Syrian Sky

"The Sage as Astronomer: As long as thou feelest as stars as an ‘above thee', thou lackest the eye of the discerning one."

      - Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.
 

Syria’s history clocks more years before the arrival of Christ, than after. It came into being roughly 2700 years before Christ and we have just about 2100 years in AD. Arithmetically speaking Syria is 4800 years old. Syrian history, though continuous, is marked by invasion, occupation, conquest and destruction since antiquity; the land, located as it was at the cross roads of trade routes and empires. Historically, the importance of this region, bounded by its location, was strategically tied to the schemes of other empires. Syria attained its glory in history, albeit briefly, mostly playing second fiddle to neighbours. The contemporary phase of notoriety Syria has attained provides us a prosaic image of endless and perpetual instability, civic strife and intractable conflict. In the world we live in, however, notoriety is no longer the exact opposite of fame.

When we hear the word Syria today, it is usually accompanied by bomb and explosion, collision and coalition, casualty and death, rebels and refugees, in this milieu; one may forget that there is an entity named Syrian government. This association is thick and outlines the contours of the analysis that follows. Is Syria competing with its own history through repetition, as part of the scheme of other designs, other powers? The region ‘middle- east’ throughout the cold war era was perceived and equated with medieval-ism: instability and disorder, a living example of a dead past; important due to its oil-fields and strategic location. Syria was just a part of it. Over the last few years it has achieved an ‘eminence’ of its own. Does the alleged presence of an Islamic State, the ‘home-land’ of terrorists, hotbed of terrorism, offer an explanation for its new found status? Or, is it a conflict about human beings and their history, bearing in mind that Syrian history extends well beyond its Islamic past.

 Nation-states and history of conflicts

Terror and terrorism are not new and are in the modern age spun as means for political ends. Terror and terrorism for political ends were part of anti-colonial consciousness and anti-imperialist aspirations and they draw strength and legitimacy through this association. Terror-terrorism in its second avatar survived surreptitiously by spilling over carefully demarcated national boundaries, once they were created. Cold war era conflicts of the last century sustained and appropriated them in their own ideological colours, if they were already not dictated by realpolitik. In short, history of modern nation-states is co-terminus with the history of terror as a weapon for securing political ends. In the last three decades, gradually but ‘systematically’, terrorism was vested with a definitive religion: Islamic terrorism.

 

The quest and resultant contestation for a world and its future (world wars for example) is not new. The processes of identifying and naming its adversaries and enemies vary. In the uni-polar world of the 1990s, the United States fought terrorism overseas in Iraq, and as this century commenced, in Afghanistan, as part of its own commitment to make this world ‘secure’ from terror and terrorism. As they tailed terrorism and its networks, Syria assumed significance. The contestation over the future is always in the present. Once the parties crystalize and conflicts materialise, their past and how it is perceived and presented begins to look like parts of a larger, incomplete picture. Is Syria a witness for the unfolding of a grand design, a possessed jigsaw puzzle that summons its components to come together?

Nation-state, Community and Order

Ostensibly decisive victories over a party in conflict can be secured by engendering not just their present existence, but would also involve re-configuring their past. This arrangement rearrangement threatens the present and is a steady source of a sense of immediate and absolute danger for the region involved. In this background, historical sites, monuments, places of worship, religious beliefs, archaic and arcane meanings assume salience, and they ‘turn’ (to serve, in service of) and have turned into a sanctuary for various communities. To re(member) such a disposition inscribes human beings as members of this group, tied to that region and territory, or belonging to an imagined community. To remember in this manner is to order memory, marshal history.

 

Communities organized and instituted in these terms look back at themselves and their own history. However, history is not a warehouse of fairy tales of/for communities and otherwise. They are not wells of mythical solidarities from which we can draw upon at will. Wells, well, they dry up, they contain sludge and dredge. When communities look within for themselves; they also end up marking boundaries for others. When they take a hard look at their history, solidarity widens, the fissures and divisions surface within the communities, fault lines deepen. The realities of the fragmentation within/of communities ‘opens’ them up, if they don’t look forward, they end up looking upwards. This over determined ‘strategic’ moment implicates the conflict and its history in the present. This re(treat) has brought Syria at the world stage today? Undoubtedly, Syria is being served a treat, alongside the world has retreated, but to what end?

