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Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Middle East Critique Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ccri20 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 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19436149.2011.572410 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. 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 D o w n l o a d e d
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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 D o w n l o a d e d
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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 D o w n l o a d e d
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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 D o w n l o a d e d
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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 D o w n l o a d e d
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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 D o w n l o a d e d
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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 D o w n l o a d e d
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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 D o w n l o a d e d
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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 D o w n l o a d e d
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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 D o w n l o a d e d
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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 D o w n l o a d e d
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