The Syrian Security State

“She’s not coming.  She won’t meet with you.”  It wasn’t the first time I’d been told that a Syrian was afraid to meet with me because I was a foreigner and that would mean extra scrutiny for her and her family from the Mukhabarat, the secret police, and it wouldn’t be the last.  All Syrians, it doesn’t matter what your class, age, religion or gender, are subject to the Big Brother phenomenon; the State insidiously encroaching in their lives and watching over everything they say, write, do, in case it is perceived in any way to be threatening to the regime’s ‘security.’  As a result, interaction with foreigners is viewed with alarm and suspicion by the authorities, in case Syrians are being ‘infected’ by their liberal, Western ideas and then try to apply them to Syria.   Several times while travelling with Syrian friends, we would pass the journey sitting apart from one another, feigning to be strangers, in case the authorities became curious and started to ask questions about why Syrians and non-Syrians were travelling together.  This was during the year of 2010, which I spent in its entirety in Syria, during the time that Facebook and YouTube were banned in case they too gave Syrians ‘dangerous’ beliefs about freedom.  But what the government didn’t realize was that the Syrians didn’t need contact with foreigners to be ‘infected’ with such notions as democracy and human rights; those notions were already there, whispered in clandestine exchanges and lurking in the hidden corners of peoples’ minds.  In the age of the internet’s global village, information could be accessed and contacts could be established despite government attempts to shut down all ‘subversive’ sites and communications.  In fact, in almost every internet café I walked into in Damascus, most Syrians were busily tap tap tapping away on Facebook’s blue and white screen via a proxy web address.  So the government’s removal of the ban on Facebook and YouTube in February 2011, in an attempt to try and avert civilian unrest spreading to Syria in the wake of the ‘Arab Spring,’ was irrelevant.  Syrians had been revolting against the Security State long before the news of tanks and snipers obliterating peaceful protesters reached our screens.

As a foreigner from Britain, I never felt totally comfortable being in Syria because I never felt totally free, as I do back home.  When you travel within Syria as a foreigner, in order to board a bus, you have to register your passport details and your destination with the authorities before you can leave.  You also have to register your address with internal security every time you change apartment.  This way, the authorities can know where you are at all times.  It is said that when the landlord gives you a key to your apartment, he also keeps one for himself and gives a third to the Mukhabarat.  Several of my foreign friends had their apartments raided and their laptops and cameras removed, whilst money, passports and other such valuables were left untouched.  Sometimes the laptops and cameras were returned after the Mukhabarat were done checking them, sometimes they weren’t.  It happened, on occasion, that I was followed by the none too subtle Mukhabarat, dressed in their uniform dark trousers, shirts and wrap-round sunglasses, with the conspicuous bulge of a gun tucked into their belts, or, alternatively, one of them would sit down unnaturally close to me and a friend, leaning in close to listen as we sat chatting about anything from history to the weather.  At other times, I would here interference on the telephone line and an ominous click sound that implied that someone had tapped into my conversation.  A Syrian joke has it that two Frenchmen are talking on the phone in their incomprehensible Parisian slang, when the poor, textbook trained Mukhabarat officer listening into the call interrupts them in his impeccable, classical French, to ask the two gentlemen if they can please speak properly so that he can understand what they are saying.  Meanwhile, in a real, Skype conversation that took place between me and a friend of mine back in Britain, she asked me if I had been involved in any activism since I’d been out there.  Somewhat flustered and alarmed that we might not be speaking just to each other but also to a third, uninvited listener, I asserted, as firmly as I could, that it was best not to discuss these things over the internet.  But of course, being the tenacious and inquisitive interrogator that she is, this only spiked her curiosity so she went on and on asking, despite my protestations, what I could mean by this and why I wouldn’t talk, until finally she joked, “why, is someone listening?”  Maybe I was being paranoid but I didn’t want to tell her that someone could well be listening.  But whilst all of this was merely somewhat unsettling, it remains the case that if I, as a British citizen, were caught criticizing the State and advocating for democratic reform, in all likelihood the worst that would happen to me is that I would be quickly spirited off on a return flight home to Britain and banned from returning to Syria.  Not so for the Syrians.

Even before the recent uprisings in Syria, if one were to visit Amnesty International’s website and look at the reports filed under Syria, one would be confronted with a long list of people who had been disappeared, detained as prisoners of conscience, tortured and/or killed by the State’s security arm.  These people ranged from being human rights activists to artists, lawyers, Islamists, writers and opposition politicians.  In a country where all political parties, bar the ‘President’s’ ruling Ba’ath Party and where Amnesty International are illegal, it is not surprising that anyone who dares to challenge the State, whether publically or privately, is dealt with swiftly, violently and in contravention of international, human rights law by the very same ‘service’ that is allegedly there to protect the Syrian people from actual threats to their safety.

