To: Detroit
Workers' Voice mailing list
August 8, 2016
RE: Aleppo and solidarity
Before the uprising, Aleppo was the largest city in Syria and its commercial and industrial heart. In 2012, the majority of the people of Aleppo rose up against the the dictatorial regime of Bashar al-Assad. Faced with the heavy weapons and merciless bombing carried out by the regime, Aleppo has been devastated, and divided into rebel-controlled and regime-controlled districts. 300,000 people have held out against the worse that Assad could throw at the rebel-controlled region of the city. Last month that section of the city was completely encircled by the soldiers of the Assad regime and its foreign backers, and the last supply routes were cut. If Aleppo fell, it would be a catastrophe for the democratic movement in Syria. It would also be a humanitarian disaster as Assad would take revenge, as he has elsewhere in Syria. But it would not end the struggle against the Ba'ath dictatorship.
Last week the defenders of Aleppo opened a major counteroffensive. The news in the last few days is that they have broken the encirclement of Aleppo. They have achieved this despite the heavy weapons of the besieging force and intense bombing by the Russian air force. They have opened a new corridor to Aleppo. If they can hold on to this corridor, they will have won a major victory, which will keep the flag of democratic struggle alive in Aleppo. But the fighting over this corridor will no doubt continue to be intense, as the corridor not only opens the way for bringing in food, medicine, and military supplies for democratic Aleppo, but holds out the possibility that now it will be the forces of Assad's regime that are encircled in Aleppo.
The struggle against dictatorship in Syria is, however, not just a military struggle. It is also a political struggle for allowing the Syrian people to have a say in their own destiny. It is a struggle over what will follow Assad as well. And it is a struggle to break out of the encirclement of the lies of the Syrian dictatorship, and gain the sympathy and support of the working people of the world.
Indeed, the Syrian uprising against Assad has become a world issue. The fate of the uprising not only affects every Syrian, but more and more people elsewhere, from the Middle East to Europe and even the US. Which side people take in the struggle against dictatorship in Syria will affect their own situation in their country.
Thus the Syrian civil war has become a test of the people's movements throughout the world. Is there really a world movement in support of struggles against oppression and exploitation, or do the existing parties and movements and governments that speak in the name of the working people care only about their local concerns? Or worse yet, do they speak for the working people, but take part in oppressing them?
The Assad regime has only been able to hold out in the civil war for so long because of its outside support. Despite its overwhelming advantage in weaponry, the Syrian army is estimated to have declined from about 300,000 soldiers at the start, to 100,000 today. As the Assad's forces have been hollowed out by desertion, demoralization, and casualties, Assad has increasingly relied not just on foreign money and supplies, but foreign soldiers as well.
Assad will let anyone kill Syrians, if they will do it on behalf of his regime: this includes religious fundamentalists with sectarian motivations. He has relied heavily on the clerical fundamentalist regime in Iran. The Iran theocrats have provided money, supplies, and cannonfodder for Assad; the Iranian Republican Guard has been active in Syria; and Afghan refugees in Iran have been pressured to fight in Syria. The fundamentalist organization Hezbollah in Lebanon has sent its members to fight for Assad. The expansionist Putin regime in Russia has provided heavy weapons, ammunition, and personnel.
Indeed Iranians, Afghans, and fighters from Hezbollah have been particularly active in the battle of Aleppo. But all that wouldn't have been sufficient to encircle Aleppo except for the role of Russian bombing.
The Syrian civil war has gone back and forth during the years since it began. But by late 2015 it looked like the Assad regime was fading and coming close to defeat. This was why the capitalist regime in Russia began bombing in Syria: it saw that supplying heavy weapons wasn't enough. And so Russian bombing on an industrial scale began in September 2015. Now the Syrian people had to deal not just with barrel bombs, but with Russian conventional bombs, with incendiary cluster bombs, etc.
The Russian government claims that it is only hitting ISIS and Islamic terorists, but in fact, the majority of its bombing attacks are on the Syrian opposition. It wages war on the people in the same manner as the Assad regime, so that the attacks on hospitals and civilians have continued and intensified. So the Syrian rebels not only have to fight the Assad regime and ISIS, but also have to resist the Russian air force, which has dramatically escalated the air war carried out by Assad's forces.
