeed, the Baath
was supposed to bridge that gap between landlord and peasant, city and
countryside, the core Sunni axis of the four major cities with the western
coastal and mountainous areas, and the north-east. The agrarian reforms of
1963–69 did some of that, by dispossessing big landlords, and transforming
peasants into small landlords, with various laws making it harder for the
landlord to evict tenant-farmers and laborers. At the same time, the economic
assets of what became in the liberal period the “bourgeois middle class” were
nationalized in an apparent attempt to consolidate the state monopoly over the
economy and its national resources. Quite rapidly, therefore, the early
pre-Asad Baath managed to rip off landowning, manufacturing, and financial middle
class groups from their core resources, which in itself was a blunt attempt to downgrade
them politically in favor of the one-party system that was yet to come. The
Syrian paradox—or exception—would consist precisely in the return of the power
groups that were weakened in the 1960s. This would take place in the coming
couple decades in two different stages. When Hafiz al-Asad assumed power in
1970 in the wake of a coup d’état against his early Baathist companions, he
inaugurated what was then dubbed as the “rectification movement,” which in
essence meant “correcting” the “extremes” of the early Baath. More concretely,
this aimed at a re-opening towards old Sunni and Christian professional groups
that always dominated the national economy; but even though they were openly courted
to reinvest in core economic sectors (such as textiles, food and chemicals),
they did so only reluctantly, leading the whole “rectification movement” into a
downward spiral from which it never recovered. The 1979–82 years in particular
witnessed a number of urban riots, led by the since then outlawed Muslim
Brothers, which culminated in the Hama massacre in 1982, a symptomatic failure
of a state-run economy.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro";">The fall of the
Berlin Wall and the communist bloc left Syria without the “socialist”
protective umbrella that it relied upon since the 1960s. An attempt was made to
“liberalize” the economy, this time more realistic than the defunct “reforms”
of the 1970s, with “investment law n° 10” in 1991. Herein lies the paradoxical dialectic
of contemporary Syrian history: firstly, the return <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">en force</i> since the 1990s of the economic Sunni and Christian middle
classes; secondly, the failure of the one-party “socialist” state to reduce
imbalances among confessional groups, cities and regions; or to incorporate new
emerging groups into its entrepreneurial activities (including the Alawis which
are supposedly in control of political power via the Asad clan, but which as a
whole are an underclass rather than a privileged group); or to drastically
improve the status of the peasantry and the redundant surplus in rural labor.
In sum, there is a blatant “return” to the Ottoman and colonial eras, with
their dominant professional Sunni and Christian urban groups, which look down at
peasants, tribes, and rural areas. In one of those iconic historical twists,
which may be at the root of the current uprisings, political power is presently
in the hands of groups which originally were small to middle class rural
landowners, and whose rural origins seem all too forgotten amid four decades in
power; while “real” economic power is back to the groups that were displaced in
the 1960s by those who are now holding power. It is such an awkward “sharing”
of power between well experienced entrepreneurial <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ancien régime</i> factions that cannot rule, and the political <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nouveaux riches,</i> who do not have the
required entrepreneurial <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">habitus</i> to
be fully integrated into the ranks of the traditional economic class, which now
delineates Syria in its civil war.</span></div>
</div>
zouhairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18243592617841882763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6566641959183651307.post-81450469368302301742011-05-08T02:07:00.000+03:002011-05-08T02:07:21.960+03:00Bin Ladism long dead<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF7y5NLCHRyOeCX-Pad9X_L8rk0sph9bJw48YkSX-H3Zgu0wB2JojDiqfgvqzMhwx6PaqhRAmRY61qQgvKE2Ua5Cjd9wet2LYcJJDZ5qS1Xn3a_w7x969-taZXmQb1lYsHRBzGCviB00N1/s1600/bin-laden_killing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF7y5NLCHRyOeCX-Pad9X_L8rk0sph9bJw48YkSX-H3Zgu0wB2JojDiqfgvqzMhwx6PaqhRAmRY61qQgvKE2Ua5Cjd9wet2LYcJJDZ5qS1Xn3a_w7x969-taZXmQb1lYsHRBzGCviB00N1/s320/bin-laden_killing.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><style>
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</style> <div class="MsoNormal">Bin Ladism as an ideology—indiscrimination between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, jihadism against American imperialism; death to America, the Jewish state, and the Saudi monarchy; and the possibility of an all encompassing Islamic state and umma—may not survive as a totality, assuming there was one. What is important to note is that in their more basic elementary fragments, such elements survive on their own, rather than as a totality, in various areas, and in varying degrees, within the Arab and Islamic worlds. The only thing that Bin Ladism adds to such common sense notions is their actualization in the context of a violent revolutionary struggle. In other words, slogans are redeemed inefficient in their own right—they’re only words—and could only be brought to justice (and to earth) through revolutionary struggle. Hence the jihadism that Bin Laden supported and financed in Afghanistan under the Soviet occupation (1979–1989), the attacks against U.S. embassies and American military and civilians, and, last but not least, the spectacular character of 9/11 (where, for once, reality supersedes fiction), which has set new benchmarks that the Qaida was unable to replicate anymore. It is therefore such revolutionary struggle that sets Bin Ladism apart from the rest—not the fragmentary content of its ideology—and which precisely prevents it from having a strong line of adherents among the Arab and Muslim youth. Moreover, since the Qaida was never set as a territorial organization, the way Hamas and the Hezbollah are, it floats around as a virtual nation-state without any concrete links to a population. Hence the excitement about Bin Ladism has waned rather than accelerated since 9/11, and by the time Bin Laden died this past week, he knew that his Revolution would never materialize. This is not to say that his ideology as a totality or in its fragments is not there anymore. Without the idea of a Global Revolution most of Bin Ladism would be sheer common sense. Bin Laden died not only defeated and isolated (probably “bored,” said the New York Times), but in a home with no connections (not even a phone line or an Internet connection), as if waiting for death to come by, and it finally came by way of the Obama Administration. By contrast, when Saddam Hussein was caught, stood trial, then executed, thanks to a poor coordination between the Bush Administration and the Iraqi federal government, he had plenty to do and was at the height of his powers. In Bin Laden’s unfortunate case, the Grand Revolution looks like a utopianism that was bound to fail and rapidly disappear, while the Baathist power structure, as epitomized by the likes of Saddam Hussein (and Asad, Mubarak, and the rest), is there to stay. Let us not forget that, in spite of the Arab revolts, all the infrastructures of power are still there untouched. By contrast, Bin Ladism, which has built its ideology on nonsensical fragments commonly found in Arab political discourses, had no way to materialize in practice. Bin Laden therefore died like a bored university professor who some time ago produced lots of words, but whose main achievements were decades behind rather than ahead of him. If, as has often been noted, the young who are taking it to the streets in the Arab world are not using anti-imperialist slogans, but are rather coming through with more concrete demands, it is because in most instances they’re not the ones behind state and party organizations; hence the slogans of the protesters are no indication that the Arab political discourse of the modern nation-state is yet shifting in another direction. Caught in a globalized capitalist world, the modern nation-state is unable to set itself into practices that make sense locally, that is, for the disfranchised populations whose per-capita income and modes of living are far off from their counterparts in advanced liberal societies.