Another Syrian joke has it that when a government official excitedly tells Hafez al-Assad, the current dictator, Bashar al-Assad’s father and the former Dictator ruling from 1970 to 2000, that he has won the latest election with 97% of the votes and asks, “what more could you want?”  Hafez coolly replies, “the names of the other 3%.”  Western governments may have comforted themselves with the myth that the young, new, British educated Bashar al-Assad was far less draconian than his father, as they tried to cosy their governments up to his in an attempt to divert Syrian support for and further isolate Iran but the evidence of the young successor’s brutality was glaringly obvious, albeit ignored for reasons of ‘national interest.’  One of Bashar al-Assad’s first maneuvers upon seizing the reins of power was to shore up his base of support by changing his father’s security forces with new men, loyal to himself.  The brief interlude between 2000 and 2001, whence new civil society organisations and non-governmental organisations previously banned under the old regime were allowed to be established and to flourish, was rapidly followed by a crackdown, wherein they were forcibly closed down and government detractors were once again rounded up and herded into Syria’s overcrowded jails.  So it is not surprising that the Syrian ‘President’ has reacted to the ‘Arab Spring’ in the way that he has; he is his father’s son and witnessed firsthand how successful Hafez’s brutal 1982 crackdown on Hama was in crushing the Muslim Brotherhood, who were then challenging his regime.

But whilst it is not surprising, it is scary, and I cannot help but think of my friends still in Syria, both the politically active and those who are just trying to lead a normal life but who might get caught up in the brutality nonetheless.  I think about my friend Mohammad, who works for SANA, the Syrian Arab News Agency, and who, despite his position as a reporter for the State, could not leave the country without a ‘minder,’ even before the ‘Arab Spring,’ for fear that he would spread truthful news to the outside world about Syria. Although Mohammad has already spent a stint in prison, merely for being a member of Amnesty International, he still takes every opportunity he can to ring them, on what he hopes is a secure line, and tell them of the atrocities being committed in his homeland.  And I think of Mustafa, an activist who already, in 2010, had two travel bans prohibiting him from leaving Syria, due to his refusal to carry out compulsory military service and his public critique of the government’s continuous human rights’ violations.  Mustafa now risks his life daily by disseminating news of Syrian State brutality and by going to anti-government demonstrations in Damascus, despite their small and easily targetable size.  And I think of the family with whom I lived for several months, one of whom has recently had a baby and just wants to bring her son up in a country where he can be free to laugh and say what he wants, as you or I can, without fear of State repression and reprisal.  The Syrians are brave and warm people, who are always ready to share their homes and anything else they might have with you but, tragically, they live in one of strictest security states in the world, which means that they themselves are far from safe.

The Forgotten Arab Minority of Israel

When I told people at the beginning of this year that I was moving to Israel, they were surprised, since last year I had lived, worked and studied in Syria.  “Switching sides?” I was asked.  “Moving over to the enemy,” they joked.  Then when it emerged that I was moving out here for work, the immediate assumption was that I must be going to live on a kibbutz.  Now, had I said that I was moving to the Palestinian Territories, I have no doubt that the response would have been very different; people would have supposed that I was going as an activist against Israeli occupation or to work towards ‘bringing peace and democracy’ to the region with one of the innumerable NGOs that flood the West Bank.  It seems that if you are working in Israel, you must be working with the Jewish population and if you are working in Palestine, you must be working with the Palestinians.  There is no cross-over.

“No, no,” I clarified, “I’m going to work with the Israeli Arabs.”  The common reaction was one of surprise and disbelief; “there are Arabs in Israel?  But it’s a Jewish State.”  Repeatedly I would explain that there remained an Arab minority in Israel which had not fled to other Middle Eastern countries in the 1948 war that saw Israel gain its independence and approximately 750,000 Palestinians flee the county in what is known to the Arabs as ‘al-Nakba,’ the catastrophe.  In fact,” I would continue, “this sizeable minority constitutes one fifth of the total Israeli population, some 1.6 million people out of a total of 7.7 million Israelis.”  It seems that everyone is aware of the plight of the Palestinians inside Gaza and the West Bank but nobody has even heard of those still inside Israel.

It is important to point out here that there is some disagreement as to how we should refer to these Arabs still living in Israel.  Originally, before the creation of Israel, they were Palestinians living in Palestine, which stretched from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.  Now, however, they cannot be Palestinians because they reside in the new state of Israel and not in the what we have commonly come to see as Palestine, namely Gaza and the West Bank.  They cannot, therefore, be Palestinian Israelis because this is a contradiction in terms, giving them two nationalities.  So, for political reasons, they are Israeli Arabs, a hard burden to shoulder.

