The Syrian author, journalist and dissident Yassin al-Haj Saleh is without doubt one of the most outstanding voices of the Syrian Revolution. Imprisoned as a communist by the Hafez al-Assad regime from 1980 to 1996, after his launch he turned an influential leftist voice throughout the Arab world. In 2012 he co-founded the Arabic–English platform Al Jumhuriya.web. Al-Haj Saleh fled Syria in 2015 after spending 21 months in hiding. His spouse, the human rights activist Samira Khalil, remains to be lacking after being kidnapped by Islamists in liberated Houms in 2013. On this interview with Esprit, held in Paris on 28 March 2025, al-Haj Saleh talks about his political philosophy in addition to his hopes and considerations for the way forward for Syrian democracy after the autumn of the Assad regime.
Esprit: You turned a author throughout your time in jail in Syria from 1980 to 1996. And your expertise of jail allows you to analyse up to date Syria and the world. How do you perceive the centrality of the jail query within the Center East? And the way did you react to the opening of Sednaya jail final December?
Al-Haj Saleh: Till I used to be arrested, my life was not very completely different from that of some other Syrian pupil. However I joined the communist opposition and was arrested. At first, I believed I’d be in jail for just a few months, or just a few years on the most. After a year-and-a-half in jail, we had entry to books, in Arabic and English (I learnt English in jail). I turned a author as a result of I spent 13 and a half years studying in jail. The final 12 months I couldn’t learn, after being transferred to the infamous Tadmor jail. In a approach, I’m a graduate of the Syrian jail!
I used to be finding out drugs once I was arrested: I finally obtained my diploma, however I by no means practised drugs. I needed to belong to the world of writers, thinkers and intellectuals. What I liked was studying and writing. It was my jail expertise that formed me, as a result of it engulfed my youth in concern, starvation and torture. It left a profound mark on my physique and soul and reconfigured my notion of the world.
Aleppo, January 2017. Picture VOA / Wikimedia Commons
In my work, I strive to have a look at Syria from a broader perspective. Syria is a part of the world, and you may’t speak about it with out mentioning the Shoah, the Gulag, the genocides and the tragedies of the primary 20 years of the twenty-first century. With out making comparisons, my work attracts on the writings of Varlam Shalamov, Primo Levi and Jean Améry, who’re my comrades. Due to my expertise of jail, the concept of freedom has turn out to be central to my work: to jot down about jail is to jot down about freedom. The three essays now revealed in France try and conceptualise the liberty invoked within the slogans of the Syrian revolution.
The opening of Sednaya jail was a robust image. After 2006–2007, it turned probably the most well-known jail in Syria, simply as Tadmor was within the Eighties and Nineteen Nineties. Releasing the prisoners and letting individuals see for themselves the Assad regime’s manufacturing facility of energy is a distilled type of the nation’s liberation. I went there myself earlier this 12 months, and it jogged my memory of the Aleppo jail the place I spent a number of years. It’s a mixture of unhealthy decay and bloodthirsty cruelty. As such it’s an excellent illustration of the 2 features of Assad’s rule. I hope that nobody can be imprisoned there once more.
Esprit: The idea of jail is a part of your concept of the ‘Syrianisation of the world’. You write that to be free, you need to emancipate your self from nations. However after the autumn of Assad, isn’t the nation the premise on which the nation is making an attempt to rebuild itself?
Al-Haj Saleh: When the Syrian rebellion and the Arab Spring started, we have been hopeful that Syria would transfer nearer to the rule of legislation, with pluralism and decency in political life. However the nation sank into chaos. Syria was – and nonetheless is – house not simply to 2 world powers, america and Russia, but in addition three regional powers, Iran, Turkey and Israel, in addition to quite a few sub-state actors. A big a part of the world is in Syria, and 7 million Syrians (30% of the inhabitants) are refugees in 100 and twenty-seven nations all over the world.
