Syria's investigations, "great men," the Turkish attention sphere

Notebook #17

This is a regular post in which I talk about the things I’ve been reading and watching, as well as some news items worth talking about. The first part is free, the rest is for paid subscribers only.

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Before I get into things, I just want to give you a personal update. The last six months have been very intense for me. I’ve finished and submitted my book, became a father, and a couple of weeks ago, submitted my PhD dissertation. It has been a wonderful, if grueling time. Meanwhile, the world at large, and especially the Mediterranean-Atlantic parts that I inhabit, has descended into deep political crisis. I have mixed feelings about that, but it’s how these things often go.

I now embark on a new part of my professional life. Whatever I end up doing next, this blog is going to be a big part of it. Thank you all for reading!

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Book announcement: I’ll be doing some events about my new book. The schedule isn’t entirely set yet, but (ICE permitting) I’m planning to visit the US East Coast in April. I’ll post more details on here soon. Let me know if you’re in the area and would like to meet.

I’ll also write more about the book and the ideas behind it in an upcoming series of posts.

The hardcover version of my book arrived recently. Get it wherever you get your books!

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On Syria’s investigations

As many of you know, there was an armed uprising in Syria’s Alawite regions, and newly formed central government (formerly Islamist militias) put it down. Many in the Western media were struck by how violently the Islamist fighters went through the Alawite neighborhoods.

I don’t have any insights on the political and regional dynamics here, and I’m highly skeptical of people who claim to have a grip on them. Syria is changing very quickly and it’s very hard to keep up. (Sam Heller has been reporting about this, and I’m curious of what he’ll say. There’s also this Q&A they did with the always-excellent Aaron Lund.)

Here’s something that got my attention though: Ahmed Al-Sharaa, a.k.a. Abu Muhammed Al-Golani, who’s now the “interim president” of Syria, has said that he has formed a committee to investigate the events.

In established countries with residual democratic culture (mostly the West), the political elite usually “launches investigations” when there’s a scandal of some kind, and they need to kick the can down the road. Think about the Panama Papers, inquiries after the 2008 crisis, “partygate” in the UK, etc. In these places, when the person in charge faces the cameras and says that they’re taking the situation “extremely seriously” and have launched investigations trying to figure out exactly what happened, it usually means that they want the issue to cool off. It may be that at some point in the past, people in power were afraid of such investigations, but these days it probably means that they have to pay more lawyers’ fees and sit through extra meetings, but that’s it.

When I read that Damascus was “launching investigations” I thought that they’re probably taking a page out of the playbook of Western elites (via their Turkish advisors/interlocutors). This makes sense, since their audience wasn’t their own public, but European observers. An EU politician who has to explain lifting sanctions on Syria will probably be confronted with the news of the massacres on the coastal regions, and he’s now armed with the information that the government is taking that sort of thing “extremely seriously” and has put together an investigative committee.

On the other hand, perhaps the time for this kind of language has passed. Anyone who’s politically literate understands that the actions of these militias are a very real — if crude — expression of the new regime taking shape in Damascus. Lucky for the Islamists then, that the European elite is far too exhausted to think about the political implications.