The artwork of despair

The Syrian author, journalist and dissident Yassin al-Haj Saleh is likely one of the most distinguished voices of the Syrian Revolution. Imprisoned as a communist by the Hafez al-Assad regime from 1980 to 1996, after his launch he turned an influential leftist voice throughout the Arab world. In 2012 he co-founded the Arabic–English platform Al Jumhuriya.internet. Al-Haj Saleh fled Syria in 2015 after spending 21 months in hiding. His spouse, the human rights activist Samira Khalil, remains to be lacking after being kidnapped by Islamists in liberated Houms in 2013. On this interview with Esprit, held in Paris on 28 March 2025, al-Haj Saleh talks about his political philosophy in addition to his hopes and issues for the way forward for Syrian democracy after the autumn of the Assad regime.

Esprit: You turned a author throughout your time in jail in Syria from 1980 to 1996. And your expertise of jail allows you to analyse up to date Syria and the world. How do you perceive the centrality of the jail query within the Center East? And the way did you react to the opening of Sednaya jail final December?

Al-Haj Saleh: Till I used to be arrested, my life was not very completely different from that of another Syrian pupil. However I joined the communist opposition and was arrested. At first, I believed I’d be in jail for a number of months, or a number of years on the most. After a year-and-a-half in jail, we had entry to books, in Arabic and English (I learnt English in jail). I turned a author as a result of I spent 13 and a half years studying in jail. The final yr I couldn’t learn, after being transferred to the infamous Tadmor jail. In a means, I’m a graduate of the Syrian jail!

I used to be finding out medication once I was arrested: I finally bought my diploma, however I by no means practised medication. I wished to belong to the world of writers, thinkers and intellectuals. What I cherished was studying and writing. It was my jail expertise that formed me, as a result of it engulfed my youth in worry, starvation and torture. It left a profound mark on my physique and soul and reconfigured my notion of the world.

In my work, I strive to have a look at Syria from a broader perspective. Syria is a part of the world, and you’ll’t discuss it with out mentioning the Shoah, the Gulag, the genocides and the tragedies of the primary twenty years of the twenty-first century. With out making comparisons, my work attracts on the writings of Varlam Shalamov, Primo Levi and Jean Améry, who’re my comrades. Due to my expertise of jail, the concept of freedom has turn out to be central to my work: to write down about jail is to write down about freedom. The three essays now printed in France try and conceptualise the liberty invoked within the slogans of the Syrian revolution.

The opening of Sednaya jail was a robust image. After 2006–2007, it turned probably the most well-known jail in Syria, simply as Tadmor was within the Eighties and Nineties. Releasing the prisoners and letting folks see for themselves the Assad regime’s manufacturing facility of energy is a distilled type of the nation’s liberation. I went there myself earlier this yr, and it jogged my memory of the Aleppo jail the place I spent a number of years. It’s a mixture of unhealthy decay and bloodthirsty cruelty. As such it’s an excellent illustration of the 2 points of Assad’s rule. I hope that nobody will probably be imprisoned there once more.

Esprit: The idea of jail is a part of your concept of the ‘Syrianisation of the world’. You write that to be free, it’s important to emancipate your self from nations. However after the autumn of Assad, isn’t the nation the idea on which the nation is making an attempt to rebuild itself?

Al-Haj Saleh: When the Syrian rebellion and the Arab Spring started, we had been hopeful that Syria would transfer nearer to the rule of legislation, with pluralism and decency in political life. However the nation sank into chaos. Syria was – and nonetheless is – dwelling not simply to 2 world powers, the US and Russia, but in addition three regional powers, Iran, Turkey and Israel, in addition to quite a few sub-state actors. A big a part of the world is in Syria, and 7 million Syrians (30% of the inhabitants) are refugees in 100 and twenty-seven nations world wide.

What’s extra, as a substitute of Syria shifting nearer to worldwide requirements of the rule of legislation, the world has moved nearer to Syrian . We are able to see this with Trump and the rise of rightwing populism within the US and Europe, in addition to with authoritarianism in Russia, China, Turkey and elsewhere. That is what I imply by the Syrianisation of the world: Syria has turn out to be a microcosm of the world, whereas the world has turn out to be a macrocosm of Syria.

I’m a universalist: I defend common values, whereas being crucial of the Enlightenment custom, androcentrism, eurocentrism and so forth. And I’m a cosmopolitan: I really like Paris and Berlin, as a result of you possibly can hear completely different languages and meet folks of various origins. If I had to return to Syria, I’d miss these cosmopolitan cities. However by ceasing to be a rustic, Syria led me to cosmopolitanism.

Syria shouldn’t be but a nation-state: a lot of the skin is contained in the nation and far of the within is outdoors the nation. What’s extra, there are numerous Syrias inside Syria: the American-dominated north-east by the Syrian Democratic Forces; a particular scenario in Suwayda, the place the Druze are the bulk; the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights… In a way, Syria is an anti-nation state, and that’s what makes it fascinating to the remainder of the world.

