Brothers of the Gun: A Memoir of the Syrian Civil War

"I chose Hisham and Crabapple’s book as my fifth choice because it’s an incredibly powerful account of the ongoing civil war in Syria. It’s the story of three friends in their early twenties who participated in the initial protest against Bashar al-Assad in 2011, and what happened to them in the intervening years. Marwan Hisham is one, and his two friends—one of whom was killed and the other became an Islamic revolutionary over this time. I chose this book because transitional justice, both in practice and scholarship, is grappling with this question of time that you raised, and asking whether transitional justice can be pursued prior to any meaningful transition. This book gives us a picture of what it means to pursue transitional justice when there isn’t yet a transition on the horizon, when you’re actually in the context of ongoing war and ongoing repression, where there’s no peace accord. It’s not clear who will be the victor, and if and when this civil war ends whether you will have a dictator step down or not. Throughout the book, there’s the constant refrain of death—death of a friend, death of family—and of torture. There are these segments of torture woven throughout, either torture as recorded or documented on social media such as Twitter or in YouTube videos. The uncertainty of what will happen tomorrow is also powerfully captured. The author, Hisham, writes about the area that he lived in going from being under control of the government to under control of the rebels to under control by Isis. Citizens just lived day to day, not even thinking long term about what could happen a week from tomorrow let alone a year, in this context of shifting control of territory, of shifting control of property. Apartments are taken by one group and then taken control of by another. Property isn’t secure or sacred. There’s corruption. There’s poverty that shapes the background that he grew up in, that becomes more acute as war progresses and as buildings are destroyed and food becomes scarcer. Hisham discusses dealing with the anger and despair at those conditions. “It raises questions about democracy itself: is that an ideal that all transitional societies should aspire towards?” The picture it gives is valuable not only for painting the context within which discussion of transitional justice processes might take place, but it also gives an incredibly vivid depiction of life under war in the context of repression in a way that touches on so many of the questions that transitional justice scholarship and practice has to deal with more systematically. He draws attention to the way in which this particular conflict, like so many, has become a proxy battle for international actors and international power struggles. It draws attention to the movement of people, as he himself moves at a certain point to Turkey in exile from Syria. You’ve got millions of people who’ve left Syria as refugees, what role will and should they have in processes in transitional justice in the future? It even raises questions about democracy itself: is that an ideal that all transitional societies should aspire towards? It’s an incredibly beautifully written and illustrated memoir which raises profoundly important questions that are at the forefront of transitional justice now, questions that we don’t really have adequate answers to, concerning how to think about refugees and their place in transitional justice, and how to think about the involvement of foreign actors in civil wars and civil contexts. Sure. It’s The Conceptual Foundations of Transitional Justice . Building on the work of Teitel and Drumbl in many ways, I articulate an account of what it means to do justice to past wrongs in these transitional moments, and to do so in a way that demonstrates why context matters to our understanding of what justice requires in any particular case. In my view, the ultimate goal of all of these transitional justice responses is societal transformation. More specifically, the goal is transforming the relationships among citizens, and between citizens and officials, so that they’re no longer—in the language I use—structurally unequal. Structural inequality in the opportunities afforded different groups of citizens by law is problematic in itself. It also conducive to systematic wrongdoing that becomes a basic fact of life that citizens during conflict or repression have to orient their conduct around. Processes of transitional justice can contribute to this transformation by condemning actions that were permissible in the past, for example, and documenting the underlying conditions that allowed atrocities to take place. They must also, I argue, contribute to transformation in a way that does right by victims and perpetrators who participate in these processes; I articulate conditions for treating perpetrators and victims fairly and appropriately. My book brings moral and political philosophy into the conversation among journalists and legal scholars and at the same time, draws on their absolutely essential work for understanding transitional justice. My starting point is Hume , who I believe offers a compelling methodology for identifying the moral demands of transitional justice. Hume very famously claimed that principles of justice are problem-responsive; they provide normative guidance for resolving a problem or question of justice that arises in a set of what he called ‘circumstances of justice.’ Hume thought instability of property was the central question of justice, and that question became necessary and possible for communities to address in circumstances such as limited scarcity of goods. If there’s extreme scarcity, he claimed, you can have all the rules you want, but no one is going to constrain their conduct if they’re facing starvation. On the other hand, if there’s extreme abundance, you don’t need to stabilize property claims, because it’s not necessary. There’s no pressing issue to be resolved in specifying whose loaf of bread is whose. This is why my starting point was identifying the circumstances of justice that characterize transitions, and then articulating how best to understand what the question of justice is in those circumstances. I also discuss theories of retributive justice, corrective justice, and distributive justice, and why the question of justice in transitional circumstances is not the question these theories take up. In sum, Hume, I think, gives the key insight for understanding what transitional justice demands: if you want to talk about justice at any time, you’ve got to first understand the context that you’re talking about, and the question of justice that’s salient given that context."