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Decriminalizing Bashar al Assad:
Towards a more effective anti-war movement
by
Carlos Martinez, Syria 360°,
23 September 2013
On 10 April 1993, one of the
greatest heroes of the anti-apartheid struggle, Chris Hani,
was gunned down by a neo-fascist in an attempt to disrupt the seemingly
inexorable process of bringing majority rule to South Africa. Although
direct legal culpability for this tragic assassination belonged to only
two men – a Polish immigrant by the name of Janusz Waluś and
a senior Conservative Party MP named Clive Derby-Lewis – the
crime formed part of a much wider onslaught against the ANC and its
allies. This onslaught – paramilitary, political, legal,
psychological, journalistic – was not primarily conducted by
fringe lunatics such as Waluś and Derby-Lewis, but by the mainstream
white political forces and their puppets within the black community
(such as the Inkatha Freedom Party). The leaders of the ANC, and
particularly the MK (Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed liberation movement
with which Chris Hani’s name will forever be associated) were
subjected to a wide-ranging campaign of demonisation. This campaign
created conditions such that political assassinations of anti-apartheid
leaders became expected, almost inevitable. Of course, the more
‘dovish’ leaders of the main white party, the
National Party, were quick to denounce Hani’s assassination;
but the truth is that they were at least partly responsible for it.
Speaking at Hani’s
funeral, Nelson Mandela spoke
of this phenomenon: “To criminalise is to outlaw, and the
hunting down of an outlaw is regarded as legitimate. That is why,
although millions of people have been outraged at the murder of Chris
Hani, few were really surprised. Those who have deliberately created
this climate that legitimates political assassinations are as much
responsible for the death of Chris Hani as the man who pulled the
trigger.”
Turning to the current
situation in Syria, we see a parallel between the “climate
that legitimates political assassinations” in early-90s South
Africa and a media climate that legitimates the “limited military strikes”
being planned in Washington.
The Syrian state has been under
direct attack by western imperialism for the last two and a half years
(although the US and others have been “accelerating the work of reformers”
for much longer than that). The forms of this attack are many: providing weapons and money
to opposition groups trying to topple the government; implementing wide-ranging
trade sanctions; providing practically unlimited space
in the media for the opposition whilst effecting a near-total media
blackout on pro-government sources; and relentlessly slandering the
Syrian president and government. In short, the western media and
governments have – consciously and deliberately –
“created this climate that legitimates” a military
regime change operation against Syria.
An
anti-war movement that takes part in war propaganda
Building a phoney case for
imperialist regime change is, of course, not unusual.
What is really curious is that the leadership of the anti-war movement
in the west – the people whose clear responsibility is to
build the widest possible opposition to war on Syria – has
been actively participating in the propaganda and demonisation
campaign. Whilst opposing direct military strikes, they have
nonetheless given consistent support to the regime change operation
that such strikes are meant to consummate.
Wilfully ignoring the
indications that the Syrian government is very popular,
Tariq Ali – perhaps the most recognisable figure in the
British anti-war movement – feels able to claim that
“the overwhelming majority of the Syrian people want the
Assad family out”. Indeed, he explicitly calls for foreign-assisted
regime change, saying
“non-violent pressure has to be kept up externally to tell
Bashar he has to go.”
Rising star of the British left
Owen Jones used his high-profile Independent column of 25 August this
year (just as the war rhetoric from Cameron, Hollande and Kerry was
reaching fever pitch) to voice his hatred
of the “gang of thugs” and “glorified
gangsters” that run Syria, before worrying that “an
attack could invite retaliation from Iran and an escalation of
Russian’s support for Assad’s thugs, helping to
drag the region even further into disaster.” Jones evidently
doesn’t know very much about Syria, but that
doesn’t stop him from participating in the
Ba’ath-bashing: last year, his response to a bomb attack in
Damascus which killed several Syrian ministers was the gleeful
“Adios, Assad
(I hope)”.
According to Stop the War
Coalition national officer John Rees,
“no-one can minimise the barbarity of the Assad regime, nor
want to defend it from the justified rage of its own people.”