Since they are Israeli, they are cut off from many of their Arab brothers and forbidden from going to most Arab countries, such as neighbouring Syria and Lebanon, even if they have relatives there as a result of al-Nakba.  Meanwhile, many Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank view them with suspicion and jealousy; suspicion because they live in Israel, working with Jewish Israelis and collaborating with them on a daily basis; and jealousy because there are 1.8 million refugees in the West Bank and Gaza, who abandoned their homes during the 1948 and 1967 wars, and who now live in cramped, squalid and poverty-stricken refugee camps, whilst Israeli Arabs retain their lands and are afforded many rights that the Palestinians are not.  Despite this, the Arab Israelis are, of course, not really a part of mainstream Israeli society because instead of being Jewish, they belong to a hostile race that surround and threaten Israel.  And so it is that Arab Israelis stand alone, isolated and forgotten amidst the struggles for Palestinian independence and Arab liberation from despotic dictators.

“Ok, so you are going to work with the Arab Israelis but what are you going to do there?”  “I am going to work for the advancement of human rights there.”  “No, no,” came the common reply, “they have human rights there.  Israel is like Europe.”  Now, anyone who thinks that they ‘have human rights’ here, clearly hasn’t been here and if they have, they either haven’t left the confines of their comfy air-conditioned bus – old city of Jerusalem – four star hotel tour, or they are ignoring a reality they don’t wish to see.

Arab Israelis are subjected to many of the same discriminatory laws and policies as Palestinians living in occupied East Jerusalem, such as, house demolitions, the denial of building permits, inadequate municipal funding and insufficient or non-existent public services.  Indeed, just walking through Arab neighbourhoods and towns in Israel, you may feel like you have entered an entirely different, less economically developed country; a country where rubbish is dumped in the middle of the town or lies uncollected for days, where loose and dangerous electric cables hang from utility poles, where schools are rundown and overcrowded and where green spaces and playgrounds barely exist.  This, of course, is in total contrast to Jewish neighbourhoods and towns, which appear to have public services of a similar standard to France or Spain.  Instead of prioritising its existing citizens and aiming to narrow the discrepancy between their living standards, however, Israel gives preference to non-Israeli Jews across the world by actively promoting their immigration to Israel and providing them with, inter alia, financial grants, income insurance and attractive financial housing schemes if they make aliya.  Meanwhile, Palestinian refugees from 1948 are refused the right to return to their lands in Israel and continue to languish in refugee camps across the Middle East.

The rights abuses committed by the Israeli authorities against its Arab citizens are most pronounced with regards to the Bedouin in the Negev desert.  These people, who traditionally used to roam freely across the desert, have now been pushed into 3% of this area in Israel since most of the desert has been claimed as State land, thereby denying the Bedouin access to their ancient grazing lands.  They have been forced to settle in ‘recognised townships,’ which have limited land space, as well as a lack of commercial infrastructure.  This means that the Bedouin cannot continue their traditional livelihood, based on farming livestock, but that they equally have little other means of securing an income.  Inevitably, this has led to an existence of poverty and despair.  Worse still, those Bedouin who have refused to give up their historic lands and move to the ‘recognised townships,’ remain in what are termed as ‘unrecognised villages.’  There are 45 of these so-called ‘unrecognised villages,’ which have populations ranging from 500 to 5,000 people.  Some 85,000 Bedouins in total are therefore subjected to repeated house demolitions and the refusal by the Israeli authorities to provide public services, such as schools, water, electricity, waste removal and medical clinics, because officially, these villages, along with their people, do not exist.

Let us now compound these rights abuses and put ourselves in between the rock of racist Israeli policy and the proverbial hard place of a highly traditional, patriarchal society.  Bedouin women are not only relegated to the position of third class citizens by the Israeli authorities (after the Jews and the ‘recognised’ Arabs) but they are also reduced to the lower ranks of society by their own communities.  Traditional gender-discriminatory practices, such as forced marriages, domestic violence, ‘honour-killings,’ polygamy and the denial of education, still remain relatively common amongst the Bedouin here, despite the fact that all of these customs are illegal in Israel.  As is to be expected from a government that does not care for its Arab minority, such practices more often than not go unpunished.  Israeli authorities consistently fail to enforce the law in these matters, feebly claiming that these are cultural issues in which they cannot interfere.

And so al-Nakba continues.  Maybe Zionist militias are no longer mobilizing to massacre the populations of entire Arab villages, as they did in 1948, but Arab villages continue to be razed and their populations dispossessed and displaced.  The ethos behind these current and historic policies remains the same; to make life for Arab Israelis in Israel so unbearable that they are ‘encouraged’ to move elsewhere.  In other words, the aim of the Israeli authorities is insidiously to purge Israel ethnically of its Arab population so that Israel can be what it was always ‘supposed’ to be, a Jewish State.