March 15 marks four years of the popular uprising against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Two hundred thousand dead, towns and villages destroyed, more than seven million displaced, and another three million refugees abroad, is the balance of this bloodthirsty regime that has not hesitated to use the entire deadly arsenal against its peoples to remain in power.
The intervention of Russia and Iran providing weapons to the regime, together with direct military intervention by Hezbollah, have been instrumental in changing the course of the military front giving the regime military supremacy. But the popular resistance in Aleppo and other cities demonstrates the will and determination of the popular uprising, and prevents the regime to complete the defeat.
The regime encouraged the formation of ISIS, emptying the prisons of Islamists prisoners.
ISIS counted with direct financing and armament by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the absolute complicity of the Turkish regime for its supply and sale of oil from the areas it controls. Clashes between ISIS and the regime have been sporadic, demonstrating the collaboration they have kept trying to destroy the revolution. The reactionary character of ISIS lies not only in the brutality of their actions, comparable to those of the regime, but in its goal to destroy the revolution.
Only when a strengthened ISIS dares to advance on Baghdad and the US occupation Government, Obama decides to start bombing against ISIS, while internationally he rehabilitates the murderous regime of al-Assad against the Islamist threat. With the bombings the imperialist intervention serves not to defend the Iraqi, Syrian or Kurdish people, but to strengthen the two regimes against their peoples.
The defeat of ISIS in Kobane is a triumph of the Kurdish struggle and is vital to begin to reverse the situation. Large demonstrations in solidarity developed in Turkey to denounce how Erdogan prevented young Kurds from going to for fight for Kobane while he greeted ISIS’s advance, and which took a toll of more than 40 dead by police repression and the intervention of paramilitary groups who murdered with impunity to terrorise the protest marches. The complicity of the Turkish government has been essential to the advancement of ISIS and the isolation of the Kurdish resistance in Syria.
Aleppo is the other symbol of popular resistance. The siege of months to which it has been subjected by the regime’s troops on one side and ISIS on the other, makes the resistance to be very weak, with barely any weapons or food, but at the same time it shows the world the will to fight of the Syrian revolution.
But the Syrian and Kurdish revolution has been isolated from international solidarity. A portion of the left sided in direct support to the regime of al-Assad endorsing the mass murder with excuses of alleged plots by the CIA and Israel, when it is now clear the agreements of Washington with Tehran and its collaboration with the regime of al-Assad. Another big part of the movement of solidarity with the peoples has kept silent and looked the other way, while the Syrian people and the Kurds resisted heroically and hundreds of thousands of Syrians became the new immigrants of southern Europe.
Enough of silence, enough of complicity. We call on the international left organizations, on the solidarity movements to make their voices heard in solidarity with the struggle of the Syrian people and the Kurdish people. We call to multiply acts of solidarity in our countries, to coordinate, to make the voice of solidarity between workers and peoples heard.
International Workers Unity – Fourth International (IWU–FI)
Comunist Organization of Syria
March 2015
