Abstract
This chapter traces the Syrian crisis through the lives of Syrian labourers in Beirut. Lebanon has maintained a significant population of migrant workers for decades. Men undertook largely seasonal work with extended periods of wage labour abroad. However, there was little evidence of permanent settlement and few signs of a second generation of Syrians settling permanently across the border. The chapter describes how and why—when the first rumbling of the uprising began to break—a number of migrant workers expressed support for what they called ‘the revolution.’ From this, it moves to chart the overbearing harsh realities of the present, that is, realities of intense legal, economic, and social precarity against which men hope only to survive.
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Notes
- 1.
The Lebanese University is the country’s only public university. Syrians who enrol pay significantly lower fees than at the American University of Beirut (AUB) or the Lebanese American University of Beirut (LAU). At the faculty of Social Science, the enrolment fee is $700. While education would be cheaper still in the state-funded Damascus University, even before the uprising, men made the decision to study in Lebanon instead. This was because they saw a chance for (1) a better education and (2) the possibility of working alongside their study and generating savings that could then be re-invested in housing, marriages, business, and the like back in Syria.
- 2.
The words used to describe events in Syria require careful elaboration. This elaboration develops throughout the text, but for now let me note that terms like ‘revolution,’ ‘uprising,’ ‘civilwar,’ and ‘proxy war’ all contain partisan webs of association dividing those who align themselves with the al-Asad government or with the opposition.
Analytically, I follow Thomassen’s (2012) definition of political revolution as that which not only involves the overthrow of the regime but entails a popular movement of mass participation. Without mass participation, a drastic political change is less a revolution and more a coup d’etat. On an analytic level, given the high degree of splintering witnessed within the Syrian opposition, it seems accurate to refer to the first stages, from 2011 to 2012 as an ‘uprising’ before then transitioning into a simultaneously civil and proxy war. Civil because the conflict—despite the high presence of foreign forces—involved Syrians fighting Syrians but proxy given that this fighting is now also sustained by a high degree of imperialist and geopolitical interests.
Ethnographically the men in my research—who were all aligned with the opposition—understood the protests, armed uprising and (elements) of the war to be still part of a broader revolutionary process. The term they used was always thawra [revolution] and never intifada [uprising]. With the growth of internal opposition fighting, the entrance of the Islamic State, and the complete degradation of social and economic life, the term ‘ḥarb ahlıˉya’ [civil war] increased slightly in usage, but it was still not dominant in comparison to thawra.
For clarity’s sake, when writing in a more analytic frame, I use the words ‘uprising’ and ‘proxywar,’ but when discussing the actions and ideas of informants, I use the term ‘revolution’.
- 3.
See Proudfoot (2017) on the use of awakening language in Syrian worker uprising narratives.
- 4.
As a concept ‘revolutionary subjectivity’ is closely related to the Marxist notion of ‘class consciousness’, but differs in the sense that it describes more general revolutionary dispositions rather than merely ‘class awareness’ and acting in ‘class interests.’ Moreover, otherwise materially opposed groupings might share in these similar revolutionary dispositions (i.e. ‘solidarity’), therefore ‘revolutionary subjectivity’ can spread through the traditional proletariat but can also be found amongst the fallāḥin [land workers], rural-urban migrants, students, and intellectuals.
- 5.
WhatsApp messenger became increasingly popular in Lebanon only after the more widespread take-up of the 3G network in 2012. The cost of sending an SMS and calling is prohibitively expensive. With WhatsApp one can send unlimited messaging and recorded audio clips provided one has a mobile device with either (1) Wi-Fi or (2) mobile internet.
- 6.
Ḥarakat Amal is a political party typically explained to me by rebel-workers as being popular amongst Lebanon’s Shia community as well as a party known for its support of the Syrian government.
- 7.
The political division in Lebanese politics has been divided between ‘14 March’ and ‘8 March’ since 2005. Their dates refer to when parties within the alliances called for mass demonstrations in downtown Beirut in reaction to the assassination of the Prime Minister of Lebanon, Rafic al-Hariri, on 14 February 2005. March 8th called for a demonstration in support of al-Asad government, thanking the latter for its participation in ending the Lebanese civil war and supporting resistance movements to the Israeli occupation. The most significant membership has come from Maronite Christian-supported al-Tayyār al-Watani al-Hurr (Free Patriotic Movement) as well as Shia-supported Hezbollah and Ḥarakat Amal. March 8th is therefore largely pro-Syrian government. March 8th are accused by their opponents of being proxies of the Iranian and Syrian governments.
March 14th is a coalition of parties composed mostly of the Sunni-supported ‘tayyār al-mustaqbal’ as well as the Maronite Christian, al-quwwāt al-lubnāniyya’ and ‘al-Katā’ib al-lubnāniyya.’ They organised demonstrations against the al-Asad government, are anti-Syrian, and are accused by their opponents of being proxies funded by Saudi Arabia and guided by the United States.
- 8.
The southern suburbs of Beirut and an area physically controlled by and understood to support Amal, Hezbollah, and the al-Asad government. This area also has a large stock of affordable housing and is therefore popular amongst Beirut’s worker population, especially in the areas in, and directly surrounding the Palestinian camps.
- 9.
The organisation was formally known as ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or—ad-Dawla al-ʾIslāmiyyah fi Iraq wa ash-sham. This old name remains the source of the organisation’s acronym in Arabic—‘Da’ish’ which continues to find in popular usage, though mostly amongst those who object to its existence. Indeed, Islamic State discourages its usage and has reportedly carried out corporal punishment against those found uttering it. Nonetheless, it is the term the individuals discussed in this paper use, and it will be deployed interchangeably with Islamic State, which also is often used clipped in the Arabic to ‘Dawla’ [State].
- 10.
On 23 January 2012, Nuṣrah declared its formation with a video posted online. The group claimed responsibility for many of the suicide bombing operations during the early phases of the uprising as well as a number of strategic guerrilla attacks. Western governments including the United States and the United Kingdom have blacklisted Nuṣrah as a terrorist organisation due to its links with al-Qaida. In areas that fell under its control, such as districts in Aleppo, it seized bakeries and controls the distribution of food. It has also seen the implementation of Shari’a courts. During the uprising’s opening stages, the Free Syrian Army lost a good number of recruits to Nuṣrah due to its reputation as a highly disciplined, well-financed, and powerful fighting force (Casey-Maslen 2014).
- 11.
The term ‘fallāḥīn’ [singular: fāllah] is often directly translated to the English ‘peasant.’ This is, however, not quite accurate given that a ‘peasant’ generally implies that the worker does not own the land. In the Middle East, by contrast, sometimes the term is used for landless land workers, but it can also be applied to those who simultaneously own and work the land. For this reason, the more generic term ‘land worker’ is perhaps a more appropriate translation (Abufarha 2009: 29).
- 12.
The kafala system is a labour sponsorship arrangement in which a citizen or a business pledges responsibilities for the migrant’s legal and visa status. The system has been widely condemned by international organisations for generating a system where the employer or citizen is able to confiscate the migrant’s passport and abuse their sponsees, who have little opportunity to pursue legal repercussions.
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Proudfoot, P. (2019). Lebanon Can’t Give Him a Future: Revolutionary Subjectivity and Syrian Rebel-Workers in Beirut. In: Matar, L., Kadri, A. (eds) Syria: From National Independence to Proxy War. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98458-2_7
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