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Even though president Obama took on his behalf the decision not to publish the photos and videos of Bin Laden’s body with his head and body torn with bullets, what the White House decided to release instead is what ultimately became “the” photo of the event: the group around the president which knew of the Bin Laden operation, and which was able to watch it “live,” with a direct commentary from CIA director Leon Panetta. Ever since the Nuremberg trials, the West has at great pains set for itself the task to prosecute crimes against humanity, wherever these may have occurred. Since then, many of such crimes which have either touched on the peripheries of Europe (Serbia and Kosovo), Africa, and the rest of the world, were also subjected to tough investigations and prosecutions against the persons or groups who committed them. Since groups are impossible to prosecute, it was indeed those who “represented” them that generally stood trial. The idea here is not so much revenge per se, as much as a willingness to “represent” evil, show it, and bring to public life those who are allegedly responsible for such crimes. The important thing here is therefore the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">publicity</i> of all such operations: instead of the vendetta feuds that were normally in use until World War II, the aim here is to make the process public, whether the hearings where the perpetrators are openly accused of their crimes, the rebuttals by lawyers and culprits, or the decisions themselves by judges and magistrates. Hence within the whole judicial process that became the norm in 19th-century Europe, and which replaced the old system by ordeal, everything has to be carefully examined and judged accordingly. In the case of Bin Laden, the decision was made, which was never admitted as such openly, to bring him dead rather than alive, hence a process à la Nuremberg was out of question, and would have created an impossible process to manage logistically or otherwise. But then justice was rendered, at least in the grand north American tradition, of punishing “the one” who was “known” to be behind the 9/11 massacres and other killings as well. What is still missing in all this, however, is due process and a fair trial, hence the importance of the photo released by the White House. The photo <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">publicizes</i> the decision-making process and provides it with an aura of legitimacy. It does so by humanizing the protagonists-as-decision-makers, beginning with president Obama himself, who appears not only stone-faced, but more importantly, not even as the central character. You’ll have to look well to find him, and there he appears on the edge of the table, as if sitting on his own and oblivious of the others. What the protagonists are watching, we’re unable to see, and we’ll have to make up for such a gap in our minds, as the best of Italian and Iranian neorealism have taught us. We’re nearly sure that they’re watching the operation unfold, but which moment exactly—the decisive one where bin Laden was shot dead?—and does it really matter to know? The photo “works” precisely because it adds suspense to the hors-champs, incorporating the unseen and out-of-frame within the suspended narrative, while capturing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">le moment décisif</i> (Henri Cartier-Bresson) at a decisive moment that we’re unable to see and determine. The photo, in other words, adds a touch of “realism” in a secretive process, handled, as we can witness, mostly by mid-aged family men whose life was devoted to the Washington belt, but who manage to appear here in their more humane unseen self, like weekend family men and women watching a good TV show. The monstrosity of the act of killing Bin Laden, the precision and ruthlessness with which it was executed, add to the importance of the photo by humanizing the protagonists. Even though the president made the final decision, and was liable for it, it was, indeed, group work that finally mattered (as should be the case in a liberal democracy)—and the photo precisely underscores the collective aspect of the team work. In the absence of a fair trial, had Bin Laden survived, the legitimacy of the killing appears well founded, precisely because of the team work which was publicly revealed thanks to this unique photograph—and to the sublime work of ideology.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The photo was taken on May 1 2011, and uploaded on Flickr a day later:</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, along with members of the national security team, receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House, May 1, 2011. Seated, from left, are: Brigadier General Marshall B. “Brad” Webb, Assistant Commanding General, Joint Special Operations Command; Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough; Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Standing, from left, are: Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; National Security Advisor Tom Donilon; Chief of Staff Bill Daley; Tony Binken, National Security Advisor to the Vice President; Audrey Tomason Director for Counterterrorism; John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism; and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Please note: a classified document seen in this photograph has been obscured. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Source:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/5680724572/in/photostream">http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/5680724572/in/photostream</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div>zouhairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18243592617841882763noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6566641959183651307.post-36158133471163774372011-05-06T00:55:00.003+03:002011-05-06T01:05:50.066+03:00a new third political order?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><style>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">A postcolonial “second order” was de facto established in west Asia and the middle east in the aftermath of WWII, which replaced the post-Ottoman “first order” that protected the nascent nation-states and their bourgeois middle classes and professional élite groups in the aftermath of the empire’s dismantlement and sudden demise. As it turned out, such groups were doing well and prosperous as long as the French and British colonial order was there to safeguard the middle east from further fragmentation. The 1952 free officers revolution in Egypt and the 1958 Qasim coup against the Hashimites in Iraq were the first indicators of the end of the post-Ottoman colonial bourgeois rule, with all its liberal underpinnings (free press, multi-parties, banking and finance, and family owned industries). By 1963 and the coming of the Baath in Syria and Iraq, the tone was clearly set that we're into "socialism," one-party state rule, secret services, and a preponderant role to the military and their affiliates, which ended up controlling education and major industries. Qaddafi's coup in 1969 against the Idrissi dynasty, the rejuvenation of the Baath in the 1970s under Saddam and Asad, reinforced the trend, while the Iranian revolution in 1978–79 