Anatomy of Tadamon Massacre, Damascus, 2013

ABSTRACT

What does the Tadamon massacre that come to be known in details in April this year, 9 years after was committed tell us about Syria? This article investigate seven faces of this horrific crime.

KEYWORDS:

• Manual rule
• genocidal massacre
• tashbih
• tashlih

Acknowledgements

This essay was first published in Arabic by Aljumhuriya magazine on 27 May 2022. https://aljumhuriya.net/ar/2022/05/27/%d8%a3%d9%88%d8%ac%d9%87-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%85%d8%ac%d8%b2%d8%b1%d8%a9-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b3%d8%a8%d8%b9/

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Mustafa Khalifa, The Shell: Memoirs of a Hidden Observer (Northampton, MA: Interlink Books, 2016). It contains a very grim report in a novelistic form on Tadmur (Palmyra) prison in 1980s and 1990s. I refer to the Arabic original published in Beirut in 2008.

2 For this concept, see A. Dirk Moses: The Problems of Genocide: Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).

3 Martin Chulov, “Massacres in Tadamon: How Two Academics Hunted Down a War Criminal,” The Guardian, 27 April 2022; Uğur Ümit Üngör and Annsar Shahhoud, “How a Massacre of Nearly 300 in Syria Was Revealed,” Newlines Mag, 27 April 2022, https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/how-a-massacre-of-nearly-300-in-syria-was-revealed; Yasmin Mashaan, “The Tadamon Massacre Reopens Untold Wounds,” Al-Jumhuriya, 3 May 2022, https://aljumhuriya.net/en/2022/05/05/the-tadamon-massacre-reopens-untold-wounds/

4 “UN Human Rights Council Calls for Special Investigation into Houla Massacre in Syria,” UN News, 1 June 2012, https://news.un.org/en/story/2012/06/412302-un-human-rights-council-calls-special-investigation-houla-massacre-syria

5 Chulov, “Massacres in Tadamon.”

6 For more details about this concept, see the last chapter of my book: The Impossible Revolution, Making Sense of the Syrian Tragedy (London: Hurst and Haymarket, 2017), esp. 229-33.

7 Orwa Khalifa, عروة خليفة: شتاء عدرا الأحمر (Adra’s Red Winter), Al-Jumhuriya, 13 December 2021, https://aljumhuriya.net/ar/2021/12/13/%d8%b4%d8%aa%d8%a7%d8%a1-%d8%b9%d8%af%d8%b1%d8%a7-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a3%d8%ad%d9%85%d8%b1/

8 Violations Documentation Center in Syria, مركز توثيق الانتهاكات في سوريا: تقرير حول شهداء ثورة الكرام (A Report on the Martyrs of the Dignity Revolution in Darayya City in Rural Damascus), 2013, https://www.vdc-sy.info/index.php/ar/reports/darayya#.YrnGDZDMI6F.

9 State-sponsored militias.

10 See Nadia Murad,الفتاة الأخيرة، قصتي مع الأسر ومعركتي مع داعش، دار التنوير، (The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State) (Beirut, 2019).

11 See Nader Hashemi and Dany Postel, eds., Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East (London: Hurst, 2017).

12 Ansar said this in during Aljumhuriya symposium on May 11. According to her, this is what the men of Abu Ali Hikmat were bragging about during her communications with them between 2018 and 2021, and they were referring to their “achievements” between late 2012 and 2015. She said in a personal follow-up that the victims’ families with whom she communicated between February 2021 and February 2022 support such estimations. They were talking about many thousands.

13 According to the researchers’ full report published in Aljumhuriya and New Lines magazine on 27 April 2022.

14 Üngör and Annsar, “How a Massacre of Nearly 300 in Syria Was Revealed”; Mashaan, “The Tadamon Massacre Reopens Untold Wounds.”

15 Yassin Al-Haj Saleh, “Political Relationships of Torture: Torture and Power Production Mode in Assad’s Syria,” Al-Jumhuriya, 21 May 2020, https://aljumhuriya.net/ar/2020/05/21/%D8%B9%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%82%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AA%D8%B9%D8%B0%D9%8A%D8%A8-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%A7%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AA%D8%B9%D8%B0%D9%8A%D8%A8-%D9%88%D9%86%D9%85%D8%B7/

16 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977).

17 Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process, Vol. 1: The History of Manners (New York: Urizen 1978); and Vol .2: Power and Civility (New York: Pantheon, 1982).

18 See my article, تحديق في وجه الفظيع (Staring in the Eyes of the Atrocious), Al-Jumhuriya, 29 May 2015, https://aljumhuriya.net/ar/2015/05/29/33487/

19 I refer to a chapter on torture and the ethics of photography devoted to a discussion of Sontag’s ideas in Frames by Judith Butler in her book, Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? (New York: Verso, 2016), 63–100.

20 Üngör and Shahhoud, “How a Massacre.”

21 For Caesar’s file, see Guarance le Caisn, “‘They were torturing to kill’: Inside Syria’s Death Machine,” The Guardian, 1 October 2015; Guarance le Caisn, Operation Caesar: At the Heart of the Syrian Death Machine (Cambridge: Polity, 2018), And this report by Human Rights Watch, Syria: Stories Behind Photos of Killed Detainees, 16 December 2015, https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/12/16/syria-stories-behind-photos-killed-detainees.

22 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, A Report on Banality of Evil (London: Penguin Books, 2006).

23 Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Polity, 2015), 192–8.

24 This does not mean that I always endorse the notion of banal evil in remote rule societies. Torture cannot belong to this category. However, I discussed this point in my article on torture political relationships, referred to above.

25 This was written on a certain mukhabarat [military intelligence] checkpoint in Damascus in October 2015, and it paraphrases an expression from the Koran about Allah: Allah is the light of heaven and earth.

26 United Nations Convention on the Punishment and Prevention of Genocide, 9 December 1948, https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf

27 Douglas Jehl, “Officials Told to Avoid Calling Rwanda Killings ‘Genocide,’” New York Times, 10 June 1994.

28 Leo Kuper, Genocide. Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983).

29 Sultan Shalabi, سلطان شلبي: تجارة الاعتقال في سجون ومعتقلات النظام السوري (Syria’s Lucrative Detainment Market: How Damascus Exploits Detainees’ Families for Money), Syria Untold, 16 April 2020, https://syriauntold.com/2021/04/13/syrias-lucrative-detainment-market-how-damascus-exploits-detainees-families-for-money/

30 Violations Documentation Center of Syria, رحلة الهروب من الجحيم", مركز توثيق الانتهاكات في سوريا أيلول/ سبتمبر 2013 (An Escape Journey from Hell), September 2013, https://www.vdc-sy.info/index.php/ar/reports/1379156802#.Yq99HnZBxPZ

31 See this report of Alarabi TV, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87G3Aiy02Rg, it is just a quarter of a minute after the minute 36 of the report.

32 Laila Vignal, War-Torn, The Dismantling of Syria 2011–2021 (London: Hurst, 2021), 219–43.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yassin al-Haj Saleh

Yassin al-Haj Saleh is Syrian writer, author of nine books on Syria, prison, cruelty, contemporary Islam, and intellectual life. He is based in Berlin.