Freedom consists of emancipating oneself not solely from the nation, but in addition from borders, faith, traditions. This implies questioning one’s allegiance to the nation, to sure beliefs or ideologies, but in addition to the instances during which we stay. The revolt has been swept alongside by a normal motion to interrupt free from all types of confinement. This demand would stay even when Syria had been to turn out to be a nation state. We must not ever settle for the nation as an absolute: nations haven’t all the time existed in historical past, and the time will come when they may now not exist.

Esprit: You advocate the separation of faith and sovereignty. Is thus secularism à la française?

Al-Haj Saleh: The French are too cautious about public expressions of faith. That is comprehensible in view of the nation’s historical past, as is the secularism of the Kemalists in Turkey, however it’s not mine.

In Arabic, secularisation normally means the separation of faith and politics. However what I defend is the separation of faith and sovereignty, which isn’t fairly the identical. By sovereignty I imply the state’s monopoly on violence and its sole authority to demand common allegiance. I’ve no drawback with the existence of Islamist events. In our fashionable historical past, the exclusion of Islamists has all the time accompanied the exclusion of secularists and democrats. In Syria, Tunisia, Egypt, in all places, the exclusion of 1 specific group finally ends up affecting everybody.

Underneath Hafez al-Assad, Islamists had been handled way more harshly than democrats, and had been the probably the most frequent victims of arbitrary executions. However we had been all in jail collectively. My drawback is that these Islamic events don’t wish to play the sport: they need sovereignty, in different phrases to be the state and never a celebration amongst different events. I defend the existence of Islamist events, however they need to abandon the mission of capturing the state. We’d like a historic compromise: Islamists are admitted into nationwide politics in trade for giving up the objective of sovereignty for good.

It’s not simple to work with Islamists, whether or not it’s the Muslim Brotherhood or, a fortiori, the jihadists. The group presently in energy in Syria, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), initially comes from a jihadist background, however has been displaying indicators of a coverage of nationwide inclusion, albeit top-down. By that I imply together with Syrians as members of communities quite than of political events, to not point out as people and residents.

In Egypt, governing with Islamists didn’t work; in Tunisia, it labored for some time, nevertheless it didn’t final. In Syria, many voices inside the Nationwide Coalition of Opposition and Revolutionary Forces had been raised towards the dominance of the Islamists and their need to regulate every thing. Right now, we’re nonetheless confronted with the issue of the conceitedness of the Islamists and their need to dominate every thing.

Al-Sharaa shouldn’t be looking for to impose an Islamist authorities, however it might be a mistake to imagine that the nation is heading in direction of democracy. As a substitute, the HTS chief is pursuing a ‘politics of notables’: politics is represented by well-known, rich males, tribal chiefs and group leaders. As a substitute of growing Syrian civil society, the politics of the notables is a type of conservatism that reproduces and reinforces conventional buildings.

Esprit: You plan renewing Syrian politics by together with these ‘absented’ by the Assad regime. What would such a coverage contain and the way might it’s carried out in Syria, significantly when it comes to transitional justice?

Al-Haj Saleh: Since Athenian democracy, sure classes of the inhabitants have been excluded: girls, slaves, foreigners, and many others. This construction of exclusion remains to be current in fashionable democracies, significantly for ladies, the poor and migrants, particularly if they’re colored or Muslim. These excluded folks make up what I imply by ‘the absent’. If democracy is a dialogue between you and me, ‘he’, ‘she’ and ‘it’ will not be represented – ‘it’ being life, the biosphere, the surroundings that’s being destroyed. The absent individual is the third one that shouldn’t be invited to the democratic dialog.

Revolutions are openings by which the absent impose themselves on politics. That is the case with the French, Russian and Syrian revolutions: those that had been excluded from politics imposed their presence, those that had been silenced started to talk for themselves, those that had been made invisible turned seen. Democracy finds its vitality within the inclusion of the beforehand excluded. One excessive case of absence issues enforced disappearances. As , I’ve been there.

The private and collective expertise of utmost struggling has led me to replicate on the connection between struggling and that means. In Arabic, there’s an etymological hyperlink between mua’nat (‘suffering’) and ma’na (‘meaning’). Lately, I’ve developed the concept of a politics of that means: creating meanings helps us to raised symbolize our experiences, perceive our struggling and cope with our trauma. This concept responds to the situation of exiled folks, those that stay with a way of injustice, who’re forbidden to mourn, that suffer beneath the unequal distribution of ‘grievability’. For me, it had a therapeutic impact, like a theodicy.

As I turned conscious of this dimension, I launched a 3rd time period, which additionally has an etymological hyperlink with mua’nat and ma’na: inaya, ‘care’. I now not settle for the concept of associating all our pains with meanings, and thus curing them, as Victor Frankl’s logotherapy postulates. This strategy leaves no room for meaninglessness. To fight nihilism, we have to recognise that some struggling has no that means. Currently, I’ve been leaning in direction of a coverage of rifk ­– that means ‘attention’, ‘kindness’ and ‘good company’– versus ‘violence’, from which rafik, ‘comrade’, is derived.