What’s extra, as an alternative of Syria transferring nearer to worldwide requirements of the rule of legislation, the world has moved nearer to Syrian . We will see this with Trump and the rise of rightwing populism within the US and Europe, in addition to with authoritarianism in Russia, China, Turkey and elsewhere. That is what I imply by the Syrianisation of the world: Syria has turn out to be a microcosm of the world, whereas the world has turn out to be a macrocosm of Syria.
I’m a universalist: I defend common values, whereas being crucial of the Enlightenment custom, androcentrism, eurocentrism and so forth. And I’m a cosmopolitan: I really like Paris and Berlin, as a result of you possibly can hear completely different languages and meet individuals of various origins. If I had to return to Syria, I’d miss these cosmopolitan cities. However by ceasing to be a rustic, Syria led me to cosmopolitanism.
Syria just isn’t but a nation-state: a lot of the skin is contained in the nation and far of the within is outdoors the nation. What’s extra, there are various Syrias inside Syria: the American-dominated north-east by way of the Syrian Democratic Forces; a particular state of affairs in Suwayda, the place the Druze are the bulk; the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights… In a way, Syria is an anti-nation state, and that’s what makes it attention-grabbing to the remainder of the world.
Freedom consists of emancipating oneself not solely from the nation, but in addition from borders, faith, traditions. This implies questioning one’s allegiance to the nation, to sure beliefs or ideologies, but in addition to the instances during which we stay. The revolt has been swept alongside by a normal motion to interrupt free from all types of confinement. This demand would stay even when Syria have been to turn out to be a nation state. We mustn’t ever settle for the nation as an absolute: nations haven’t at all times existed in historical past, and the time will come when they are going to not exist.
Esprit: You advocate the separation of faith and sovereignty. Is thus secularism à la française?
Al-Haj Saleh: The French are too cautious about public expressions of faith. That is comprehensible in view of the nation’s historical past, as is the secularism of the Kemalists in Turkey, however it’s not mine.
In Arabic, secularisation often means the separation of faith and politics. However what I defend is the separation of faith and sovereignty, which isn’t fairly the identical. By sovereignty I imply the state’s monopoly on violence and its sole authority to demand common allegiance. I’ve no drawback with the existence of Islamist events. In our fashionable historical past, the exclusion of Islamists has at all times accompanied the exclusion of secularists and democrats. In Syria, Tunisia, Egypt, all over the place, the exclusion of 1 specific group finally ends up affecting everybody.
Below Hafez al-Assad, Islamists have been handled rather more harshly than democrats, and have been the probably the most frequent victims of arbitrary executions. However we have been all in jail collectively. My drawback is that these Islamic events don’t wish to play the sport: they need sovereignty, in different phrases to be the state and never a celebration amongst different events. I defend the existence of Islamist events, however they need to abandon the undertaking of capturing the state. We want a historic compromise: Islamists are admitted into nationwide politics in change for giving up the purpose of sovereignty for good.
It’s not simple to work with Islamists, whether or not it’s the Muslim Brotherhood or, a fortiori, the jihadists. The group at present in energy in Syria, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), initially comes from a jihadist background, however has been displaying indicators of a coverage of nationwide inclusion, albeit top-down. By that I imply together with Syrians as members of communities somewhat than of political events, to not point out as people and residents.
In Egypt, governing with Islamists didn’t work; in Tunisia, it labored for some time, however it didn’t final. In Syria, many voices throughout the Nationwide Coalition of Opposition and Revolutionary Forces have been raised towards the dominance of the Islamists and their want to regulate the whole lot. At present, we’re nonetheless confronted with the issue of the vanity of the Islamists and their want to dominate the whole lot.
Al-Sharaa just isn’t searching for to impose an Islamist authorities, however it might be a mistake to consider that the nation is heading in direction of democracy. As a substitute, the HTS chief is pursuing a ‘politics of notables’: politics is represented by well-known, rich males, tribal chiefs and group leaders. As a substitute of creating Syrian civil society, the politics of the notables is a type of conservatism that reproduces and reinforces conventional constructions.