Any objectively progressive actions ever taken by the Syrian government
(such as its support for Palestine and Hezbollah) are nothing more than
“self-interested and calculated acts
of state policy”
– which claim is rather reminiscent of the Financial Times accusing
Hugo Chávez of “demagogy” in pushing for
land reform in Venezuela!
Rees is only too clear
that the number one enemy for Syrians is the government, and that
pro-west sectarian Saudi-funded rebels are a secondary enemy
– a position virtually indistinguishable from the Israelis,
who state:
“We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the
bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were
backed by Iran.” Further, Rees believes that what is really
needed is to “give the revolutionaries the chance to shake
off their pro-western leaders and defeat Assad.”
That’s presumably if they’re not too busy eating human hearts
or murdering people on the basis of
their religious beliefs.
These are not isolated
examples. It is decidedly rare to find a British anti-war leader
mentioning Bashar al-Assad and his government in anything but an
intensely negative light. Bashar is “brutal”; he is
a “dictator”; he should be indicted
at the International Criminal Court. Frankly, this leader of
independent, anti-imperialist Syria is subjected to far more severe
abuse from the mainstream left than are the leaders of Britain, France
and the US. In the imperialist heartlands of North America and Western
Europe, the defence
of
Syria
has
been
left
to
a
small
minority,
although thankfully the (far more important) left movements in Venezuela,
Cuba,
Nicaragua
and elsewhere have a much richer understanding of anti-imperialist
solidarity.
At the risk of stating the
bleedin’ obvious: if you’re trying to spread
anti-war sentiment and build the most effective possible movement
against military action, then taking part in the demonisation of the
country under threat is probably not a very smart strategy.
This campaign of propaganda,
lies and slander has been very effective in creating a public opinion
that is ambivalent at best in relation to the attack that is under
preparation. Whilst most people may be “against”
bombing Syria in principle, to what extent are they passionate enough
to actually do
anything to prevent this criminal, murderous act from taking place? Two
million people marched against war in Iraq (and given the right
leadership, they would have been willing to do considerably more than
just march); yet no demonstration against war on Syria has attracted
more than a couple of thousand people. Would thousands of people be
willing to participate in direct action? Would they be willing to
conduct, say, a one-week general strike? Would workers follow the great
example of the Rolls Royce workers in East Kilbride
and actively disrupt imperialist support for regime change? Highly
unlikely. And this is because all they have heard about Syria
– from the radical left to the fundamentalist right to the
Saudi-sponsored Muslim organisations – is that Bashar
al-Assad is a brutal dictator whose overthrow is long overdue.
OK,
but haven’t we just prevented a war?
In the light of the House of
Commons exhibiting an unusual level of sense by voting against Cameron’s
motion authorising use of force
against Syria, some anti-war activists were quick to claim
that the “sustained mass power of the anti-war
movement” has “undoubtedly been a decisive
factor.” Members of this movement should “recognise what we have achieved in
recent weeks : we have stopped
the US and Britain from waging a war that, if the British parliament
had voted the other way, would already have taken place, with who knows
what consequences.”
Now, optimism and jubilation
have their place, but they shouldn’t be used to deflect valid
criticism or avoid serious reflection. Anybody who has been involved in
the anti-war movement in Britain over the past decade will have noticed
the level of activity steadily dwindling. Just two years ago, we
witnessed a vicious war fought by the western imperialist powers (with
Britain one of the major instigators) in order to effect regime change
in Libya. Over 50,000 died.
Murderous racists
were brought to power. A head of state was tortured and
murdered , while imperialism celebrated.
Decades of development – that had turned Libya from a
colonial backwater into the country with the highest living standards in Africa
– have been turned back. Stop the War Coalition
weren’t able to mobilise more than a tiny protest
against this war, and yet we are expected to believe that, two years
later, Britain suddenly has a vibrant and brilliantly effective
anti-war movement capable of preventing war on Syria? This is obviously not the case.