completed the circle of the monolithic state and its military and intelligence apparatuses. So it took three decades after WWII for the political and social “second order” to take shape in west Asia and the middle east. Are the present revolts destined to dismantle that order or consolidate it? The elements that consolidated the old order, and which are still there, came from the rural peripheries and small cities, and were rooted in the military. In the four decades since they've come to power, they've lost touch with their original peripheries, hence what we're witnessing now is the class struggle emerging from large sections of the populations that have been disfavored and marginalized. However, there isn't much of a political program for all those lower classes, which have been joined by fragments of the middle classes that lost their purchasing powers over the years, and young techies that do not fit well into the current societal stalemate. High unemployment and birth rates, inflation of college degrees, the low status of women, and the failure to industrialize, are certainly the main culprits behind the gross failures of the nascent nation-states to modernize and compete with their Asian counterparts. Hence it's a curious combination of elements that are coming together in those street protests, more class- than ethnically-oriented, whose final resolution would take several decades to settle. To be sure, there will be more openings towards more representative political systems (multi-parties etc.), but that won't be enough, hence the possibility of a rigid consolidation if the social forces fail to mature in the right direction. I'm as usual fairly pessimistic, as I don't feel that the region as a whole is yet ready for a mature "liberal" solution.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div></div>zouhairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18243592617841882763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6566641959183651307.post-91474442012130298822011-04-25T04:57:00.002+03:002011-04-25T08:28:25.478+03:00the economics of sharia law<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">Kuran, Timur, <i>The Long Divergence. How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East</i>, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011. ISBN 978–0–691–14756–7. U.S. $29.95.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Even though Timur Kuran is overall convincing at laying out arguments on the backwardness of Islamic practices regarding partnerships, corporations, banks, loans with interest, waqfs (mortmain properties blocked from circulation), and contracts in general, he seems less convincing at explicating why Islamic societies were held back from competition with Europe from the middle ages up to modern times. Indeed, his main assumption that it was Islamic law that held back the economy escapes the problem rather than points at its cause in a convincing way. Legal systems in general are more an outcome of social conditions, rather than the major force that would bring social relations to a more developed level. In other words, history shows that whenever the law is “behind” social practices, whether cultural or economic, they tend to be addressed sooner rather than later. A case in point, which Kuran explains at length, is the ban on loans with interest that both Jews and Christians had to abide by in the early European middle ages, which in both instances were bypassed due to the socio-economic conditions in Europe at the time. Even in modern times, legal systems tend to struggle in order to match cultural and economic developments. Witness how the American common law had to battle, since the nineteenth century, its formative period, with issues like private property, contracts, the corporation, slavery, rights of minorities and women, abortion, and gay and lesbian rights, in order to become congruent with the nascent capitalism and the mores of the times. It therefore seems quite obvious that for any society and civilization, at every historical juncture, it is the totality of social relations, or the mode of production, which in the last stance is what impacts politics and law. There are times when the law falls behind the evolution of social relations, which could be attributed to anything from the weakness of the state, or to the nature of legal reasoning itself, for instance, a need for complete overhaul that is constantly delayed, due to lack of adequate resources or for political reasons. However, Kuran addresses Islamic law for over a millennium, and for that long a period it would be absurd, as he does, to blame economic backwardness solely on the law, as suggested in the book’s subtitle and its various chapters. It goes without saying, however, that there is a “divergence”—and a wide one for that matter—between Islamic economies and their western counterparts; the Mediterranean economies of the last millennium, between east and west, point to such a divergence. Even though Islamic law shares the blame, it is more of a symptom of a much broader and deeper problem, than the major culprit.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Kuran’s demonstration often questions the reasons that did not push “communities” and subcommunities from tailoring Islamic law to their own needs and aspirations. In other words, if Islamic law proves to be, indeed, the main culprit, or the prima causa, in the history of economic backwardness of middle eastern societies, why hasn’t there been any resistance to its rule? Or why, in the vast Islamic empires since the Umayyads and Abbasids up to the Ottomans, no major challenges were posed to the legal limitations on partnership, inheritance, loans with interest, and waqfs? Why is it that no corporations, loan institutions, public debt and banking services have emerged even in rebellious peripheries? Or why is it, as far as economic and legal practices are concerned, no significant changes are to be noted between the Shi‘i and Sunni sects? Why is it that no group, subgroup, community or subcommunity broke the general rules in order to establish more aggressive economic and legal practices?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Kuran’s reasoning assumes that, first, Islamic law reached such a level of maturity and comprehensiveness so as to rule out any possible defections on the part of groups and communities, whether urban or regional: “On the face of it, the presumed comprehensiveness of Islamic law ruled out self-governance on the part of subcommunities; one could not replace divine law with human-made law even in limited domains.” (107) Such passages do suggest that, first, Islamic law reached such a level of comprehensiveness and a systematic character by the early middle ages to the point that it would undermine other sub-laws from emerging, which would have been secular and more competitive. In other words, the divine character of Islamic law gave it such an aura that no community would have even dared to challenge it. But what if the reverse proves to be the truth, namely, that three to four centuries since its inception, Islamic law failed to develop a systematic character, and that at no point there was even an attempt to develop a system of codes à la Justinian? What in effect persevered since the 10th–11th centuries was a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">de facto</i> process of “accommodation” of the broad principles of the law, which were never comprehensive in the first place, to the needs and aspirations of the local regional communities; and even at this level, it was custom that reigned supreme, rather than sharia law. Such a failure to create a corpus of Islamic law that would have served as a comprehensive code for the various regions and communities of “the lands of Islam” has been accommodated for in various forms from one epoch to another. In Ottoman times, for example, a clear division was instated between sharia law, on one hand, and the regional bureaucratic “secular” laws, commonly known as the qanunname, on the other, which in itself was a bland admission of the inoperative character of Islamic law in such matters as rent, taxation, and crime. Moreover, even for the core of sharia law, the Ottomans adopted Hanafism out of the four Sunni schools, a flexible school that accepts “custom” as regionally operative, while assuming the status of “law” (“habit is tenacious,” states one of the “general rules” of Hanafism). What the Ottoman centuries therefore point to is precisely the level of “autonomy” that subcommunities have assumed on their own, a self-rule that was made possible not so much by sharia law itself, but rather thanks to the very nature of the societies on the eastern Mediterranean and north Africa.