Esprit: You intend renewing Syrian politics by together with these ‘absented’ by the Assad regime. What would such a coverage contain and the way might it’s applied in Syria, significantly when it comes to transitional justice?
Al-Haj Saleh: Since Athenian democracy, sure classes of the inhabitants have been excluded: girls, slaves, foreigners, and many others. This construction of exclusion remains to be current in fashionable democracies, significantly for girls, the poor and migrants, particularly if they’re colored or Muslim. These excluded individuals make up what I imply by ‘the absent’. If democracy is a dialogue between you and me, ‘he’, ‘she’ and ‘it’ usually are not represented – ‘it’ being life, the biosphere, the atmosphere that’s being destroyed. The absent individual is the third one who just isn’t invited to the democratic dialog.
Revolutions are openings by way of which the absent impose themselves on politics. That is the case with the French, Russian and Syrian revolutions: those that had been excluded from politics imposed their presence, those that had been silenced started to talk for themselves, those that had been made invisible turned seen. Democracy finds its vitality within the inclusion of the beforehand excluded. One excessive case of absence considerations enforced disappearances. As you recognize, I’ve been there.
The non-public and collective expertise of maximum struggling has led me to replicate on the connection between struggling and which means. In Arabic, there may be an etymological hyperlink between mua’nat (‘struggling’) and ma’na (‘which means’). Just lately, I’ve developed the concept of a politics of which means: creating meanings helps us to raised symbolize our experiences, perceive our struggling and cope with our trauma. This concept responds to the situation of exiled individuals, those that stay with a way of injustice, who’re forbidden to mourn, that suffer below the unequal distribution of ‘grievability’. For me, it had a therapeutic impact, like a theodicy.
As I turned conscious of this dimension, I launched a 3rd time period, which additionally has an etymological hyperlink with mua’nat and ma’na: inaya, ‘care’. I not settle for the concept of associating all our pains with meanings, and thus curing them, as Victor Frankl’s logotherapy postulates. This strategy leaves no room for meaninglessness. To fight nihilism, we have to recognise that some struggling has no which means. Currently, I’ve been leaning in direction of a coverage of rifk – which means ‘consideration’, ‘kindness’ and ‘good firm’– versus ‘violence’, from which rafik, ‘comrade’, is derived.
Transitional justice is crucial political subject in Syria immediately. Nonetheless HTS is extra fascinated about avoiding inter-community battle and stabilising the nation, and is due to this fact leaning in direction of a normal amnesty. Its creativeness is marked by the instance of the prophet Mohammed who, when he seized Mecca, instructed the inhabitants: ‘Go, you might be free.’ However it is very important perceive that tens of millions of Syrians have been instantly affected by enforced disappearances and abstract executions, to not point out the destruction of struggle. The demand for justice comes not solely from the political elite, but in addition from the individuals, supported by human rights defenders. Certainly, it’s the moral content material and authorized articulation of the revolution itself., which was not only a query of overthrowing the regime.
The present authorities is afraid {that a} international transitional justice system will flip towards its members, as a result of they too have dedicated crimes. Transitional justice, whether it is supported by the HTS in any respect, can be reserved just for the crimes of the regime. These are actually probably the most quite a few crimes. However my spouse, my brother and my pal, for instance, weren’t kidnapped by the regime… There’s going to be a battle over this. And will probably be the yardstick by which the transition in Syria can be judged.
Esprit: How do hope and despair match collectively in your expertise?
Al-Haj Saleh: The query of hope and despair has been with me since my early years in jail within the Eighties. Again then, I believed that hope was a matter of selection, that you simply selected to see the world with hope somewhat than despair. Hope, I believed, was not the conclusion of a rational evaluation of the situations during which we stay. There have been no convincing causes for both hope or despair.
