In mid-December 2024 a stunning series of events unfolded in the already fragmented state of Syria in West Asia. The dictatorship of Bashar al Assad suddenly fell to a motley coalition of military forces, including former affiliates of Isis, led by Ahmed al-Sharaa. Assad ignominiously fled to Moscow. The insurgent fighters, so-called 'rebels', are backed by Turkiye, Washington and the Zionist state. For fifty years, the Assad family ruled Syria, favouring the relatively privileged Alawite religious sect over other branches of Islam. Bashar, son of Hafez al Assad (president from 1971 - 2000), violently suppressed a democratic internal uprising in 2011 -- part of the inspiring Arab Spring that flowered from Tunisia to Egypt, and beyond.
To be clear, while the Assad regime was starved by severe U.S.-imposed economic sanctions, it fell also due to its own criminal deeds. It shocked the world with the horrific anti-civilian weapon known as "barrel bombs". It filled its nightmarish prisons with political dissidents, starving and torturing them. It turned to the mass production and sale of addictive drugs to circumnavigate economic sanctions and keep the regime financially afloat.
The December 18 edition of Left Voice, an international magazine linked to the PTS (Socialist Workers' Party) of Argentina), further illuminates the situation: "Assad’s atrocities following the Arab Spring, the destruction inflicted by the Islamist militias of ISIS, the attacks against the Kurds by forces commanded by Turkey, and the bombings by the international coalition led by the United States, have plunged the population into an endless hell."
When al-Sharaa's 'rebels' rolled into Damascus, meeting little resistance in Aleppo and other major centers of Syria along along the way, residents took to the streets in big celebrations.
"Such joy at the fall of a hated regime like Assad’s is understandable; unfortunately we cannot share in this joy, given that the forces that have overthrown Assad are also deeply reactionary. Their victory does not bode well for the majority of the Syrian population who have been decimated and torn apart by 13 years of a terrible civil war and successive imperialist interventions." (LV, Dec. 18)
Now underway is violent retribution against supporters of the previous regime, with local protests beginning to appear against sectarian measures inflicted by the new regime. The U.S. has 2,000 soldiers in the oil fields of north-east Syria, in alliance with Kurdish forces. Meanwhile, the Zionist IOF heavily bombed Syrian weapons depots and seized territory well beyond the occupied Golan Heights. South Lebanon is occupied by the IOF, which conducts military operations notwithstanding an official 'ceasefire'.
Hezbollah is forced to find new military supply routes from Iran. As the so-called Axis of Resistance is dealt a setback, the genocide in Gaza is relentless, and expanding across the beleaguered West Bank, notwithstanding Israel's historic political isolation. Materially, Israel is stretched to its physical limits. It has lost tens of thousands of citizens to emigration over the past year. The global movement of solidarity with the Palestinian people, the largest international anti-war movement in generations, continues. At the same time, it is vital to draw some of the political lessons of events in Syria.
"In respect to the Kurdish struggle, compromises with Western imperialist states — in particular with the United States — to obtain recognition of “autonomy in Rojava” have hindered both the self-determination of the oppressed Kurdish people and the possibilities of profound social change. The current situation, in which the Kurds are being cornered again, shows that those who have presented the imperialist states as protectors or even allies of the oppressed nations have left the Kurdish people tied up, without a strategy of class independence and anti-imperialism." (LV, Dec. 18)
Paramount is the question of strategy. Bourgeois rule, as in the case of the long Assad family-compact, cannot lead resistance to imperialism and Zionism all the way to victory. Only a process of permanent revolution is able to unleash the power of workers and farmers in the less-developed countries. Socialists defended the Arab Republic of Syria against western intervention, against the so-called Free Syrian Army, an arm of U.S. imperialism. But such a defense is conducted by class conscious workers without giving Assad any political support.
We part company with Stalinists and liberal nationalists. The latter extend political support to the likes of Assad, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the regimes in Tehran and Moscow. Socialists seek workers' power, workers' self-emancipation. Our defense of Syria from western intervention is mainly aimed at staying the hand of our own imperialist masters. The enemy is at home, as Lenin famously said. The oppressed and exploited, the world over, need time and space to exercise genuine self-determination. That comes with the disengagement of the direct and proxy armies of imperialism.
We are not neutral, historically. In the 1930s conflict between feudal Ethiopia and imperialist Italy, the Fourth International backed Ethiopia. In the war between Kuomintang-led China versus imperial Japan, Trotskyists supported China. But not the KMT, and not Haille Selassi. Marxists fight for the political independence of the working class -- for a workers' government everywhere. There is no scope for reliance on bourgeois substitutes - and that includes the BRICS countries. The BRICS strive for autonomy expressly within the world capitalist order.
Israel furnishes a poignant case study. Where does the genocidal settler-state get fuel for its military and colonial infrastructure? Its electricity grid is powered by natural gas (70%), coal (18%) and renewables (10%), relying heavily on imported crude oil and refined fuels, which is delivered by the U.S., Russia, Azerbaijan, Greece, Italy and Brazil. China remains Israel's third largest trade partner, covered in blood and shame.
The pertinent slogans thus remain: Imperialist Hands Off Syria. Turkiye, Israel, the US and jihadist forces out of Syria. Solidarity with Kurdish Rojavan. Workers to Power. Canada out of NATO. Free Palestine, for a Democratic, Secular Palestine, from the River to the Sea!