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The main problem in Kuran’s book is not only his desire to see in Islamic law the prima causa of economic backwardness, but more importantly, in an inability to properly describe the sociological and historical nature of the societies and civilizations which were operating under Islamic law. Which gives Kuran’s study the impression that things could have been otherwise were it not for Islamic law. But what if things could not have been that much otherwise, precisely because the societies that were subject for centuries to sharia law operated under their own ecological, tribal, urban and social limitations? Indeed, a major weakness of the book is that it does not delve deeply enough into the political and economic organizations of such societies: Would a system more open than sharia law made them any different? Assuming that in the past millennium the bulk of Islamic societies were under prebendal and patrimonial absolutist dynasties, where prebends in the form of land grants were donated as signs of loyalty to urban élite groups, were the social conditions ripe enough to create a milieu that would have hosted more competitive economic practices from the ones already in place? Is it really a problem with sharia law itself, and the fact that it imposed all kinds of restrictive uncompetitive norms, or was it a limitation coming from social structure? Historians working within a sociological comparatist perspective (such as Barrington Moore and Reinhard Bendix) have often noted that “feudalism” in its European connotations was a privilege that failed to materialize in the middle east and Asia (except perhaps in Tokugawa Japan), and that such a failure was what led to the general backwardness in the past millennium. The point here is that when speaking of economic performance over long periods, one cannot escape the totality of social structure—the “law” being one of the components of society rather than its determining agent. Had the economic practices covered by Kuran been indexed to social structure instead of being reduced to their legal underpinnings, economic backwardness would have <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">eo ipso</i> looked messier, with no prime cause in sight.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Even though a big advantage of Kuran’s approach is his excellent description of economic practices over a millennium with their legal underpinnings, his ascription to “law” the prima causa of all economic backwardness does a disservice to his enterprise. As already pointed out, in various passages Kuran seems uncertain as to how much the “holding back” was an outcome of the “law” itself: was sharia law, as divine law, so powerful that no community could be set free from its creed? And why with all the “autonomy” that communities enjoyed in most Islamic empires, no alternative economic systems came to light? As in the passage above (107), Kuran seems to suggest that the “divine” aspect of the law made it irreproachable. Such arguments, however, do not feed well for a complex undertaking on economic development, and end up too circular, if not solipsistic: Islamic societies have created a divine legal system, to which they’re imprisoned, precisely because of the divine character of the law. For example, notice how Kuran is at loss when he questions the reasons behind the failure of anything close to a “corporation” or a “corporatist structure” in Islam. Having first noted that “free incorporation” would have implied “the right to incorporate at will, without the consent of a monarch, president, or parliament” (121)—which makes “corporation” even stronger than “partnership” (which in Islam was limited to the basics)—Kuran then notes that, under such conditions of “free incorporation,” “of necessity subgroups of the community would enjoy a measure of self-governance” (122), which in turn, would pose a challenge to the ideal of communal unity, and which in the case of Islam would have implied a challenge to the divine character of sharia law. As in other passages, and whenever we’re faced with a crucial “shortcoming,” in this instance the “corporate structure” (even the Roman Church behaved as a corporation), it was the “law” that halted the process: “In adhering to the ideal of a unified community and withholding legal rights from subcommunities, jurists and political theorists doubtless thought to deny social divisions legitimacy.” (122–23) So, if the “corporation” or “the fictitious person,” which as legal notions stand as prerequisites to one another, have not been embraced in Islam, it is because as radical innovations, they would have undoubtedly posed a threat to “the ideal of undifferentiation,” namely the Islamic community of believers known as the umma. The problem with such views is that they give the false impression that it was Islamic law that prohibited communities, which for the most part were based on strong kinship and tribal ties, from embracing the corporation (and other prerequisites, such as the fictitious person and competitive partnerships), hence in moving in the direction of openly liberal markets. But were such handicaps and constraints imposed by the monolithic nature of Islamic law, as Kuran seems to suggest, or by the social structure of Islamic societies, which in turn are an outcome of the ecologies and terrains in which they have evolved?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-outline-level: 1;">Zouhair Ghazzal</div><div class="MsoNormal">Loyola University Chicago</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="mailto:zghazza@luc.edu">zghazza@luc.edu</a></div><br />
<div class="zemanta-pixie"><img alt="" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/pixy.gif?x-id=e390d577-3629-8ae1-98b6-ddd6f2f7f8ed" /></div></div></div>zouhairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18243592617841882763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6566641959183651307.post-1920979763973617482011-04-07T05:09:00.002+03:002011-04-07T05:13:15.636+03:00Why the Arab revolts are not political, at least not for now<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><div class="MsoNormal">The Arab revolts have thus far taken different routes, even though their root cause may be similar. In Tunisia and Egypt, the army stood off the conflict, posing as arbitrator rather than protagonist. Such position led to a relatively bloodless resolution to the uprisings, at least for now. In neighboring Libya the army, composed of 50,000 or so poorly trained and equipped elements, dissolved rather rapidly, while the ruling clan managed to survive thanks to its private militias (the seven Qaddafi sons have, we are told, each their own militia, 5,000 each on average). In Yemen the state lost control over most of the national territory, but the president Ali Saleh survives in his presidential compound thanks to tribal links and his well-trained presidential guards, in spite of daily manifestations that have metamorphosed into a thriving business. In Syria, the bloody demonstrations have been spreading at a slow pace, with thousands (mostly male) demonstrators in various cities managing to break the security vanguards of the ruling clan. The Syrian revolt will thus to be fought city by city, neighborhood by neighborhood, and clan by clan, so much this urban society is fractured along kinship loyalties.