Solidarity with the Syrian People's Victory
A statement from Liberation Road's international work team
As socialist internationalists, Liberation Road supports the self-determination of the Syrian people. Hafez al-Assad and his son/successor Bashar murdered and imprisoned hundreds of thousands of Syrians during their combined 53-year rule. Bashar al-Assad’s overthrow was carried out by thousands of Syrians and celebrated by millions, exercising their right to control their national destiny.
Because the Assad regime was backed by Russia and Iran, which are at odds with the US regime, some leftists (“campists”) who primarily see the world as divided into US and anti-US camps, assume that Assad’s removal was a result of some US intervention, and is a setback for the world’s peoples. On the contrary, from all the evidence we can gather, removing Assad has been a wide-ranging effort of the Syrian people since he violently crushed their 2011 protests for democratic reform. It was not a CIA coup or something largely driven by the outside, even though countries like Turkey played a major role in providing resources for the final offensive.
With his major backers Russia and Iran embroiled in other conflicts, Assad had no organic support in his own army. What will happen next is not clear and there are immense dangers both internal and external. Syria has numerous ethnic and religious minorities, has been a center of arms trans-shipment (from Iran to Hezbollah in Lebanon), and has several countries and numerous armed groupings claiming parts of its territory. It seems unlikely that any one player can unite all in a unity government in the near future, so armed conflict is likely to continue, and the emergence of an authoritarian, reactionary regime is possible. Very importantly, due to decades of repression, there is not yet a broad infrastructure of organizations of working class and oppressed people and democratic-minded allies in other classes ready to run Syrian society.
The anti-Assad forces are diverse:
The leading one, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), is an offshoot of Al Qaeda and controls vast swaths of north-central Syria. Their recent promises and gestures toward secular democracy remain to be tested—particularly, whether they will attack women’s rights across the spectrum of social life.
Israel is currently bombing Syrian Air Force installations, has occupied the Golan Heights since 1967, and has claimed it since 1981, though the US is the only other country to recognize this annexation as legitimate.
Turkey occupies some northern border areas, deploying the so-called “Syrian National Army” which Turkey itself created and controls.
Forces in the south, some emerging from popular movements, have formed an armed faction called the Southern Operations Room.
In the northeast are the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), dominated by organizations of the Kurdish national liberation movement, particularly the People’s Protection Units (YPG). The Kurds have met the five criteria that Marxists generally use for nationhood (common language, territory, economic life, psychic makeup, common culture) for hundreds of years, but lost out (due to Turkey’s influence) when Euro-US imperialists divvied up the Ottoman Empire. They got no land of their own but were divided among four states: Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.
In 2016, during the prolonged fighting in Syria, the Kurdish Democratic Party established the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, known as Rojava. Women in Rojava have a militia called the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), are co-occupiers of all political offices, and have overall equal social status. Like many socialists and socialist-feminists around the world, we have supported Rojava and the Kurdish people’s right to self-determination, including the right to obtain arms and aid from wherever they can. At one point US imperialists also found it in their interest to aid Rojava against Al Qaeda, but this seems to be less the case today, and the survival of Rojava is imperiled.
This situation is clearly complex and in flux and we socialist internationalists based in the US don’t have a very clear grasp of it. But here are three things we can do:
Unite with others calling for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Syria.
Respond to any requests for solidarity actions coming from Rojava.
Inform ourselves further about all progressive forces in Syria. Follow the activities, statements and analyses of various Syrian socialist and progressive groups and individuals.
In that vein, we urge everyone to tune into After the Fall of Assad: The Struggle for a Free Syria on Wednesday December 18th at 3pm Eastern, with Joseph Daher, Leila al-Shami, Yasser Munif, and Shireen Akram-Bosha, sponsored by Spectre Journal.
The overthrow of the brutal Assad regime is to be celebrated for sure, but it is hardly a victory for the Syrian people, at least not yet. As we speak, Syria is being carved up by Israel, Turkey, and the USA, while HTS holds power in Aleppo, Homs, and Damascus. The diverse Syrian people have yet to coalesce in a governing coalition - HTS is not that - and whether they will be able to do so and overcome the internal divisions and outside intervention is an open question. This may not be a CIA coup, but US sanctions and military occupation of Syrian oil fields and important agricultural land were instrumental in the destruction of the Assad regime; and the role of the Turks in protecting and arming the rebel army in Idlib was also a big factor in setting the stage for the HTS assault on the urban centers. Now Syrian military assets are being systematically destroyed by Israeli bombs, strategic territory on the approach to Damascus seized and occupied by Israel, and it is not clear that the Israeli advance will stop there. What we see here is not a victorious popular revolution, but an intervention by global and regional powers and their proxies. We can hope the Syrian people find their way to unite and defeat their enemies, and we should support those efforts; but that seems unlikely in the short run.