Regardless of how much
attention the British public pays to the anti-war movement, the fact is
that public opinion in the west is only a small factor in the much
larger question of the balance of forces. Syria is different to Libya
in that it has powerful
allies
and that it has never disarmed. Furthermore, it shares a border with
Israel and is capable of doing some serious damage to
imperialism’s most important ally in the Middle East. This
makes military intervention a highly dangerous and unpredictable option
from the point of view of the decision-makers in Washington, London and
Paris.
The uprising was supposed to
take care of this problem. A successful ‘Arab
Spring’ revolution – armed, trained and funded by the west
and its regional proxies in Saudi, Turkey, Qatar and Jordan –
would have installed a compliant government and would have constituted
an essential milestone in the imperialist-zionist regional strategy:
the breakup of the resistance axis
and the overthrow of all states unwilling to go along with
imperialist diktat. This
strategy – seemingly so difficult for western liberals and
leftists to comprehend – is perfectly well understood
by the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah: “What is
happening in Syria is a confrontation between the resistance axis and
the U.S./Israeli axis. They seek aggression against the resistance axis
through Syria in order to destroy Syria’s capabilities and
people, marginalize its role, weaken the resistance and relieve
Israel.”
Beyond the Middle East, a
successful ‘revolution’ in Syria would of course be
a vital boost to the US-led global strategy: protecting US hegemony and
containing the rise of China,
Russia and the other major developing nations.
And yet, in spite of massive
support given to the armed opposition; in spite of the relentless
propaganda campaign against the Syrian government; in spite of Israeli bombing raids
on Damascus; in spite of a brutal and tragic campaign of sectarian
hatred
being conducted by the rebels; in spite of the blanket support given to
the rebels by the imperialists
and zionists;
the Syrian Arab Army is winning.
The tide has clearly turned and the momentum is with the patriotic
forces. Hezbollah have openly joined the fray.
Russia has sent its warships
to the region and has demonstrated some genuine creative brilliance
in the diplomatic field in order to prevent western military strikes.
Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela and others have been immovable in their
demands for a peaceful, negotiated solution to the crisis.
Nobody in imperialist policy
circles expected things to turn out like this. The
‘revolution’ was supposed to have succeeded long
ago. As a result, the western ruling classes have moved from a firm,
united policy (i.e. help the rebels to victory and then
‘assist the transition to democracy’) to chaos,
confusion and division. There are hawkish elements that want to bomb
their way to victory, and there are more cautious/realistic elements
that realise this would be an incredibly dangerous course of action for
the western powers and for Israel. Imperialism is faced with a very
delicate, even impossible, balance: trying to preserve its increasingly
fragile hegemony whilst actively attacking the global counter-hegemonic
process. It is a case of “damned if they do and damned if
they don’t”.
Such divisions within the
ruling circles in the west are to be welcomed, but it would be an act
of significant deception to claim victory for a western anti-war
movement that has persistently refused to ally itself with global
anti-imperialism.
Decriminalise
and defend Syria
If we are going to build an
anti-war movement capable of mobilising people in a serious way to
actually counter imperialist war plans for Syria, we cannot continue
with the hopeless “neither imperialism nor Assad”
position, which is designed to avoid the obvious question: when
imperialism is fighting against the Syrian state, which side should we
be on?
A far more viable anti-war
slogan is: Defend Syria from
imperialist destabilisation, demonisation and war.
But can we really defend this
brutal, oppressive, repressive regime? Wasn’t the much-missed
Hugo Chavez just being a bit of a nutcase when he expressed his
fondness for “brother President Bashar al-Assad”
and worked to counter the offensive against Syria by shipping fuel to it?
As with so many things, we have
to start with a total rejection of the mainstream media narrative. The
country they paint as a brutally repressive police state, a prison of
nations, a Cold War relic, is (or was, until the war started tearing it
apart) a dignified, safe, secular, modern and moderately prosperous
state, closely aligned with the socialist and non-aligned world (e.g. Venezuela,
Cuba,
DPR Korea),
and one of the leading forces within the resistance axis
– a bloc that the imperialists are absolutely desperate
to break up.
