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From Subjects to Citizens? Civil Society
and the Internet in Syria
Roschanack Shaery-Eisenlohr
a
a
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic
Diversity, Gttingen, Germany
Version of record first published: 20 Jul 2011
To cite this article: Roschanack Shaery-Eisenlohr (2011): From Subjects to Citizens? Civil Society
and the Internet in Syria, Middle East Critique, 20:2, 127-138
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From Subjects to Citizens? Civil Society and
the Internet in Syria
ROSCHANACK SHAERY-EISENLOHR
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Gottingen, Germany
Recent debates on the role of new media in the Muslim world have coalesced around two
major arguments. In the rst line of research, some scholars argue that the emergence of
new media has led to more transparency as well as to a democratization of sacred
knowledge since new actors have emerged who interrogate the authority of traditional
Muslim leadership.
1
Addressing the relationship between new media and authority, other
scholars have argued that there is no necessary relation between the advent of new media
and political liberalization,
2
and that new media often has been used in ways that help
consolidate the power of authoritarian states.
3
In the second line of argument, following
more Foucauldian themes, scholars argue that new media practices create new forms of
subjectivity and discipline and therefore question the assumed democratizing character of
new media.
4
In this second line of argument, media technology itself has no inherent links
to particular social or political consequences, but what is of interest is how this technology
becomes absorbed in particular cultural and political contexts and plays a prominent role
for its users as a means to realize their aspirations.
Despite the limited success of activists in the Middle East to create a more pluralistic
form of public sphere through the use of the new media, civil society activists and
political dissidents continue to view the Internet as an important tool in their resistance
against oppressive regimes and argue that it is often their only available medium to
ISSN 1943-6149 Print/1943-6157 Online/11/020127-12 q 2011 Editors of Middle East Critique
DOI: 10.1080/19436149.2011.572410
Correspondence Address: Roschanack Shaery-Eisenlohr, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and
Ethnic Diversity, Gottingen, Germany. Email: rshaerie@hotmail.com
1
Dale Eickelman (2005) New Media in the Arab Middle East and the Emergence of Open Societies, in: Robert
W. Hefner (ed.) Remaking Muslim Politics: Pluralism, Contestation, Democratization, pp. 3759 (Princeton:
Princeton University Press). Dale Eickelman and Jon W. Anderson (eds) (1999) New Media in the Muslim
World: The Emerging Public Sphere (Bloomington: Indiana University Press).
2
See, for example, Shanthi Kalathil & Taylor Boas (2003) Open Networks, Closed-Regimes: The Impact of the
Internet on Authoritarian Rule (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace).
3
See Evgeny Morozov for a discussion of the role of the Internet in Russia and how both nationalists and civil
society activists make use of the Internet. He suggests that the nationalists consolidate their power through the
use of the internet. The Internet: The Room of our Own? Available at: http://www.evgenymorozov.com/les/
09Summer-MorozovInternet.pdf, accessed September 4, 2009.
4
See, for example, Charles Hirschkind (2006) The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic
Counterpublics (New York: Columbia University Press).
Middle East Critique
Vol. 20, No. 2, 127138, Summer 2011
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connect to ordinary citizens. In this article I discuss why and how self-proclaimed secular
Syrian civil society activists mobilize the Internet as part of their political project to resist
the Asad regime. Based on the examples discussed in the paper I make three broad
arguments:
First, the Internet can be seen as a new forum where power relations between the regime
and its opponents are negotiated, and this new medium adds to what Lisa Wedeen calls the
ambiguities of domination.
5
Dissidents are never sure whether the goals achieved can be
linked directly to their own efforts and activism or whether they are part of the regimes
calculation to create a democratic facade.