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Observers of the Arab revolts have often pointed to their presumed “political” character in the narrow sense of the term: namely, that what is common to all of them is that urgent demand to overthrow an existing corrupt ruling group, which took control of the state apparatuses decades ago. What is therefore “political” in this instance is the overthrow of a corrupt régime as an apparatus that dominates “civil society.” But what such a view often overlooks, however, is how much is at stake beyond the usual opposition of state and civil society. In effect, analysts typically miss the fact that the link between state and civil society is so abstract as to become analytically useless. A more fruitful approach would be to point to intermediary institutions, such as political parties, municipalities, daily practices, the social uses of space, charismatic leadership, as necessary components of society, whose political expressions have been cruelly lacking in the Arab societies that have been witnessing uprisings and revolts. Such a crucial shortcoming, which has been present for over half a century, in the so-called postcolonial period, will only postpone the move towards more democratically representative (and industrialized) societies.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">With the end of the Second World War and colonialism, it took over three decades for the middle east, as an inherently incoherent region, to establish a political order that would become its trademark. In fact, both the 1952 free officers revolution in Egypt, and the 1958 bloody end of the Hashemite monarchy in Iraq, have set a dubious pattern of a sudden military takeover of civilian rule at the hands of low middle class officers from rural landowning families. The Baathist coups in Iraq and Syria in the early 1960s had consolidated that already familiar pattern of the breakdown of civilian bourgeois rule, and its concomitant replacement by a one-party state with faked mass-mobilization strategies. Such an arrangement meant the end of politics in civil society at large, and the current uprisings and revolts would not be enough to get politics back on track. At best, such uprisings could be termed “cultural,” in that they seem to emanate from groups (not to be limited to the youth) which by and large have learned their modus vivendi from the globalized media landscape in terms of mass communication, body language, and the social uses of space.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">What therefore needs attention are the implications of the dismantlement of civil society in the Arab world at large for over half a century, and why the revolts sweeping the region at present won’t be enough as a remedy. What is at stake are practices that delve much deeper into the socio-political and cultural substrata.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Arab and Islamic empires of the past centuries give the false impression of states tightly controlling their societies, which some historians have wrongly attributed to long-term “absolutisms.” In reality, those states were more prebendal and patrimonial than “absolutist,” as the core of state formations was the clan and tribe of the ruling dynasty which distributed prebends to loyal urban groups. In modern times, with military power and technology, the grip of the state over society has only marginally solidified, giving that illusion of mighty control, while in reality the state only contributed at crushing and postponing movements in civil society that could have created possible alternative political formations and representations.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Having already overestimated the power of the authoritarian state, we should refrain from either overestimating its downfall or for a rapid emergence of political movements in civil society in the near future. Indeed, what we have been witnessing since December 2010 throughout the Arab world are the “cultural” expressions of large segments of frustrated groups in society. Besides the fact that 65 percent of the populations of the Middle East is under the age of 35, high unemployment, the failure to industrialize and modernize at a large scale, the marginalization of women in public life and the dismantlement of family values, have all contributed at pushing protesters into a “public sphere” that exists only marginally, that is, as a space whose social use has been severely truncated for decades. As globalization has created a mediatized world of images that centers on the body and its social power, it is that kind of culture, which is primarily non-political in its essence, that protesters have espoused, while the bringing down of the likes of Ben Ali and Mubarak are only symbolic acts which help to foster that needed energy of belonging together among protesters. It remains to be seen, however, whether such cultural representations would find a much deeper political expression, in terms of deeply rooted institutions, in particular that there is much at stake in the cultural values of society. Think, for instance, of family values and the role of women in public in Arab societies: Would it be possible to industrialize and modernize at a large scale without dismantling many of the traditional family values, and without giving women more public prominence and freedom? We should know by now that technology and science are not neutral entities, which could be exported and implemented at will, without their ideological underpinnings. It remains uncertain, however, how much awareness there is at the implications behind cultural change, and whether there is, indeed, any willingness to find political expression for popular discontent.</div><br />
<br />
<div class="zemanta-pixie"><img alt="" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/pixy.gif?x-id=18a24a34-eebe-8181-a3b5-355934fc0542" /></div></div></div>zouhairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18243592617841882763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6566641959183651307.post-49765289628385806302011-04-05T03:23:00.001+03:002011-04-05T03:23:49.540+03:00mysteries of minorities<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'><p class='MsoNormal'>The harassments that Christians are facing today in countries like Iraq and Egypt tend to be seen in isolation to similar problems across the middle east, on one hand, and from historical precedents on the other; and while routinely associated with a surge in Islamic values across the Arab and Islamic worlds, their economic underpinnings are overlooked.</p> <p class='MsoNormal'> </p> <p class='MsoNormal'>In the old Islamic empires, Christian and Jewish minorities were simultaneously referred to as “the people of the book” and <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>ahl al-dhimma,</i> the former referring to the identification of minorities with their holy scriptures, while the latter limited them to their status as minorities, in particular in matters of political representation and taxation (the special <i style='mso-bidi-font-style: normal'>jizya</i> tax). In Ottoman times, such minorities were integrated within the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>millet</i> system, which grosso modo implied, as with the previous empires, poor political representation and special taxes, together with the legalization of economic practices that were forbidden to the majority of Muslims under sharia law. Thus, when Jews fleeing the Spanish inquisition in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries opted for the Ottoman empire, they were greeted within the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>millet</i> system, on one hand, and as potential moneylenders on the other. Such historical <i style='mso-bidi-font-style: normal'>millet</i>-specific economic functions tend to be overlooked these days, in particular in relation to the hardships that Christians have been going through in the middle east. That 2010 implied the end of Christianity in Iraq, and that the