Meanwhile death counts, frequency of violence and suicide bombings uncannily bear a resemblance to a diet plan or an exercise regime. Acting as variables of an ethereal function, they provide a new lease of life to existing circumstances, apart from reproducing them afresh. This function guarantees that Syria finds its place as part of the (norm)al everyday life in a/the world. The profusion of reports about Syria variegates and the responses they generate form an assorted conundrum. The Syrian crisis spawns a global help industry. If you are not stirred by the images of violence, stand with the refugee, save- a- child engages your conscience. Syria sneaks into our chat, floats as small talk, syncs with the news, and unnoticeably ‘settles’ with us like a dictionary entry. Syrian civic strife shows up as part of a scoop, a spoof that wasn’t.

 

Ranked 89th in terms of geographical area in the world, Syria’s territory comprises 185,180 square kilometers. The support and direct military involvement of various nation-states in Syria is available traced in the map at commons wikimedia.

 

A great power contest?

The index below the map says ‘support’ and ‘military involvement’; it gives an impression of absence of conflict, as if no one is opposing anything, just getting tangled. The neat analytical distinction between a regional and global power has collapsed in Syria. Layers of engagements and entanglements patrol the grids that have taken hold of Syrian territory, while air force drawn from 14 countries hover over its skies, not counting the presence of forces on the ground and naval power. Though we are accustomed to congregation of powers in the age of modern nation-states for peacekeeping missions and humanitarian aid, whether the Syrian occupation is an instance of a familiar cooperation, within the stipulations of UN provisions or without is not easily answered.

The cohabitation of Syrian space by various powers has definitely crossed one threshold, it has moved past territorial sovereignty and traditional sanctity accorded to national boundaries. The idea of sovereignty over air space was anyway a thing of the past, notwithstanding the principle of the 1648 Westphalia pact; the nation-states constituting one world. When regional unions, multinational co-operations and corporations, globally positioned systems and satellites, space missions and advance defense and offence weapons rule the roost, territorial sovereignty cuts little ice. For small and weak states it amounts to nothing.

The United Kingdom intends to exit the European Union, not Syria. Interpreted in the similar vein, does the promise ‘make America great again’ indicates a similar avowal from United States, portend an exit form its role at the world stage? Syria is tied to Europe not merely by the fact of geographical contiguity; European powers soar over its sky. Is Russia via its presence in Syria, reaffirming its connection to Europe or marking out its zone of dominance? The Russian presence orients us to a world where they count, if not as the foremost power then as part of the first world, while they were routinely lumped as being the part of the second world. Middle-east being geographically and historically close lends its schism of Shia and Sunni within Islam and other communities to the Syrian civic strife. If it is about Arab world then we may also rest equally assured about the fact of Israel’s own contiguous immersion.

Will the fact of their coming ‘together’ means anything more than the incidental? A busy airport and airspace, until the other day, was a typical sign of modern progress. So crowded has been the Syrian air space today, it makes news in its own unique ways, across different genres.

The photographs of destruction in Syrian streets, blood spilling over bodies, refugees fleeing gobbles columns and reels of paper. Are they hungry for news? Prime time is grime time and Syria is right up there, pleading to be aired. The stipulated safe distance for the war ‘crafts’ of United States and Russia from each other has been breached on several occasions in the Syrian sky. There is an operational agreement between United States and Russia to avoid accidents in the Syrian air space. The point it seems is this: incidental should not lead to accidental.

The agreement is not without reasons: combat air crafts, commercial air liners have been shot down, manned and unmanned air borne vehicles tailed; cases of ‘near misses’ abound, over and around the Syrian airspace. The aforementioned operational agreement between these two super(sonic) powers underscore the structural hinges of the contemporary global order, and the breaches continue: there is no agreement about Syria. Syria is not part of this agreement.

Access, display of technology and war

The Syrian sky is marked by the lack of cooperation between involved parties and unlike a patchwork of cobbled together peacekeeping missions, displays the most advance combat formations, with their cutting edge technology. These air crafts fly with the help of advance space based technologies. Are these air crafts flying to ensure that Syria has access? The fact that these air crafts are flying in Syria is reported worldwide, as if it were an unscheduled air show that is going on in Syria. An airshow to strut your stuff: British Reapers, French Rafales, Russian Sukhois, American Hornets and Growlers, and whatever the name the Chinese give to their air crafts, they all show up in the Syrian sky for an unscheduled, unannounced appearance. However, unlike an air show they drop bombs. The drop from these manned and unmanned flying objects in precision mode, can take a line out from the page. The payloads they carry and ‘drop’ end chapters and erase the book of life: obliterate history.

Violence acquires valence and urgency, violated people respond with their limited volition and paltry resources. Body politic emerges as a spectacle, human body turns into a bomb: stretching the limits that can realize the spectacular. Though skewed, the response of the population underneath also makes news with their stand out suicide bombers. Combatants are not placed in equivalence, the grounded unable to match those who fly in the sky; so we have a suicide bomber for a combat aircraft? Both, however, manage to bring down a part of the world.