In the words of its president,
Syria is “an independent state working for the interests of
its people, rather than making the Syrian people work for the interests
of the West.” For over half a century, it has stubbornly
refused to play by the rules of imperialism and neoliberalism. Stephen Gowans shows
that, in spite of some limited market reforms of recent years,
“the Ba’athist state has always exercised
considerable influence over the Syrian economy, through ownership of
enterprises, subsidies to privately-owned domestic firms, limits on
foreign investment, and restrictions on imports.
These are the necessary economic tools of a post-colonial state trying
to wrest its economic life from the grips of former colonial powers and
to chart a course of development free from the domination of foreign
interests.”
The Syrian government maintains
a commitment to a strong welfare state, for example ensuring universal
access to healthcare (in which area its performance has been impressive)
and providing free education at all levels.
It has a long-established policy of secularism and multiculturalism, protecting and celebrating its
religious and ethnic diversity
and refusing to tolerate sectarian hatred.
Syria has done a great deal
– perhaps more than any other country – to oppose
Israel and support the Palestinians. It has long been the chief financial and practical
supporter of the various Palestinian resistance organisations,
as well as of Hezbollah.
It has intervened militarily to prevent Israel’s expansion
into Lebanon. It has provided a home to hundreds of thousands of
Palestinian refugees, who are treated far better
than they are elsewhere in the Arab world. In spite of massive pressure
to do so – and in spite of the obvious immediate benefits
that it would reap in terms of security and peace – it has
refused to go down the route of a bilateral peace treaty with Israel.
Palestine is very much at the forefront of the Syrian national
consciousness, as exemplified by the Syrians who went to the border
with Israel on Nakba Day 2011 and were martyred there at the hands of the
Israeli ‘Defence’ Forces.
True to its Pan-Arabist
traditions, Syria has also provided a home to hundreds
of thousands of Iraqi refugees
in the aftermath of NATO’s 2003 attack.
Whatever mistakes and painful
compromises Ba’athist Syria has made over the years should be
viewed in terms of the very unstable and dangerous geopolitical and
economic context within which it exists. For example:
- It is in a permanent state
of war with Israel, and has part of its territory
occupied by the latter.
- While it has stuck to the
principles of Arab Nationalism and the defence of Palestinian rights,
the other frontline Arab states – Egypt and Jordan, along
with the reactionary Gulf monarchies – have capitulated.
- It has suffered constant
destabilisation by the western imperialist countries and their regional
allies.
- It shares a border with the
heavily militarised pro-western regime in Turkey.
- It shares a border with the
chronically unstable Lebanon (historically a part of Syria that was
carved out in the 1920s by the French colonialists in order to create a
Christian-dominated enclave).
- Its most important ally of
the 70s and 80s – the Soviet Union – collapsed in
1991, leaving it in a highly precarious situation.
- Its economic burdens have
been added to by longstanding sanctions,
significantly deepened
in 2003 by George W Bush, specifically in response to Syria’s
support for resistance movements in the region.
- Its economic problems of
recent years have also been exacerbated by the illegal imperialist war
on Iraq, which created a refugee crisis of horrific proportions. Syria
absorbed 1.5 million Iraqi refugees and has made significant sacrifices
to help them. Given that “Syria has the highest level of civic
and social rights for refugees in the region,”
it’s not difficult to understand how its economic and social
stability must have been affected.
- In recent years, Syria has
been suffering from a devastating drought
“impacting more than 1.3 million people, killing up to 85
percent of livestock in some regions and forcing 160 villages to be
abandoned due to crop failures”. The root of this problem is
the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights, as one-third of Israel’s water
is supplied from Golan.
- Given the number of
different religious sects and ethnicities within Syria, it has never
been difficult for the west and its regional proxies to stir up
tensions and create unrest.
While there is clearly a need
to enhance popular democracy and to clamp down on corruption and
cronyism (in what country is this not the case?), this is well
understood by the state. As Alistair Crooke writes:
“There is this mass demand for reform. But paradoxically
– and contrary to the ‘awakening’
narrative – most Syrians also believe that President Bashar
al-Assad shares their conviction for reform.”
So there is every reason to
defend Syria. Not because it is some sort of socialist utopia, but
because it is an independent, anti-imperialist, anti-zionist state that
tries to provide a good standard of living for its people and which
aligns itself with the progressive and counterhegemonic forces in the
region and worldwide.