A number of liberal and left-wing forces have continually denounced
the fact that some military supplies have reached the forces of the
Syrian uprising. They have organized demonstrations against this. But
they haven't denounced the massive outside intervention on the side of
Assad. And they haven't denounced Russian bombing inside Syria. For
example, the supposedly socialist "Workers' World" party has applauded
Russian and Iranian participation in the civil war as "international
assistance to Syria". (Sara Flounders, "Russia, Iran give international
assistance to Syria", Oct. 6, 2015,
http://www.workers.org/2015/10/06/russia-iran-give-international-assistance-to-syria/#.V6kkvxKHOXU)
Now, many of these forces also back Russian intervention in Ukraine. They argue that Ukraine is on the borders of Russia; that many Ukrainians speak Russian; and Ukraine used to be in the USSR: they think these things justify Russia's action. This is imperialist reasoning, which says the big powers have the right to oppress smaller countries. But it's what Russian President Vladimir Putin argues, and what many on the left repeat.
Well, Syria is not on the border with Russia. Syria was never in either the USSR or the Tsarist empire before it. Syrians never spoke Russian or any Slavic language as their native tongue. And here is the Russian bourgeoisie bombing the hell out of Syria ... and with no higher aim than seeking to prolong the reactionary Assad dictatorship.
The US government and the other Western powers talk about democracy, but their attitude to the Assad regime shows that they don't care about the struggle for freedom. The Western imperialist powers aren't committed to Assad like Russia or Iran; but they aren't upset by his tyranny either, and would like to see the present Syrian army and security apparatus maintained in any settlement of the civil war. They want a government that will support exploitation in Syria and join imperialist alliances. So they are letting the Syrian people bleed to death, hoping that this will mean that whoever wins in Syria, popular movements will be dead in Syria for a long time. They worry only that the struggle is destabilizing the Middle East and even Europe, and that ISIS was gaining a foothold.
The exact stand of the US and other outside powers varies over time. The different powers squabble among themselves, and their attitude to the Syrian uprising depends on how they think it affects their particular interest of the moment. It is precisely the differences among them that has allowed the Syrian uprising to obtain certain supplies from outside. Yet the Syrian opponents of Assad have refused to do what has been demanded of it by the US government and the Western powers.
The US government is presently trying to coordinate its military strikes, to a certain extent, with the Iranian regime, the Russian government and even the Assad government. This is what US imperialism regards as a fight against ISIS. This led in July to Secretary of State John Kerry making a deal with Russian Foreign Miniser Sergey Lavrow to coordinate US and Russian military strikes in Syria, even though Russia is clearly concentrating its bombing on bolstering Assad's position in the civil war. The deal may keep unraveling, but Kerry is intent on obtaining it.
The defense of Kobane in 2014-15 against ISIS by the Kurdish YPG (People's Protection Units) was hailed by progressive people around the world. It was a determined and heroic defense, and showed that it's the people, not the imperialist forces, who can defeat the ISIS fundamentalists. While [the anti-Assad Free Syrian Army or] FSA took part in the struggle at Kobane, the YPG was the main force involved.
But in July the YPG cooperated with the Assad regime during the campaign to encircle Aleppo. As the regime's forces and Russian bombers stepped up their pressure on Aleppo, the YPG engaged in some military operations against the Syrian opposition in the Aleppo region. The YPG is interested in geographically linking up certain areas which it occupies, and to that end, it has been willing to make certain deals with the Assad regime and its Russian allies. This has led to the point of a certain cooperation in strangling Aleppo.
The YPG is the armed wing of one of the parties of Syrian Kurds, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which in turn is associated with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). In July 2012 Assad withdrew military forces from three Kurdish-majority regions; it does not bombard these regions as it does rebel-controlled regions elsewhere in Syria. Although certain clashes have taken place between PYD and the Assad regime, there is also a certain accommodation. The PYD is not the only Kurdish group in Syria, and many Kurds have taken part in the civil war. But the PYD has an ambiguous attitude towards the anti-Assad struggle.
