The collapse of the government of Bashar al-Assad is a grave setback for anti-imperialist forces from which we must learn.
The resignation of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and the handing over of Damascus to US-backed terror gangs is a victory for US imperialism. The Anglo-American imperialists have long sought to subjugate all of Syria and now they think they have the opportunity to do so.
There are those who call themselves ‘socialists’ who are celebrating the fall of the Syrian government and the end of the Syrian Arab Republic, but as soon as it was declared that President Assad had gone into exile, US and Israeli warplanes started bombing runs all over the country and the Israeli regime began to annex more Syrian territory.
The US-led war on Syria began in 2011 in the period referred to as the ‘Arab Spring’, during which mass street protests broke out in Tunisia and then Egypt and in both countries longstanding leaders aligned with the USA were forced out. The USA and its imperialist allies responded quickly to the situation and began to actively manipulate and even create protests in other countries, including in Syria and Libya.
Their aim was to rapidly escalate any peaceful protests that did occur into violent confrontations spiralling into civil war that could then be used to justify ‘humanitarian’ intervention by the imperialist camp. This is what was done in Libya and which had such horrific effects on the Libyan people, with the nation now divided in two and with open slave markets operating in Tripoli.
In Syria at this time, the USA unleashed a giant cover action campaign that was codenamed ‘Operation Timber Sycamore’. This consisted of a huge programme of arming gangs of extremely reactionary fundamentalists, who at various times went under the names of al-Qaeda, Isis, the Syrian National Army, Jabat Al Nusra and now Hayt-Tahrir Al Sham. This multitude of names disguises that they are (at root) the same group, which has been working with the USA in many countries since at least the time of the Afghan war in the 1980s.
Their way of war is always the same, and it involves the mass killing of civilians and countless other war crimes that the US pretends to oppose. Along with this campaign of mass terror came the economic sanctions, which in many ways were even more devastating than the actions of the terror gangs.
A brutal and strangulating siege
Since 2011, Syria has suffered under brutal and strangulating imperialist sanctions that have severely prohibited its ability to fulfil even the most basic functions such as feeding its population. Even after intervention by the Russians and Iranians in support of the Damascus government, over one third of the country remained controlled by the al-Qaeda-type groups and by Kurdish forces (also aligned with the USA) in parts of the north and north-east. Meanwhile, US military directly occupied the country’s major oil and wheat producing areas.
The aim of all this was to create a state of siege in the country, and the aim of any siege is to break the will of the opponent to resist by making life in the besieged land as unbearable as possible. This is what was being done to Syria from 2011 onwards, and it was done in order to bring down the government led by Bashar al-Assad and replace it with one that is totally subservient to US diktat.
What happened over the course of last week was that the years of siege warfare appear to have finally paid off and a significant number of commanders in the Syrian army simply refused to fight the latest incursion of US and Turkish-backed HTS-led forces.
The cumulative effect of the siege warfare seems to have finally broken the will to fight of many in the Syrian army, and President Assad himself left the country as part of a deal with the US-backed forces. Now Syria is a country without a functioning state, with no army to defend it, and no allies. It is being bombed continuously by Israeli and US warplanes, the imperialists clearly being determined to make sure that not a shred of Syria’s defensive capabilities remain. Territory is being seized by Israel in the south and there is a high likelihood of a direct Turkish invasion in the north.
Thirteen years of war, hundreds of thousands dead and millions turned into refugees. This is the legacy of the imperialists’ dirty war on Syria, and now they have won their grim victory it is likely that only chaos and more destruction awaits the Syrian people.
The enemy within
The question must be asked: why did so many on the British left support this imperialist war? Why did left-social-democratic and Trotskyists such as Owen Jones, Paul Mason, Aaron Bastani, Zarah Sultana and so many other ‘leftist’ luminaries support the destruction of this anti-zionist country?
The answer lies in the fact that all of these ‘leftists’ are rabid supporters of US imperialism. Whether the war is on Russia or on Syria, Britain’s fake left will line up either to support it directly or to indirectly justify it by hiding behind dumb phrases like “Assad is a dictator”. These traitors to the working class will move on and forget this war as the news media turns away and Syria is torn to pieces by the rabid dogs of imperialism.
The lesson for true socialists is that when this war was first being pushed by David Cameron back in 2011 a much more serious antiwar campaign should have been waged. Instead the pro-imperialist left agreed with much of the propaganda being pushed by the imperialists and ended up doing little or nothing to mount any real opposition to the 13-year-long siege on and destruction of a nation that was an important part of the anti-imperialist resistance axis.
This is yet another shameful episode of collaboration by the British ‘left’ with our class enemies. Until we purge our movement of the influence of this bribed and treacherous fifth column, we will come not a single step closer to our own liberation.