Tasks
for the anti-war movement
If the anti-war movement can
agree on the need to actively defend Syria, then its tasks become
relatively clear:
- Clearly explain to the
public that this is not a revolution or a civil war, but an imperialist
war of regime change where the fighting has been outsourced to
sectarian religious terrorists. It is not part of a region-wide
‘Arab Spring’ process of “overthrowing
reactionary regimes”; rather, it is part of a global process
of destabilising, demonising, weakening and removing all states that
refuse to play by the rules. It is this same process that brought about
regime change in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Grenada,
Nicaragua, Chile, Argentina, Congo, Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, Brazil
and elsewhere. This process was described in a very clear,
straightforward way by Maurice Bishop, leader of the socialist
government in Grenada that was overthrown 30 years ago: “Destabilisation
is the name given to the newest method of controlling and exploiting
the lives and resources of a country and its people by a bigger and
more powerful country through bullying, intimidation and
violence… Destabilisation takes many forms: there is
propaganda destabilisation, when the foreign media, and sometimes our
own Caribbean press, prints lies and distortions against us; there is
economic destabilisation, when our trade and our industries are
sabotaged and disrupted; and there is violent destabilization, criminal
acts of death and destruction… As long as we show the world,
clearly and unflinchingly, that we intend to remain free and
independent; that we intend to consolidate and strengthen the
principles and goals of our revolution; as we show this to the world,
there will be attacks on us.”
- Stop participating in the
demonisation of the Syrian state. This demonisation –
repeating the media’s lies against Syria, exaggerating the
negative aspects of the Syrian state and downplaying all the positive
things it has done – is totally demobilising. It is
preventing the development of a meaningful, creative, courageous,
audacious anti-war movement.
- Campaign for an end to trade
sanctions on Syria.
- Campaign for an end to the
arming and funding of rebel groups by the British, French and US
governments and their stooges in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Jordan
and Kuwait.
- Send peace delegations to
Syria to observe the situation first hand and report back. The recent delegation
by Cynthia McKinney, Ramsey Clark, Dedon Kamathi and others is an
excellent example that should be emulated.
- Campaign for wide-ranging
industrial action in the case of military attack.
- Support all processes
leading to a peaceful, negotiated resolution of the Syrian crisis,
reflecting the will of the vast majority of the Syrian people.
The defense of Syria is, at
this point in time, the frontline of the struggle worldwide against
imperialist domination. It is Korea in 1950, Vietnam in 1965, Algeria
in 1954, Zimbabwe in 1970, Cuba in 1961, Nicaragua in 1981, Iraq in
2003, Libya in 2011, Palestine since 1948. It’s time for us
to step up.
Further
reading
Patrick Seale’s
biography of Hafez al-Assad, ‘Asad: The Struggle for the
Middle East’, provides an excellent overview of 20th century
Syria and a very balanced, detailed depiction of the
Ba’athist government.
The following articles are also
particularly useful:
Alastair Crooke: Unfolding the Syrian Paradox
Asia Times: A mistaken case for Syrian regime
change
Amal Saad-Ghorayeb: Assad Foreign Policy (I): A History
of Consistence
Amal Saad-Ghorayeb: Assad Foreign Policy (II): Strategies
of Confrontation
Monthly Review: Why Syria Matters: Interview with
Aijaz Ahmad
Stephen Gowans: Syria, The View From The Other Side
Stephen Gowans: What the Syrian Constitution says
about Assad and the Rebels
Recommended
News Sources:
Syria
360°
Libya 360°
What’s
Left
ASG’s
Counter-Hegemony Unit
Liberation
StopImperialism.com
Workers
World
tortilla
con sal
FightBack
Lalkar
Socialist Action
Global
Research
Pan-African
News Wire
Proletarian
Related:
The War on
Syria and Noam Chomsky
The Unwitting
Agents of the Imperial Order: “The Wishful
Thinking Left”
Cruise Missile
Socialists: When Justifying Imperialist Intervention Goes Wrong
Lessons Of Libya For The Anti-war
Movement
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