Dia al-Azzawi
My research on the Syrian revolution began in 2016, alongside the anthropologist Montassir Sakhi. We had both been involved in significant activist experiences in Morocco, in the wake of what has come to be known as the Arab Spring.
Our discussions with our Syrian friends—whom we met at the Turkish-Syrian border, in Iraq, and later in various places of exile in Europe—were grounded in a shared belonging to the same historical sequence within our Arab societies: an unprecedented hope followed by disaster. Yet the violence of the Syrian situation—where the Ba'ath regime waged a war of extermination against its own society—was without comparison, even among the many disasters that afflicted the region. Nonetheless, it seemed to us paradigmatic, albeit in a profoundly tragic light, of the sociopolitical deadlocks in the Arab world, the relationship between minorities and majorities, the dynamics among social groups perceived as more or less modernized, and the reemergence of the theological-political question in new terms.
All this, however, paled in comparison to the staggering cost of the crushing of the Syrian revolution—the millions of lives torn apart, imprisoned, or forced into exile. This crushing would inaugurate a cataclysmic abyss on a global scale, from which an unfathomable darkness spread, what the writer Yassin al-Haj Saleh has called the 'Syrianization of the world.'
Like many others, I was completely taken by surprise by the triumph of the Syrian revolution—a prodigious surprise, a rare horizon of hope at a time of undeniable global fascization. Like some, I could not resist going as soon as possible to Damascus, to Yarmouk, to Saednaya, to Aleppo, and other places. It is from this material that the texts of this column are drawn - a column generously hosted by the wonderful journal Les Temps qui restent. I do not claim to offer a comprehensive perspective on the dynamics and stakes of Syria’s dizzying reality. Rather, these texts should be read as 'idea reports' written in the first person, in which I hope to capture certain historical features of a moment destined to be—for everyone—as miraculous as it is decisive.
First part : La possibilité du salut
Second part : Le retour inattendu de la question nationale au Proche-Orient
Third part : Après l'utopie, le présent
Our discussions with our Syrian friends—whom we met at the Turkish-Syrian border, in Iraq, and later in various places of exile in Europe—were grounded in a shared belonging to the same historical sequence within our Arab societies: an unprecedented hope followed by disaster. Yet the violence of the Syrian situation—where the Ba'ath regime waged a war of extermination against its own society—was without comparison, even among the many disasters that afflicted the region. Nonetheless, it seemed to us paradigmatic, albeit in a profoundly tragic light, of the sociopolitical deadlocks in the Arab world, the relationship between minorities and majorities, the dynamics among social groups perceived as more or less modernized, and the reemergence of the theological-political question in new terms.
All this, however, paled in comparison to the staggering cost of the crushing of the Syrian revolution—the millions of lives torn apart, imprisoned, or forced into exile. This crushing would inaugurate a cataclysmic abyss on a global scale, from which an unfathomable darkness spread, what the writer Yassin al-Haj Saleh has called the 'Syrianization of the world.'
Like many others, I was completely taken by surprise by the triumph of the Syrian revolution—a prodigious surprise, a rare horizon of hope at a time of undeniable global fascization. Like some, I could not resist going as soon as possible to Damascus, to Yarmouk, to Saednaya, to Aleppo, and other places. It is from this material that the texts of this column are drawn - a column generously hosted by the wonderful journal Les Temps qui restent. I do not claim to offer a comprehensive perspective on the dynamics and stakes of Syria’s dizzying reality. Rather, these texts should be read as 'idea reports' written in the first person, in which I hope to capture certain historical features of a moment destined to be—for everyone—as miraculous as it is decisive.
First part : La possibilité du salut
Second part : Le retour inattendu de la question nationale au Proche-Orient
Third part : Après l'utopie, le présent
