{"article":{"id":261807,"heading":"Decriminalizing Bashar al Assad: Towards a more effective anti-war movement","author":"Carlos Martinez","created":"2013-09-27 08:35:13","modified":"2013-09-27 08:35:13","last_modified":"Fri, 27 Sep 2013 16:35:13","article":"
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Decriminalizing Bashar al Assad:\r\nTowards a more effective anti-war movement
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by\r\nCarlos Martinez, Syria 360<\/i>°,\r\n23 September 2013<\/i>
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On 10 April 1993, one of the\r\ngreatest heroes of the anti-apartheid struggle, Chris Hani,\r\nwas gunned down by a neo-fascist in an attempt to disrupt the seemingly\r\ninexorable process of bringing majority rule to South Africa. Although\r\ndirect legal culpability for this tragic assassination belonged to only\r\ntwo men – a Polish immigrant by the name of Janusz Waluś and\r\na senior Conservative Party MP named Clive Derby-Lewis – the\r\ncrime formed part of a much wider onslaught against the ANC and its\r\nallies. This onslaught – paramilitary, political, legal,\r\npsychological, journalistic – was not primarily conducted by\r\nfringe lunatics such as Waluś and Derby-Lewis, but by the mainstream\r\nwhite political forces and their puppets within the black community\r\n(such as the Inkatha Freedom Party). The leaders of the ANC, and\r\nparticularly the MK (Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed liberation movement\r\nwith which Chris Hani’s name will forever be associated) were\r\nsubjected to a wide-ranging campaign of demonisation. This campaign\r\ncreated conditions such that political assassinations of anti-apartheid\r\nleaders became expected, almost inevitable. Of course, the more\r\n‘dovish’ leaders of the main white party, the\r\nNational Party, were quick to denounce Hani’s assassination;\r\nbut the truth is that they were at least partly responsible for it.<\/p>\r\n

Speaking at Hani’s\r\nfuneral, Nelson Mandela spoke\r\nof this phenomenon: “To criminalise is to outlaw, and the\r\nhunting down of an outlaw is regarded as legitimate. That is why,\r\nalthough millions of people have been outraged at the murder of Chris\r\nHani, few were really surprised. Those who have deliberately created\r\nthis climate that legitimates political assassinations are as much\r\nresponsible for the death of Chris Hani as the man who pulled the\r\ntrigger.”<\/p>\r\n

Turning to the current\r\nsituation in Syria, we see a parallel between the “climate\r\nthat legitimates political assassinations” in early-90s South\r\nAfrica and a media climate that legitimates the “limited military strikes”\r\nbeing planned in Washington.<\/p>\r\n

The Syrian state has been under\r\ndirect attack by western imperialism for the last two and a half years\r\n(although the US and others have been “accelerating the work of reformers”\r\nfor much longer than that). The forms of this attack are many: providing weapons and money\r\nto opposition groups trying to topple the government; implementing wide-ranging\r\ntrade sanctions; providing practically unlimited space\r\nin the media for the opposition whilst effecting a near-total media\r\nblackout on pro-government sources; and relentlessly slandering the\r\nSyrian president and government. In short, the western media and\r\ngovernments have – consciously and deliberately –\r\n“created this climate that legitimates” a military\r\nregime change operation against Syria.<\/p>\r\n

An\r\nanti-war movement that takes part in war propaganda<\/b><\/p>\r\n

Building a phoney case for\r\nimperialist regime change is, of course, not unusual.\r\nWhat is really curious is that the leadership of the anti-war movement\r\nin the west – the people whose clear responsibility is to\r\nbuild the widest possible opposition to war on Syria – has\r\nbeen actively participating in the propaganda and demonisation\r\ncampaign. Whilst opposing direct military strikes, they have\r\nnonetheless given consistent support to the regime change operation\r\nthat such strikes are meant to consummate.<\/p>\r\n

Wilfully ignoring the\r\nindications that the Syrian government is very popular,\r\nTariq Ali – perhaps the most recognisable figure in the\r\nBritish anti-war movement – feels able to claim that\r\n“the overwhelming majority of the Syrian people want the\r\nAssad family out”. Indeed, he explicitly calls for foreign-assisted\r\nregime change, saying\r\n“non-violent pressure has to be kept up externally to tell\r\nBashar he has to go.”<\/p>\r\n