Second, both regimes and dissidents believe in the power of media as an educational
tool, similar to the early classic Frankfurt School perspectivewhich believed that
consumers understand the content of the media as intended by the producers and therefore
argued that media can manipulate greatly the minds of people. Likewise, civil society
activists privilege the production rather than the consumption aspect of media. In other
words, because civil society activists believe that the spreading of alternative information
among activists themselves and for the general public on the Internet eventually will create
the necessary awareness among ordinary people to resist the oppressive regime, they
put too much importance on the fact that information in a variety of forms is put on the
Internet. However, they do not take into account that knowledge can be interpreted in a
variety of ways and used in diverse forms, sometimes in ways the activists had least
intended. Often, consumers of these civil society websites engage in non-virtual patron-
client relations, and, as one of the examples below will show, producers of information
serve as quasi-patrons of those seeking help.
Third, activists view the Internet as providing them with opportunities to counter the
culture of fear, the core of which is the atomization of society, the creation of distrust
among citizens, and international isolation. Activists argue that they use the media in a
way that facilitates networking and community-building, trust among citizens and contact
with a variety of international organizations. Thus, through the power many activists
imagine to inhabit the new media, they propose new state-society relations in which
Syrians are aware citizens rather than mute subjects and would hold the state accountable
for its actions, having gained knowledge of their rights.
The Popularization of the Internet in Syria
Volker Perthes identies three broad tendencies within the current Syrian regime elite:
First, he identies the conservatives who desire to maintain the status quo; second, he
mentions the democratic reformists who are more critical of the entire system, and
consequently emphasize the need for fundamental change; and nally, the modernizers
among whom Asad belongs, and who emphasize technological modernisation and
gradualism.
6
It comes as little surprise then that the introduction of the Internet to the
Syrian public has been the result of efforts of the current president, the self-styled advocate
5
See further Lisa Wedeen (1999) Ambiguities of Domination. Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary
Syria (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
6
Volker Perthes (2006) Syria under Bashar al-Asad. Modernization and the Limits of Change (New York:
Routledge), p. 14.
128 R. Shaery-Eisenlohr
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of the modernization of Syria. Prior to his fathers death, he was the head of the Syrian
Computer Society, a society for information technology (IT) professionals in Syria, from
1995 to 1999. Computers and the Internet have been emblems of modernity and as a
technocrat and so-called modernizer it is hardly surprising that Asad would see their
introduction as yet another sign of the commitment of the Asad family to lead Syrians into
progress and prosperity (within the limits of continuity with the past of course). To Asad,
transparency, knowledge production, speed and order are qualities of a modern society,
and in his view new technology supposedly inhabits these qualities:
I have always seen the problems caused by chaos and corruption, and these problems
can be fought with the computer. And if you use a computer, you must be
organizedyou cannot be chaotic and be good with a computer. The technology
was created to make things easier and faster, and we need to make things easier and
faster in this country.
7
Indeed, after 2000, school children began to receive computer lessons, permission was
given to open Internet cafes and the cost of Internet connection was reduced. In 2003, only
1.45 percent of all Syrians used the Internet,
8
ve years later the number of Syrians who
had access to the Internet had expanded to 16.8 percent,
9
although the percentage of those
with Internet access still compared unfavorably with that in other authoritarian states, such
as Iran where 48.5 percent of the population had access to the Internet in 2008.
10
These
technological advances by no means are intended to relate to or parallel with changes in
the political sphere, and the various security branches have closely controlled all Internet
activities.
Despite all the surveillance, Syrians created new ways of transgressing Internet policing
and used the Internet for a variety of purposes, perhaps least in ways the regime had
ordered them. The Internet became another arena where many Syrians had to push the
infamous red lines and test the boundaries. Unlike the very strict Press Law of 2001
(particularly Articles 50 and 51), which grants the state full authority to give licenses,
cancel existing licenses, imprison journalists for publishing so-called false news or forged
documents, there is no law managing electronic media. Testing boundaries therefore has
been by trial and error.
