NAR for Communist Liberation
The fall of the Assad regime in Syria is a historic development, for the country, but also for the Middle East as a whole. It is not the result of the victory of a popular uprising but of its defeat. The “anti-regime” forces undermined any feeling of genuine popular anger and became reactionary puppets of imperialist forces, against a regime that implemented neoliberal policies of impoverishment, relying for years only on the army, the police and the protection of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah.
In the military patchwork that managed to take power, the jihadist organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)which was linked to Al-Qaeda has a leading role, while the role of other groups with direct support from Turkey, the USA, Israel and other states is also strong.
The Assad family regime ransacked the country for decades, turning the socialist promises of the Baath party into an authoritarian regime and police state. The Assad regime’s “anti-imperialism” has always been a bargaining chip, such as when it supported the US intervention in Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein. The survival of the regime was ensured by the military assistance of Russia and Iran/Hezbollah, but in the last year, these forces have retreated significantly in the region. That created the conditions for the attack of the jihadist groups with the strong support of Turkey, which has its own aspirations in Syria concerning the presence of the Kurdish minority, but also with its wider role in the “Great Game” of the US- Israel-EU with China-Russia bloc.
The Assad regime was weakened by the sanctions, the crude intervention of the USA, direct or indirect, in a dismemberment operation ala Libya, Iraq, Yemen and finally it was beaten from the inside, as the army and the state apparatus surrendered almost without a fight. The fall of Damascus looked like a controlled “peaceful transition.” While the landscape remains murky, the biggest immediate benefits accrue to Israel, the US and Turkey. Within a few days, a key link of the “Axis of Resistance” collapsed. Iran suffers a strategic defeat while Hezbollah is forced into retreat in Lebanon. Already, the power vacuum is being filled by expanding the Israeli occupation in Syria.
The implications of Assad’s overthrow on the two major issues of national self-determination in the Middle East, the Kurdish and the Palestinian, are great. The Kurds are already under attack from the Turkish army and the armed forces it leads, and despite their alliance with the US they are threatened with ethnic cleansing. As for the Palestinians, they remain hopelessly alone, even as Sunni Hamas celebrates the fall of Assad.
The hypocrisy of the EU, and the Greek government, which welcomed the fall of the Assad regime by forces they labeled “terrorists” and within 48 hours decided to freeze all asylum procedures for Syrian refugees, now considering Syria a “safe country.” The suffering of the people of Syria will not end in a country that has already been destroyed by a war of all against all.
The developments in Syria are not only painful for its people, but they threaten a general war chaos in the region, further reinforcing the tendency of our time for direct warlike expression of the sharpened antagonisms of capital, bourgeois states and capitalist blocs, which bring destruction and endless suffering to the peoples. The need for a internationalist anti-war movement of workers and peoples in independence and rupture with the forces of capital and the imperialist blocs is imperative.
The possibility of peace and liberation for the exploited and oppressed people of Syria cannot rest on any “protector”. The expectation of national liberation under the guise of foreign powers is futile and dangerous for the peoples. Syria must remain independent, without any foreign military bases and troops of other states, with equal rights for all, regardless of ethnicity, race and gender. Such a Syria will be the work of the Syrian people themselves to live in peace in connection with the struggle for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie in the country. The contribution of the communist left in Greece goes through the denunciation and opposition first and foremost to the plans of the Greek government, the EU, NATO and their imperialist goals in Syria, Palestine, the Middle East, all over the world. We express our international solidarity, promoting the goal of a militant resistance of the oppressed throughout the Middle East against their own regimes and imperialists, taking the example of the Palestinian resistance