Rising star of the British left\r\nOwen Jones used his high-profile Independent column of 25 August this\r\nyear (just as the war rhetoric from Cameron, Hollande and Kerry was\r\nreaching fever pitch) to voice his hatred\r\nof the “gang of thugs” and “glorified\r\ngangsters” that run Syria, before worrying that “an\r\nattack could invite retaliation from Iran and an escalation of\r\nRussian’s support for Assad’s thugs, helping to\r\ndrag the region even further into disaster.” Jones evidently\r\ndoesn’t know very much about Syria, but that\r\ndoesn’t stop him from participating in the\r\nBa’ath-bashing: last year, his response to a bomb attack in\r\nDamascus which killed several Syrian ministers was the gleeful\r\n“Adios, Assad\r\n(I hope)”.<\/p>\r\n

According to Stop the War\r\nCoalition national officer John Rees,\r\n“no-one can minimise the barbarity of the Assad regime, nor\r\nwant to defend it from the justified rage of its own people.<\/b>”\r\nAny objectively progressive actions ever taken by the Syrian government\r\n(such as its support for Palestine and Hezbollah) are nothing more than\r\n“self-interested and calculated acts\r\nof state policy”\r\n– which claim is rather reminiscent of the Financial Times accusing\r\nHugo Chávez of “demagogy” in pushing for\r\nland reform in Venezuela!<\/p>\r\n

Rees is only too clear\r\nthat the number one enemy for Syrians is the government, and that\r\npro-west sectarian Saudi-funded rebels are a secondary enemy\r\n– a position virtually indistinguishable from the Israelis,\r\nwho state:\r\n“We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the\r\nbad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were\r\nbacked by Iran.” Further, Rees believes that what is really\r\nneeded is to “give the revolutionaries the chance to shake\r\noff their pro-western leaders and defeat Assad.”\r\nThat’s presumably if they’re not too busy eating human hearts\r\nor murdering people on the basis of\r\ntheir religious beliefs.<\/p>\r\n

These are not isolated\r\nexamples. It is decidedly rare to find a British anti-war leader\r\nmentioning Bashar al-Assad and his government in anything but an\r\nintensely negative light. Bashar is “brutal”; he is\r\na “dictator”; he should be indicted\r\nat the International Criminal Court. Frankly, this leader of\r\nindependent, anti-imperialist Syria is subjected to far more severe\r\nabuse from the mainstream left than are the leaders of Britain, France\r\nand the US. In the imperialist heartlands of North America and Western\r\nEurope, the defence\r\nof\r\nSyria\r\nhas\r\nbeen\r\nleft\r\nto\r\na\r\nsmall\r\nminority,\r\nalthough thankfully the (far more important) left movements in Venezuela,\r\nCuba,\r\nNicaragua\r\nand elsewhere have a much richer understanding of anti-imperialist\r\nsolidarity.<\/p>\r\n

At the risk of stating the\r\nbleedin’ obvious: if you’re trying to spread\r\nanti-war sentiment and build the most effective possible movement\r\nagainst military action, then taking part in the demonisation of the\r\ncountry under threat is probably not a very smart strategy.<\/p>\r\n

This campaign of propaganda,\r\nlies and slander has been very effective in creating a public opinion\r\nthat is ambivalent at best in relation to the attack that is under\r\npreparation. Whilst most people may be “against”\r\nbombing Syria in principle, to what extent are they passionate enough\r\nto actually do<\/i>\r\nanything to prevent this criminal, murderous act from taking place? Two\r\nmillion people marched against war in Iraq (and given the right\r\nleadership, they would have been willing to do considerably more than\r\njust march); yet no demonstration against war on Syria has attracted\r\nmore than a couple of thousand people. Would thousands of people be\r\nwilling to participate in direct action? Would they be willing to\r\nconduct, say, a one-week general strike? Would workers follow the great\r\nexample of the Rolls Royce workers in East Kilbride\r\nand actively disrupt imperialist support for regime change? Highly\r\nunlikely. And this is because all they have heard about Syria\r\n– from the radical left to the fundamentalist right to the\r\nSaudi-sponsored Muslim organisations – is that Bashar\r\nal-Assad is a brutal dictator whose overthrow is long overdue.<\/p>\r\n

OK,\r\nbut haven’t we just prevented a war?<\/b><\/p>\r\n

In the light of the House of\r\nCommons exhibiting an unusual level of sense by voting against Cameron’s\r\nmotion authorising use of force\r\nagainst Syria, some anti-war activists were quick to claim\r\nthat the “sustained mass power of the anti-war\r\nmovement” has “undoubtedly been a decisive\r\nfactor.” Members of this movement should “recognise what we have achieved in\r\nrecent weeks : we have stopped\r\nthe US and Britain from waging a war that, if the British parliament\r\nhad voted the other way, would already have taken place, with who knows\r\nwhat consequences.”<\/p>\r\n