If the government blocked websites, the activists came to learn about proxies that
nonetheless can access those websites through other servers. For instance, several blogs
provide a way for users to share information on how to bypass government blocking of
sites through what is known as anonymous Internet proxies that hide the Internet protocol
(IP) of the Internet user.
11
There are at least seven groups on Facebook that provide web
7
Quoted in David W. Lesch (2005) The New Lion of Damascus: Bashar al-Asad and New Syria (New Haven:
Yale University Press), p. 73.
8
Perthes, Syria under Bashar, p. 33.
9
International Telecommunications Union ITU Internet Indicators 2008. Available at: http://www.itu.int/
ITU-D/icteye/Reporting/ShowReportFrame.aspx?ReportNam, accessed March 13, 2010.
10
Internet World Stats. Available at: http://www.internetworldstats.com/middle.htm#ir, accessed March 5,
2010.
11
Syria Expands Iron Censorship over Internet. Available at: http://www.uk.reuters.com/article/internetNews/
idUKL138353620080313, accessed August 18, 2010.
From Subjects to Citizens? Civil Society and the Internet in Syria 129
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proxies to Syrians; these groups have a total of 17,971 members.
12
Facebook, of course, is
banned in Syria but almost 10,000 Syrians join Facebook every month.
13
Human rights
activists and other civil society actors inside Syria and in exile use social networks to
promote their agendas. Online magazines such as All4Syria
14
and Al-Watan
15
are
published by prominent journalists such as Ziad Haidar
16
and Ayman Abdel Nour.
17
YouTube is another tool that is employed by Syrians, especially minority groups, seeking
to promote causes that oppose ofcial policies. For example, clips documenting the
repression of Syrias Kurds have been uploaded to the site.
18
Civil Society and the Fetishization of the Internet
The Internet has done more than simply provide a eld to extend old struggles by new
practices. Instead, in the view of civil society activists, this medium allows them to
provide a counterweight to the culture of fear and to propagate new state-society relations.
Two examples will clarify how activists believe they resist the atomization of society and
isolation from the international community despite continuous constraints. I also show that
such activism on the Internet takes on a life of its own, as consumers of such information
with or without access to the Internetrather than becoming active citizens and applying
the knowledge acquired on the Net to advance their rights, often reproduce patron-client
relations with the activists and seek help as subjects exposed to the states arbitrary
actions. Activists then become mediators between ordinary citizens and the statea
position and an identity that have been created through the particular way the activists
make use of the Internet. For example, Thara is an online magazine that denes itself as a:
Weekly review of scholarship, culture and literature on womens issues. Based in
Syria, its goal is to provide a reliable resource of international, regional and local
documentsfor example, laws and conventionsconcerning women. It also aims
to monitor social ills and practices that violate rights and freedoms, especially those
of women, as they are the most vulnerable and suppressed sector of Syrian society.
The review tries to expose these problems and propose alternative courses of
action.
19
12
Information obtained from M. J. Baiardy (pseudonym) (2008) Censorship in Syria. The Relationship between
Television, Society and Censorship (London, unpublished manuscript).
13
The Real Reason Syria Blocked Facebook. Available at: http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/?p 493, accessed
March 29, 2010.
14
All4Syria. Available at: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid 14064300466&ref ts, accessed March
18, 2010.
15
Al-Watan. Available at: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid 14064300466&ref ts#!/pages/alwata
nonline/319149569281, accessed March 18, 2010.
16
Ziad Haidar runs AlWatan Online. Available at: http://www.alwatanonline.com/home.php, accessed March 3,
2010.
17
Ayman Abdel Nour runs All4Syria. Available at: http://www.all4syria.info, accessed March 3, 2010.
18
Tal Pavel (2009) The Power of 140 Characters: Twitter in the Middle East, TelavivNotes, July 26 (Sorell
Foundation), pp. 23.
19
Thara. Available at: http://www.thara-sy.com/TharaEnglish/modules/tinycontent/index.php?id 1, accessed
December 17, 2009.
