The Syrian regime has collapsed like a house of cards. Completely unexpectedly, it has collapsed in less than two weeks: the army, the police, and the prisons built during 54 years of criminal dictatorship have collapsed. People in the cities have revolted, emptied the prisons, threw down statues of the dictator father and the dictator son. The prisoners of the dictatorship have taken to the streets in a new Syria. Police officers and soldiers panicked and deserted en masse.
The offensive of the opposition coalition seemed incapable of changing the situation when it started only ten days ago. Their weapons were nothing compared to those of the dictatorship, supported by Russia and Iran. The regime of Bashar al-Assad had thrown thousands of barrels of dynamite into defenceless neighbourhoods, had gassed his own people with chemical weapons, had erected prisons that were huge torture centres, including crematoria as in Sednaya, had cut the vocal cords of singers and thrown them into rivers, had raped thousands of men and women, had bombed schools and hospitals.
Russia and Iran enabled Assad’s reign of terror. The United States and Israel preferred Al-Assad rather a revolutionary situation with the potential to destabilize the region. When the support of Tehran and Moscow weakened, the Syrian people saw the emperor naked and overthrew him. It has not just been the rebel military offensive; it has been a popular uprising. Daraa, the cradle of the revolution of March 2011, was liberated without waiting for the rebel columns to advance.
A surprise military action that has triggered a rebellion and exposed the weakness of a security apparatus that seemed invincible. The Syrian regime was a pillar of stability in the entire region, which is why all governments in the region fear its fall. This is what the governments of Qatar, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Iran, Turkey, and Russia declared on Saturday, December 7, one day before Bashar’s flight, in a joint communique. Some attacked and others defended Al-Assad, but none of them ever wanted the triumph of a revolution they could not control.
The fall of Al-Assad is good news for the Middle East people and the world. Assad’s regime destroyed the Syrian revolution, leaving the impression Middle Eastern freedom is impossible. In Algeria, in Egypt, in Lebanon… when someone raised his head, the local regime threatened with another Syria. Another massacre.
The Syrian people and the opposition coalition have made their support for Palestine very clear. Also, Hamas, unlike Hezbollah, broke with the murderous Syrian regime. No one can understand better than the Syrian people the ongoing genocide in Gaza because they have been under systematic bombardment, hunger, and thirst sieges, massive displacement for 14 years. Aleppo was liberated with flags of the Syrian revolution and of Palestine. The rebels have already attacked Israeli positions in the occupied Golan. A free Syria, unlike the current regime, could aid the Palestinians. Israel said and repeated throughout the revolution that it preferred Bashar al-Assad to remain in power and these days it has threatened the Syrian opposition. Al-Assad filled his mouth with the Palestinian cause, but in reality, he was the best guardian of Israel’s northern border. He delayed retaliation against Israel, stating “we will respond when the time is right,” a promise unfulfilled for 54 years.
Most of the left around the world abandoned the Syrian revolution, anchored in the precepts of Stalinism and colonialism. These masters of confusion will justify bad dictatorships they wouldn’t live in. They will continue to subscribe to a stupid bloc logic where you can supposedly be anti-imperialist and drown your own people in blood. They have apparatus, Putin’s propaganda and the fake left and fake reformist anti-imperialism of the Maduro (Venezuela), Daniel Ortega (Nicaragua) or Diaz-Canel (Cuba) on their side… but nothing they say holds up looking at what is happening in Syria. The only way to square their analysis with reality is to misrepresent it.
The fall of Bashar is the triumph of the revolution started in March 2011 as part of the revolutionary process that began in Tunisia and toppled dictatorships of more than 30 years of existence.
The Syrian revolution is not a bed of roses. No revolution is. There are many challenges ahead, At the moment, the Islamists of HTS, who have led the coalition that led the military offensive, and the Kurdish PYD are in talks about the future of Syria. Only a Syria that recognizes all its peoples can be a free and democratic country. From the IWU-FI, as revolutionary socialists, who always support the revolution together with the Syrian left, we do not lend support to this leadership, nor do we arouse any political confidence. The basic solution remains to continue the struggle for a Socialist Syria under a government of the workers and popular sectors. We support and stand in solidarity with the Syrian people and with this first revolutionary triumph.
The siren cries from Stalinism and the reformist left criticizing the Syrian revolution for its leadership are not valid now. They silenced the voices of the left in Syria, with the active complicity of this blind and colonial international left. This left that is today in exile and with whom, from the IWU-FI, we have had the honour of working side by side, can play an important role in the struggle for the construction of the new Syria.
The recent events that have overturned the map of Syria can only be understood from this approach: on the one hand, the collapse of a decayed regime that has lost its social base and that has only maintained itself with the military support of external forces; on the other, the military advance of a political coalition that, with reactionary characteristics, reflects in a distorted way the legitimate demand of the people for the overthrow of the dictatorship. We have great political differences with HTS (the group that has led within the coalition the military offensive), with the rebels who relied on Turkey and with the Kurdish leadership (PYD). We also have big differences with Hamas and this does not lead us to detract one iota of support for the Palestinian people. With the dictator Bashar Al-Assad out of power the struggle enters a new phase, fighting, among other demands, to guarantee full democratic freedoms, for the withdrawal of all foreign military forces and for the social demands pending because of capitalist-imperialist exploitation.
Long live the free Syrian revolution!
Long live Solidarity among the peoples! Free Palestine from the river to the sea!
International Workers’ Unity – Fourth International (IWU-FI)
8 December 2024