Now, optimism and jubilation\r\nhave their place, but they shouldn’t be used to deflect valid\r\ncriticism or avoid serious reflection. Anybody who has been involved in\r\nthe anti-war movement in Britain over the past decade will have noticed\r\nthe level of activity steadily dwindling. Just two years ago, we\r\nwitnessed a vicious war fought by the western imperialist powers (with\r\nBritain one of the major instigators) in order to effect regime change\r\nin Libya. Over 50,000 died.\r\nMurderous racists\r\nwere brought to power. A head of state was tortured and\r\nmurdered , while imperialism celebrated.\r\nDecades of development – that had turned Libya from a\r\ncolonial backwater into the country with the highest living standards in Africa\r\n– have been turned back. Stop the War Coalition\r\nweren’t able to mobilise more than a tiny protest\r\nagainst this war, and yet we are expected to believe that, two years\r\nlater, Britain suddenly has a vibrant and brilliantly effective\r\nanti-war movement capable of preventing war on Syria? This is obviously not the case.<\/p>\r\n

Regardless of how much\r\nattention the British public pays to the anti-war movement, the fact is\r\nthat public opinion in the west is only a small factor in the much\r\nlarger question of the balance of forces. Syria is different to Libya\r\nin that it has powerful\r\nallies\r\nand that it has never disarmed. Furthermore, it shares a border with\r\nIsrael and is capable of doing some serious damage to\r\nimperialism’s most important ally in the Middle East. This\r\nmakes military intervention a highly dangerous and unpredictable option\r\nfrom the point of view of the decision-makers in Washington, London and\r\nParis.<\/p>\r\n

The uprising was supposed to\r\ntake care of this problem. A successful ‘Arab\r\nSpring’ revolution – armed, trained and funded by the west\r\nand its regional proxies in Saudi, Turkey, Qatar and Jordan –\r\nwould have installed a compliant government and would have constituted\r\nan essential milestone in the imperialist-zionist regional strategy:\r\nthe breakup of the resistance axis\r\nand the overthrow of all states unwilling to go along with\r\nimperialist diktat. This\r\nstrategy – seemingly so difficult for western liberals and\r\nleftists to comprehend – is perfectly well understood\r\nby the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah: “What is\r\nhappening in Syria is a confrontation between the resistance axis and\r\nthe U.S.\/Israeli axis. They seek aggression against the resistance axis\r\nthrough Syria in order to destroy Syria’s capabilities and\r\npeople, marginalize its role, weaken the resistance and relieve\r\nIsrael.”<\/p>\r\n

Beyond the Middle East, a\r\nsuccessful ‘revolution’ in Syria would of course be\r\na vital boost to the US-led global strategy: protecting US hegemony and\r\ncontaining the rise of China,\r\nRussia and the other major developing nations.<\/p>\r\n

And yet, in spite of massive\r\nsupport given to the armed opposition; in spite of the relentless\r\npropaganda campaign against the Syrian government; in spite of Israeli bombing raids\r\non Damascus; in spite of a brutal and tragic campaign of sectarian\r\nhatred\r\nbeing conducted by the rebels; in spite of the blanket support given to\r\nthe rebels by the imperialists\r\nand zionists;\r\nthe Syrian Arab Army is winning.\r\nThe tide has clearly turned and the momentum is with the patriotic\r\nforces. Hezbollah have openly joined the fray.\r\nRussia has sent its warships\r\nto the region and has demonstrated some genuine creative brilliance\r\nin the diplomatic field in order to prevent western military strikes.\r\nRussia, China, Iran, Venezuela and others have been immovable in their\r\ndemands for a peaceful, negotiated solution to the crisis.<\/p>\r\n

Nobody in imperialist policy\r\ncircles expected things to turn out like this. The\r\n‘revolution’ was supposed to have succeeded long\r\nago. As a result, the western ruling classes have moved from a firm,\r\nunited policy (i.e. help the rebels to victory and then\r\n‘assist the transition to democracy’) to chaos,\r\nconfusion and division. There are hawkish elements that want to bomb\r\ntheir way to victory, and there are more cautious\/realistic elements\r\nthat realise this would be an incredibly dangerous course of action for\r\nthe western powers and for Israel. Imperialism is faced with a very\r\ndelicate, even impossible, balance: trying to preserve its increasingly\r\nfragile hegemony whilst actively attacking the global counter-hegemonic\r\nprocess. It is a case of “damned if they do and damned if\r\nthey don’t”.<\/p>\r\n