hardships of the Copts in Egypt have been under the hood during the Mubarak autocratic rule, and have only accelerated since his departure, beg the following questions: How come autocratic régimes, like Baathism under Saddam Hussein, Nasserism up to Sadat and Mubarak, or Syrian Baathism, manage the status of minorities far better than the more “democratic” ones? It is, for instance, no secret that under Saddam Hussein the Christians of Iraq were much safer than now, and that an explanation of the kind that they have been targeted because of a sudden rise of Islamic jihadic groups, which the nascent federal state is unable to control, would certainly not suffice, and is inadequate as an explicans. What needs to be explained here—the explanandum—is the relative “security” that Armenians, Christians and Jews, in their lives and properties, have benefited from in Ottoman, colonial, and postcolonial times, but only when the postcolonial independent state acted like a mini-Ottoman state, with millet rights and privileges. There seems therefore, prima facie, at face value, a contradiction, which is precisely what needs to be explained: Why under autocratic conditions, in countries like Iraq, Syria and Egypt, minorities feel much safer than in less autocratic and more open conditions? The reason is that postcolonial autocratic states have stabilized around post-Ottoman notions of power, where millets were kept with similar economic rights and privileges. Whenever such autocratic states have shifted in another direction, as is the case in Iraq and Egypt, the “protection” accorded by the state is not there anymore, and the minorities find themselves competing with other groups, in particular the Muslim majority.</p> <p class='MsoNormal'> </p> <p class='MsoNormal'>The real secret here may well be the so-called “pluralism” in sharia law, which permitted a special legal status to minorities and foreigners. Up to the early 19th century, such special legal status did not create large economic discrepancies between communities. By the 19th century, however, competition across the Mediterranean pushed for greater legal autonomy to minorities. In areas where sharia law was particularly weak, such as partnerships, moneylending, and corporations, minorities benefited from their special legal status, namely, the fact that laws outside the sharia system were applicable to them—and to them only—either within their own confessional millets, or else through capitulations and special mixed courts.</p> <p class='MsoNormal'> </p> <p class='MsoNormal'>It is, indeed, that relative economic “success” of minorities that is often overlooked today. Is there any connection between the economic and cultural edge that minorities were able to secure, and the harassments and massacres that they had to endure? Let us note here that the first calls for autonomy, in the form of regional and territorial nationalisms, in the Ottoman empire, were to erupt in Greece and the Balkans, in regions where the Greek Orthodox faith was predominant.</p> <p class='MsoNormal'> </p> <p class='MsoNormal'>In a recent book, the economist Timur Kuran notes that until the late 18th century Muslim role in trade and commerce was significant, as there is no historical evidence that Muslim merchants left trade to Christians and Jews, even though both Islamic economic and legal practices lagged behind their counterparts in medieval and early modern Europe in practices like partnership, the corporation, the legal person, primogeniture (as opposed to equal inheritance), money lending, the letter of credit, trust funds (as opposed to the closed waqfs), stocks, bonds, treasuries and public debt. But with the expansion of capitalism, the industrial revolution, trade and colonialism, the trend has begun to shift towards non-Muslim minorities, as more aggressive trade practices were needed. As sharia law leaves the door open for “legal pluralism,” the denominational communal courts served the purpose of granting legal protection for practices that the sharia courts would otherwise not have permitted. Better still, non-Muslim minorities had that unique option to opt for the legal authority of their own choice, pending on what was at stake. “By the end of the 19th century,” however, “the Ottoman Empire’s Muslim merchants were decidedly secondary players in its external trade with Europe, and at home, too, they had lost enormous ground to local minorities” (Kuran 191). Soon, the dhimmi communities who were commercially active became, like the foreigners of the empire, protégés of European powers or of their inside cohorts. Some, seeking better protection, or to be exempted from specific taxes, either became consuls or dragomans (<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>tercüman</i>s) in consulates.</p> <p class='MsoNormal'> </p> <p class='MsoNormal'>Herein lies the shift that occurred from the “protected” millet status to one that was life threatening to non-Muslim minorities. To understand the significance of such a shift by the late 19th early 20th centuries we need to go no further than the decline of the populations of non-Muslim minorities in Anatolia. Historians of the empire (Kemal Karpat and Justin McCarthy) give on average 10 to 25 percent for non-Muslim minorities in Ottoman Anatolia, when it was still within the empire’s jurisdiction. But with the killing and deportation of close to 1.5 million Armenians, and other minorities (primarily Greeks) by the end of WWI, Turkey’s population of today’s minorities stands at less than 1 percent of the total of the republic. Nor was such a movement of deportation and harassment to stop with the foundation of the republic or in the aftermath of WWII for that matter. The last episode, known as “the pogrom against Greek businesses,” on 6 and 7 September 1955, when Adnan Menderes was prime minister (1950–60), emptied the heart of Istanbul, the Beyoğlu (Pera) area, from its Greek businesses, amid large scale riots that pushed many Greek families to leave their homes and fortunes behind in their rush for more secure countries (Zürcher 231). Ironically, the Greeks were targeted at a time when Turkey’s economy was most successful, achieving a 9 percent growth rate over the ten-year period of the Menderes administration, with rapid urbanization and industrialization, thanks partly to foreign aid. Which begs the question, Why are minorities targeted even in times of relative economic success, when the country is not challenged by external enemies?</p> <p class='MsoNormal'> </p> <p class='MsoNormal'>Yet, Turkey is the only country in the region to have successfully industrialized and modernized, well situated within the prestigious G–20 membership. Why was it the first Islamicate society to systematically eliminate its minorities? Was the elimination of minorities an operation necessitated by the growth of the nation-state, industrialization, modernization, laissez-faire capitalism? In other words, does the “imagined community,” which acts as a prerequisite for the nation-state, necessitate that “minorities” be targeted to create a “coherence” in the imagined ideology?</p> <br/><br/><div class='zemanta-pixie'><img src='http://img.zemanta.com/pixy.gif?x-id=08f15b33-ea7a-804d-a1af-b3edea63293d' alt='' class='zemanta-pixie-img'/></div></div>zouhairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18243592617841882763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6566641959183651307.post-75697591937011551662011-04-03T05:58:00.001+03:002011-04-03T05:58:47.598+03:00political or cultural theater?