However in the midst of these lengthy, seemingly countless years in jail, I started to see that one of the best ways to free your self from despair was to free your self from hope. I even drew from this a chunk of recommendation for myself and others: to remain engaged in public life, begin from despair and never from hope. You might want to grasp the artwork of despair so that folks by no means cease preventing for change, even when the battle appears hopeless.
In the middle of the Syrian battle, with its appreciable losses, I coined a time period to explain the homicide of hope: ‘speicide’. For me, the Syrian tragedy can’t be summed up merely because the homicide of a whole bunch of hundreds of human beings; it additionally concerned the denial of any which means to the intense struggling of the Syrian individuals. It was the mass homicide of hope and the mass manufacturing of despair.
At present, I are inclined to suppose that it’s a mistake to position hope and despair at reverse poles, as we often do. Hope lies past despair, however in the identical path, so as to’t attain hope with out going by way of despair and carrying it with you. Despair is just nearer to us than hope.
 Esprit: How can Al-Jumhuriya contribute to public debate in Syria? Can we depend on uncompromising journalists, teachers and judges to rebuild the nation?
Al-Haj Saleh: The autumn of the regime has thrown the members of the journal, myself included, into disaster. We had been hoping for this for a few years, however the velocity of the collapse took us unexpectedly. It has referred to as into query a variety of initiatives and raised the query of our doable return to Syria. We’ve to recognise that our enemy has gone and {that a} new energy is now in place, one which we see not as an enemy however as a political adversary. The excellent news is that our group in Syria is rising. However we want time to learn how to enter the general public debate, the place there are nonetheless no newspapers aside from Al-Watan, which is offered on on-line.
So far as teachers are involved, I’m not so positive. Our greatest intellectuals are both lifeless or in exile. We don’t have any good universities, significantly within the humanities. Syrian universities want an intensive overhaul. For the second, the brand new authorities has merely renamed them. Furthermore, traditionally, Syrian universities have been nearer to the State than to society, and mental life has developed outdoors academia.
Attorneys are extra energetic and reply to fashionable demand for debate. The commerce unions, then again, have been at a standstill since they turned subservient to the Baathist regime in 1981. The brand new regime has not indicated that it needs to advertise their independence. But for the reconstruction of a real civil society in Syria, the commerce unions are of larger strategic significance than the political events.
Esprit: Does the historical past of the Iranian revolution make it easier to to consider the present state of affairs in Syria?
Al-Haj Saleh: The Iranian revolution is recent within the minds of many Syrians. However the supporters of democracy usually are not within the state of affairs of the secular Iranians energetic within the revolution earlier than being excluded and even executed by the Khomeini regime. Certainly, probably the most ardent opponents of the Assad regime nonetheless stay in exile and usually are not concerned within the new political configuration.
After the bloodbath of Alawites within the coastal areas in March, the temper is way much less optimistic. The opposition in exile, to which I belong, is making an attempt to not make the state of affairs worse. If we’re not going again to Syria, it’s primarily as a result of we don’t really feel victorious. We’re blissful that the regime has been overthrown, and that Bashar al-Assad and his henchmen have been compelled to depart in such a humiliating approach, however this victory doesn’t belong to us.
If extra violence takes place in Syria, which is kind of probably, will probably be between the extra average Islamists and the extremists, a division that additionally runs alongside Syrian-national and worldwide jihadist traces.
Esprit: Why do you name your self a author and never an mental or a thinker? Does it must do along with your poetic fashion?
Al-Haj Saleh: No person within the Arab world calls themselves an ‘mental’, not to mention a ‘thinker’ – that’s one thing different individuals can say about you at finest. I care about language, I really like phrases and forging new expressions, particularly in Arabic, which permits nice flexibility. As such, I take into account myself a author or an essayist. Nonetheless, it’s only in France that folks touch upon my poetic fashion. I feel it comes out from my love of phrases, and the French love of fashion.