Such divisions within the\r\nruling circles in the west are to be welcomed, but it would be an act\r\nof significant deception to claim victory for a western anti-war\r\nmovement that has persistently refused to ally itself with global\r\nanti-imperialism.<\/p>\r\n

Decriminalise\r\nand defend Syria<\/b><\/p>\r\n

If we are going to build an\r\nanti-war movement capable of mobilising people in a serious way to\r\nactually counter imperialist war plans for Syria, we cannot continue\r\nwith the hopeless “neither imperialism nor Assad”\r\nposition, which is designed to avoid the obvious question: when\r\nimperialism is fighting against the Syrian state, which side should we\r\nbe on?<\/p>\r\n

A far more viable anti-war\r\nslogan is: Defend Syria from\r\nimperialist destabilisation, demonisation and war<\/i>.<\/p>\r\n

But can we really defend this\r\nbrutal, oppressive, repressive regime? Wasn’t the much-missed\r\nHugo Chavez just being a bit of a nutcase when he expressed his\r\nfondness for “brother President Bashar al-Assad”\r\nand worked to counter the offensive against Syria by shipping fuel to it?<\/p>\r\n

As with so many things, we have\r\nto start with a total rejection of the mainstream media narrative. The\r\ncountry they paint as a brutally repressive police state, a prison of\r\nnations, a Cold War relic, is (or was, until the war started tearing it\r\napart) a dignified, safe, secular, modern and moderately prosperous\r\nstate, closely aligned with the socialist and non-aligned world (e.g. Venezuela,\r\nCuba,\r\nDPR Korea),\r\nand one of the leading forces within the resistance axis\r\n– a bloc that the imperialists are absolutely desperate\r\nto break up.<\/p>\r\n

In the words of its president,\r\nSyria is “an independent state working for the interests of\r\nits people, rather than making the Syrian people work for the interests\r\nof the West.” For over half a century, it has stubbornly\r\nrefused to play by the rules of imperialism and neoliberalism. Stephen Gowans shows\r\nthat, in spite of some limited market reforms of recent years,\r\n“the Ba’athist state has always exercised\r\nconsiderable influence over the Syrian economy, through ownership of\r\nenterprises, subsidies to privately-owned domestic firms, limits on\r\nforeign investment, and restrictions on imports.<\/b>\r\nThese are the necessary economic tools of a post-colonial state trying\r\nto wrest its economic life from the grips of former colonial powers and\r\nto chart a course of development free from the domination of foreign\r\ninterests.”<\/b><\/p>\r\n

The Syrian government maintains\r\na commitment to a strong welfare state, for example ensuring universal\r\naccess to healthcare (in which area its performance has been impressive)\r\nand providing free education at all levels.\r\nIt has a long-established policy of secularism and multiculturalism, protecting and celebrating its\r\nreligious and ethnic diversity\r\nand refusing to tolerate sectarian hatred.<\/p>\r\n

Syria has done a great deal\r\n– perhaps more than any other country – to oppose\r\nIsrael and support the Palestinians. It has long been the chief financial and practical\r\nsupporter of the various Palestinian resistance organisations,\r\nas well as of Hezbollah.\r\nIt has intervened militarily to prevent Israel’s expansion\r\ninto Lebanon. It has provided a home to hundreds of thousands of\r\nPalestinian refugees, who are treated far better\r\nthan they are elsewhere in the Arab world. In spite of massive pressure\r\nto do so – and in spite of the obvious immediate benefits\r\nthat it would reap in terms of security and peace – it has\r\nrefused to go down the route of a bilateral peace treaty with Israel.\r\nPalestine is very much at the forefront of the Syrian national\r\nconsciousness, as exemplified by the Syrians who went to the border\r\nwith Israel on Nakba Day 2011 and were martyred there at the hands of the\r\nIsraeli ‘Defence’ Forces.<\/p>\r\n

True to its Pan-Arabist\r\ntraditions, Syria has also provided a home to hundreds\r\nof thousands of Iraqi refugees\r\nin the aftermath of NATO’s 2003 attack.<\/p>\r\n

Whatever mistakes and painful\r\ncompromises Ba’athist Syria has made over the years should be\r\nviewed in terms of the very unstable and dangerous geopolitical and\r\neconomic context within which it exists. For example:<\/p>\r\n