130 R. Shaery-Eisenlohr
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Thara is part of the Etana Press, an organization that maintains intense ties to Western
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the international community; not only does
it receive funding from a variety of international organizations, but it also facilitates visits
of foreign journalists and academics to Syria as well as organizes a number of art
exhibitions and semi-academic seminars. The intentions of the information producers to
inform women of their rights through an e-magazine and to raise consciousness by
providing them with legal documents, such as the Syrian constitution and family and
personal status laws in various Arab countries, has taken its own local form in Syria,
namely that of the importance of networking when struggling with ones plight. In the
view of Maan Abdul Salam, the owner of Etana Press:
The internet is really important, but it doesnt make any change in the end, because
the hand of security is still so strong. People can get information now, but they cant
do anything with the information. Maybe you have a window on the world, but you
dont have a window on whats going on inside, and that makes you blind.
20
Despite the view that the Internet can change little in Syria, the journalists and writers of
Thara work around the clock to put information online, to respond to e-mails, to provide legal
advice via e-mail, and to expand their readership. In the view of J,
21
a journalist who is
responsible for responding to the ood of e-mails the magazine receives, Thara not only is an
e-magazine but, more importantly, it has turned into a de facto social institution. He agrees
that the magazine caters to a small section of the population due to the high illiteracy rate
among women and their limited access to the Internet, but he explains that many women who
read Tharas articles talk about themwith their friends, family and neighbors, and so the ideas
are disseminated. Signicantly, many women have heard that Thara cares about womens
issues, so they sometimes walk into the ofce or nd the mobile phone number of one of the
employees and ask for help. J adds that women from all sectarian backgrounds contact the
ofce. Some have run away fromtheir homes, some have been victims of domestic abuse and
a few even come to drop off their own or their daughters, illegitimate children. Thara has
tried to help these women nd shelter and lawyers, although ofcially it is an e-magazine and
did not plan to provide such informal social services on the side. He concludes that the
implications of the internet are larger than the internet and its readers itself.
22
While Maan Abdul Salam might be right in asserting that the Internet does not lead to
the creation of the kind of public sphere activists desire, because the security branches
keep a close eye on such Web activism, the consumers of this e-magazine seem to view
Thara as a sort of social network outside the direct control of the state and Islamic charity
organizations. It is information, not necessarily the content of the articles that Thara
journalists put online, about Thara as a womens organization or place to where women
can turn to receive help, that in fact has contributed to the creation of a counterhegemonic
space and has facilitated countering the atomization of society. This example clearly
20
Maan Abdul Salam. After the Damascus Spring Syrians Search for Freedom Online. Available at: http://www.
metransparent.com/old/texts/guy_taylor_after_the_damascus_spring_syrians_looking_for_freedom_online.
htm, accessed December 17, 2009.
21
Personal interview, Damascus, April 26, 2009.
22
Ibid.
From Subjects to Citizens? Civil Society and the Internet in Syria 131
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shows that media reception is diverse and often the intentions of the producers do not
overlap with those of the consumers. But it also shows that civil society actors in fact
change state and society relations, even if not in the ways that they originally intended.
The second example is of another human rights organization in Damascus. This
example shows how a human rights activist has domesticated the Internet into his social
network and views the Internet as enabling the maintenance and even improvement of the
quality of this social network. The activist, A, denes his mission as one of publicizing a
culture of human rights among ordinary people.
23
In his view,
many Syrians do not want a regime changethey instead want economic and social
securitythey do not care much about democracy. They want a symbolic gesture.
We, as the leaders of the people, want a plural political system. We need to give
people education [as to] what their rights are, because they have lived for 40 years
under dictatorship; they need to learn.