Back during the defense of Kobane, the DWV list carried an item "Solidarity with the defenders of Kobane!" (www.communistvoice.org/DWV-141014.html) It pointed out that "just because a people rises for freedom doesn't mean that they have put behind them all their problems such as national chauvinism." The forces of the Syrian uprising hadn't recognized the needed national rights for the Kurdish people. This is a major issue that faces the Syrian people. Unresolved, it led at times to armed clashes between certain units of the FSA and some Kurdish villages. But there is also another problem: the PYD's history of deal-making. The cooperation between the FSA and the PYD that developed in the fight against ISIS was an important step forward; the agreements were reported to include recognition of the desirability of some type of autonomy for the Kurds. But the cooperation of the PYD with the siege of Aleppo is a horrible step backward.
The YPG and PYD have brought important reforms to the areas under their control, but they have also repressed any other group, Kurdish or not, which has tried to be active there. This, and their ambiguous attitude to the overall democratic struggle in Syria, constitute the seamy side of the YPG.
The radical left is supposed to support struggles anywhere in the world against exploitation, racism and national oppression, or tyranny. But that's not what most of the left is doing with respect to Syria. Groups such as the Workers' World, and many other Trotskyist or Stalinist groups, have become quite skilled at painting many popular movements as imperialist plots. And a number of journalists who played a valuable role in the struggle against the US war in Vietnam or other imperialist atrocities have also taken to reviling the struggle against Assad. This is not only betrayal of the working people of other countries, but it threatens to discredit the idea of anti-imperialism.
These groups claim they are fighting against intervention in Syria. But where is their opposition to the massive bombing of Syria by the Russians? It's nowhere to be seen.
Syria is far away, and many people don't know much about it. So they take the word of sources they have respected in the past. If it seems that everyone from Bernie Sanders to the radical left has washed their hands of the fight against Assad, then it looks like that is the proper thing to do. But actually, if most of the liberal and radical left have abandoned the Syrian people, this shows there's something seriously wrong on the left. It shows that there needs to be serious change in the left.
It's a sign that the weakness of the radical left isn't just that the left groups aren't big enough, or don't get enough votes. It isn't even that the bourgeoisie fights against us. It's that there is a serious problem of orientation in the movement today. The Communist Voice Organization is devoted to dealing with this crisis. There has to be a careful look at what anti-imperialism really is: it can't be giving comfort to reactionary regimes.
This year two books have come out with a good deal of information about the situation in Syria.
* Khiyana: Daesh, the Left and the Unmaking of the Syrian Revolution,
edited by Jules Alford and Andy Wilson, consists of essays by a number
of authors. "Khiyana" is Arabic for betrayal. The book has a lot of
information about the Syrian Civil War, who the Syrian rebels are, the
nature of ISIS, and how all this has been interpreted on the left. It
includes material on the failure of the large anti-war movement in
Britain to support the Syrian people. A review of this book appeared on
July 5 on the DWV list, see
www.communistvoice.org/DWV-160705.html.
It's an important book, but it has its limits. For example, it's important that one of the essays criticizes the Trotskyist theory of "permanent revolution" as "falsified by reality". We at the Detroit Workers' Voice list have been saying the experience of the Arab Spring has shown the bankruptcy of the theory of "permanent revolution". Now someone agrees with us, at least in part. But the essay nevertheless sees the problem as mainly just Stalinism, and not also Trotskyism. Another example is that the book criticizes the so-called anti-imperialism of the supporters of Assad, but doesn't dwell enough on what real anti-imperialism is.
* Another informative book published this year is Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War by Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami. It gives a lot of detail about how the mass movement at the base of the Syrian uprising developed, and the different phases which the struggle has gone through. But I'm still only part-way through it, so I can't say much more about it at this time.
* The Communist Voice Organization website has a good deal of
material about the theoretical issues involved in opposing the sham
"anti-imperialism" which denigrates the democratic struggle. There are
articles on such issues as what is real anti-imperialism and what
is the relationship of democratic struggles to the working class
movement. It also deals with the question of what, as opposed to
"permanent revolution", is the Marxist theory about democratic
struggles such as those in the Arab Spring. See
www.communistvoice.org/00ArabSpring.html and
www.communistvoice.org/00Anti-imperialism.html
for links to these articles. <>
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Posted on August 10,
2016.
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