Transitional justice is crucial political situation in Syria at this time. Nevertheless HTS is extra involved in avoiding inter-community battle and stabilising the nation, and is subsequently leaning in direction of a normal amnesty. Its creativeness is marked by the instance of the prophet Mohammed who, when he seized Mecca, instructed the inhabitants: ‘Go, you are free.’ However you will need to perceive that hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been instantly affected by enforced disappearances and abstract executions, to not point out the destruction of conflict. The demand for justice comes not solely from the political elite, but in addition from the folks, supported by human rights defenders. Certainly, it’s the moral content material and authorized articulation of the revolution itself., which was not only a query of overthrowing the regime.

The present authorities is afraid {that a} world transitional justice system will flip towards its members, as a result of they too have dedicated crimes. Transitional justice, whether it is supported by the HTS in any respect, will probably be reserved just for the crimes of the regime. These are actually probably the most quite a few crimes. However my spouse, my brother and my buddy, for instance, weren’t kidnapped by the regime… There’s going to be a battle over this. And it is going to be the yardstick by which the transition in Syria will probably be judged.

Esprit: How do hope and despair match collectively in your expertise?

Al-Haj Saleh: The query of hope and despair has been with me since my early years in jail within the Eighties. Again then, I believed that hope was a matter of selection, that you simply selected to see the world with hope quite than despair. Hope, I believed, was not the conclusion of a rational evaluation of the circumstances during which we stay. There have been no convincing causes for both hope or despair.

However in the midst of these lengthy, seemingly limitless years in jail, I started to see that one of the simplest ways to free your self from despair was to free your self from hope. I even drew from this a bit of recommendation for myself and others: to remain engaged in public life, begin from despair and never from hope. You might want to grasp the artwork of despair so that individuals by no means cease combating for change, even when the battle appears hopeless.

In the middle of the Syrian battle, with its appreciable losses, I coined a time period to explain the homicide of hope: ‘speicide’. For me, the Syrian tragedy can’t be summed up merely because the homicide of lots of of 1000’s of human beings; it additionally concerned the denial of any that means to the intense struggling of the Syrian folks. It was the mass homicide of hope and the mass manufacturing of despair.

Right now, I are inclined to assume that it’s a mistake to position hope and despair at reverse poles, as we normally do. Hope lies past despair, however in the identical course, to be able to’t attain hope with out going by despair and carrying it with you. Despair is solely nearer to us than hope.

 Esprit: How can Al-Jumhuriya contribute to public debate in Syria? Can we depend on uncompromising journalists, teachers and judges to rebuild the nation?

Al-Haj Saleh: The autumn of the regime has thrown the members of the journal, myself included, into disaster. We had been hoping for this for a few years, however the velocity of the collapse took us unexpectedly. It has referred to as into query a variety of tasks and raised the query of our attainable return to Syria. We’ve got to recognise that our enemy has gone and {that a} new energy is now in place, one which we see not as an enemy however as a political adversary. The excellent news is that our staff in Syria is rising. However we want time to learn the way to enter the general public debate, the place there are nonetheless no newspapers aside from Al-Watan, which is on the market on on-line.

So far as teachers are involved, I’m not so certain. Our greatest intellectuals are both useless or in exile. We don’t have any good universities, significantly within the humanities. Syrian universities want an intensive overhaul. For the second, the brand new authorities has merely renamed them. Furthermore, traditionally, Syrian universities have been nearer to the State than to society, and mental life has developed outdoors academia.

Legal professionals are extra energetic and reply to standard demand for debate. The commerce unions, however, have been at a standstill since they turned subservient to the Baathist regime in 1981. The brand new regime has not indicated that it needs to advertise their independence. But for the reconstruction of a real civil society in Syria, the commerce unions are of better strategic significance than the political events.

Esprit: Does the historical past of the Iranian revolution allow you to to consider the present scenario in Syria?

Al-Haj Saleh: The Iranian revolution is recent within the minds of many Syrians. However the supporters of democracy will not be within the scenario of the secular Iranians energetic within the revolution earlier than being excluded and even executed by the Khomeini regime. Certainly, probably the most ardent opponents of the Assad regime nonetheless stay in exile and will not be concerned within the new political configuration.

After the bloodbath of Alawites within the coastal areas in March, the temper is far much less constructive. The opposition in exile, to which I belong, is making an attempt to not make the scenario worse. If we’re not going again to Syria, it’s primarily as a result of we don’t really feel victorious. We’re completely happy that the regime has been overthrown, and that Bashar al-Assad and his henchmen have been pressured to go away in such a humiliating means, however this victory doesn’t belong to us.

If extra violence takes place in Syria, which is sort of possible, it is going to be between the extra average Islamists and the extremists, a division that additionally runs alongside Syrian-national and worldwide jihadist strains.

Esprit: Why do you name your self a author and never an mental or a thinker? Does it need to do together with your poetic model?

Al-Haj Saleh: No one within the Arab world calls themselves an ‘intellectual’, not to mention a ‘philosopher’ – that’s one thing different folks can say about you at finest. I care about language, I really like phrases and forging new expressions, particularly in Arabic, which permits nice flexibility. As such, I take into account myself a author or an essayist. Nevertheless, it’s only in France that individuals touch upon my poetic model. I believe it comes out from my love of phrases, and the French love of favor.