24
A explains that his organization is not permitted to publish on paper any material that has
the word human rights (huquq al-insan) in it. He does not even have a business carda
popular thing to own in the Arab East among a diverse group of peoplebecause he
cannot nd a print shop that would dare to print the phrase human rights on it. Through the
control of paper and what is written on it, the regime obviously decides what identities and
occupations are permissible and can be labeled as such and which ones do not deserve to
be put into a distinct category. When the Internet became available, A remembers, that:
We began to surf the net to get information about human rights; we wanted to know
what it is exactly, what we have to do, for example, when someone is put on military
trial and what can our lawyers say to defend them. What vocabulary should we use?
How do we make a case? We had heard the word human rights, but we had no idea
what it was exactly and we still need training in it.
25
Now the groups ofcial statements are put online and its communications with members
is mainly through e-mail. A explains in detail how he publicizes arbitrary detentions and
locates missing persons.
We got members in each city and everybody knows this is the guy associated with
the human rights, so when they have detained a person, family members run to him
and our contact visits the family of the victim and asks them to recount exactly what
happened and who took the person (as there are four different types of security
services). Before the internet it used to take months before we heard of arrests. Now
our contact e-mails us all this information and we immediately telegram the Ministry
of the Interior and ask about the whereabouts of this person and the reasons for his
detention. This is what we call writing a statement. At the same time, we e-mail this
information to our contact at the United Nations in Geneva who immediately gets in
23
Personal interview, Damascus, April 24, 2009.
24
Ibid.
25
Ibid.
132 R. Shaery-Eisenlohr
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touch with the Syrian Embassy, which then gets in touch with the Foreign Ministry,
which has no clue about this incident, so they telegram the Baath National Security
Ofce, which then inquires of all its branches to nd out where the person is held,
and they might then get back to us after two or three days, two or three weeks, or
never. If we hear a message, we e-mail it to our contact and he visits the family and
tells them about the situation. So you see, time is of the essence. Without the internet
it would have taken us months even to hear that some person was detained; now
within hours we have the news and we can take some action.
26
Whether through this method a culture of human rights is propagated requires more
ethnographic research, but what is obvious is that the families of the victims make use of this
network to nd out the whereabouts of their family members and the way the activists use the
Internet facilitates a quicker way to locate the victims. In other words, a type of patron-client
relation is created that competes with the network the regime maintains with the people.
Anyone who has heard of Syrian detention centers knows that time is of the essence and the
speed of communication is vital. In the view of A, new media (particularly satellite TV) has
also enabled the creation of a community, a network of people, which prior to the advent of
this media did not knownor trust each other. In fact, the issue of trust is essential in a society
where the fear of being reported to the security service is always present. Arecalls that his cell
phone did not stop ringing after he had been interviewed in Al-Arabiyya on human rights
conditions in Syria. He explained that people here and there had heard his name and knew
about his organization, but it was the fact that an established TV programwhich many
Syrians watchhad interviewed him that underlined his credentials as a trustworthy
dissident and not a disguised mukhabarati. Fromthen on, he would receive e-mails and phone
calls regularly, and with each additional case others would hear about his organization and
consequently, according to him, about the concept of human rights.
27
In this case, the media
(TV leading to an exchange of e-mails) also functioned as an authentication mechanism.
Building networks of people who trust each other even when they do not know each
other personally is the rst step to countering and breaking the regimes politics of fear.
Similarly to the Thara magazine, it may be that this human rights organization also
functions as a social institution which offers people ways to create some minimal
boundaries to resist the states arbitrary actions. More than learning about human rights or
women rights through online articles, people primarily seek help as subjects as opposed to
citizens. By the former I refer to the majority of Syrians who use creative strategies
routinely in order to secure basic services which the state has theoretically granted them.
They also often play the role of the client in a patron-client relationship appealing to the
responsibilities of the patron, who is a representative of the state.
Labeling the Activists and the Politics of Immediacy
Considering the manifold ways civil society activists view the Internet as enabling the
creation of a counterhegemonic space, the question remains: How does the Syrian regime
manage this difference of opinion? How does it try to break this space? Besides direct
26
Ibid.
