Robin Jones

Robin Jones
Al-Jumhuriya
Beirut, Lebanon

“You know, most leftists in Syria do not support the idea of human rights.” A Syrian human rights lawyer, who I interviewed during research for my thesis on the history of the Syrian left, made this claim when we met, almost immediately upon hearing about my project topic.

Coming from a family of leftists himself, this lawyer has charted a different course than his siblings, who joined opposition communist parties and faced lengthy jail sentences for their activism. He expressed critical views of leftist politics and arguably, of political parties and grand ideologies more generally, as he understood them as being inherently inclined toward authoritarianism and the erosion of individual rights.

Tracing the rise of Amnesty International, the scholar Jessica Whyte claims that “two very different political movements” emerged at roughly the same time: the anti-war movement, based on leftist political commitments to global solidarity, and the human rights movement, which avoided structural questions and operated outside of the leftist political milieu.

There is indeed a tension between the left and human rights, as noted by my interviewee. Yet, as we discussed in the same interview, many Syrian human rights activists come from a communist or former communist background. The history of the human rights movement and its interactions with the left may differ outside of the Western context that forms the focus of Whyte’s writing.

For the last week of my internship, I traveled to Berlin, where some members of the al-Jumhuriya collective are based, to meet them and begin preliminary interviews for my masters thesis. This gave me a glimpse of another side of life in the Syrian diaspora as well as an opportunity to reflect on my work throughout the summer and how it might feed into my broader academic trajectory.

This interview in particular seemed to encompass many of the questions and issues that I have been grappling with, regarding whether collective projects of liberation are compatible with an approach based on the rights of the individual. Given the ruling Syrian Baath Party’s longstanding use of the rhetoric of anti-colonial nationalism and Arab socialism toward the violent repression of its own population, are these ideas so tainted that Syrian adherents of social justice should retreat to a defense of liberal individual rights alone?

When I posed this question to one of al-Jumhuriya’s founders, who also expresses criticisms of the response of the international left to the Syrian revolution, his answer was no. He argued that liberalism has little currency among the poor and the working class because it fails to seriously address socioeconomic inequality. He suggested instead that new paradigms are needed–as I understood it, ones that enable us to learn from the mistakes of the left in the 20^th century and that embrace a humanist approach. It is through grassroots struggles such as the 2011 revolution in Syria that such paradigms will be forged.

Robin Jones
Al-Jumhuriya
Beirut, Lebanon

As part of my work with al-Jumhuriya, I am responsible for editing several pieces by young Syrian writers based in and out of Syria. These articles were initially written in Arabic and were translated into English. I am not involved in the translation process myself; instead, my role is to improve the style and clarity to prepare the articles for publication.

So far, three such articles that I have edited have been published online. One is reportage on the Syrian-Turkish border by a writer with personal experience traversing it. Another is an author’s reflections on time spent in a refugee camp and the hopes and dreams of other Syrian women displaced there. There is another article on incarceration and a former prisoner’s experience of waiting for amnesty.

I have sought to approach these pieces with care, attention to detail, and humility, aware of the fine line between an edit that improves comprehensibility and clarity for an English audience and one that distorts the author’s original intent. When working with translated content, is it best to stick as closely as possible to the exact wording used by the author, or should one instead try to capture the spirit of the text even if it requires linguistic deviation? I do not have a one-size-fits-all answer; rather, I am learning as I go.

Despite my limited Arabic proficiency, I often find myself comparing the translated version of these articles to the original Arabic text and using several translation applications in an attempt to better grasp how particular terms function in their context. Of course, not all idioms and turns of phrase have a direct equivalent in English. Moreover, many of the articles contain expressive writing that deals with highly personal content.

As such, I am acting as a mediator of sorts when I work with these texts, despite my lack of direct experience with the trauma of war and displacement (or, for that matter, with the hopeful and positive Syrian collective experiences of the 2011 revolution). The implications of my positionality vis-à-vis that of the writers demands deeper analysis, in a way that is productive rather than self-congratulatory or paralyzing.

Overall, the experience has highlighted the need for me to further develop my Arabic language skills so that I may better engage with written work coming out of Syria and the region. It has also spurred an interest in working as a translator myself at some point in the future, when I have attained fluency.

Robin Jones
Al-Jumhuriya
Beirut, Lebanon

It is normal to defend the Lebanese labour force against any other foreign labour, whether it be Syrian, Palestinian, French, Saudi, Iranian or American, the Lebanese come first!