<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'><p class='MsoNormal'>The events in the Middle East are portrayed as people versus their despotic rulers, innocent masses against corrupt states, utopian crowds versus crony capitalists of the nouveaux riches, religious versus secular, and tribalism versus the cold raison d’état of the statism. That politics is perceived as a theater of expressivity against corrupt and oppressive rulers, good guys versus bad guys, is commonplace. In the wake of the financial collapse in the US and the rest of the world in 2008–09, the bad guys were the Wall Street bankers, who, behind our backs, and while benefiting from our trust (in the money that we’ve safely deposited in their banks), they went ahead and engineered all kinds of “immoral” (rather than illegal) transactions. The financial collapse was thus seen in terms of individuals defecting as a group from common sense behavior against the majority of innocent actioners. Similarly, the middle east uprisings are portrayed as an action of an innocent majority versus a corrupt minority in power. But how come such a minority managed to rule the uncorrupt majority? By sheer force? What political discourse and analysis hardly reveal is the amount of consensus behind political power, whatever the degree of coerciveness involved: indeed, it all comes to a matter of degree rather than deeply rooted principles. That oppressors and oppressed belong, therefore, to the same cultural landscape (ethos), that they may share similar cultural values, is what is often overlooked once the veil of consensual coercion has been broken—but to what kind of political order exactly? In other words, once the consensus that lies behind political power (from the most totalitarian to the most liberal) seems to have been broken, amid, for instance, street protests and violence, political power is de facto portrayed as “out of sync”—or out of touch—with the masses, hence hiding (repressing) the very idea of consensus even behind coercion and oppression, not far away from the consensus that we find in liberal democracies. That is to say, what is occulted here is what protesters are finally aiming at. Thus, when we ask the trivial question, What is it that they want, what is it that they are aiming at?, we get the trivial answer, They want political freedom, uncorrupt governments, and a radical régime change. Whether to some this implies western laissez-faire liberalism, or on the other end, a Muslim radical theocracy or a moderately Islamic liberal government (in the style of the Muslim Brothers), important as it may as an issue, is not what is at stake here, at least not for the centrality of the revolts. We want to unmask what has been left out in all this: the real motivations of the protesters, why they’ve been coming, with their bodies, alone or en masse, day after day. We want an analysis along the following lines: the body, the visible, the gaze, time and (public) space, all of which pertain to a particular political culture. We want to argue that the broad movement launched across the middle east, which is now shaped as a region whose coherence (or lack thereof) is being made and unmade through the protests, targets an entire cultural landscape, between oppressors and oppressed, wealthy and poor, the state apparatuses and those outside them.</p> <br/><br/><div class='zemanta-pixie'><img src='http://img.zemanta.com/pixy.gif?x-id=649bb85e-232b-8997-b673-18b9f2bc813d' alt='' class='zemanta-pixie-img'/></div></div>zouhairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18243592617841882763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6566641959183651307.post-59344731565196316372009-02-01T00:27:00.006+02:002011-04-03T05:44:22.845+03:00The Wrestler<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">Darren Aronofsky’s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wrestler_%282008_film%29"><i>The Wrestler</i></a> (2008) should have been more appropriately entitled “the wrestler and the stripper.” There is more in the “friendship” between Randy (Mickey Rourke) and Cassidy (Marisa Tomei) than the usual setting of boy-meets-girl. One is a professional wrestler whose prime period has come to an end, and is painfully resuscitated through weekend shifts in the New Jersey clubs, while the other is a mid-aged professional stripper, whose “colleagues” tend to be younger women in their twenties, with the kind of “I shouldn’t be here in the first place” attitude. Both invest their lives very professionally in their respective jobs. However, at face value, nothing brings wrestling to stripping, one is mostly dominated by macho male figures, where the body is at the same time glorified, trashed, and subject to great physical kinky violence, while the other is mostly female, and where violence is symbolic in nature, even though it could turn nasty at times. Which is precisely what brings wrestling to stripping: the body. Both are physical performances, situated within closed spaces, and both need a great deal of motivation, discipline, and professionalism. And that’s precisely what we’re offered to see in the “Wrestler”: fairly accurate descriptions of both spaces, which do not connect per se as physical and professional spaces, but only though the “connection” that Randy makes in his van every once and a while to meet Cassidy in her working club. It is indeed those “rides” in the New Jersey area (that same area of the Sopranos, David Chase, and Philip Roth), portrayed as if they were rides in the middle-of-nowhere, in cities and suburban spaces where emotions of intimacy have vanished, which awkwardly connect the two disconnected milieus. Randy first approaches Cassidy very professionally, generously paying her for “private” lap dances mixed with “private” talks. In the wake of his heart attack and bypass surgery, and recovery in a hospital room and then in the loneliness of his shabby trailer, Randy feels that urge to get more “intimate” with Cassidy. It is indeed that longing for “intimacy,” which all of a sudden comes as an urge in the middle of the film that feels awkward, as both Randy and Cassidy have protected themselves all their lives within the professional spaces of wrestling and stripping from the vagaries of personal relationships and intimacy. When Randy wanted to tell Cassidy about his heart operation and the decision to drop wrestling for the rest of his life, he realized that he couldn’t do it in the stripping club—in the professional space where he had met her as performer. He insists that they meet outside, in his van parked in a nearby parking lot reserved for the club’s customers. They meet briefly in the van, and Cassidy is obviously not at ease dropping her mask of professional performer in order to transit to the confidante and lover role. We learn from this encounter and later that both have suffered from failures and dysfunctional lives—and who hasn’t?—Randy is portrayed, even by his own daughter, that he’s a failed father, who was always absent in the most crucial moments, while Cassidy has a nine-year old son from a failed relationship. When Randy manages to convince her for a “one-beer” deal in a bar (after shopping for a present for Randy’s daughter), Cassidy had to cut short on Randy’s kiss, and offer for another drink. “You still see me as a stripper,” was one of her takes on Randy, and “I can’t mix my professional life with that of my customers,” was her second one. Here’s the core of the film now fully developed: Cassidy’s blatant fear of “mixing” the two lives—the personal and the professional. The professional implies ritualistic encounters and distance: keeping those men at <i>distance</i> is a prime professional ritual. Then there’s the money, and in stripping it comes piecemeal, all based on bodily performance and nothing but performance. Same thing for Randy: the ring protects him from the audience-cum-mob through a professional relation of pure performance, which brings him the income he needs for survival (at the beginning, his landlord manager locks him out for one night for defaulting on his payments). When Randy realizes the pain of personal relationships and their futile nature, he returns, in a sudden shift, to what was obviously his last performance. He dies performing, throwing himself at an “audience” that looks more and more like a mob of bloggers, rather than a real “public” in the conventional nineteenth-century sense. That was the only time that Cassidy drove in the emptiness of the New Jersey suburban landscape to meet Randy in his professional milieu, as if she was indebted to him in a way she couldn’t figure out: to see him burn himself out to death on the ring with his cherished “audience.”<br />