27
Ibid.
From Subjects to Citizens? Civil Society and the Internet in Syria 133
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policing, such as blocking websites and installing lters, how does it counter this new
mode of resistance? I suggest, rst, that it expands its politics of fear and its practice of
commissioned criticism to the Internet and, second, that it resists such networking by
undercutting the politics of immediacy.
28
By this I mean the claims to be in immediate
and more direct interaction with a desired religious or political source and the power and
authority that derive from it. The regime also negatively labels these networks and those
who maintain them and presents them as marginal and anti-national. Interestingly, the
labeling, as we will see below, underlines the idea that both the regime and its opponents
view the Internet as facilitating networking.
After a short period of relative political openness in June 2000, the so-called Damascus
Fall began in 2001 and was marked by the comeback of political repression, some argue
even worse than during the rule of Bashar Asads father. Both international events and
local considerations played a role in the shift back to repression. The beginning of the
second intifada and September 11 are examples of such international events, and the pace
and type of change dissidents desired collided with Asads vision of a future Syria.
Asad directly attacked civil society activists not only by arresting them, but by labeling
them as unpatriotic. In an interview given in February 2001 to the pan-Arab daily Al-sharq
al-awsat, Asad criticized civil society activists who were involved in the Damascus Spring:
Syrian intellectuals are a small group which portrays itself as an elite. It was entirely
unnatural for them to be truly representative of the majority. . . . When the
consequences of an action affect the stability of the homeland, there are two
possibilities. Either the perpetrator is a foreign agent acting on behalf of an outside
power, or else he is a simple person acting unintentionally. But in both cases a
service is being done to the countrys enemies . . .
29
In a setting dominated by visions of networks as primarily hierarchical and valuable only
as a way to access goods and receive unconditional obedience in return, the regimes view
of civil society activists made sense. In patron-client relations the more directly one can
access the patron and the fewer the mediators, the better the chances are to access all sorts
of goods, such as economic, cultural, political, and freedom to break laws without penalty.
Activists often have been in touch with the local population and international
organizations via the Internet and, as the two examples above made clear, consumers of
the information often turn the producers of such information into patrons, even if
unintentionally. I suggest that the regime views the Internet as taking on the role of the
mediator between the activists and the people, as well as among the activists and the
international organizations supporting them, thereby creating the patron-client relation.
The Internet, in the view of Syrian activists, has facilitated the most direct way, so far, to
communicate with ordinary citizens, with other activists and with the international
community and to receive some sort of immunity from the international community, some
acknowledgment for their suffering and some economic and moral support for their
activism. If we view the dominant belief among many Syrians that distribution of goods
28
William Mazzarella (2006) Internet X-Ray: E-Governance, Transparency, and the Politics of Immediation in
India, Public Culture, 18(3), pp. 473505.
29
Al-sharq al-awsat (London), 9 February 2001.
134 R. Shaery-Eisenlohr
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and services primarily depends on who you know in positions of power, how close you are
to that person and who else your contacts know in the security branches, it comes as little
surprise that activists are thrilled with their access to the Internet, as it enables them to be
in fast and direct contact with those who presumably protect them. It is therefore
understandable (while neither justied nor reecting the reality) that the regime labels
activists as servants of the West as the regime members imagine that a patronage system,
as they practise it themselves to access goods, always comes with expectations of
obedience.
30
The regime imagines that the price these Western humanitarian organizations
would demand from local activists would be to bring about regime change regardless of
how many of these activists actually argue that they do not believe a regime change would
be possible and that they desire to work with the regime to bring about socioeconomic and
political reform. But a patronage system creates an either-or categoryone receives goods
and protection from and pays duties to solely one master and shifts are considered
betrayals. The regime does not imagine the network between civil society members and
ordinary citizens or between the activists and Western organizations as democratic and
horizontal (as it is at least ideally presented), but rather as asymmetric with patronage
patterns.