These are the translated words from a Trumpian tweet last month by Gebran Bassil, the Lebanese foreign minister. In an evening Arabic media class that I am taking here in Beirut, we read an article about this tweet in the context of the recent upsurge in racism against Syrians in Lebanon.

The tweet’s premise, of course, is absurd. The number of French, Saudi, Iranian, and American foreign workers in Lebanon is minimal, and the situation of Western “expatriates” here is in no way comparable to that of Syrian or Palestinian refugees. The tweet is an example of the anti-Syrian sentiment that has intensified in recent weeks, manifested mostly in vigilante attacks on businesses employing Syrians and a crackdown by the Ministry of Labour on Syrian workers.

Anti-Syrian sentiments in Lebanon are buttressed by the increasingly prevalent notion that the war in Syria is essentially over. The logic goes, therefore, that it is time for Syrians to return home. Multiple Lebanese political actors are promoting Syrian return on an allegedly voluntary basis, and some Syrians in Lebanon have in fact returned to Syria or attempted to do so. Yet the war rages on in multiple areas of Syria, such as Idlib and Daraa. Even for Syrians from areas where fighting is now minimal, the lack of basic security for returnees (not to mention the substantive political transition) leave them exposed to surveillance, conscription, arrest, and state violence.

This is the political context in which my internship in Beirut with al-Jumhuriya, a Syrian online media platform, takes place. Currently, I am assisting a journalist with research for an upcoming feature article on interactions between Lebanese citizens and Syrian refugees.

When I discussed this article with the team, I was informed that we were seeking to capture the complexities and emotional nuances of these intercommunal relations, not merely to tell a story of heroes and villains, or to paint Syrians as passive victims. Daily interactions between Syrians and Lebanese in shops, workplaces, schools, and public spaces are shaped by a spectrum of factors and emotions, from compassion to economic competition to subtle prejudice to outright racism. These micro-level relationships are shaped by a discriminatory legal framework and by frequent demagogic appeals by major politicians.

In preparation for the article, we recently conducted a site visit where we began making contacts with Lebanese shop owners whose stores are sponsored by a program that offers food credits for Syrian refugees. We will continue with research and interviews for the article over the next two weeks. It will be published on al-Jumhuriya’s English and Arabic platforms toward the end of August.

Robin Jones
Al-Jumhuriya
Beirut, Lebanon

My name is Robin Jones and I’m currently pursuing a master’s in Near Eastern Studies at NYU. My academic research focuses on Syrian politics and society, particularly in the context of the 2011 revolution and the ongoing war.

I will be traveling to Beirut, Lebanon this summer to work with Al-Jumhuriya, a Syrian media publication founded by activists and writers as a platform for discussion on the 2011 revolution and ensuing conflict. Al-Jumhuriya publishes reporting and commentary in English and Arabic dealing with a wide range of sociopolitical questions and human rights issues in Syria.

My project will involve participating in the editorial process for Al-Jumhuriya’s English platform. I will work alongside others from the team to decide on topics to cover and articles to publish, while also editing and proofreading pieces. I will also be writing and publishing articles of my own on topics related to Syrian politics.

For my own written work, I’m particularly interested in writing about an older generation of Syrian activists, many of whom were imprisoned in the 1980s and 1990s for criticizing the ruling Ba’ath Party. I would like to know more about how the dissidents of eras past related to the 2011 uprising. In particular, I’m interested in considering the life stories and ideological transformations of leftist political prisoners, and examining how they perceived and related to international human rights organizations that advocated on their behalf.

I also hope to engage with the debate surrounding “humanitarian intervention” in Syria, which has been discussed in the context of well-documented, large-scale war crimes by the Syrian regime. Critics suggest that modern humanitarian interventions replicate past colonial structures and serve as an alibi for Western foreign policy goals. While this may often be true, appeals for support from Western states have commonly featured in media produced by Syrian protesters, putting anti-war ideals in tension with imperatives of solidarity with a popular uprising. I hope to think further about the Syrian war in the context of other conflicts where questions of foreign intervention and transnational solidarity have loomed large, such as Libya, Kosovo, and the Spanish civil war.

While this is a unique opportunity to engage more deeply and directly with a political cause that I have studied largely from a distance, I anticipate that it may be challenging to navigate traumatic issues sensitively. As such, I will seek to remain aware of how my presence might alter or negatively affect certain situations throughout my work with Al-Jumhuriya.