The ‘world-wide’ gathering of combat air crafts ‘in action’ in Syria has the ability to evoke enthusiasm and tap strange emotions. Testing, comparing and judging military capabilities have hit a new high in Syria and reports galore. These comparisons flood the consciousness with their awe inspiring features so much so that one overlooks the costs. In the process uncountable human lives are lost. The assessments of aircraft, technologies that power them, however are still trapped in their usual vibes and leave an unmistakable stench of being ahead about this and that. Like a James bond film, they betray their ideological moorings and present Russian as backward and dysfunctional, marked for failure; European as credible and worthy and American as effective and cool, the best. In the end, the one who is ‘ahead’ catches up with the one who is ready to ‘behead’.

These evaluations of capabilities relegate Syria and the issues that are at stake and circumvent what is happening, to use a proverbial phrase on the ground. The demonstration of air power ensures that the world remains aware about developments in Syria, the Islamic state and the 'hold' the threat of terrorism has over the world. While Syria, destitute, poor and in shambles with the bombs that have been dropped, with its old historical and heritage sites bestows an image of purity in suffering. Syria is integrated and accorded a part of the world as an archetype of theater of war. It’s the theater that is real. In Syria, news worthiness meets evocative photographs and yet, they will not add up to a travel invitation.

Is the display over the Syrian sky a reminder that Islamic terrorism is on the radar? Is this all that there is? Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom have a sizeable Muslim population within their territories and issues arising with their presence affect their national constitution. Or, the fact of their appearance in Syrian space intended for domestic Muslim populace in Russia, China, France and United Kingdom and elsewhere? The historical wariness that has existed between the Arab world and Israel meet again in Syria.

India and Pakistan do not register their presence over the Syrian sky. Terrorism, Muslim population, regional power implicates them. Now, they belong to the much vaunted nuke club. The nuke club does not correspond to Syrian sky club? That some of the air craft these two countries have already are part of the air show over Syria cannot be the reason for their non-participation. Or, is it a call for devices and tools that can dominate spatial arrangements and rule the sky, to which only the elements that constitute it can answer the call? Is nation- state still a part of this constitution? All nation-states are not a party to this conflict. The ‘many’ of the many nation- states that display their air fire power over the Syrian space ‘appear’ due to proximity or are related to the issues at stake?

Technology: Costs, access and spread

This technological display is expensive and can be alternatively used for eradicating human suffering and eliminating wants. But that isn’t happening. What this fact reveals is that even though the logical in the technological is to spread, it is distributed in order to ‘seek’ competition, up-gradation, innovation and supremacy. Once ‘technology’ becomes a commercial good, it will follow the trajectory of trade--  to spread and generate revenue would be its telos? Or, expenses and costs are important but not critical to technology? 

 

With the spread of technology, one should not assume that there will also be fair distribution of power or benefits. Syria is an exemplar. Not long back, this competitive element among nation-states expressed its supremacist stamp in Europe, largely confined to ‘white’ nations, whose chosen ones were the Jews, then. The demonstration of capability and projection of power belongs to a different league, its crucial character being hierarchy and asymmetry. In this sense, this roll call over Syria marks and ranks its absences distinctly.

Technologically driven human ‘kind’, fed up with intractable conflicts on the ground and faced with near impossibility of a resolution, has found a new way to respond to it: lift the conflict itself, literally off the ground and let it hang in the air? A la the song, the answer my friend is blowing in the wind. A hallow above the conflict, usually reserved for the divine, in the sky, so that those still on the ground can look up and find something concrete: trail the scripture left behind by stealth missions. Aren’t the planes that are screeching in the Syrian sky announcing the dawning of a new era, a new messianic religion?

 

The arrival of a technological innovation and change in technique of controlling population is the moment; the alteration closes its rank.The technicalities being esoteric, obscure and abstruse require expertise. It is that moment when the canon of secrecy, refinement and developing technologies face democracy and scores a deficit to mark this encounter. The evaluation about the actual improvement and the real change that the alteration releases constitutes a domain of experts. The disclosure clause and democratic dissemination of information, about the technology prefigures the affective grid.

 

Ordinary mortals suspend their experience and judgement. Poeple prepare themselves to be more open to the impressions, that information provided to them forms, of which the more that is regularly made available to us about Syria, the less we know.

Going by the boasts of the Syrian sky who isn’t a refugee? A spectator?