In order to disturb this network the regime believes that complicating communication
networks between them is useful. Therefore it makes sure it does not provide a convenient
Internet network so that the media vanishes into the background as if nonexistent, giving
the impression of immediate and more direct access among activists, ordinary citizens
and the international community. Instead, it slows down the Internet, buys lters to check
on the content of the e-mails, blocks websites, Facebook, chats, and selectively punishes
media users. Not only does it create a culture of fear by doing all this, but regime members
also undermine the politics of immediacy. By this I mean that they make the existence of
the Internet as a medium of communication palpable for every user at all times and do not
let the media vanish into the background so that Internet consumers have a sense of being
immediately in touch with each other.
The Syrian Media Center, for example, announced that about 153 Internet sites have
been blocked in Syria.
31
Simply forwarding an e-mail considered controversial by state
ofcials or browsing the oppositions websites can cost ordinary citizens a few years of
imprisonment under harsh conditions. In this new arena new rituals of fear have come into
existence. Reporters without Borders concluded in their 2006 report that Syria ranks
among the worst offenders against the freedom of the Internet, often, just like their allies in
Iran, arresting bloggers and ltering oppositional websites.
32
30
I am very critical of the role of the so-called humanitarian organizations in authoritarian settings and so have
been all my interlocutors in Syria. While working closely with a Dutch humanitarian NGO with close ties to
some Syrian activists, I realized that the networks are more contested and local activists resist the hegemonic
visions of Western humanitarian organizations. In this sense, despite the unspoken desire of these Western
NGOs to create consensus and some obedience, Syrian activists are far from submitting to these NGOs vision
of a future Syria.
31
Syria Expands Iron Censorship over Internet. Available at: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL1383536
20080313, accessed December 17, 2009.
32
Reporters without Borders Reporters without Borders Annual Report 2006. Available at: http://www.unhcr.or
g/refworld/publisher,RSF,SYR,46e690c0c,0.html, accessed September 4, 2009.
From Subjects to Citizens? Civil Society and the Internet in Syria 135
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Commissioned Criticism
Miriam Cooke discusses the practice of tans/tanaffus in detail.
33
In essence, she describes
how, in times of crisis, the regime opens, with clear calculation, the safety valves for a
period of time and gives citizens the pretence of choice and freedom while it is entirely in
control of the situation; hence the use of the word tans, meaning, literally, ventilation (in
other words giving a space to express frustration with the regime, to breathe so to say). The
regime goes even further, Cooke describes, and in some way or other actually forces
intellectuals and artists to produce material that mildly criticizes the regime. This
commissioned criticism or bought critique is a moment for sharing unbelief and
awareness of injustice; it provides pleasurable release of pent-up pressure.
34
The danger
of tanaffus, she goes on, is that it allows for injustice to persist.
35
Syrian dissidents all are
aware of the tanaffus politics and have few illusions of how their activism can bring about
(quick) change. Nonetheless, they all agree that tanaffus is a bargaining chip and better
than no breathing space at all. Among civil society activists there is an ongoing debate
about the authenticity of their opposition and whether their activism is genuine resistance
against the regime or whether it is part of this tans politics. This debate itself underlines
the power of commissioned criticism and the ambiguous atmosphere this practice creates
in which citizens are never sure about the effectiveness of their actions and the very
meaning of resistance. As we saw above, however, it does not hinder activists from
continuing their work.
How has new media played into this practice of commissioned criticism? Contrary to
Alan Georges argument, in his otherwise impressive book on the Syrian civil society
scene, that for authoritarian regimes like Syrias, the advent of satellite television and the
internet has been a nightmare,
36
I argue that it also has been a blessing. Commissioned
criticism has been applied to Internet use as well. By allowing some critical websites and
bloggers to exist online for a while, the regime continues its politics of creating a
democratic facade. For example, Ali Jamalo, a member of the Baath regime himself,
runs the website Champress,
37
which is currently the most popular news source online. He
openly admits that he has a deal with the government where he can criticize it to a certain
extent, but not cross the red line. When the government and its leaders are criticized
directly in his news pieces, the Ministry of Information shuts the website down for a few
days.