Technorati Tags: <a class="performancingtags" href="http://technorati.com/tag/The%20Wrestler" rel="tag">The Wrestler</a></div></div>zouhairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18243592617841882763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6566641959183651307.post-41665563001685966462009-01-25T22:49:00.001+02:002009-01-25T22:49:45.862+02:00Between secularists and jihadists<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>Among all what has been said about Ghazza in the last few weeks, and all the ranting and raving about the savagery of Tsahal and its shelling of civilians, one article stands out: “How Israel helped to spawn Hamas,” by Andrew Higgins in The Wall Street Journal of January 24–25. Even though, as I’ll argue in a moment, Higgins’ main arguments are both historically and sociologically flawed, they at least question Israel’s <i>historical</i> links with the likes of Hamas and the PLO: did Israel’s paranoiac attitude towards Palestinians since 1948 help ferment the likes of the PLO, Hamas, and the Hezbollah? The argument goes principally along the lines of a division between so-called “secularists” and “religious activists” or “jihadists” in Palestinian politics, which grosso modo reflects a broader division in Arab societies on the eastern Mediterranean. The secularists among Palestinians were for the most part represented by the PLO under Yasser Arafat, while the religious activists are now mostly under Hamas rule in Ghazza. Higgins goes on to say that Israel inadvertently and very naively radicalized both groups. First, its relentless fears over “Palestinian nationalism” in the 1960s and 1970s pushed it at war with the PLO, which back then was a weak and insignificant organization, mostly rooted among the <i>lumpenproletariat</i> of the Palestinian camps in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. That eventually led to a radicalization of the PLO, and its institutionalization in one of the Arab summits in Fez (Morocco) as “the sole representative of the Palestinian people.” Eventually, Israel had to stage a costly war against the PLO in Lebanon in 1982, pull the organization out of its Lebanese conundrum, only to negotiate (through Norway) a peace treaty with its leaders from their Tunisian exile. But Oslo notwithstanding, Arafat, now in Jericho, would keep his defiant tone until the very end, that is, until he was eaten by disease and old age (and an alleged poisoned assassination). As to Hamas, an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brothers, it was a direct upshot of the first intifada in 1987. Higgins makes the point that Israeli intelligence “welcomed” Hamas as a way to weaken a “secularist” and “nationalistic” PLO.<br/><br/>There are several problems with such a conceptualization of Palestinian politics. First, it divides Palestinian politics grosso modo among so-called “secularists” and “religious” zealots, as if such a division marked some kind of a <i>coupure épistémologique</i>, an epistemological break that would translate into different visions of society and politics among the two groups, or as if the likes of Arafat and Shaykh Yasin were totally two different brands of politicians in Palestinian society (not to mention their broad impact on the impoverished Arab masses). Of course, they were different, but in what way? Was it that one was more user–friendly with the “Zionist enemy” than the other? Or was it for their different views of politics and society? Let’s first observe that such a division has been around on the eastern Mediterranean for some time. In Egypt, where it probably all began, the Muslim Brothers under Hasan al-Banna created their movement in the 1920s when the country was still under British rule. The Brothers were rivals at the time to the Wafd Party, Egypt’s prime organization for the middle classes, and then in the 1950s and 1960s, to Nasser’s monochromatic dictatorial rule, which abolished multi-party politics, and nationalized major financial and economic resources. By the 1960s Nasser succeeded at a total cramp down of the Brothers, jailing their main ideologue Sayyid Qutub, and executing him in his prison cell. Upon Nasser’s death in 1970, Sadat was dissatisfied with Egypt’s sole reliance on “communist friends,” and the spread of “socialism” in society. He thought of the “Islamicist” groups as a counter–point to communism. Hence a revival of the Brothers since then, and a political resurgence that ultimately led to the public assassination of Sadat by a member of one of the Islamic groups close to the Brothers.<br/><br/>We can discern that kind of duality—between the secularist and the religiously rooted movements—in many Arab and Islamic countries. Think of the Syrian Baath Party and its own Muslim Brothers as a prime example. When Iraq was liberated from the Baath in 2003 the spectrum of parties that emerged was no different from what other neighboring societies had already witnessed. But to think of the Syrian Baath as more “tolerant” or “secular” than its Muslim Brothers is like trying to choose between two different methods for putting an end to civil society (or what is left of it). To view them as a product of colonialism, imperialism, and Zionism, would be a gross mis-conceptualization, and an easy way to root the failures of Arab politics into alien forces imposing the nation-state from the outside. It would be more helpful to conceptualize the differences between the two in terms of a combination of class and ethnic identities and the violent competition over the monopoly of religious discourse. Religion today is not closeted anymore, as it used to be in Ottoman times, in the hands of the ulama class. As religion has become more fractured and specialized, with banks offering an “Islamic interest” on deposited capital, and with doctors offering “Islamic” medical service, it has opened up to all kinds of media-type political an social salvations. Thus, the likes of Hassan Nasrallah, the head of the Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the late Shaykh Yasin of Hamas, in spite of their public attire, they both are not a product of the traditional ulama class, receiving all kinds of challenges from the latter. To covet his rule, Nasrallah has to maintain a two-tier ulama infrastructure, where the lower-tier is the most militant, hidden as it is under the veneer of the more prestigious first-tier of the likes of the fatwa-maker Fadlallah.<br/><br/>What is it then that distinguishes the two groups of so-called “secularists” and “religious” zealots? Certainly not a view of politics that would absorb the multiplicities of social formations that exist in their societies, as all of them tend to be intolerant towards social diversity and laissez-faire liberalism. In the Baath party’s slogan of “unity, freedom, socialism,” what is most disturbing is that claim for “unity,” which often concretely translates as a monolithic one-party system that would place all “classes” of society under the wise aegis of the Baathist state. Freedom and socialism, whatever meaning we ascribe to them, would only come at the price of a political unity, which, historically, often implies a one-party system. But between that kind of “unity” and the “oneness” of a “fair” “Islamic state” (whose model would be the dysfunctional rule of the first four caliphs, not to mention the prophet in person), and the secularism of the Baath, what’s the real difference? Isn’t it that in all their variations and diversities all such discourses share a destructive common ground, and an intolerant political sphere?<br/>Technorati Tags: <a rel='tag' href='http://technorati.com/tag/Hamas' class='performancingtags'>Hamas</a>, <a rel='tag' href='http://technorati.com/tag/secularism' class='performancingtags'>secularism</a>, <a rel='tag' href='http://technorati.com/tag/Arab%20politics' class='performancingtags'>Arab politics</a></div>zouhairhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18243592617841882763noreply@blogger.com0