Lebanon: On Syria's Intellectuals and Workers
Hazem Saghieh Al-Hayat 2005/02/26
The Syrian intellectuals have expressed solidarity with their Lebanese counterparts and the Lebanese people in their moment of sorrow. They have demanded what the majority of the Lebanese demand that is the withdrawal of the Syrian forces and the return of sovereignty and independence to Lebanon. Their solidarity was for the first time free of the familiar Arab nationalist and resistance style of rhetoric. It was a pure solidarity expressed by the intellectuals of a country towards the intellectuals and the people of another.
Some of those have spent long years in their country's prisons and some have participated in "Damascus's spring" which followed the death of the late Hafez Al Assad and represented the first quake to hit the structure of the Baathist regime. They know more than the Lebanese what it means to ask of a dictatorial regime to "withdraw": for they want it to withdraw from their bodies and homes and their private and intimate spaces before speaking about physical withdrawal.
In this sense, they are the partners of the Lebanese in their subjection to tyranny and oppression. From this perspective, it was natural for them to look toward the Syrian workers in Lebanon and point out to their Lebanese partners not to turn those desperate workers to a scapegoat. It is true that a lot of those migrating workers crossed the borders as if there were no borders and their flow was free from any control that a sovereign country supposedly exercises on migration. All this requires correction according to the principles of state sovereignty which should protect the local work opportunities from the Lebanese-Syrian competitiveness. Yet it is also true that these workers represent the "excess" number of the Baathist society and its rotting economy; they have been abandoned by a regime that does not care about them but is only concerned with their monetary transfers. It is of great significance how the Syrian officer in Lebanon has authority and wealth while the Syrian worker sleeps under bridges and in the open air, for the latter is expelled from the life of wealth and influence.
In other words, they are partners of the Lebanese in being subjected to the same harm from the same source.
They are also the partners of the Lebanese for another reason which is the demand of Lebanese prosperity to their labor force. This was the situation, even if in lower numbers, before the Syrian hegemony and its regime. When the Lebanese considered a free economy as part of the life they have chosen, it became inappropriate to control the market mobility by national sentiments or a semi-racist attitude that is hostile to Syrians. So how would it be when Lebanon is desired to be diverse, pluralistic and open to the outside world, all the outside; and how would it be when the Lebanese pride themselves with their immigration to the ends of the Earth searching for opportunities? After all the calculations, the wealth that is gained by the Syrian workers contradicts the theft which is perpetrated by the small mafias or exercised through overwhelming the Lebanese market with subsidized and therefore cheap agricultural products.
It is considered "natural" for the nationalism that was forbidden from materializing to be angry and frustrated; yet, the nationalism of anger and frustration is no longer viable. It is indicative how the nationalist awakenings which began with the collapse of the Soviet Union were accompanied by tolerance, openness and democracy. Ukraine, which some Lebanese wish to imitate, has offered the most recent example: when it scored victory on the influence of the Russian regime it initiated to appease the Russian neighbors.
It is understandable in tense situations for the radical tendency to intensify. Nonetheless, it is required from the political (and intellectual) leaders of the Lebanese opposition to intervene and to alert the masses about the vast difference between the Syrian people and regime, with no reference to the hackneyed folklore of Arab nationalism and brotherhood. The Lebanese position from the Syrian intellectual, and especially from the Syrian worker, represents an example of the awaited new form of Lebanese nationalism. There are two choices; either a tolerant nationalism would be born and would be a model worth exerting effort for now and in the future or a closed-minded and radical nationalism that is hostile to the other. In that case, questioning the outcome of all this effort would be legitimate.
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