38
Lisa Wedeen refers to this type of so-called criticism as licensed criticism, in
which the system is criticized, but never the family of Asad or the leader himself
directly.
39
Thus the Syrian regime actually has drawn benets from the advent of new media
technology and its use has created yet another space for licensed and commissioned
criticism. By effectively supporting some forms of media and resolutely blocking others,
33
Miriam Cooke (2007) Dissident Syria. Making Oppositional Arts Ofcial (Durham: Duke University Press),
Chapter 4.
34
Cooke, Dissident Syria, p. 72.
35
Ibid.
36
Alan George (2003) Syria: Neither Bread nor Freedom (London: Zed Books), p. 134.
37
Available at: http://www.champress.net, accessed 4 September 2009.
38
After the Damascus Spring Syrians Search for Freedom Online. Available at: http://www.reason.com/news/
show/118380.html, accessed September 4, 2009.
39
Wedeen, Ambiguities, p. 90.
136 R. Shaery-Eisenlohr
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the regime has tried to utilize it for its own goals and interests as much as the dissidents
have. For example, after the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Raq Hariri in
February 2005, many Lebanese citizens and the international community blamed Syria for
his assassination. To show these critics that Asad was still in charge of Syria and popular
among the locals, Asads cousin, Rami Makhlouf, who owns one of the two cell phone
companies in Syria, sent SMS messages to many citizens inviting them to attend a
demonstration in support of Syria.
40
Over half a million citizens showed up to this
demonstration making it the largest public gathering ever held in Syria. There is also
concrete economic interest at play which explains, to some extent, the somewhat lenient
policies toward dishes, mobiles and the Internet, as the Asad and Makhlouf families
(Makhlouf is the maternal line of Asad) own much of these private enterprises.
41
Conclusions
Hopes that increased globalization and advanced media technology would lead naturally
to political liberalization by now have vanished. We know now that authoritarian regimes
are more resilient than imagined and that economic liberalization and technological
modernization are not necessarily coupled with democratic reform. Activists view new
media, especially the Internet, blogs and twitter, as having the ability to support their
project to create a counterpublic space where state hegemony is challenged. However,
opinions on the importance of this counterpublic space differ greatly among Syrian
dissidents. Is this space part of the bought criticism or is it a real space of dissent? There is
no doubt that the regime also uses new media to its own advantage and creates only the
facade of pluralism by allowing some oppositional views to be expressed. I have suggested
that in the process of using the Internet, activists and consumers have produced new
identitiesconsumers viewing the activists as mediators between themselves and the
state, while the activists view ordinary citizens as potential citizens rather than subjects.
Through the production of these new positions and identities they have used the Internet in
ways that have helped, to some extent, counter the regimes politics of fear. An example of
this would be the formation of networks of citizens who do not know each other personally
and who never would have trusted each other had they met casually in person. Networking
and this building of trust work against the atomization of society and could help break the
culture of fear even among the un-privileged as they have access to new media. Syrians
know that this virtual counter public is not the type of resistance that could bring down a
regime, but they also know that the resilience of authoritarianism is not simply due to the
citizens fears, but rather is deeply entwined with local, regional and global politics and
economic interests. They do their share of breaking the culture of fear with their limited
possibilities and with the knowledge that the virtual counter public might just be another
trick of the Orwellian regime.
40
Carsten Wieland (2006) Syria Ballots or Bullets? Democracy, Islamism, and Secularismin the Levant (Seattle:
Cune), p. 41.
41
Ibid., p. 60.
From Subjects to Citizens? Civil Society and the Internet in Syria 137
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