Justice & Accountability

It has been one hundred years since a French and a British diplomat marked the borders of the modern Middle East. In so doing, they also marked the contours of our discourse. Not only re-routing our economies and communities, but re-drawing our imaginations. Because since then, the political cantons of our region have steadily multiplied, and much of the region can no longer be seen and touched, only imagined.

We see them daily in the news. Masses of black bodies, cramped together on unseaworthy boats, bodies in rags lying, helpless, exhausted, on the white sand. No face. No name. Such images reproduce, time and again, an imaginary of the invasion of Europe by its radical ‘Other’; an imaginary that, in turn, justifies exceptional measures – the militarized and arbitrary government of migration. Here too, images are, identical, interchangeable: military ships, circling radars, men in uniforms and gloves intercepting desperate bodies. We see these images so often. There is nothing left to see or think; or do: both this ‘flow’ of people and the violent reaction of the state to the crossing of its borders seem unstoppable. Flip the page, zap. And yet it is precisely this ‘flow’ of people that I have sought to present differently: I’ll try to show that far from being a uni-directional, violent, and massive ‘invasion,’ the transnational migration of Sub-Saharan Africans in the Maghreb has evolved according to complex patterns, often over several years, and is shaped by multiple forms of agency and collaboration enacted by migrants.

What has happened to the transnational visions so characteristic for leftist movements? A number of political movements and ideological formations in the Middle East were concerned with ways in which to overcome borders. While Pan-Arbism, essentially a nationalist movement, was focusing on lifting geographic borders, socialist and communist movements scrutinized the social and economic borders within societies and contemplated overcoming class structures and confessional or ethnical divisions. Hanaa Edwar, member of the Iraqi Communist Party and the Iraqi Women’s League, joined the Iraqi Peshmerga in 1985 and spoke to us about the dream of overcoming all borders.

Over the past few years, talks about partitioning Syria as a potential solution to ending the conflict have been taking place among diplomats and experts; these ideas tend to gain momentum following significant military shifts or before high profile political talks.

On a sun-filled and breezy afternoon in May, Sawsan Bou Khaled sits quietly in a corner of a Beirut café gazing at a photo she took of Kinkaku-Ji, Temple of the Golden Pavilion, in Kyoto. The temple is elaborate, covered in gold and adorned with gilded leaves; it was designed not only to alleviate and dispel negative thoughts and feelings about death but also to create a backdrop of visual excess. Sawsan has recently returned from Japan, where she took part in the World Theatre Festival in Shizuoka with her latest theatre performance entitled ‘Alice’, and her artistic world appears closely tied to the spirit of Kinkaku-Ji. Just as the temple’s shimmering excess is deployed to promote an acceptance of death, so Sawsan embraces a similar philosophy in both her directing and performance where visual display is harnessed to present death on stage. They are worlds and forms apart but a common thread runs between them providing the basis for new narratives.

Heinrich Böll Stiftung Middle East cordially invites you to celebrate the launch of the 10th issue of our regional magazine Perspectives! Wednesday, November 2, 2016 at 19.00 Venue: The Crypt, Monot, Beirut

A year ago or maybe more, the world’s most pressing problems suddenly took a step backwards leaving two issues to take centre stage: Daesh and the issue of refugees and immigrants in the West. The dangers of dictatorships, social inequalities and climate change all faded into the background and the fascination with the Arab Spring—now turning into Autumn—began to dwindle. Even the issue of terrorism was reduced to that of the Islamic State.

Lately, predictions about redrawing the map in the Middle East have proliferated: a new ‘Sykes-Picot’, a full century after its famous historical predecessor came into effect. Analyses (or guesses) which take this line, state that the multi-level, multi-party conflicts the region has played host to in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq—which started with the so-called Arab Spring revolutions of 2011—now appear impossible to resolve, especially following the involvement of regional and international forces either directly or through local groups.

Many a time, they will reminisce about a pre-revolutionary Syria, albeit a romanticised version, from which they – due to a lack of knowledge, ignorance or quite consciously – omit that the country already was a rogue state at that time, characterised by arbitrary arrests, torture, oppression and discrimination.